The Right Man In Montana by Kristine Rolofson

Author:Kristine Rolofson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2011-06-08T00:00:00+00:00

THE SOUND OF CRYING woke him. With his eyes still closed, Joe listened but couldn’t tell if he heard the infant or Janie. He hadn’t heard Sylvie’s child before, since he was a man who slept hard and deep. Even during those long months after Deb and Jim had died, he’d worked eighteen hours a day to make sure he’d have no nightmares, no midnight pain.

Listening to a child’s sobs was something different, even if the sound was something he’d heard before in the middle of the night. He rolled out of bed and pulled on a pair of jeans, then hurried down the hall to Janie’s room, where only silence and his niece’s rhythmic breathing greeted him when he opened the door. No, the cries came from the kitchen.

He didn’t stop to figure out why he went downstairs instead of heading back to his bed—except that he remembered his brother’s tender care of his wife in those months after they’d had a child. Jim hadn’t been at all reluctant to get up in the middle of the night to change diapers and help his tired wife deal with a baby’s demands.

She stood by the kitchen table, a stranger in Deb’s territory. He waited for the familiar resentment to surface, but this time he only felt sorry for Sylvie. There was something about the woman. He stepped closer and, when she turned to look at him, he noticed her eyelashes were fringed with tears. She was barefoot; a faded gray sweatshirt hung loosely over a kneelength nightgown. She had no right to look so vulnerable that all he wanted to do was take her into his arms.

“You okay?”

“I’m sorry we woke you,” she whispered, patting the child’s back. “Dillon won’t stop crying. I don’t know why.”

“Is he sick?”

“I don’t know. He just ate and then he started crying like his heart was broken.”

Joe held out his arms. “Give him to me.”

“Why?”

“I’ll walk him. Burp him. Something.”

“You don’t know how.”

“There are three kids upstairs, honey.” He didn’t tell her that he had been more of an observer than a participant in their care when they were babies. But hell, she didn’t have to know everything. “I’ve seen my brother deal with babies, and there didn’t seem to be much to it besides walking around and singing some Willie Nelson song.” Sylvie reluctantly handed him her son, and he gathered the protesting child against his shoulder. He smelled like baby powder and sweet milk, but his little legs were rigid against Joe’s bare chest. “Okay, kid, calm down.”

“No song?”

He should have put on a shirt. Joe tried to remember if he’d zipped up his jeans. “I’m tone-deaf.”

“Dillon wouldn’t know the difference.”

“Yeah, he would.” The child bunched his legs up and howled. “I think the little fella has gas.”

“Is that the same as colic?”

“Sometimes, I guess, but maybe he just needs to walk around.”

“That’s what I’ve been doing.”

“And crying along with him, from the looks of you.”

She surprised him by smiling. “I tried to be a little quieter than my son.

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