The Bachelor, the Baby and the Beauty. Victoria Pade

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      A quick glance around at the large, open area and Chase knew that Logan had made sure the contractor met his specifications.

      His furniture had been sent ahead last week. He’d trusted his own belongings to professional movers while he’d manned the truck—that was now stalled just outside of town—filled with the Mackey and McKendrick Designs pieces that were slated for the Northbridge showroom. The movers had set his things around the place haphazardly—the furniture was usable but still needed to be arranged the way he wanted it.

      But Chase had more important things on his mind. Despite what he’d led his friend to think, he was a little shaken to suddenly find out he hadn’t been an only child.

      How the hell could he have blanked on something like brothers and sisters? he asked himself as he went to the chrome-and-glass kitchen table and tossed the social worker’s file folder onto it.

      Okay, yes, he had been barely more than a baby when his parents were killed—six months younger than Tia was now, and she was just a tiny, tiny kid.

      And yes, there had been dreams. Disjointed dreams that had never seemed like anything but dreams—that he had a family, that his parents were alive. But he’d always figured it was just wishful thinking. It had never felt real enough to be anything else, or been clear enough to make him believe there had ever actually been other kids, especially when he honestly had no waking memory of them.

      But apparently there had been. Older and younger kids …

      Trying now to think back as far as he could, Chase still couldn’t recall anything that led up to his going to the boys’ home where his first memories began—and even those were vague. He just remembered being at the boys’ home, being scared and lonely most of the time there.

      Nowhere in that could he remember the slightest indication that there were siblings he’d been separated from.

      Not that he recalled ever asking.

      He did remember asking about his parents—though he didn’t remember exactly when. He only knew that the answer to his question had been, “They’re no longer with us …” He’d thought that that meant they’d gone off somewhere and just left him behind for some reason, maybe because he had done something wrong.

      The fact that his parents had died hadn’t been openly discussed with him until he’d gone from the boys’ home to his foster home.

      He’d been eight then. When Alma Pritick had taken the time to talk to him about his mother and father, about what had happened to them.

      Alma Pritick had been one of the few positive aspects of his childhood.

      It had been Alma who had located an old newspaper clipping of his parents’ wedding picture for him and framed it. Alma who had finally given him the sense that at one point he had belonged to someone who cared about him.

      But nowhere in any of what Alma had said, either, had there been a mention of other kids who had been orphaned alongside him.

      He had never had a clue.

      But now that he knew it, he had other things to deal with.

      Things like an eleven-month-old nephew …

      That still didn’t seem real.

      But with that baby in mind, he sat on one of the director’s chairs that went with the table and opened the file.

      The DVD and some paperwork were inside. Along with the photograph of the baby.

      Cute enough, as kids went, he thought as he studied the picture. Big brown eyes. Chunky cheeks. Some feathery, light-colored hair that stood up on the top of the kid’s head like spikes.

      “Okay …” he said as if he’d successfully taken the first step on the detour he’d just made into unknown territory.

      And a kid was pretty unknown territory for him. The only one he’d ever had contact with was Tia, and that had been more in the role of sort-of uncle. Initially, when Logan’s wife had left Logan with their two-month-old daughter, Chase had gone to Connecticut to help out. But his help had actually just been moral support for Logan—it wasn’t as if he’d done much hands-on with Tia.

      Diaper changes, feedings, baths—those things had been his friend’s purview. He’d held Tia a few times, but that was about it. And in the three years since then? A sort-of uncle—that was what Chase’s relationship with Tia had consisted of. There definitely hadn’t been anything that would have prepared him for taking care of a kid himself, that was for sure.

      But when Neily Pratt had said this new kid was in foster care? That had struck a nerve.

      No, his experience in foster care hadn’t been a horror story. But he did know the good and the not-so-good sides of it.

      Alma Pritick had been the good side.

      But there had also been Alma’s husband, Homer. And while Homer might not have been abusive, he had definitely been on the not-so-good side of foster care. Homer Pritick and the boys’ home before him—those were the memories that had spurred Chase to take the kid. Because the bottom line was that if the child was related to him in any way, he didn’t want him in that same system.

      “So you’re gonna be mine,” he said as if he were talking to the baby rather than the baby’s picture. “At least for a while …”

      Then he set down the photograph and picked up the DVD.

      The DVD his older sister had made.

      Sisters and brothers …

      It just didn’t seem possible.

      It was Logan who had sisters and brothers, not him.

      Sisters like Hadley.

      Hadley …

      “I couldn’t believe my eyes, Had-Had-Hadley,” he said to himself as set down the DVD, got up and went to unpack his laptop computer so he could play it.

      Sure, over the years Logan had told him that Hadley had slimmed down, but he hadn’t given it much thought. Hadley was just Hadley: Logan’s sister. Logan had told him things about Tessa and Issa and Zeli—Logan’s half sisters—and about his half brothers, too. None of it had meant anything to Chase beyond being Logan’s news from home.

      But wow, seeing Hadley for himself? She hadn’t just lost weight, she’d grown up into a knockout.

      Her previously bad skin was porcelain-perfect now. He’d never known she had high cheekbones or that what had just looked like dents in bread dough were actually damn adorable dimples in her cheeks. Her hair wasn’t stringy anymore; it was bouncy and smooth and silky and begged to be touched. The rest of her face had been so plump that until today, he’d never known what full, sweet lips she had. And even her eyes somehow seemed more remarkable—green but with a sort of topaz glimmer to them.

      And the body! No one would ever guess that that firm, curvy little figure could have been whittled out of what she’d been as a girl.

      Man, she was a beauty! A country-girl kind of beauty that made СКАЧАТЬ