Maverick Christmas Surprise. Brenda Harlen

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      The house emptied quickly after dessert was finished and the cleanup complete, leaving Wilder and his father alone with the baby. Then Max took off, too, to pick up a crib he’d arranged to borrow from one of their many Crawford relatives in town.

      Wilder had offered to make the trip, but his dad had insisted that he stay at the Ambling A to watch the baby. For the first half hour, there weren’t any major snags—because the kid slept. But when he woke up, he was not in a very good mood.

      The baby didn’t cry. Not really. But his face was all scrunched up and he was squirming in his seat, and Wilder braced himself for the crying to start.

      “Avery promised that you would sleep for a few hours,” Wilder said, trying to reason with the infant. “That was barely more than an hour ago.”

      His words got the kid’s attention, though, and he fixed his big, blue eyes on Wilder.

      “You can’t be hungry already,” he continued, in the same logical tone. “You sucked back a whole bottle before she left.”

      The baby continued to fuss, clearly unconvinced and unhappy.

      And his lower lip was starting to do that quivering thing that warned Wilder real tears and sobs likely weren’t too far behind.

      “I’m sorry,” he said. “But I don’t know what to do.”

      “You could try picking him up.”

      Wilder turned to see Hunter standing in the doorway. “I thought you’d gone home.”

      “I did,” his brother confirmed. “And then I came back.”

      “Why?”

      “Because I thought you might want to talk to someone who’s been where you are.”

      On another day, Wilder might have made a snarky comment about not remembering when a baby had been left on Hunter’s doorstep, but right now, he was too grateful for his presence to risk saying anything that might prompt him to leave again.

      “I think I need a manual more than a sounding board,” he confided.

      “A manual would be useless,” Hunter said. “Because every baby is different.”

      “So how am I supposed to know what’s wrong with this one?”

      “He’s probably out of sorts because he doesn’t know where his mama is.”

      “That makes two of us,” Wilder said.

      “And when babies are out of sorts, they need to be comforted.”

      He gestured to the infant in his carrier. “Feel free.”

      But his brother shook his head. “You need to step up.”

      “I would have stepped up months ago if Leighton had told me she was pregnant,” he said in his defense.

      “So why are you hesitating now?” his brother challenged.

      “Because I don’t have the first clue what to do with a baby.”

      “No first-time parent has a clue in the beginning.”

      His brother’s matter-of-fact statement was hardly reassuring.

      And while they were talking, the baby was growing more distressed.

      With a sigh of resignation, Wilder unhooked the strap and lifted him out of the seat.

      The baby stopped fussing for a moment to stare at him, as if waiting for something else.

      Something more.

      Wilder looked at his brother. “I’m doing this wrong, aren’t I?”

      “Babies generally like to be held closer than arm’s length,” Hunter told him.

      Wilder pulled his arms toward his chest, so that he was almost nose-to-nose with the kid.

      Hunter started to chuckle, but quickly covered it with a cough when Wilder glared at him.

      “Closer,” he urged. “But to the side, with his head about level with your shoulder so he can see behind you. With newborns, you need to keep one hand on the bottom and the other on the head and neck, for support, but he’s obviously strong enough to hold his head up just fine.”

      Wilder did his best to follow his brother’s instructions.

      “That’s it,” Hunter assured him.

      “He feels so tiny.” His whispered remark was filled with awe and wonder—and just a hint of the nerves that were tangled up inside him. “So fragile.”

      “It’s normal to be scared. I was terrified the first time I held Wren in my arms,” his brother confided. “And she was a lot smaller than Cody is.”

      “But you had nine months to prepare yourself for her arrival,” Wilder pointed out, though he wasn’t sure anything could have prepared him for this moment.

      Hunter nodded. “True.”

      Wilder patted the baby’s back gently, as he’d watched Sarah do, and was rewarded with a shockingly loud belch.

      “Gas might have been another cause of his distress,” Hunter noted then.

      “You think?” Wilder asked dryly.

      “And now that it’s out of his system, you can try the cradle hold,” he said, and talked him through shifting the baby’s position so that he was tucked in the crook of Wilder’s arm. “Now sit down and relax.”

      Relax? He wasn’t sure he’d be able to relax so long as there was a baby under his roof.

      And though Leighton’s note had given no indication that she was planning to come back for the little guy, he had to believe that she would. After all, what kind of mom just left her kid?

      Mine, he thought, then shoved the unpleasant twinge from his mind.

      Hunter took another seat at the table, leaning back in the chair and stretching his legs out in front.

      Obviously relaxing wasn’t a problem for him.

      “Where’d Dad go?” he asked.

      “To СКАЧАТЬ