Santa's Seven-Day Baby Tutorial. Meg Maxwell

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СКАЧАТЬ around a city. The twins will keep me occupied. I need to work and be busy.”

      “Very Amish,” she said with a smile.

      He turned to grin at her, and his smile lit up his entire face. “We should get along fine, then.”

      He was so good-looking, so close, so...hot, as the magazines put it, that she had to turn away to collect herself. As they passed through Grass Creek, Anna glanced out the window, noting how the women were dressed. All differently, but in modern clothes. English clothes. Jeans. Skirts. Pants. Brightly colored sweaters. She glanced down at her shapeless blue dress. “I guess when we arrive, everyone will immediately know I’m Amish.”

      He glanced at her. “You are Amish.”

      “Yes, but I just realized I’d like to start off this rumspringa as the person I feel like inside. And this dress and these boots and the head covering...they’re all familiar and comforting in a way, I suppose, but they don’t make me feel like...” She trailed off and looked down.

      “Like?” he prompted.

      “Like myself. I’m not entirely sure who that is, though. I have no idea what ‘my style’ would be.”

      “Ah. I understand. Well, how about this—my sister stays over my place sometimes and has a bunch of stuff at my condo. You’re welcome to borrow some clothes and whatever else you want.”

      Once assured that his sister wouldn’t mind, Anna accepted the offer. Which meant going to Colt’s condo. She’d been in an elevator before, at the hospital. But she’d never gone thirty-two flights up in the sky. She smiled, happy goose bumps popping up on her arms. Everything about working for this man for the next week would be new and incredibly exciting.

      As Colt drove past the exit for Grass Creek, Anna’s heartbeat felt like it was going faster than his car. She couldn’t wait to see where he lived, the tall buildings and crowds and the city lit up at night.

      “This is it, up ahead,” he said, and she stared up at the huge glass building. He pulled into a garage attached and drove up and around several floors, then parked in a reserved spot. He opened her door and she got out, surrounded by parked cars. Not a buggy in sight.

      Colt got the stroller from the trunk and pulled it around to the back passenger-side door, rousing a groggy baby into the stroller. He was gentle, soothing, and said, “Hey, little buddy, we’re at my place,” then settled the boppli—Anna wasn’t sure who was who just yet—into the stroller. The baby was fully awake now, the strange surroundings holding his attention. Colt wheeled the stroller to the other side and repeated his actions with his twin, who started to cry.

      Anna got out of the car. “I’ll take him,” she said, scooping up the little one from the car seat. She held him against her chest, gently rocking him, and he quieted.

      “A pro. Exactly what I need.”

      She smiled. “You’re pretty good yourself, Colt.”

      “The novelty hasn’t worn off,” he said.

      Novelty? She supposed that as a single man, an FBI agent living in a big city, he wasn’t exactly surrounded by babies. But taking care of others, seeing to their needs, whether a baby or an adult, wasn’t something that wore off. She wanted to ask him what he meant, but now the other baby was fussing.

      “Noah may be a little jealous,” Colt said, glancing at the baby in her arms.

      Anna smiled. “I’ll bet you’re right. And so you must be Nathaniel,” she said to the little one she carried. “Let’s put you in the stroller next to your twin.”

      Noah still fussed, so Anna picked him up and rocked him in her arms, letting him stretch a bit. He calmed down, but the moment she tried to put him back in the stroller, he let out a wail. “Okay, little one. My arms, it is.”

      Colt pushed the stroller with a satisfied Nathaniel, who was biting on his little chew toy.

      A couple emerged from an elevator with a little boy, and as the boy ran full speed ahead right toward them, the mother called out, “Don’t crash into the nice family!”

      Anna froze and she could feel Colt do the same beside her. She recovered first, smiling at the boy who darted past. The couple apologized for their speed demon and moved on.

      Colt continued pushing the stroller toward the elevator bank, his entire demeanor...changed. Now he seemed tense. Unsettled. Because of the woman’s comment? Because she’d mistaken them for a family? Even in her Amish clothing, her white bonnet, Anna had seemed believable to the woman as the wife of this gorgeous Englisher in his black leather jacket.

      Though, with a baby in her arms, and Colt pushing another in the double stroller, they did look like a family. Despite Colt’s discomfort, Anna felt a secret thrill at the notion that they were a family. This ridiculously sexy Englisher, her husband. She smiled, the idea so exciting and preposterous that she laughed.

      “What did I miss?” he asked, eyeing her as they reached the elevators.

      “That woman took us for a family. Can you imagine, an Amish woman, albeit on rumspringa, as wife of an FBI agent in Houston?” She couldn’t even wonder what that life would be like. When she was little she’d asked her mother if English wives did the same things as Amish wives—the cooking and cleaning and raising of kinder, and if they had glamorous jobs or not so glamorous jobs, how they managed everything. Her mother had told her that in the English world, it took a community to help out just the same as in their world. No one could do it all alone.

      “This FBI agent can’t imagine having any wife,” Colt said, pushing the button for the elevator.

      Her smile faded and she stared at him. He looked dead serious. “You don’t plan to marry?”

      He shook his head. “I’m fine on my own. I live for my work. In January, I’ll be heading up a task force to take down an organized crime ring that’s been building in Houston. Getting those thugs off the street and behind bars—that’ll take everything I’ve got. If I had a wife or children, my attention would be split.”

      She gaped at him. “Split? But your heart would belong to your family completely.” Wouldn’t it? Jobs were important, of course. Money was necessary to live. But family was the most important thing in this life. Family came first.

      The silver elevator doors opened and Colt pushed the stroller inside. Anna stepped next to him, Noah playing with the string of her bonnet.

      “I would hope so,” he said, running a finger across Noah’s big cheek. “But since my heart belongs to my job, I’m sticking with that.”

      Unsettled, Anna shifted Noah in her arms and pressed her own cheek to his head. She wanted her own family so badly. “Not badly enough that you’ll say yes to a gut man who loves you,” her aenti Kate had said more than once. “Not badly enough that you’ll commit to being Amish and spending your life as a wife and mother in our village.”

      She’d even said no to her best friend, Caleb. Handsome. Kind. Loyal. They’d grown up together, but even when she was a girl she didn’t dream of marrying Caleb Yoder. She dreamed of what was up the road beyond her sights. She dreamed of hiding in Grass Creek so that the buggies would leave without her. And last year, when Caleb had said he’d waited long enough and had given СКАЧАТЬ