First Came Baby. Kris Fletcher

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СКАЧАТЬ tell me to let it go. Because you know that if the positions were reversed, you wouldn’t.”

      There was some truth to that. Anyone who hurt Allie had to be prepared to face the wrath of Kate, and if that happened, they ended up counting their blessings, because it meant that Kate got to them before her mother did.

      But this was different. Boone had been nothing but honest from the start. Ten minutes after meeting him at a fan convention in Ottawa, she had known that he was going to be around for only a few months, that even though he was still Canadian he considered Peru his home, that there was no chance of anything long-term or forever between them. He wasn’t a family man. Kate, on the rebound from a bad breakup, had been fine with that. She’d definitely wanted permanence and a family someday, but at that moment, short-term and fun and intense had been just what she’d needed.

      That was, until a perfect storm of chances and failures had led to the perfect baby sleeping in her arms.

      “The point is,” she said, easing Jamie upright, “Craig and Jill are running things again, and as soon as they were caught up, Boone booked a flight. He’ll be here Tuesday. Call me sentimental, but I didn’t want to put him in a room that had faded flamingo wallpaper on one wall and giant chrysanthemums on the others. So we’re painting.”

      Allie’s grunt was all the proof Kate needed that her sister didn’t approve of any of this. No surprise there. What was surprising was that Allie hadn’t yet mentioned that they were prepping a second-story room for Boone, when Kate and Jamie were already established in Nana’s old room on the first floor.

      Any minute now...

      “Hang on.”

      Kate lifted her chin. She could wait for Allie to say it, or she could get the hardest part out of the way.

      “That’s right,” she said as evenly as possible. “He’s sleeping up here.”

      “You’re putting your husband—the man you haven’t seen in ten months, the guy who almost made you commit an act of public indecency on the beach that day—in a separate room?”

      “That’s right. And no, before you ask, I’m not moving my stuff up here.” Kate rose from the chair with all the grace of a lame giraffe. “He’s not coming just to meet Jamie, Allie. Or to help me get the place fixed up so I can sell it. He’s also coming home so we can get a divorce.”

      * * *

      JACKSON BOONE’S FEET slowed as he approached the door leading from the secure area of the Ottawa airport to the public space. Once he stepped through that door, everything was going to change.

      God, he hoped he was ready.

      His head knew that the real change had happened months ago, when Jamie was born. Or when he and Kate had decided to get married so her grandmother—set in her ways until the end, as Kate had said—could die in peace, knowing her first great-grandchild wouldn’t be born out of wedlock.

      Though really, everything had changed when he’d opted to leave his work in Peru for a few months to do some advanced study in nonprofit leadership in Ottawa. Or, more accurately, when he’d let a classmate drag him to a Star Wars fan gathering and he’d spied Kate across the crowded convention hall. One look at the purple streaks in her Princess Leia hair and his entire world had shifted.

      Still, that had all been fun and games and some of the best times he had ever known. This, though. This was his kid. His son.

      Boone had been a lot of things in his life. Student. Builder. Foster kid. The relative that had to be taken in. But in all his life, he had never really felt like a son. And he had no idea how he was supposed to be a father.

      Think about Kate, he ordered himself yet again. You’re here to make things easier for her. That’s what matters.

      Right. As long as he came out of this having helped Kate in whatever way he could, the rest would fall into line.

      With that in mind, he hitched his backpack higher on his shoulder, braced himself and walked through the doors.

      It took him a moment to find her in the crowd. He scanned the faces in front of him, looking for the thick brown hair and the glowing smile that had first drawn him to her. Winding his way through the reunions taking place on either side, he peered, ducked and—

      There. She was over by the window, sitting on a bench tucked into an alcove.

      Heat raced through him. They had talked regularly these past months, Skyping at least once a week, so it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen her since he left. He knew that she had cut her hair, and that the purple streaks were long gone. He had watched her jiggle little Jamie and pat his back and rock back and forth—probably without even knowing what she was doing, because if they gave out extra years for instinctive nurturing, Kate would have a lifespan stretching into the triple digits.

      But it was one thing to watch all that happen from thousands of miles away and the safety of a computer screen. It was another to know that she was in front of him, to drink in the sight of her while voices bounced off the high ceilings and people laughed and cried on either side and folks brushed past him as they headed for the baggage area.

      She hadn’t spied him yet. She was curled over—well, he assumed it was Jamie. From this angle, all he could see was a gray lump, a pack of some sort, from which dangled a miniature leg and an impossibly tiny foot, wiggling back and forth like it was waving hello to him.

      I helped make that foot.

      His mother, during the rare times he had spent with her, had assured him regularly that he wasn’t the type to have any success at making things. But as Boone stared at that tiny foot holding his attention as securely as if it were a hypnotist’s watch, he knew that in this, at least, his mother had been dead wrong.

      Kate finished fussing with the pack, gave a little pat to the front of it, and kissed the top of Jamie’s head. The foot swung faster.

      A loud wail pierced the roar of voices. Boone flinched and hurried forward. He’d heard Jamie cry over the phone many times. Intellectually, he understood when Kate laughed it off and assured him that cries were simply the way babies communicated, and that while there was always a reason, the reason was rarely the end of the world.

      But this sounded different. More demanding. Maybe it was simply because it wasn’t coming to him via satellite or whatever, but this cry went straight to Boone’s gut.

      Mierda.

      Kate stood, her arms below the pack, swaying and jiggling. She raised her head and scanned the area, her hazel eyes squinting, then widening as she spotted him.

      He wasn’t sure what kind of welcome he had expected. A hug? Maybe. A kiss? No. Kate had made things very clear when they’d last talked. Their marriage was over, exactly as they’d planned. No hard feelings. They were both adults. They both knew this had been only temporary, and now that her grandmother was dead, well... But since they weren’t planning a future together, she felt it was best if they kept things platonic while he was in town. Easier on everybody, she had said. And since the one thing Boone wanted most in this visit was to give Kate what she needed, he had agreed. He understood.

      That didn’t mean he liked it.

      Whatever reunion he might have hoped for, СКАЧАТЬ