First Came Baby. Kris Fletcher

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       CHAPTER TWO

      BOONE HOPPED OUT OF the car as soon as it came to a halt, eager to be vertical once again. The drive from the airport to Kate’s little hometown on the Saint Lawrence River might have been the most comfortable hour of his journey, but it had been the one that most sent him out of whack. He needed to enjoy some sunshine and refresh himself and then get busy. Once his hands and his brain were occupied, he would be more grounded. More confident.

      More able to stop thinking about all the ways he wasn’t anywhere near as ready to be a father as he’d convinced himself he was.

      The trunk was already popped. He grabbed his bags, slung his backpack over his shoulder, and, while Kate was freeing Jamie from his restraints, let himself take in the house.

      Boone had never been here. Kate had been living and working in Ottawa when they met. In their few months together last year, he had made only one trip to Comeback Cove with her, and that had been when they’d driven down to get married in her mother’s living room. That was as far as her grandmother had been able to travel by that point. They had offered to hold the ceremony by her bedside, but she’d been a tough old bugger who’d insisted that she was not going to sit in bed wearing her nightgown as she watched her oldest granddaughter get married. She had made it to the ceremony in full wedding regalia—flowered dress, floppy hat and all. She had been the happiest person in the room.

      Not difficult, since he and Kate had both still been in shock, and her mother and sister had spent the whole ceremony giving him the evil eye.

      Nana had died a month after he’d left. He was glad he’d had the chance to meet her and quietly satisfied that he’d been able to contribute to an easy passing for her.

      But as he took in the house, he couldn’t help but think that Kate inheriting it might not have been the blessing she’d deemed it.

      Kate, Jamie on her shoulder, came to stand beside him.

      “It used to be amazing,” she said softly.

      He could see that. The wraparound porch, deep enough to shade rocking chairs; the strong Queen Anne lines; the turret on the right all gave the house character. Charm. Potential.

      It also needed a new roof and new windows in the turret and a new railing on the porch. And that was just the work he could spy with a casual glance.

      Well, the good news was that fixing this place would leave him so wiped there’d be no question of insomnia.

      “Nana couldn’t keep up with it. She tried, but it was too much. We told her she should sell and move in with Mom, but she always said this was the house that welcomed her as a bride and gave her the happiest years of her life, and she had no intention of leaving until she had to be carried out. Which is exactly what happened.”

      Boone, who had never lived more than six months in the same place until the end of high school, couldn’t begin to comprehend what it must have been like to spend almost an entire life in one house.

      “Come on.” She headed for the steps. “Careful on the porch. The chairs are strategically placed to cover the spots where the boards need to be replaced.”

      He did as instructed, trying not to wince at the number of chairs to be skirted, then followed her into the house, braced for water marks and sagging floors and God only knew what else. So it was a pleasant surprise to walk through the ornately carved front door, through the tiny, sunlight-filled vestibule, and into a cheery yellow room filled with the cushy furniture he recognized from her old place. Sun catchers in the bay window sent prisms dancing over every surface, adding to the feelings of warmth and welcome.

      “This is better than I expected.” He kicked off his sneakers and flexed his toes. “Oh, man, that feels good. I’ve been wearing those shoes for about thirty-six hours.”

      She wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, I can tell.”

      Her grin told him she was teasing. Which shouldn’t have been as much of a relief as it was.

      She nodded toward the doorway into the next room. “Come on. I’m going to see if I can get Jamie into his crib. Then I’ll give you the grand tour.”

      He kept his eyes firmly glued on the walls and the ceiling as he followed her. For one thing, it gave him a chance to assess the structure. For another, it was safer than watching the sway of her hips as she padded in stocking feet across the plank floors. Or the brush of her hair against her neck. Or the curve of her shoulder where he used to bury his face and inhale her and...

      The floors. Right. Think about the floors. They would need to be sanded and refinished before the place went on the market.

      “You lived here for a while when you were a kid, right?”

      “Right. Just long enough to make it the first home I can remember.”

      As soon as they passed into the kitchen, his heart sank. Someone had obviously painted in here—the walls were a great shade of green, not too minty, just fresh and vibrant—but the cupboards needed a total face-lift, if not a complete gutting. The linoleum on the floor was cracked and peeling. And the window above the sink bore a long strip of...

      “Duct tape?” He glanced from the glass to Kate.

      She seemed embarrassed. “That just cracked last week,” she said. “We had a windstorm. A nasty one. We lost power overnight and had to stay with my mom. When I came back, I found that. I called the glass guys, but as you can imagine, they’ve been pretty busy. I’m on the list for next week.”

      “Cancel them. I can have that fixed in a day or two.” He measured the window with his eyes. “Okay, maybe a little longer, depending on whether the glass is a standard size. But I can definitely do that.”

      “Okay.” She lifted the lid on a slow cooker, releasing a rich aroma he hadn’t smelled in too long.

      “Chili?” he asked.

      “Mmm-hmm. I figured that would be a good one for tonight. If your flight was delayed, it would only get better.” She replaced the lid and kept moving.

      Boone was getting a good hint about which one of them had given Jamie the gene that kept that foot swinging all the time.

      He shook his head and followed her into the next room. It held only a rocking chair—strategically placed in front of a truly massive stone fireplace, complete with rock mantel—a computer desk, a bookshelf, and something that he was pretty sure was a changing table. At least, it looked like the pictures that had come up on the Google searches he’d conducted before Jamie’s birth, when Kate would talk to him about baby equipment. Changing tables and bassinets, bottle brushes and onesies, diaper pails and breast pumps.

      He shuddered. Yeah. He’d probably spent a good ten minutes staring at the pump thing, trying to figure out how it worked and why it wasn’t prohibited as an instrument of torture.