A Forever Kind of Family (2 page)

She turned on the lamp beside the rocking chair while he went directly to the crib and lifted Oliver into his arms. The baby’s heart-wrenching cries immediately ebbed to shuddery sobs as he snuggled against Ryan’s strong chest.

Harper hovered a few feet away, feeling useless and ineffectual as she watched him soothe the distressed child. His voice was low and even, and the sexy timbre was enough to stir the blood in her veins.

She knew only too well how it would feel to be cradled in his strong embrace, to lay her cheek on his chest and feel the beating of his heart. She knew because she’d spent one incredibly magical night in his arms—then the sun had come up, bringing not just morning but the harshness of reality.

“What’s wrong, buddy?” Ryan crooned to Oliver softly. “Are you wet? Hungry?” He patted the baby’s bottom. “Yep—a diaper change is definitely in order.”

She watched him work, noting how Ryan held Oliver in place on the changing table with one hand splayed on the boy’s tummy while he rummaged on the shelf beneath for a clean diaper. He made it look so effortless and easy, while she worked up a sweat trying to prevent the little guy from wriggling off the edge whenever she attempted the task. Which was, admittedly, not nearly as often as Ryan did.

Over the past two and a half weeks, they’d started to establish a routine. He took care of Oliver in the mornings while she was at work, and when she got home from the studio, he would go into his office for a few hours. They hadn’t created a specific schedule for grocery shopping or laundry yet, but Harper was pretty sure that, in the past week, Ryan had done the bulk of those chores, too. She usually started dinner before he got home, and after they finished eating, they worked together to clean up, followed by bath time for the baby. But when it was Oliver’s bedtime, he’d made it clear early on that he preferred falling asleep in Harper’s arms.

Ryan glanced over his shoulder at her now as he finished fastening the tabs on the diaper. “Go back to bed, Harper. I’ve got him.”

Since her alarm would be going off at 4:45 a.m., she wanted to do exactly that. When she’d gone back to work a few days after the funeral, Ryan had offered to be the one to get up in the night with Oliver so that she could sleep through. It wasn’t his fault that she heard every sound that emanated from Oliver’s room, across the hall from her own.

Thankfully, she worked behind the scenes at
Coffee Time with Caroline
, Charisma’s most popular morning news show, so the dark circles under her eyes weren’t as much a problem as the fog that seemed to have enveloped her brain. And that fog was definitely a problem.

“Do you want me to get him a drink?” she asked as Ryan zipped up Oliver’s sleeper.

“I can manage,” he assured her. “Go get some sleep.”

Just as she decided that she would, Oliver—now clean and dry—stretched his arms out toward her. “Up.”

Ryan deftly scooped him up in one arm. “I’ve got you, buddy.”

The little boy shook his head, reaching for Harper. “Up.”

“Harper has to go night-night, just like you,” Ryan said.

“Up,”
Oliver insisted.

He looked at her questioningly.

She shrugged. “I’ve got breasts.”

She’d spoken automatically, her brain apparently stuck somewhere between asleep and awake, without regard to whom she was addressing or how he might respond.

Of course, his response was predictably male—his gaze dropped to her chest and his lips curved in a slow and sexy smile. “Yeah—I’m aware of that.”

Her cheeks burned as her traitorous nipples tightened beneath the thin cotton of her ribbed tank top in response to his perusal, practically begging for his attention. She lifted her arms to reach for the baby, and to cover up her breasts. “I only meant that he prefers a softer chest to snuggle against.”

“Can’t blame him for that,” Ryan agreed, transferring the little boy to her.

Oliver immediately dropped his head onto her shoulder and dipped a hand down the front of her top to rest on the slope of her breast.

“The kid’s got some slick moves,” Ryan noted.

Harper felt her cheeks burning again as she moved over to the chair and settled in to rock the baby.

“It’s a comfort thing,” she said, not wanting to go into any more detail than that. She knew that it had started when Melissa was trying to wean him and Oliver stubbornly refused to drink from a cup. Her doctor had suggested that he was rejecting the cup because he wanted the skin-on-skin contact of nursing. So Melissa cuddled with him as if she was nursing but gave him milk from a cup.

After a few weeks, he would happily drink from the cup so long as his hand was on her skin—and yes, she confided, that usually meant her breast. But over time, even that had become unnecessary. Losing his mother had obviously rekindled that need for skin-on-skin contact, and Harper had no intention of refusing Oliver the little comfort she could give him.

“Maybe I need to be comforted, too,” Ryan teased.

She rolled her eyes. “Then maybe you should call Brittney.”

He looked at her blankly. “Who?”

“The woman you were with the night I called to tell you about Melissa and Darren’s accident,” she prompted.

The confusion in his eyes cleared. “That was Bethany.”

“I’m going to have to write down the names of all of your girlfriends in order to keep them straight.”

“That won’t be necessary,” he said. “Because there’s no reason for you to cross paths with any of them.”

“Fair enough,” she agreed. “So long as you’re back from whatever bed you tangle the sheets in by five thirty so that I can go to work, I don’t care where you sleep.”

“That’s what time you leave every morning? Five thirty
a.m.
?”

She nodded.

Because Oliver had been waking so frequently in the night, Ryan usually slept like the dead after he got the baby settled back down and returned to his own bed. So while he knew Harper’s day started early, he hadn’t realized it was quite so early. “That’s insane.”

“Look on the plus side,” she suggested. “It will save you those awkward morning-after goodbyes.”

She’d made it clear from their first meeting that she didn’t hold the highest opinion of him. Even at twenty-one, not yet graduated from NYU, Harper Ross had been a woman with plans and ambitions. Ryan had been finishing up his business degree at Columbia and preparing for an entry-level position at Garrett Furniture. And although there had been some definite chemistry between them, she’d made it clear that she wanted more than a man content to work in sales.

Even when she’d found out that his family owned the multimillion-dollar company, she hadn’t been impressed. In fact, she’d accused him of coasting through life on his family name and money. There was probably some truth to that, but Ryan had grown up with a workaholic father who missed more family dinners than he attended. As a result, he’d vowed not to live his life the same way and he refused to apologize for the fact.

He also refused to let her put him on the defensive about his personal relationships.

“The only awkward morning-after I ever experienced was with you,” he told her.

Harper drew in a sharp breath and glared at him over the baby’s head. “We agreed to
never
talk about that night.”

“I didn’t agree to any such thing,” he denied. “You decreed it and I chose to go along.”

She glanced down at Oliver, who, despite their heated exchange, had immediately settled back to sleep. “So why are you bringing it up now?” she challenged.

It was a good question—and one he wasn’t sure he knew how to answer. Because even if he hadn’t explicitly agreed that the subject was off-limits, he
had
gone along with her request that they both forget it had ever happened.

Except that he’d never really forgotten about that night. Yes, he wanted to—because it was more than a little humbling to share an incredible sexual experience with a woman who made it clear that it was never going to happen again—but his efforts had been unsuccessful.

No, he hadn’t forgotten about that night, but he’d pretended that he could. And he’d never said a word about it to anyone. Until now.

“Because it’s there,” he finally said in response to her question. “Even if we don’t talk about it—it’s there.”

“It was one night more than four years ago,” she reminded him. “Ancient history.”

“If it was so long ago and so unimportant, why didn’t you ever tell Melissa about it?” he challenged.

“What?”

“You always said that there were no secrets between best friends, that you told her everything. So why did you never tell her about that night?”

“Because I didn’t want things to be awkward between us.”

“Us
who
? You and her? You and me?”

“All of us.” She kept her focus on the baby. “If I’d told Melissa, she would have told Darren. Then anytime we were all together, it would have been awkward and weird.”

“You don’t think it was awkward and weird anyway?”

“Not at all,” she denied.

“You don’t feel
any
residual attraction when we’re together?”

“Hardly.”

His gaze narrowed at the dismissive tone, but he noticed that she didn’t look at him as she spoke. Her gaze had dropped to his shoulders, skimmed down his torso. Even in the dim light, he could tell that she was checking him out—and appreciating what she saw. “You’re a smart woman, Harper.”

She dragged her eyes from his bare chest to meet his again. “Thank you,” she said, just a little warily.

“So you must realize that a lot of guys would take that statement as a challenge.”

“It was merely a statement of fact.”

He told her what he thought of that in a single-word reply.

She rose from the chair with the sleeping baby. “I’m putting Oliver in his bed and going back to my own.”

He couldn’t resist baiting her, just a little. “Is that an invitation?”

“Has hell frozen over?”

She responded without missing a beat, and he found himself smiling as he watched her gently lay Oliver down on his mattress. What was it about this woman that, even while she infuriated him, he couldn’t help but admire her quick mind and spunky attitude?

He walked beside her to the door. “You still want me.”

“You really need to do something about that ego before—”

He touched a finger to her lips, silencing her words.

“You still want me,” he said again. “As much as I still want you.”

As he spoke, his fingertip traced the outline of her lips. Even after four years, he remembered the softness of her mouth, the sweetness of her kiss. He remembered the passion of her response to his touch and the feel of her hands moving over his body.

Her eyes darkened and the rapid flutter of the pulse point below her ear made him think that she was remembering those same things.

Then she blinked and took a deliberate step back. “Are you really hitting on me less than three weeks after we buried our best friends?”

“I was merely stating a fact,” he said.

“Your slanted interpretation of a fact,” she countered.

He slung an arm across the doorway, halting her retreat. “I hardly think you’re in any position to be talking to me about slanted interpretations when you’re deep in denial about your own feelings.”

She rolled her eyes. “Because I must be in denial if I’m not dragging you across the hall to my bed, right?”

“You wouldn’t have to drag me—I’d probably cooperate if you asked nicely.”

“Don’t hold your breath.”

Chapter Two

“...a
vailable dates for next month.”

The words nudged at Harper’s mind as if from a distance.

She recognized her assistant’s voice, but she wasn’t sure Diya was talking to her and she couldn’t summon the energy to respond.

“Did you hear me?”

The voice was closer now, sharper.

“Harper?”

She lifted her head, blinked her gritty eyes. “Yes, of course.”

Diya’s expression was concerned. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” She reached for the mug of coffee at her elbow and swallowed a mouthful, trying not to wince as the cold liquid slid down her throat. Obviously she’d zoned out for more than a couple of minutes if the coffee she thought she’d just poured was already cold.

She blamed Ryan for her lack of sleep the night before. After she’d put Oliver down in his bed and gone back to her own, she’d lain awake for a long time thinking about what he’d said—and silently damning him for being right.

Because she did still want him. Just being near the man made her blood heat and her heart pound. And there had been a brief moment in the doorway of Oliver’s bedroom, as Ryan had slowly and gently traced the outline of her mouth with the tip of his finger, when she’d wished he would stop teasing her and start kissing her. She’d wanted to lift her hands to touch him, sliding her palms over the rippling muscles of his belly, the hard planes of his chest. And yes, dammit, she
had
wanted to drag him across the hall and have her way with him.

Of course, he probably had the same effect on most females. Because how could any woman resist the intense focus of those green-and-gold eyes that made her feel as if he saw nothing but her? How could she deny the allure of that sexy half smile that promised all kinds of sensual pleasure? Harper didn’t think it was possible.

She knew that guys like that, who had women falling at their feet, were often selfish lovers—concerned only with their own satisfaction. She also knew that Ryan Garrett was
not
one of those guys.

However, one spectacular lovemaking experience more than four years earlier couldn’t change the fundamental fact that they were completely and totally wrong for one another. Like her favorite Godiva salted-caramel chocolate bars—he might be tempting and delicious, but she knew she would inevitably regret the indulgence. It was that knowledge that had finally given her the strength to move away from him.

Unfortunately, the memories of that long-ago experience churned up by his casual touch had kept her awake into the early hours of morning. And wasn’t it a sad reflection on her love life that, four years later, she could still recall every detail of that night?