They were standing so close that she could smell the scent of his cologne, and it was going to her head.

And there were those eyes of his…

Sky-blue and looking down at her with something that might have been interpreted as appreciation, if she didn’t know that was crazy.

He’s just being friendly.

I’m pregnant.

He’s not going to kiss me…

And yet…

He also wasn’t making any move to leave. Or to take his hand away from her arm. Or even to stop that tiny massage of his thumb that seemed increasingly like more than support or comfort.

And he was studying her with an intensity that seemed more than friendly.

Was she imagining it because she wanted it to be true? Because she wanted him to kiss her?

Dear Reader,

Issa McKendrick has moved back to her hometown of Northbridge, Montana, with a secret. The end of her last relationship left her with a little surprise—she’s pregnant. That relationship is one-hundred-percent over and done with. But she’s decided to have the baby, despite the fact that doing it on her own is a daunting prospect.

Former football star Hutch Kincaid has moved to Northbridge to raise his toddler son and to mend fences with his twin brother. He’s been widowed for a year and a half but he’s not in the market for a new woman in his life, or in the life of his son.

But in comes Issa anyway. And while a baby fathered by someone else has to be one of the biggest obstacles there is, somehow not even that can keep these two apart.

Or can it?

I hope you enjoy finding out!

Best wishes,

Victoria Pade

About the Author

VICTORIA PADE is a USA TODAY bestselling author of numerous romance novels. She has two beautiful and talented daughters—Cori and Erin—and is a native of Colorado, where she lives and writes. A devoted chocolate lover, she’s in search of the perfect chocolate-chip-cookie recipe. For information about her latest and upcoming releases, and to find recipes for some of the decadent desserts her characters enjoy, log on to www.vikkipade.com.

Mummy in the Making
Victoria Pade

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Chapter One

“Ash! Asher! Get back here!”

A man’s voice.

Whispering.

Something about ashes?

Coming out of a sound sleep, Issa McKendrick’s first thought was that she was dreaming.

Until, very near to her ear, she heard, “Pit-tee.”

Pity?

Struggling out of heavy slumber, she opened sleep-bleary eyes.

Staring at her almost nose-to-nose was a very small boy.

“Hi!” he greeted her happily.

“I’m sorry.”

A man’s voice again, this time not whispering, coming from the door to her apartment. The door that was wide open.

From her position lying on the sofa, Issa bolted upright, alarmed by the fact that she wasn’t alone. That a strange man and child were there.

“Get back here, Ash,” the man repeated more firmly.

“Bye,” the child said before he did as he’d been told.

Issa’s vision was beginning to focus as her gaze followed the child and landed on the man.

Whoa!

Dreamy-looking guy—maybe this was a dream….

“I didn’t mean to just come in,” he said then, convincing her with the deep tones of an intensely masculine voice that she was awake. “I’m Hutch Kincaid, your landlord…”

Hutch Kincaid.

Still trying to get her bearings, Issa was not quick on the uptake. It took her a moment to put things together in her mind.

Hutch Kincaid was the owner of the house-turned-duplex where Issa had an apartment on the upper floor. Her brother had rented it for her when she’d announced that she was moving back to her hometown of Northbridge, Montana and wanted a temporary place while she looked for a property to buy.

Hutch lived in the lower half of the building, but he’d been out of town when Issa had arrived two days ago, so they’d yet to meet.

“I got the note you left under my door downstairs and you’re right,” he was saying when she began to gather her wits, “this lock is broken—all I did was knock and the door opened. And then Ash barged in before I could grab him.”

Issa took in the view of the man standing in her doorway.

He was very real and very good-looking. Big and strapping, with an athlete’s broad chest and shoulders, a narrow waist and long legs all barely contained in jeans and a lime-green polo shirt.

And the face—sharp jawline; longish, thin, somewhat pointy nose; just-full-enough lips; the sexiest dip in the center of his chin; and eyes the blue of a cloudless summer sky. Top it all off with short, sunkissed sandy-brown hair worn with the top a hint longer and carelessly disheveled, and he was quite a sight to wake up to.

“It’s okay,” Issa finally said. Her voice was groggy and small. She was embarrassed to be caught sleeping in the middle of a Sunday afternoon. “Come in.”

That was as much invitation as the little boy needed—he promptly left Hutch Kincaid’s side and came back to the sofa as Issa pivoted to put her feet on the floor.

Her intention had been to stand to greet her guests and hopefully regain some of her dignity.

But it didn’t take more than that pivot to make her so dizzy that she couldn’t get up as the room seemed to spin around her.

“Just a minute…” she muttered, further embarrassed and feeling as if she were making a spectacle of herself. “I’m really light-headed all of a sudden…”

“Take your time,” Hutch Kincaid urged as his jeans-clad legs came into her wobbly view in the center of the room, on the opposite side of the coffee table.

The coffee table where she had a number of illustrated pamphlets in plain sight, all titled things like Pregnancy and You, So You’re Going to Have a Baby and What to Do Now that You’re Pregnant….

Dead giveaways.

Of the biggest secret Issa had ever kept and the one most important to her not to let out.

Any hope she might have had of Hutch Kincaid not becoming aware of the pamphlets evaporated when the little boy pointed them out with a chubby index finger and said, “Bay-bees.”

“Why don’t you come over here with me, buddy,” Hutch Kincaid suggested.

“No. Pit-tee.”

The little boy couldn’t possibly know that she was pregnant, that she was horrified by that fact and that the father of her baby had run like a rabbit from parenthood, so she was facing it all alone. But that was the second time he’d said he pitied her….

“He feels sorry for me?”

Hutch Kincaid chuckled. “He thinks you’re pretty.”

The dizziness finally passed and Issa could see straight again. She cast a glance at the little boy who, despite his undefined features, resembled the man too much not to be closely related to him, and said an uncertain, “Thank you?”

“Wilcome.”

“That’s you’re welcome,” her landlord translated. “And this is Asher, by the way. My son. He’s two and a half, with a mind of his own. And he’s apparently developing a taste in women…” Hutch Kincaid added somewhat under his breath, sounding amused.

Issa got to her feet then and was rewarded with a closer view of her hubba-hubba-handsome landlord.

And oh, but he was hubba-hubba-handsome, more so now that he was smiling slightly, a smile that drew lines from the corners of his nose to bracket his nimble-looking mouth.

But she was in absolutely no position to be paying any attention whatsoever to how handsome he was, she reminded herself.

“I’m sorry, I don’t usually sleep in the daytime, but I was really out of it…” she lied. The truth was that lately sleeping was all she wanted to do night and day, and napping had become nothing unusual for her.

“It’s okay,” Hutch Kincaid assured her in an understanding tone, his gaze dropping for a split second to the pamphlets, making it clear that he’d seen them and put two and two together.

And that was when something else occurred to Issa.

While she hadn’t met Hutch Kincaid before this, she’d learned through her brother and half sister that he was connected to her family through his own family and friends.

And this was Northbridge where word could travel like wildfire….

All of which made her think she’d better address the subject right away.

“Yes, I’m pregnant. And unmarried, unattached—” Why was she telling him that?

Oh, she was just never, ever at her best meeting new people. She always made blunders, and now, when she was already thrown off-kilter by her overall situation, when it was all too fresh for her to have become comfortable with, she supposed she shouldn’t be shocked that she was particularly bumbling.

She shook her head as if that would erase her awkwardness and tried to make enough sense of what she was saying to get her point across. “No one here—no one—knows, so please—”

Hutch Kincaid held up one hand, palm out. “It’s okay. It won’t come from me,” he said.

But still feeling exposed, Issa scooped up the pamphlets and shoved them under the couch cushion to get them out of sight.

Then, desperate to regain some sense of normalcy, she said, “Can I have just a minute to splash some water on my face? Maybe you could look at the lock while I do…”

“Sure,” the big man agreed.

And Issa made a beeline to the bathroom.

For a moment after she reached it, she merely leaned her back against the door she’d shut firmly behind herself. Closing her eyes, she dropped her head forward and again shook it—this time cursing the shyness that she’d always suffered, that had once again made her act like a ninny. Why couldn’t she just be smooth?

But it was too late for that with her landlord. He probably already thought she was an idiot. An unmarried, pregnant idiot.

Nothing like making a good first impression….

Oh, no, and she hadn’t even introduced herself! He’d introduced himself. And his son. But she’d overlooked that simple civility, too.

I really am a ninny. A socially inept ninny….

Disgusted with herself, Issa sighed and pushed away from the door. To her right was the sink, to her left was the linen closet that was hidden when the bathroom door was open.

She turned and rummaged in the linen closet.

The apartment was small—a single bedroom, a single bath, with the living room, kitchen and dining area all in the one open space she’d just fled. She liked the place, though. She’d been told that the remodel that had turned it into a duplex had only recently been completed, and that everything was new, including all the furnishings. She’d needed only her own towels, linens and kitchenware, so unpacking had been easily accomplished in the two days she’d been living there.

She took a washcloth and a hand towel from the closet and rotated to face the sink.

Wetting the washcloth, she buried her face in it and hoped for a surge of the energy and oomph that pregnancy seemed to have robbed her of. But still she just wanted to sleep.

Maybe it was some kind of psychological need to escape the situation she’d found herself in.

Except that the pamphlets said to expect to feel fatigued and to need some extra rest as her body adjusted.

Hurry up and adjust, she told herself. Because she had a whole lot more to deal with than mere hormones.

She dried her face and took a look in the mirror above the sink.

Rosy glow—the pamphlets had talked about that, too, and surprisingly, Issa could see it. She’d always had an extremely pale complexion, but now her coloring couldn’t be better—her high cheekbones were petal pink, making her look robustly healthy even without blush.

That was a good thing, she thought. One of the few advantages to pregnancy.

That and the fact that her previously A-cup breasts had already gone to a B. She didn’t have any complaints about that, either.

And in spite of how tired she felt most of the time, there weren’t any circles under her blue-green eyes—she was grateful for that. At least nothing gave away how she felt.

Now if only the pamphlets were wrong about the potential for hair loss or dullness. She liked her light, flaxen hair the way it was—although at the moment one side of it had escaped the clip that had been holding the shoulder-length locks at the back of her head and it looked awful.

Great, bedhead…

Another way in which she was not happy to have met Hutch Kincaid.

She took the clip out, quickly ran a brush through her hair and then caught it in the back again where she reclipped it.

Sprucing up for her handsome landlord?

That wasn’t what she was doing, she reasoned. She just wanted to be presentable.

Which was also why she applied the light lip gloss.

And when it came to adding a touch of mascara even though she hadn’t put any on earlier today? That was just so she looked more bright-eyed and not like some slug-a-bed who slept the afternoons away.

In her clothes….

How did they look?

Checking, she judged that her jeans showed no evidence that she’d been sleeping in them. She just wished that they weren’t her puttering-around-the-house jeans, that they were her better jeans. One of the other pairs that didn’t sag in the seat.

Not that it mattered what her seat did.

As for the cap-sleeved T-shirt she had on? It was slightly rumpled, so she tugged on the hem to stretch the wrinkles out of it. That pulled the V-neckline lower, although not low enough to show cleavage. But because the T-shirt was a bit on the snug side, it still showed off the single visible clue that she was pregnant—her blossoming chest.

Why that had even crossed her mind she didn’t know. It shouldn’t have.

But the new B-cups did make her T-shirts look a lot better. It was just about her general appearance, and had nothing whatsoever to do with who might see her. It was a confidence builder. And she definitely needed that!

Okay, presentable—she just wanted to be presentable and she was.

So get back out there to the landlord…

She took a deep breath, exhaled it completely and told herself to try to have some composure, to be more outgoing than she was naturally inclined to be. The shyness had never served her well and it certainly wasn’t helping now.

Another deep breath and she opened the bathroom door.

When she did, she could see Hutch Kincaid in the vicinity of the apartment’s entrance again, this time with his back to her as he fiddled with the door handle.

The rear view of him was no less impressive than the front. His jeans definitely didn’t sag in the seat. Instead, he sported a derriere to die for, splendidly displayed in denim.

And from there up? Her gaze began at his narrow waist and rose to broad, broad shoulders that didn’t have the slightest hunch to them. Nope, straight and strong-looking, they formed a V-shaped canvas that squared into biceps straining the short sleeves of his polo shirt with well-defined muscles.

Okay, so there was nothing lacking in the man’s physique. It still didn’t matter to her.

“I just realized that I didn’t introduce myself,” she said when he changed angles and caught sight of her coming out of the bathroom. “I’m sure you know, but I’m Issa McKendrick. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“Itta?” the little boy said from where he was hunkered down near the door, playing with a screwdriver and a pair of pliers.

“Issa,” she corrected.

“Itta,” the toddler countered as if he’d said it right the first time.

“That’s probably as good as it’s gonna get,” Hutch Kincaid said as he put the screwdriver he’d been using in one of the back pockets of his jeans. Then he put one hand on the knob on the outside of the door and the other on the inside knob. Cupping them, he slowly turned them both back and forth, back and forth…

And out of nowhere Issa suddenly had a flash of something far less innocent being done with those hands. And her own new B-cups.

Where that had come from she had no idea and she was so stunned by it that for a moment she didn’t know what to do.

Then she realized her landlord had no idea what had just shot through her mind and that she needed to ignore it herself. So, still not wanting to be a shrinking violet, Issa attempted to make small talk while he worked.

“I’ve known your brother Chase since I was a kid—he was at our house so much growing up that he was like one of us.”

“I’ve heard that. He’s talked about how unhappy he was with his foster father. We all hate that he didn’t get adopted the way the rest of us did.”

“It came as such a surprise to find out that he had biological brothers and sisters.”

“It came as a surprise to us, too,” Hutch said.

Hutch’s birth parents had been killed in a car accident when Hutch and his twin brother, Ian, were two months old, leaving behind five children—Hutch, Ian, an older sister named Shannon, their older brother, Chase, and a much older half sister, Angie. Angie had been returned to her birth father, the three youngest children had been adopted to two different homes, while Chase had been placed in foster care and grown up in Northbridge, best friends with Issa’s half brother Logan.

It was Angie who remembered the other four siblings, who sought them out and revealed that there were brothers and another sister when she’d faced the end of her own life and needed someone to raise her son.

“All that time Chase had all these brothers and sisters he didn’t know about…” Issa marveled.

“And now there’s also our half sister Angie’s son, Cody, to round things out,” Hutch added.

“Right. A nephew Chase is raising—it’s hard to picture the Chase I knew as a dad. But the whole thing was just amazing. I was here at Christmastime, so I met Shannon and Cody then, and I heard before I left that they’d contacted you and your twin—”

“Ian,” he supplied.

“Right. I’ve only been in town a couple of days, so I haven’t met him yet, but I knew that was his name. Ian Kincaid. And you’re Hutch…”

And she was babbling.

She was just no good at this.

Plus it didn’t help that it had suddenly occurred to her that Hutch Kincaid had exactly the same color eyes as his older brother, Chase. And that she’d always thought that Chase’s eyes were gorgeous….

Hutch Kincaid made it easier on her then by picking up the conversation and running with it.

“And we’re even in-laws now.”

It was true. Hutch’s newly found sister Shannon had recently married Issa’s brother Dag, although Issa had not been able to attend the ceremony. Her plane had been grounded due to weather.

“I came to Northbridge for Shannon’s wedding,” Hutch continued. “That was my first trip here since Ian and I were adopted and taken to Billings. The wedding was at the end of March. Through April and May I’ve been here off and on, so I’m only beginning to get to know who’s who. Logan and Dag I’ve seen a lot of, and I’ve heard there’s more to your family but I haven’t met the others.”

“And you and Ash live downstairs…”

“For now. I bought the place as an investment. It was a flip—I guess it was pretty run-down when the owners put it on the market, but the local contractor bought it, remodeled it and put it up for resale. I figured I could rent both halves out to college kids in the fall, and in the meantime Ash and I needed somewhere to stay while I look for a house for the two of us. Dag said you needed pretty much the same thing—somewhere to stay short-term—”

“While I look for a house to buy, too.”

“So you’re settling back in your old hometown?”

“I am,” she said without going into any details, even though she was relieved that he was making conversation and facilitating an easy flow between them.

“Northbridge has plenty of charm,” Hutch said. “It sucked me in at first glance and I haven’t found anything about it that I don’t like yet. I even bought out the old sporting goods store to turn into one of mine.”

Beyond his connection to Chase, her half brother Logan’s best friend and business partner, Issa really only knew two things about Hutch Kincaid.

She knew that he and his twin had been raised by former football giant and three-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback Morgan Kincaid. The Morgan Kincaid, who had parlayed his football fame and fortune into the Kincaid Corporation—a conglomerate of retail, rental and hotel properties, car dealerships, restaurants and various other ventures that now included his most recent purchase, an NFL expansion team that he was bringing to Montana—the Monarchs. Their training center was to be built in Northbridge.

The other thing she knew about Hutch Kincaid—only because Dag had told her—was that he’d had his own star-quality career in football at some point but now owned sporting goods stores.

“What’s it called, your store?”

“Stores, plural. The one here will be my fifth. They’re Kincaid’s All Sports. There’s a website, too. We do a respectable share of online business.”

“Cool…”

Cool? Had she really just said that? Issa wanted to kick herself.

Trying to get past the awkwardness as fast as she could, she angled her gaze down to Hutch Kincaid’s son. “What about you, Asher? Do you like sports?” she asked, fearing that sounded almost as dumb as cool.

“I yice cookies…” the toddler answered with an obvious hint.

“I don’t have any cookies,” Issa whispered to Hutch.

“No, no, no,” Hutch Kincaid said with another chuckle. “You don’t need to have cookies. Two-and-a-half-year-olds aren’t known for their manners.” Then to his son, he said, “No cookies, Ash.”

Hutch stopped fiddling with the lock and straightened up to face Issa. “I’m gonna have to cry uncle with this lock anyway—it can’t be fixed. I’ll have to get a new one and come back. Is that okay?”

Somehow the thought that she was going to see him again was energizing. And Issa had no idea why that was the case. Why adrenaline instantly flooded her to chase away her pregnancy-induced weariness.

What she did know was that excitement over a second visit was not a response she should be having….

“Would you mind if it was this evening, though?” he was saying into her confused thoughts. “I’ll hit the hardware store, but there are some things I needed to check on at my new store and it’s just a few doors down, so I’d like to kill two birds with one stone. Then Ash will need some dinner. Can we make it after that?”

“Sure,” Issa said, wondering if her voice had sounded as bright and full of anticipation to him as it had to her. She hoped not. Then, working for a more neutral tone, she added, “I’ll be here.”

Had she sounded unduly eager and available? Or worse yet, a little desperate?

She wasn’t. She wasn’t at all desperate. Not for company. Not for a man. Not for anything. Except for that composure she’d been hoping to find when she’d come out of the bathroom.

But then she started to think of Hutch Kincaid being in town in the early June heat, meeting people on the street, in the hardware store. Talking to them. She thought of the chance that he might tell her secret. And composure slipped further out of her reach.

“You won’t forget not to say anything to anyone, though, right?”

Having given up trying to fix the door handle, he’d removed it along with the built-in lock and was gathering up the pieces when she said that. He cast her a confused look that told her he didn’t know what she was referring to.

“About… You know… Earlier… The pamphlets…” She just couldn’t bring herself to say it outright again.

“Oh, yeah,” he said when what she was talking about finally seemed to dawn on him. Then he smiled slightly and added, “See, forgotten already. No, I won’t say a thing to anyone. It’s your business.”

“And maybe I’ll have cookies when you get back,” she said too jovially, overcompensating and once more proving how clumsy she could be.

“I yice cookies,” Ash Kincaid contributed.

“Don’t go out of your way—you don’t have to do that,” her landlord assured her.

“Well, we’ll see,” Issa said.

Hutch Kincaid glanced down at his son then. “Come on, buddy, time to go. Give me the pliers and screwdriver.”

The little boy stood from his squat on the floor. Rather than handing his father the tools, he pulled up his striped T-shirt—exposing his entire tummy—twisted as far around as he could and put them into the back pockets of his own jeans, obviously mimicking his father.

But Hutch Kincaid reached down and took them out again. “We don’t need you falling back on those,” he explained as he did.

Then he tugged the toddler’s shirt down, and held out one long index finger. Without prompting, the toddler took it in one chubby fist.

“Say goodbye to Issa,” Hutch instructed.

“‘Bye, Itta.”

“‘Bye, Ash,” Issa answered.

“We’ll be back around seven,” Hutch Kincaid said.

“Okay.”

“And your secret is safe with me, so don’t worry about it,” he said in a softer voice.

Issa looked squarely at him, searching for signs of disapproval or judgment. But there seemed to be only kindness and understanding in his remarkable blue eyes.

“Thanks,” she said, not only sounding relieved but actually feeling it.

He nodded at the hole in the door where the handle and lock had been. “You can still close the door. It won’t be any worse than it was with the bad hardware. I’ll lock the main door downstairs and we’ll be gone, so you’ll have the place to yourself until I come back with the new stuff—no more surprise visitors.”

“Sure. Okay,” Issa muttered as he took his son and left her to do as he’d suggested, shutting her door as securely as she could.

And then she found herself doing the oddest thing.

She bent over and peeked through the hole where the handle had been to watch her landlord go down the stairs that led to his own half of the house.

At least until she realized what she was doing and how silly it was.

Then she shot upright and reminded herself that no matter how big and strapping and hubba-hubba-handsome someone was, so much as noticing a man at this point was beyond absurd. She was pregnant. With another man’s baby. And that was more than enough of a catastrophe. She didn’t need to add insult to injury.

But Hutch Kincaid was big, strapping and hubba-hubba-handsome.

And nice, too, it seemed.

It just didn’t change anything.

Chapter Two

“One more bite, Ash, then we’ll go upstairs and fix Issa’s door.”

“Itta,” Ash parroted his father before dragging a French fry through a puddle of ketchup and putting it haphazardly into his mouth. Then, mid-chew, the two-and-a-half-year-old announced for the third time, “Done.”

The toddler had eaten about half of his dinner and Hutch had been urging him to eat more for at least fifteen minutes. One bite at a time. He decided to finally accept the done decree. What he wasn’t sure of was whether Ash was too young yet for etiquette lessons, but he decided to err on the side of caution and said, “Don’t talk with your mouth full, big guy.”

“‘Kay,” Ash agreed, giving Hutch his second view of the partially chewed fry.

So much for that.

Hutch got up from the table, slid Ash’s sippy cup to the little boy and said, “Finish your milk,” as he gathered the remnants of their burgers and fries to put into the trash.

Teaching table manners—Iris would approve of that even if he had failed at it.

Burgers and fries for Sunday dinner—his late wife would have frowned on that.

Still, it was a meal, they’d sat at the kitchen table together to eat it and Hutch had attempted to give the etiquette lesson—that was all something. Something better than the way things had been right after Iris had died. Because while he might not be a candidate for Father of the Year, he was giving Ash his all now.

And in that vein, he made a mental note to look in the child-development books for information on when and how to begin teaching table manners, and when to reasonably expect a kid to understand and be able to incorporate them into his routine.

As for the fast food that he tried to keep to a minimum, they had just arrived home from a seven-day trip to Denver where Hutch had closed on the sale of his and Iris’s house. Plus he’d come home to details that needed to be attended to with the new store, and an upstairs tenant who had arrived during his absence and needed him to take care of the broken lock on the apartment door—sometimes fast food was just a necessity.

As it was, he was still five minutes late for getting upstairs to the apartment.

He glanced over his shoulder as he did the dishes. Ash’s sippy cup was right where he’d left it.

“Finish your milk, Ash,” he repeated. “It’ll make you big and strong.”

“Lise you,” Ash said.

“Yep, like me,” Hutch confirmed, feeling that twinge of delight that his son’s current hero worship gave him. The books said things like that came and went with the different stages kids passed through, but Hutch was enjoying it while it lasted. “Let’s see your muscles.”

Ash raised his arms in flexing He-Man fashion, fists pointed toward his tiny shoulders.

“They’re lookin’ good, but I think they need some more milk. Drink up.”

The tiny tot took the sippy cup and finally drank from it.

Hutch wasn’t sure whether encouragement along those lines translated into the kind of pressure his own father had put on him and Ian to be athletes—actually, to be football stars to equal Morgan Kincaid’s own accomplishments as a former NFL player. Hutch hoped not. Pressuring Ash was definitely not something he wanted to do. The be-like-Dad, muscle-building angle just seemed to be one that worked, so Hutch was using it. He’d stop if it ever started to become anything more than a ploy.

He just wanted to be a good dad. He wanted to incorporate the parts of his own father that he’d liked and appreciated, and leave out the parts that hadn’t been great. And he wanted to do the kind of job his late wife would have expected of him, the kind of job Iris would be counting on him to do.

“Yook now,” Ash demanded.

Hutch glanced over his shoulder once more. The sippy cup was drained and Ash was again flexing.

“Yep, I can see those muscles growing already. Good job!”

Dishes finally in the dishwasher, Hutch rinsed the sink, then dampened a paper towel and returned to the kitchen table where Ash sat in a booster seat propped on one of the chairs.

“Cleanup,” he announced.

“No!” Ash protested the way he always did when it came to washing his face.

“Come on, Issa is expecting us and we can’t visit a lady with ketchup all over your face and hands.”

“Itta’s pit-tee,” Ash said, seeming more inclined toward cooperation with the mention of Issa.

“Yes, she is,” Hutch confirmed as he applied the damp cloth to the toddler.

Thoughts of Issa, images of her, hadn’t been far from Hutch’s mind since he’d first set eyes on her this afternoon. Mentioning her name to his son, Ash’s comment about her, were all it took to bring her to the forefront yet again.

Sleeping Beauty, that had been Hutch’s first impression.

The incredible beauty sleeping on the couch in the apartment upstairs.

When her brother Dag had rented the apartment for her, he’d told Hutch that his sister was quiet and the shiest of all the McKendricks. That she was meticulous and tidy so she would be a good tenant. Dag hadn’t said anything about the fact that Issa was a head turner.

Not that that was at all relevant to renting her a temporary place to live.

It was just that, to Hutch, Issa McKendrick was something to behold and he sort of wished he’d known that in advance so he hadn’t been so dumbstruck at first.

She was a vision that made him not quite believe his own eyes.

Flaxen hair and skin like porcelain—those had been the first two things to strike him.

And she had the most delicate features—a straight, unmarred forehead; a gently sloping nose; a slightly rounded chin; full, petal pink lips; rosy, high cheekbones; and when she’d smiled slightly in her sleep, there had been dimples. Deep, deep dimples in both cheeks.

And then she’d opened her eyes. And even from across the room he’d been able to see how blue they were. Dark, sapphire blue—they stood out strikingly amidst that light skin and hair. Sparkling dark sapphires…

She was breathtakingly beautiful but still with a wholesomeness to her.

But stunning or not, it didn’t make any difference.

Hutch was not in the market for a woman. Sure, a year and a half of widowerhood might mean that he could be. But he wasn’t. He had Ash to think of. To focus on. He had to concentrate on being a single father. A father to his own kid. This was no time to get into anything with any woman, let alone with someone who had issues of her own to deal with—issues like a baby on the way without a dad.

But Issa McKendrick wasn’t going to be hard to look at while they both lived here, he thought as he lifted his son down from the booster seat.

He just wasn’t interested in anything more than looking. The way he might look at a painting or a sculpture or a photograph—purely as an appreciation for a thing of beauty. A woman of beauty.

But there was no doubt about it, Issa McKendrick was definitely that.

“Itta hep. I’ma eat cookies.”

“I think I’ve been had,” Issa observed.

Hutch Kincaid laughed. “I think you have.”

In anticipation of Hutch and his son coming to install her new door handle and lock, Issa had run to the store and bought cookies for the little boy. She’d set some of them out on a plate on the coffee table.

Hutch had made a great show of Ash being his assistant, enlisting his son to hand him the screwdriver when he asked for it.

“Then when you’re finished,” Issa had said, “there are cookies…”

That had drawn Ash’s attention to the dish on the coffee table. But a mere glance in that direction was the tot’s only immediate response.

What he had done was lure Issa into helping Hutch, too, handing the screwdriver to her so that she could hand it to Hutch.

Issa had thought it was cute that the toddler wanted to include her. And in an attempt to be more outgoing and friendly, she’d complied.

But once Ash had her at the door with Hutch, holding the screwdriver, the little boy made the announcement that she could play assistant while he went to have a cookie.

“How can a two-and-a-half-year-old be that tricky?” she asked.

“Hey, when cookies are involved, it’s every man for himself,” Hutch said with a laugh before he called after his son, “One, Ash. You can have one cookie.”

Then turning back to Issa, Hutch whispered, “Now watch, he’s going to take a bite out of one, say he doesn’t like it, choose another, take a bite, and do the same thing until he’s had a taste of every kind you have out there.”

“I shouldn’t have bought the assortment?”

“You can’t put that much temptation in front of him.”

“I don’t know anything about raising kids,” Issa confessed.

But apparently Hutch Kincaid did because Ash had done exactly what his father had predicted and was on to his second cookie.

“One, Ash,” Hutch warned.

“I doan yice this kind,” the toddler announced for the second time, choosing a third cookie.

“Better take the plate away,” Hutch advised Issa.

“It’s okay. I put them out for him. And there are only four kinds. Technically, if he has one bite of each kind, it’ll add up to only one cookie.”

“Great, you want to split hairs, too. The problem with that logic is that there are more than four cookies on that plate and he’ll go on taking one bite out of every cookie unless he’s stopped. Can you hold this like this?”

That last question drew Issa’s gaze from son back to father.

Hutch had been working at lining up the inside doorknob with the outside doorknob and—the same way he had earlier in the day when he’d inspired inappropriate ideas in her—he had a hand on each of them.

“If you don’t keep them where I’ve got them I’ll have to line them up all over again,” he explained when she was slow in responding to his question.

“Oh, sure,” she said, stepping to his side to replace him before her imagination went any further than it already had.

And if, in the transfer, his hands brushed hers and set off tiny sparks? She wrote that off to static electricity, even though that wasn’t what it had been.

Maintaining the position of the door handles, she looked on as Hutch crossed to the coffee table and picked up the plate as well as the cookies his son had discarded.

“No!” Ash rebelled.

“You can have one,” Hutch reminded reasonably, firmly, without any anger or aggravation.

“I wanna diff’ent one.”

“Nope, the one in your hand will have to do,” Hutch informed him, setting the plate on the top shelf of the nearby bookcase and stacking the already-bitten cookies beside it.

Ash studied the situation intently.

Issa couldn’t be sure, but she had the impression that the toddler was working on a plan to climb up to that plate.

But Hutch again seemed to read his son’s mind. “Don’t even try it,” he warned as he headed for the door again. “Just eat your cookie.”

Ash scowled at his father but proceeded to taste his final selection.

Issa couldn’t help laughing a little at it all as Hutch returned to the door, smiling as if he understood her amusement.

“Can you keep hanging on while I screw them in?” he said when he got to her.

“Sure,” she said a second time, at a loss for why so much about this man and even perfectly innocent things he said seemed suggestive to her.

Maybe it was hormones.

Or maybe she’d spent too much time teaching teenagers who could rarely think or talk about anything else.

One way or another, she really needed to curb it, she told herself.

There was silence for the first few minutes of their joint endeavor and during that time Issa couldn’t help looking at Hutch.

She was glad she hadn’t indulged her inclination to change clothes for tonight, that the only thing she’d done was brush her hair out and leave it down. She’d told herself that it would be too obvious if she put on a different outfit, that it would give away the fact that she’d been singularly—and strangely—focused on when she was going to get to be with him again. And now that she could see that he hadn’t been inclined to change his clothes for her, she thought it was a good thing she hadn’t changed hers for him.

Not that he didn’t look just as stare-worthy tonight as he had earlier, because he did. And she was never more aware of that fact than when he had leaned over to pick up those cookies.

But she’d lectured herself about not paying any attention to things like that and so she was trying not to.

Of course, it might help to do something besides ogling him while he worked close enough for her to catch the scent of a cologne that smelled like a cool, clear summer day at the beach. She just couldn’t think of anything to say to distract herself.

Then, as Hutch began to apply screwdriver to the second screw to fasten the inside and outside knobs together, he offered her that distraction by making conversation.

“Issa—that’s not an ordinary name,” he said then.

“It’s short for Isadora.”

“Still not ordinary. And there’s Dag, and some others I’ve heard…”

“There’s my sister Tessa—Tessa is short for Theodora. And my sister Zeli, but she’s just Zeli. Our mother thought our names sounded European and that anything European was sophisticated. And unfortunately she was all about putting on airs. But it isn’t as if Hutch is a common name. Or Ash, either,” Issa pointed out.

“Hutch is short for Hutchenson. It was on the birth certificate and because my birth parents weren’t around to explain it, I can’t tell you where it came from. I can tell you that Asher was a family name on Ash’s mom’s side—her grandfather.”

“I see,” Issa said, panicking slightly because he’d initiated this subject and she couldn’t think of what to come back with now that it seemed to be her turn.

But again Hutch Kincaid made it easy on her by not expecting her to take a turn. “So you’re a teacher, I think Dag said…”

“High school freshman chemistry. Or at least I was a teacher. In Seattle. But a little more than a year ago I sort of accidentally invented something and that allowed me to… Oh, it’s complicated,” she concluded when she was afraid she might bore him.

“What did you invent?” he asked, not letting her off the hook so easily.

“Well, in its toy version, it’s called Gob-o-Goo—”

“I’ve seen that at the toy store! It’s sort of like putty?”

“Right, except that it doesn’t ever dry out, it will hold whatever shape it’s put into, but then can be remolded whenever anyone wants to. Plus it’s not harmful if kids eat it—not that it’s food, but it just won’t hurt anything if kids put it in their mouth.”

“And you accidentally invented it?”

“It really was an accident. I was working at home on an experiment for the Reactions in the Kitchen lesson, trying to jazz it up a little to make it more exciting—it isn’t easy to keep ninth graders’ interest—” Because they were so often thinking about whoever was in front of them the way she was thinking about Hutch at that moment, about the way his hair curled just the slightest bit at his nape…

Issa again reined in her wandering thoughts to continue what she was saying.

“Anyway, I reached for something, knocked a whole box of baking soda into what I already had in the bowl—”

“And ta-da?”

“Pretty much. After the mixture went kind of crazy, it stabilized and then ta-da. It looked like a soft, shiny cloud and I just couldn’t seem to resist touching it to see how it felt.”

Much the way she wanted to touch his hair and see how it felt….

Luckily her hands were occupied with doorknobs.

“It felt as good as it looked and it was fun to mess with.” The way she couldn’t mess with her landlord, she warned herself. “Long story short, it took some tweaking from there, but I kept going back to it, fiddling with it, and Gob-o-Goo was born. A friend worked for a toy company and she helped me patent it and sell it to them.”

“That’s not a story you hear every day,” he said.

“It really was just a fluke, though. I almost feel weird taking credit for it.”

“And what did you mean when you said in its toy version?” Hutch asked then.

He really paid attention….

“That was kind of a fluke, too. One day I was messing around with it when the phone rang. I sort of unconsciously kept squeezing it and squishing it while I talked. Then I had the idea of turning it into something therapeutic. A distant, aging relative years ago broke her arm and I remembered her squeezing a ball as part of her physical therapy to increase the strength in that hand when she was recovering. At first she was too weak to do it and I started to think that my stuff had just enough resistance that it might work better than the ball in the first stages of rehab therapy.”

Okay, now she was thinking about squeezing the biceps her gaze had somehow attached itself to. What was wrong with her?

Averting her eyes, she said, “Anyway—again—” Because she knew she’d already said anyway once before. “I went back to the patent attorney, told him my idea and second ta-da. It’s being used as a filler substance to manufacture a new therapeutic tool.”

“That’s impressive,” Hutch said.

“Not really. Not when you know that it was honestly all unintentional. Accidental.”

“Still, those are more fortunate accidents than I’ve ever had.”

“They did allow me to quit working for the time being so I could move back to Northbridge. That was the biggest benefit because I was at loose ends in Seattle and staying there would have been… I just didn’t want to do it,” she finished, deciding belatedly that she didn’t want to get into the subject of the bad turn of romantic events that had driven her home.

So she skirted that issue. “And I’ll be able to buy a house without having to worry about money for a while. So yeah, that all does make it a fortunate accident,” she conceded. “But I can’t pretend that Gob-o-Goo or the squishy ball were born from the grand design of some sort of brainiac, either, because they really just came from my being a klutz.”

“I think you’re being modest.”

“I’m really not,” she insisted.

And how had her eyes gotten back on him again? This time on his profile? His perfect profile…

“Okay, you can let go.”

She heard the words as if from a distance. But the message didn’t immediately sink in because she was adrift in studying the side view of his face.

Then, from right next to her, Ash echoed his father with a “Y’et go.”

Issa hadn’t been aware of the toddler rejoining them after apparently having given up trying to figure out a way to get to that plate of cookies. But his voice brought her to her senses. She took her hands from the door handles and stepped back as Hutch Kincaid tested them.

Moving farther into the room, she hoped distance might help cure the weird affliction she seemed to have when it came to this man. But even that didn’t keep her from being overly aware of every little detail as he closed the door to make sure it actually stayed closed. He did a few trial runs with the keys—with the door open and finally with it closed, ultimately locking himself out and then letting himself in again.

“Looks like we’re in business! Now you can lock your door and keep your nosy neighbors out.”

Too bad she couldn’t keep the unwelcome thoughts she kept having about him out of her head….

He had two sets of keys and he held one set out to her then. “Keys for you, keys for me just in case of emergency—but only if there’s an emergency or you lock yourself out or something.”

Issa held out her palm. Then she tried not to think about the fact that the keys were warm from his hand.

“I wan some,” Ash complained.

Hutch dug into his pocket and produced an entire ring full of keys. “Here you go, big guy, you can hang on to these, but don’t lose them.”

Ash accepted the keys and jammed them into his own jean pocket. And again Issa was reasonably certain that the child was mimicking what he’d seen his father do innumerable times.

“‘Nother cookie?” Ash suggested hopefully then.

“Nope, you and I are gonna leave Issa alone and go downstairs so you can have your bath and get ready for bed.”

“No bath, no bed!” Ash protested once more.

“Yes bath, yes bed,” Hutch Kincaid countered, reaching out to palm his son’s buzz-cut, sandy-colored head like a basketball.

“I doan wanna,” the toddler grumbled.

“How about if I let you take one more cookie home with you and after your bath, you can have it with your milk while I read your Thomas the Train book?” Then as an afterthought, Hutch said, “If Issa is willing to let you have another cookie.”

“Sure,” she said for the third time. “He can take the whole—”

“Shh,” Hutch cut her short, holding a long index finger to his lips to stop her before she went on.

“I wan chock-it,” Ash announced by way of conceding to the deal.

“Chocolate it is,” Issa said, going to the dish on the bookshelf and choosing the chocolate sandwich cookie with the white cream center.

As she gave it to Ash, his father said, “What do you say?”

“S’ank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Issa responded.

“Okay, why don’t you go downstairs and put your cookie in the kitchen, and I’ll be right there. Remember how much you like to dunk it, so if you eat it before you get your milk, you’ll miss that,” Hutch said then, opening the door to let his son out.

“‘Bye, Itta,” Ash said without prompting.

“‘Bye, Ash,” Issa answered, wondering why Hutch Kincaid was hanging back.

His son had just begun the slow descent down the stairs when Hutch turned his attention to Issa again to say, “The dinner tomorrow night at Meg and Logan’s? I talked to Shannon late this afternoon and she said you’re going, too. She pointed out that we might as well go together? That it’s silly to take two cars?”

Issa hadn’t really thought about Hutch Kincaid going to dinner at her half brother’s house Monday night, but now that he said it, it made sense that he was. It was a barbecue at the Mackey and McKendrick compound that would include Hutch’s brother Chase, nephew, Cody, and Chase’s wife, Hadley, who was Issa’s half sister. Hutch’s twin, Ian, and Ian’s fiancée, Jenna, would also be there. Plus Hutch’s sister Shannon and Issa’s brother Dag were also going.

Hutch’s invitation to share a ride, though, was worded a little oddly—it was Shannon’s idea and Hutch had delivered it as if he wasn’t completely sold on it.

Maybe he didn’t want them to go together.

“It doesn’t matter. If you hadn’t planned to go from here, if you were going straight from your store or something, I can get there on my own.”

“No, I actually planned to bring Ash home for a late nap so he’ll be rested before we go—he’s more likely to behave that way—so I’ll be leaving from here. But it’s up to you. I don’t want you to feel like you have to go anywhere with me because we live here the way we do. But it does make sense to carpool….”

Still not an enthusiastic sales pitch.

“Are you sure you want me?” Oh, that hadn’t come out right. “To ride along,” she added as if that would make it better.

But it was already too late because there was a hint of a smile on Hutch Kincaid’s lips. Then, as if he’d decided to confess something, he said, “Dag told me you were kind of shy, that you aren’t comfortable around most people until you really get to know them. I just don’t want to push you and have you do something you don’t want to do.”

Damn Dag. He was still her little brother giving away things about her that she didn’t want out in the open—like when he’d announced her shoe size at church one Sunday.

“It’s okay,” Issa felt as if she had to say. “We’ve kind of gotten to know each other today—I know you’re an ex-football player turned sporting goods store owner, you know I’m a ninth-grade chemistry teacher and accidental inventor….”

Hutch Kincaid’s slight smile went full-on. “We’re practically old friends,” he said facetiously. “Does that mean we can drive over together?”

At that moment Issa didn’t know what they would talk about again and that made her nervous. But so far he hadn’t been difficult to be with because he was good at making conversation himself. And riding to the dinner with him tomorrow night would give her the opportunity to remind him not to spill the beans about her pregnancy….

“I think we could probably drive over together,” she decreed. “But you don’t have to drive. I mean, I can drive. We can take my car if you want.” She was nervous and cut herself off before it went too far.

“I don’t suppose you’ve had any experience with the car seat issue yet,” he said like an old sage. “It’s easiest to take whatever vehicle it’s already strapped into.”

“Does that leave room for me?”

“Plenty. I have a fairly big SUV and car seats have to be in the back. You can have my passenger seat all to yourself.”

“Okay, then. I guess if it’s all right with you, it’s all right with me.”

“We’ll be doing our small part to save the environment,” he concluded. “Tomorrow night, shortly before six?”

“Sure.” Couldn’t she say anything else? That was four times! She hoped he wasn’t counting. “I can meet you downstairs.”

“I’ll see you there and then.”

“There and then,” Issa echoed, wishing after the fact that she hadn’t.

That was when Hutch Kincaid should have left, but he didn’t. He stayed where he was, standing in her doorway, staring at her, studying her.

“Okay, then,” he muttered after a moment, as if his mind was somewhere else. “And if the lock gives you any trouble, you know where to find me.”

Somehow that had sounded a bit awkward on his part, although Issa couldn’t imagine why Hutch Kincaid would feel at all ill at ease saying goodbye to her.

“I do know where to find you,” she confirmed.

“Anything else you need, too.”

“Thanks.”

He really was having trouble leaving. She didn’t know why, but it made her want to smile.

Then he seemed to jolt out of his reverie. “Okay, see you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow.”

But another split second still went by before Hutch Kincaid followed his son out her door and, without another glance in Issa’s direction, went down the stairs.

And yet just the fact that he seemed to have been even a touch gawky at the end made her feel so much better.

It even made it easier for her to think about riding over to her half brother’s place with him the next night.

Which she suddenly found herself looking forward to.

Chapter Three

“Oh. Wine.”

“Not just any wine, Issa, this is from that little vineyard in Napa that you like so much,” Logan said when Issa hesitated to accept his offer of a glass of wine. She, Hutch and Ash had just arrived at the Mackey and McKendrick compound for Monday evening’s barbecue.

It hadn’t occurred to her that not being able to drink because of her pregnancy would raise questions. Ordinarily she would have gratefully accepted the glass of wine and enjoyed it and the relaxing benefits that would have helped her be more comfortable socializing. That was something that her half and whole siblings Logan, Hadley and Dag knew well. Which was likely why Logan had gone out of his way to get her favorite wine. And why it looked all the more suspicious that she was holding back.

But she couldn’t drink. And she also couldn’t think fast enough to come up with a plausible excuse.

Maybe she should say yes to the wine, have one tiny sip for show, then pour the rest of it out by small increments when no one seemed to be looking, and hope she didn’t get caught.

“Oops, she promised to be my designated driver tonight, so I started early and had a beer before we left,” Hutch jumped in suddenly, saving the day.

“I saw your SUV out front, Hutch. You came in that instead of Issa’s car even though she’s driving?” Hadley asked.

Luckily no one had seen them actually pull up or they would have known that Hutch had driven.

“Car seat!” Issa said, her brain finally functioning so she could help things along. “It was more trouble to switch it to my car, so I just said I’d drive Hutch’s. But now that I’m committed, no wine for me. I appreciate that you went to the trouble, though.”

“We’ll open it another time,” Meg interjected, moving things along. “How about iced tea or lemonade? And Hutch, you’re drinking beer?”

“Tall and cold!” Hutch said with vigor, making everyone laugh and drawing the focus off Issa.

To Issa’s relief.

“I can pour my own lemonade,” Issa said, grabbing the pitcher from the kitchen table.

“Then, because we’re all here, we can take everything out back,” Meg suggested.

In the backyard Chase was manning a big barbecue grill. Standing nearby overseeing things were the rest of the guests—Shannon, Dag, Jenna Bowen—whom Issa knew because they’d both grown up in the small town, and another man who had to be Hutch Kincaid’s twin because they looked so much alike that Issa could have picked him out of a crowd.

The barbecue contingent greeted Issa and Hutch as they came out onto the back porch carrying whatever they could manage of beverages and condiments—the last of what was needed to get down to the business of dinner. Logan, Meg and Hadley followed with even more plates of goodies.

“Issa,” Logan said then, “you haven’t met Ian yet, have you? Issa, Ian. Ian, my sister Issa.”

Issa and Ian exchanged nice-to-meet-yous, but Issa refrained from commenting on the twins’ resemblance to each other because she thought they probably heard that too often.

Then to round out the introductions, Jenna said, “And the other one you don’t know is over there—Abby. She’s the baby my sister, J.J., had in high school. My niece—”

“And now her adopted daughter,” Ian contributed.

“And soon to be Ian’s adopted daughter, too, as soon as the paperwork is finished,” Jenna said, smiling a beaming smile at Hutch’s brother.

“I was sorry to hear about J.J., and about your parents,” Issa said. Through her family she’d heard about all the losses that Jenna had suffered during the past year. Even though Issa had visited Northbridge periodically during that time, her visits hadn’t coincided with any of the funerals and she also hadn’t seen Jenna when she was in town, so this was the first opportunity to give condolences. In fact, neither Jenna nor Issa had lived in Northbridge until very recently, and Issa hadn’t seen Jenna since they’d graduated from high school.

Jenna thanked her for her sympathy and Issa cast another, more concentrated glance in the direction of the sandbox. She felt obligated to show an interest in the child Jenna had made a point of telling her about.

Earlier when Issa, Hutch and Ash had arrived, Meg had informed the toddler that the other kids were out back. Ash hadn’t wasted any time running through the place to join them. Now Issa spotted him playing in the sandbox with Issa’s three-year-old niece, Tia; with Shannon, Chase and Hutch’s twenty-month-old nephew, Cody, who Issa had met her first day back in Northbridge; and with a beautiful, curly haired baby girl who had to be Jenna’s niece-turned-adopted daughter.

“How old is Abby?” Issa asked, too unfamiliar with children to have any clue.

“She’s seventeen months,” Ian answered in a proud voice.

“She’s cute…” Issa said, unsure if she should be more gushy, if she should say or do anything else, and how long she should go on looking at the child before she could move on to other things. She was just no good at this stuff.

When Jenna thanked her for the compliment, Issa took that as her sign that admiring the child had gone on long enough and switched her focus back to the adults.

It was about then that the men moved nearer to the barbecue and the women migrated toward the picnic tables not far from there.

At the urging of Hadley, Issa sat beside her half sister on the bench. But as the other women began to chat about Jenna and Ian’s upcoming wedding, Issa’s mind and eyes wandered, and she ended up studying Hutch and Ian.

They stood side by side facing in her direction, watching Chase’s grilling skills, and while she might not have remarked on the fact that the twins were near mirror images, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t noticed it. Now she couldn’t help comparing the two.

They were almost identical. Only a few minor details made it possible to tell them apart.

Ian’s eyes were a pale blue rather than the deeper, richer sky-blue that Hutch shared with Chase.

Both men’s hair was the same length—short on the sides and back, slightly longer on top. But Ian’s hair was just a shade lighter than Hutch’s sandy-colored locks, and looked as if he put more effort into taming it, while Hutch wore the style with just a touch of bad-boy dishevelment.

And there was a difference in dress and comportment, too. There was something more formal and businesslike about Ian, about coming to a barbecue in slacks and a dress shirt.

But Hutch? He was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt with the sleeves pushed to his elbows—definitely in keeping with the laid-back, casual air that invited everyone around him to loosen up, too.

No, there was nothing businesslike about Hutch as he talked and joked and made the other men laugh, and Issa knew almost instantly that if she were choosing between the two men—which, of course, she wasn’t—Hutch would be who she chose.

Relaxed, personable, smooth, fun-loving—that was her impression of him. A guy who was easy to be around. Who other people were drawn to, too. The type of man who was sort of the yin to her yang.

Ah, but that was exactly why she had to be cautious when it came to her landlord, she told herself.

What she lacked in outgoingness, men like Hutch made up for. And in the past that had had its own appeal. Being with a man like that had provided her with a sort of camouflage to hide behind, a gap filler. But not only didn’t that help her to improve upon her own shortcomings, but it also had actually led her to men with shortcomings themselves. Less obvious but far worse shortcomings than being a wallflower.

And she didn’t want to risk the fallout that came from that ever happening again. So no yin and yang. No picking up the slack on anybody’s part. No he-was-strong-where-she-was-weak/she-was-strong-where-he-was-weak stuff. Not for her. Not when the hidden weaknesses of the men she chose proved to be so disastrous.

It was a newly adopted conviction, but a conviction nonetheless, and she was holding tight to it.

Just then Ash got sand in his eyes and began to cry. Issa watched as Hutch crossed to his son with long, powerful strides, scooped up the little boy and commiserated with him while he rubbed his back.

“I know that hurts, big guy, go ahead and cry,” he encouraged.

Issa’s first thought was that commiseration and rubbing the toddler’s back weren’t going to get the sand out of his eyes.

Then she realized that it was the encouragement for the little boy to cry that was the solution—the tears were washing the sand away. And sure enough, within a few minutes the two-and-a-half-year-old was fine again.

Huh…

If she hadn’t seen it herself, Issa didn’t think that route would have occurred to her. Looking on, she’d thought Hutch should rush Ash into the bathroom and flush his eyes out with water. But the tears had been an easier solution and she filed that knowledge away for future use when she was dealing with her own child.

Then it struck her that in that way Hutch Kincaid could be a double whammy.

Not only did he seem to have the kind of personality that had historically been the yin to her yang, but he also had the abilities as a parent that she lacked. Abilities that could potentially compensate for her weaknesses on that count, too.

But being with an outgoing man had never made her more outgoing; it had merely masked the fact that she wasn’t. And when it came to parenting, she thought that she had to guard against thinking that being with someone who was already a good parent would automatically make her a good parent, too. Or worst of all, mask the fact that she wasn’t.

No, when it came to parenting, she had to do everything possible to become a good parent herself.

So yes, there were two reasons for her not to be memorizing every sexy little line that formed at the corners of his beautiful eyes when he laughed.

And if two reasons weren’t enough, she could add one great big huge third reason, she reminded herself.

She was pregnant.

Admittedly, that tended to slip her mind because it didn’t seem real yet. But it was real. And what man would want a woman pregnant by someone else?

No man she knew.

And why was she even thinking anything like that?

Hutch Kincaid was her landlord, he’d fixed her door, he’d offered to carpool with her. There was nothing in any of that to require reminders of why she shouldn’t or wouldn’t or couldn’t get involved with him and she wasn’t quite sure how her thoughts had gotten there.

Except that he laughed again just then and that face of his lit up, and for a moment she couldn’t help staring at him.

He was simply too good-looking.

But that wasn’t important.

Hutch Kincaid was just a guy who happened to own her apartment, live downstairs and know some of the same people she knew. An incredibly attractive guy, but just a guy.

And she was nothing more than his unwed pregnant tenant—pregnant being the most significant part of that because if there was any man-repellent stronger than that, she didn’t know what it was, especially because it had even repelled the man who had caused it.

So whether or not Hutch Kincaid showed signs of being the sort of man she had vowed to avoid, it didn’t matter. She was protected even from herself.

Which was for the best.

She had enough on her plate as it was.

And yet…

There was something that made her a little sad to think that she’d been put on the shelf.

Particularly when it came to Hutch Kincaid.

“Thanks for covering for me at the start of tonight, with the wine,” Issa said to Hutch almost the minute they were back in his SUV when the barbecue was over.

“Hey, it got me chauffeured,” he answered with a laugh.

He was sitting in the passenger seat, angled toward the center console with an arm stretched across the back of her seat. Because Ash was in the car seat in the back, Issa thought that Hutch was sitting that way to keep an eye on his son. But so far his attention seemed more focused on her as Ash almost instantly fell asleep.

“I didn’t even think about the drinking issue giving me away,” Issa explained. “When it seemed like it might, I just froze. You really saved me.”

“Anytime,” he said. “You were pretty quiet all night, though. Did it throw you that much off your game?”

“Oh, no, that’s just me,” Issa lamented.

“The shyness.” he said as if just recalling that about her. “How does that work for a teacher who has to stand in front of a room full of kids and talk every day?”

“It took some work and a lot of shaky-voiced lectures during my student teaching to get me there, believe me. And lecturing still isn’t one of my strengths. That’s why I like to use as many demonstration experiments as I can and beef them up so the spotlight is more on the science than on me.”

“Beefing up the experiments is what led to Gob-o-Goo.”

“Right.”

“But this tonight, it was just family and old friends,” Hutch pointed out, still sounding somewhat puzzled by the evening.

“I’m not the boisterous McKendrick. I think the shyness actually came from home, from hating it when my mother would put us on display like we were her doll collection. So being with family doesn’t make it much better. I got into the habit of shrinking into the background at an early age and relying on my brothers and sisters to be center stage, so that’s still what I fall into when I’m with them.”

“I know all about being put on display,” Hutch muttered more to himself than to her. Then to her, he said, “Or was it worse tonight because of Ian and me?”

It had definitely been worse because of Hutch and all that had been going through her mind about him, but she wasn’t going to say that.

Instead she hedged, “It might have been a little worse because of a lot of things. Like there were also kids, kids, kids everywhere…”

“And that was bad because?”

“Because it was glaring evidence that I don’t know the first thing about them, or about taking care of them, or about what they need or when, or what makes them tick.”

Hutch chuckled kindly. “That sounded a little panicky.”

“Because I feel a lot panicky I must be doing pretty well hiding it, then,” Issa joked even though it was the truth.

“You’re panicked at the thought of parenthood?”

“Oh, sooo panicked! I’ve just never been a kid person. My mother made Hadley take care of the rest of us, so I never had to look after my younger brothers or Zeli. When I was a teenager, I didn’t babysit like my friends did. I just don’t know the first thing about kids.”

“But you’re a schoolteacher,” he pointed out a second time, as if she were giving him conflicting messages.

“In a high school—they aren’t kid-kids. They’re teenagers. Three-quarters of the way to being adults. And I’m only responsible for teaching them chemistry. But a baby…” Issa nodded over her shoulder in the direction of the slumbering Ash. “A toddler? A kid? Feeding it, changing diapers, keeping it clean and healthy and thriving? Walking, talking, brushing teeth, potty training—I don’t even know where to start.”

“Didn’t you want kids?”

“Not particularly. I mean I didn’t plan to have them. I just sort of thought that if that biological clock thing ever kicked in, I’d know it and things might change. But that didn’t happen and this…” She hated referring to the pregnancy too literally. “This was a birth control malfunction. It’s taken a lot of soul searching for me to decide what to do and I’ve decided to go through with it, but I’m just hoping it’s the right choice. And tonight, being around all those kids, made me wonder.”

Like she was wondering at that moment why, for someone who didn’t ordinarily talk much, talking too much was the problem with this guy. And telling him things she had no reason to tell him. Birth control malfunction—had she really said that?

She sighed audibly. “I don’t know, I just kept watching what all of you did with your kids and thinking that I don’t know any of it.”

“You have some time to learn, to get ready,” he said on a positive note.

“I’m not sure time will help.”

Hutch did glance into the rear of the SUV then, at Ash, pausing the conversation for longer than seemed necessary.

Then he looked at Issa again and said, “How about a crash course? Would that help?”

She had the impression that he’d weighed those words before he’d said them, that that had been the purpose of that pause.

“A crash course?” Issa repeated because she wasn’t sure what he was offering. If he was offering anything.

“In kids. In parenting, although I’m in no way an expert. But I know from my own experience that it isn’t easy to step into those shoes, so I’d be willing to give you a couple of lessons. And the loan of some child-rearing books I still go to whenever I have a question. And there’s also Ash. You could do some practicing on him so you can start to get used to kids, to being around the little ones and dealing with them.”

She didn’t know if Hutch had any idea how generous she considered his offer to be at that moment.

Taking her eyes off the road to look at him, she said, “Really?”

He shrugged as if it were nothing. “I’ll make you a deal. The Realtor gave me a list of properties for sale in town so I could drive by them and decide if I want to see inside any of them before she sets anything up—”

“Marsha Pinkell? She gave me a list, too. Probably the same one because Northbridge is a small town and there aren’t that many things available.”

“All the better. I was going to say that you could help me find the places, but now it’ll give you the chance to check them out, too. And while we’re at it, I was also going to say that we could trade services—I’ll do the crash course in parenting for you if you give me the guided tour of Northbridge and introduce me around, help me to start becoming part of the community.”

“I’m not really part of the community—I haven’t lived here since I went away to college.”

“You’re still a hometown girl. Jenna said you hadn’t seen each other in years and years, but you picked right up where you’d left off with her. I’m betting that’ll happen with everyone. In fact, it’ll give you the chance to get it started, let people know you’re back. Or is this too much to ask of a Bashful Betty?”

It was. But the stress of that was less than the stress she’d been suffering over the thought of becoming a totally unprepared and incompetent mother.

So she made a counter-suggestion.

“How about if rather than making a whole project of introducing you around, I just do it when the opportunity arises, like when we run into someone I know. I don’t think I can promise to be your sole entry into Northbridge society, but I think I can give you a foot in the door.”

“Fair enough. So it’s a deal?”

Was it a deal? Issa asked herself as she pulled his SUV into the driveway beside her own, smaller version.

Turning off the engine roused Ash, who sleepily demanded, “Where Za-Za?”

“Za-Za?” Issa parroted.

“The floppy lion he sleeps with. Don’t ask me why he calls him Za-Za, he just does,” Hutch confided before he got out of the SUV, closed his door and immediately opened the rear one to lean inside to say to Ash, “It’s okay, buddy. I’ll have you in bed with Za-Za in a minute.”

Issa decided she could use that minute to consider the deal she might be striking with Hutch Kincaid.

Earlier in the evening she’d reminded herself to beware of this man because he was the kind of guy she knew she was susceptible to. And nothing about that had changed, she reflected as she got out of the SUV and went up to the house’s main door to unlock it.

Plus she realized she was susceptible to Hutch in particular. If she weren’t, during the drive home she wouldn’t have been as aware as she had been of the scent of his cologne, of the heat of his body just a console away, of that long arm stretched across the back of her seat.

She wouldn’t have thought so much about her hands being on the same steering wheel his hands had been on, or that she was sitting where he usually sat, and liking the sort of familiarity that seemed to breed.

She wouldn’t have just spent the past few hours at the barbecue stealing every glimpse of him that she could steal, and then have been secretly pleased afterward to have him to herself again.

So was it smart now to sign on for spending more time with him? She pondered the question as she opened the door and waited for Hutch to finish getting his son out of the car. Because time would have to be spent with him if she showed him around Northbridge, if she showed him whatever properties were on the market, and if she had him teach her what to do with a kid.

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