“Meggie! Over here!”
In the moments before Meg’s father called her, Russ had seen the indecision in her face. The panic. Struggling with the impulse to bolt, no doubt. But why should it matter to her, whether he was there or not? Especially considering how badly they’d left things.
More to the point, why the hell couldn’t he take his eyes off her as she bumpily wheeled the baby across the uneven grass, ridged with roots from a trio of fifty-feet-tall spruces? Why did his heart knock against his rib cage when he saw her react in feigned outrage to something her brother said, then take off after him, laughing, until the two of them went down in the grass like a couple of overgrown puppies?
Why did his breath leave his lungs when she sat up, her wild hair flecked with loose grass and spruce needles, holding out her arms to her giggling daughter, toddling across the grass to throw herself in her mother’s arms—?
“Isn’t that the receptionist from the Institute?” Nova said behind him.
“Uh, yeah.” Realizing he’d been clutching the tray hard enough to gouge his palms, he set it down beside a prepared bed close to the house. Then he frowned at his sister, plopping a specimen rhododendron beside the flat. “And you shouldn’t be doing that.”
Nova straightened, brushing off her hands. “I’m pregnant. Not incapacitated.” Shielding her eyes, she looked toward Meg and the baby. “What an adorable little girl!”
Russ grunted, stalking back to the truck for more mums. Nova followed.
“She knows the landscapers?”
“She’s related to the landscapers,” Russ said, jerking the next flat so hard several plants tumbled into the truck’s bed.
“Wait a minute…didn’t you have dinner with—”
“Yes.”
“Wow. Growling, even.” Russ tossed his sister a dirty look. She laughed, then said, “Think I’ll go over and say hi.”
And she was gone before Russ could think up a plausible reason why she shouldn’t. Since he doubted The woman scares the holy bejeebers out of me was gonna cut it.
***
For the second time in less than five minutes, Meg had to fight the urge to escape. Except Nova Farris’s smile, as she quickly covered the ground between them, somehow sliced right through Meg’s trepidation.
“Hey!” she called out, waving. “What a surprise to see you here!”
“Yeah,” Meg said, curling her arms around Abbie, sitting in her lap. “You, too.”
Nova sank onto the cool grass beside the two of them, smiling for Abbie. “Ohmigosh, she’s gorgeous! How old?”
“Eighteen months.” Abbie scootched closer, ducking her face behind Meg’s arm. “And don’t let the coy act fool ya. She’s been known to reduce her older cousins to tears. And I’m talkin’ about the ones already in middle school.”
Nova laughed, then looked back toward her brother. Meg resisted for about half a second, then did the same, gawking at all those muscles bunching and shifting as he hefted plants off his truck. Like she’d never seen anybody lug greenery around before. “Russ tells me you guys had dinner,” Nova said.
Meg felt her skin warm. “Yeah. Along with eleventy billion of my nearest and dearest. And please don’t tell me you’re trying to fix us up, too.”
“Too?”
Shifting Little Miss Chunks in her arms, Meg shot a look at Andy, her youngest brother. “Apparently the only reason they told me to come on over today was because they knew your brother would be here, too. Even though—”
“What?”
A sigh punched from her chest. “This little angel in my lap, she wasn’t exactly planned. And her father wasn’t exactly thrilled about that. In fact, he took off before she was born. I didn’t even bother contesting the divorce. So your brother’s obvious aversion to kids…it just struck a nerve, that’s all.”
Nova frowned. “What makes you think Russ doesn’t like kids?”
“The look on his face when he saw Abbie, for one thing—”
“Meg!” her father shouted. “We’re goin’ around to the pond! Wanna come? The others are already there!”
“I better go,” Meg said, scrambling to her feet with the baby in her arms.
“No, wait—”
“Congratulations again,” she said, nodding toward Nova’s middle as Abbie wrapped her arms around her neck. “Raising a kid by yourself, it’s no walk in the park. But it’s worth every second.”
“I know,” Nova said, her eyes shiny.
Her own eyes stinging, Meg crossed the few feet to the baby’s stroller to plop her in it, then took off toward the sound of quacking ducks, where Abbie’s squeals of delight soothed her aching heart.
***
Seated behind the truck’s steering wheel, Russ watched both Meg take off and his sister’s approach, her face all confused and storm-cloudy.
“What the heck?” he said as she got in beside him, yanking shut the door.
“She thinks you don’t like kids.”
Russ started the truck, pulling back into the street to drive around to the large, man-made pond to unload the ferns and hostas Meg’s brother had ordered. “It’s just as well,” he said over the crush to his chest.
He could feel Nova’s eyes on the side of his face. “Ohmigosh. You like her, don’t you? Only you’re scared, so you deliberately put her off.”
“Back off, Nove. I mean it.”
His sister twisted in her seat. “Oh, wow. This is huge—”
“For heaven’s sake, I barely know the woman. And anyway, I can already tell she’s not my type.”
“Oh, really?” Nova said, turning back around. Smiling.
Roughly five gazillion Carters were at the far end of the duck pond—the shallow end—laughing and goofing around, their multitudinous progeny a blur as they swarmed back and forth. Sighing, Russ pulled the truck up beside a bank of gracefully drooping willows fifty yards away to unload the plants, doing his best, as he and Nova worked, to not look. Not yearn. Not…envy.
“Abbie!”
At Meg’s shriek, Russ’s head snapped up…just in time to see the baby tumbling down the incline toward the deeper part of the pond, way too fast to control her chubby little legs.
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