Daddy on Her Doorstep. Lilian Darcy

a minor accident while skiing or climbing, or even a punch-up outside a bar. Or maybe a construction-crew boss. Someone who knew what he was doing, but was laid-back about it. Someone good with his hands and with tools.

      This place, for example. Had he remodeled it himself?

      It was beautiful. The internet tour hadn’t given a misleading impression. Late afternoon spring sunshine poured through the kitchen window on the first floor and her bedroom window above. The wide bay window at the side of the house would glow when the morning sun hit those leaded sections of stained glass.

      Beyond the borders of a Persian rug, the hardwood floors shone a dark syrup color, and the two couches looked soft and inviting with their stylized floral fabric. There were prints on the walls, wrought-iron fire tongs on a stand beside the grate, a good-quality coffee table and end tables made of solid wood, thick cream drapes at the windows for privacy, carved newel posts and rails on the stairs.

      For the moment, however, with the baby kicking and rolling in a very uncomfortable way, the most urgent piece of exploration she needed was to check out the state of the bathroom.

      Of course, Andy ran into her at the supermarket on the outskirts of town less than forty-five minutes later.

      She was efficient, he’d give her that. She’d asked for directions to the store, and in the time he’d taken to unwind in a lazy, casual way from a day of seeing patients with conditions ranging from ingrown toenails to advanced pregnancy to serious heart disease, she’d—he could hear her faintly through the walls—toured both levels of the half a Victorian house that were now temporarily hers, tested the bathroom facilities, unpacked at least one of the suitcases and taken a long and no doubt critical look from the back porch at a garden he hadn’t touched since last summer.

      Now she was shopping, arriving at the spacious, brightly lit supermarket just off County Route 5 only a few minutes after he’d gotten here himself.

      He had steak, potatoes, orange juice and bananas in his basket.

      She was filling a whole cart, stocking up big-time.

      Buying diapers already?

      He had to smile. Of course she was buying diapers!

      He’d pegged her to a T, in the space of just a few minutes of conversation. He’d met her kind before. A highly intelligent and competent city professional, who would sincerely believe that efficiently stocking up six weeks in advance on non-perishable baby supplies would give her a significant head start in acquiring that all-important “routine” that would miraculously turn the years-long demands of parenthood, whether solo or shared, into a walk in the park.

      Boy, was she in for a shock.

      It was funny …

      And not.

      He didn’t know what to feel, actually.

      Impressed? It was brave, no doubt about that. Angry? He was so busy with this mix of wry amusement, anger and … something else that he couldn’t quite work out … that he forgot to keep track of her movements through the store and found her coming down the dairy aisle toward him, pausing to reach for yogurt and cheese on the way.

      “Oh. Hi,” she said.

      And caught him looking at the stack of diapers.

      He hadn’t meant to, but they were hard to miss—five big, block-shaped, plastic-covered, newborn-size sixty-packs piled one on top of the other.

      Ten diapers a day for a month. Seven a day for six weeks. Take your pick. She’d probably already worked out a theoretical schedule for how often the baby would need changing.

      She flushed. “It’s not like they’ll spoil. This way, I get to carry them into the house while I’m not too big and not too sore.”

      “Makes sense,” he agreed.

      And it kind of did. Of course it was a good idea to get as much done in advance as you could. But it was a drop in the ocean.

      They stood there, him with the basket hooked over his arm, her leaning on the piled-up cart. Her hair was gleaming and pretty but a little too tightly wound for his taste. He liked fullness and bounce, soft waves shadowing a woman’s face, something to run his fingers through, something to tickle his shoulders or cheeks or chest when he came in for a kiss. Was the tight style another piece of efficiency on her part?

      Knot it and go. Nothing to get in the way.

      She was incredibly well-groomed close up, even more so than he’d observed when he’d first seen her on the porch. Soft hands, their long fingers tipped with a French manicure. Neat gold earrings with just the right amount of sparkle and dangle. A touch of lip gloss. Perfectly arched eyebrows with not a hair out of line. Low-heeled ankle boots and that artfully arranged scarf.

      And what was the deal with the scarf, anyhow? If he had something like that fussing around his neck, it would either choke him or fall off every time he moved. It’d drive him crazy. She carried it with casual grace. He wondered if he was underestimating her and she would soon carry a baby on her hip the same way.

      Due in five and a half weeks. First babies weren’t always late.

      Would she manage on her own? Did she have support systems in place that she hadn’t mentioned yet?

       I’m going to find out …

      A danger signal suddenly clanged in his head. His father had accused him in the past of being a soft touch for people in need. You don’t know how to keep your distance, Andy. When you let yourself get overinvolved, all that happens is mess and complication.

      Was Dad right? He often asked himself this, because Dad was right about a lot of things and knew it. He was a heart surgeon, and patients came to him from hundreds of miles away. But was he right that Andy had a tendency to become overinvolved?

      The question hung in the balance for what felt like too long. He murmured something polite in Claudia Nelson’s direction. See you back at the house. Good luck with your shopping. The words didn’t matter. He was only using them as an exit line. Then he moved on down the aisle.

      But when he turned at the end, remembering he needed to pick up some milk, he looked toward her, saw her pick up several cans of tomatoes from a lower shelf and once more straighten and rub the band of tightness around her lower back. Suddenly, she looked far too alone, marooned in the middle of a brightly lit supermarket aisle in her designer maternity clothes.

      “She’s not going to go five more weeks …” he muttered to himself in a flash of medical intuition. “One or two if she’s lucky. A couple of days if she keeps on with the superwoman stuff.”

      Trying to look casual about it, he wandered back. “Hey, I’ve just thought, would you like to come next door for dinner tonight, since you’ve had a full day? Save you calling out for pizza?”

      “I wasn’t calling out for pizza, I was going to cook.”

      Of course she was going to cook!

      “Save you cooking, even better,” he said, keeping it cheerful and bland. “It’s only going to be steak and green salad and microwaved potatoes.”

      “Well, the baby does need iron,” she murmured, half to herself, frowning as if working out complex numbers in her head. “But for vitamins, just a green salad …?”

      Andy hid another smile. She probably calculated her nutritional intake on a daily basis. He shouldn’t laugh about it, when this was so much better than the patients he saw who paid no attention to their nutrition during pregnancy at all. “Will an offer of broccoli on the side seal the deal? Fresh fruit for dessert?”

      Reading his attitude, she fixed him with a patient, tolerant expression, and drawled, “Organic? Locally grown?”

      “Great. We’re on the same page.” And she had a sense of humor, even if she was a trifle scary.

      “What time shall