Beginning With Baby. Christie Ridgway

romance. And she harbored some very old-fashioned, and very specific dreams on that subject.

      She’d been waiting all her life for the man who “clicked”—her code for the man she believed would come along and be recognized by her heart and soul. No doubt having Rex permanently with her would affect that plan.

      “But I’m twenty-four and I’ve not caught a glimpse of him yet, Rex.” Oh, there’d been dates and all, but she was determined to find the kind of love her mother had found with her stepfather. So far that had remained elusive. And Rex was right here, right now, needing her.

      As if the baby was satisfied with her answer, his eyes finally drifted shut, his incredibly miraculous lashes resting against his soft, plump cheeks.

      Unwilling to let go of him just yet, Phoebe sat carefully on the flowered love seat. Despite her tiredness, she just looked at him, marveling at every tiny perfection, and that oh-so-dangerous emotion she’d felt before flooded back into her heart and expanded it with equal parts pain and pleasure.

      The click. She would be saying goodbye to that notion if she committed herself to Rex. But she had just as many strong and good reasons—reasons also rooted in her past—to want to provide the baby with a loving home.

      It was Rex who was clicking now.

      He whimpered a little in his sleep, and she snuggled him closer. “I love you,” she said, letting the words out freely this time. “I’m here.”

      Then she allowed herself to say something else, something big and something important, though between the sentiment and the reality stood a whole laundry list of problems: absent fathers, acute-eared neighbors, landladies with a thing about single mothers. She said it, anyway, because it just seemed right. “Mommy’s here.”

      Next door that baby was crying again. Jackson Abbott tried to ignore the plaintive sound and fall back asleep.

      It wasn’t working.

      Nearly every noise penetrated the thin wall between his apartment and the one next door. Either it was the baby crying or the disturbingly soft voice of his neighbor patiently placating it.

      A warm, afternoon breeze filled the coarse muslin curtains in his bedroom and then disappeared, snapping the thick material against the sill. It wasn’t soothing, either.

      Another infant cry drilled through the drywall. Whoever had divided the old three-story Victorian house into separate apartments had spared the expenses wherever possible. Though the month-to-month agreement he had with the landlady-owner suited his purposes for the moment, this place wasn’t constructed for the long-term comfort of a man whose work required him to sleep while the rest of the world went about their business.

      The baby cried again, and Jackson sighed. The thing was, that baby was hard to ignore. Not only its often-dissatisfied wailing and the murmur of his neighbor’s patient and sweet voice trying to calm it, but the existence of the child itself.

      Babies had a way of getting to him.

      This one unwillingly piqued his curiosity, too. He’d been here in Strawberry Bay a month, and was due to stay five weeks more. The first part of his stay, his neighbor had been blissfully quiet. She did something on a computer most of the day—the clickety-clack of keys was a dead giveaway—with only a phone call or two as punctuation.

      Then, something like fourteen days ago, the baby had entered her life.

      Their lives.

      He punched his pillow, trying to soften the damn thing as he listened to the baby cry some more. Where had it come from? He’d caught a glimpse or two of the woman next door, and she hadn’t looked pregnant. Furthermore, unless the HMOs had that drive-through baby delivery thing really in place, the woman hadn’t been away from her apartment long enough to produce an infant in the usual way.

      Jackson groaned through his teeth. What did it matter? He shouldn’t be caring about neighbors or their babies. For years he’d made it his practice to avoid such entanglements. What he cared about was sleep. God knew he’d need it on the job tonight.

      The night shift was hell, but he’d been at it for more than two years and would be at it for an indefinite number more. Between 9:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. was the only possible time to shut down even the least-crowded of California’s highways. Then he and his crew could go about the work of retrofitting the overpasses to better withstand the earthquakes that were a certain part of California’s future.

      The baby wailed again and his neighbor’s voice counterpointed the sound, her tone soothing and soft. Jackson’s eyelids popped open, and he stared up at the ceiling.

      Damn! He never had trouble sleeping during the day, just like he never had trouble moving on to the next assignment, working there for a few months and then moving on again.

      He was suited to the night just as he was suited to the wandering life.

      The curtains flapped once more. The baby cried. The woman’s soft voice spoke. There were seven hairline cracks in the ceiling’s plaster. The baby cried again.

      Jackson gritted his teeth. Sure, he could go next door and complain, but he preferred keeping to himself—avoiding confrontation as well as ties. Life worked better for him that way.

      He worked better that way.

      The night suited him, the wandering life did, too.

      Another infant sound forced him to flop onto his stomach and pull the pillow over his head. Sleep. Now. He’d be damned if anything—either the plaintive noise of a child or the soft voice of a woman—was going to change him.

      He would not get involved.

      But at 7:30 the next morning, Jackson unlaced the heavy construction boot on his left foot to the unhappy and unsurprising accompaniment of a baby crying. The sound echoed inside the empty place in his chest, unignorable and disturbing. He didn’t need this, not after working all night and then holing up for an extra hour in the hot tin can of an office trailer to write and then fax a report to the company headquarters in Los Angeles.

      Closing his eyes, he dropped his boot to the floor and flopped back against the bed’s mattress. He hadn’t slept much yesterday, and with the baby’s cries now ratcheting several notches louder, he doubted he’d enter dreamland anytime soon. The woman’s voice next door started murmuring again, but the baby didn’t respond to her soft hum.

      Setting his back teeth, Jackson tried to force the sounds from his head. But the baby’s noise continued and he curled his fingers into the worn bedspread to keep himself still.

      What did he think he could do, anyway? Go next door and make it right, make it better? He knew, only too well, what a failure he’d be at that.

      Enough. Jackson sat up and impatiently pulled at the laces on his right boot. It was time to get some sleep. Lack of the stuff was making him vulnerable to thoughts he’d buried long ago. The boot dropped to the floor, its thud nearly drowned by the noise from next door.

      Cranky baby. Sweet woman voice.

      Damn! And it was hot in here, too. He pulled the tails of his work shirt from the waistband of his ancient jeans and quickly unbuttoned it.

      Then the baby cried louder, the woman’s voice hit a concerned note and Jackson finally lost it.

      He had to get some quiet!

      His feet slid back into his boots, and with determined, swift strides he crossed through the bedroom and living room. Pulling open his front door, he took a breath and glared at the one next to his. In the minuscule hallway the sounds from the neighboring apartment were just as loud.

      Another hot spurt of irritation ran through him. He disliked being forced into making the contact almost as much as the noise itself.

      But he steeled himself—he deserved some sleep!—and knocked. He would just tell the woman to keep it down and then turn around and go back to his own place and hit the sack.

      It