Beginning With Baby. Christie Ridgway

would ease a man who moved on regularly, required more effort than he’d been willing to make lately. But if the scent of a woman—a woman with a baby—and the sight of six inches of her legs could make him poker hard, then sex had made itself a priority.

      He heard her voice again, and he forced his gaze away from her and to his soda can. “What?”

      “I asked what kind of work you do.”

      He didn’t dare look at her again. “I’m an engineer for a company that’s retrofitting overpasses—do you know what that is?”

      “Making the overpasses earthquakeproof?”

      He shook his head. “Not quite. But better able to handle the stress.” He told her a bit about his work and how he moved from one location to another.

      She came closer, looking over his shoulder to check on the stubbornly alert Rex. “Well, California has oodles of overpasses,” she said.

      Her female-scent was that much closer, too. “That’s why I’m oodling all over the state,” he answered, keeping himself sternly focused on the conversation. “I’m only here for another month or so.”

      She’d started to laugh at the “oodling” but quickly turned serious. “You like it, then? Working at night? Moving around?”

      “I’m suited to it.”

      She pulled out the only other chair he had, the one beside him, and sat down, the soft fabric of her dress drifting over her legs.

      “What about you?” he found himself asking.

      Her eyebrows came together. “What about me what?”

      Jackson cursed himself silently. What the hell was he interrogating her for? He didn’t want her to get the idea he was interested. But she was looking at him expectantly. He shrugged. “Does your life suit you?”

      “I suppose. I’ve been slowly working my way through college, and my business keeps me hopping.” She shifted in her seat, crossing her legs so that more of the smooth skin of one calf was exposed. “Now that I have the baby—”

      “What’s your boyfriend think of that, by the way?” Damn. Stupid question number two.

      Her eyebrows rose. “I don’t have a boyfriend,” she said. “And I don’t expect to snag one anytime soon.”

      Her answer provided an odd spurt of relief that Jackson wasn’t sure was bad or good.

      She cast another glance at the baby, then suddenly popped up from her chair. “You did it. You got him to sleep again.”

      He looked down. Sure enough, Rex was sleeping away, his mouth falling open and a drop of drool running out and toward Jackson’s forearm.

      Phoebe smiled as she tenderly touched the sleeping baby’s cheek. “I thank you. Rex thanks you. Though they don’t know it, the tenants of 1006 Bartlett Street thank you.” She bent over to retrieve the baby, the rounded neckline of her dress falling forward to give Jackson an innocent peek at two perfectly fine breasts in a white lacy bra.

      He bit back a second groan and looked away as she scooped the baby out of his arms. He breathed out, too, to keep her dangerous scent from reaching his lungs.

      Then she turned away. At last. It was over. She was finally leaving, and there’d be no more contact between them, he promised.

      At the door, though, she spun around, her dress floating out around her legs, the beginnings of a smile brightening her face and crinkling the corners of her morning eyes. He wanted to look away.

      “Gee,” she said, her lush mouth curling up. “I just gotta ask. What are you doing at 6:30 a.m. for the rest of your life?”

      Early the next morning Phoebe typed quietly at her computer. Rex was asleep—for what seemed like the first time in days—and she didn’t want to disturb the baby or her neighbor.

      It was the least she could do, now that she knew Jackson Abbott worked nights. Before meeting him, she’d always assumed the hours her mystery neighbor kept were due to some hot-and-heavy romance he had going. And after meeting him…

      Well, if he hadn’t denied it himself, she would still think he had some hot-and-heavy romance going. He was the type of man who found women easily. He was big, solidly big, with wide shoulders, narrow hips and strong, thick thighs. Like a pirate, she’d thought nervously, the first time she’d seen him. There was even a small gold earring that winked at her from the rumpled tangle of his coffee-dark hair.

      His eyes were dark, too, and heavily lashed, and the first time they’d looked at her they’d seemed to swallow her up.

      She shivered now, remembering it.

      To top it off, inside that dark and dangerous exterior was an awesome daddy technique that was downright magic. At first, Phoebe figured Rex responded to him because the baby was used to her stepbrother, but nothing about Jackson’s deep voice or muscled chest was anything like Teddy.

      It was a puzzle. Jackson was a puzzle.

      She tried to put it from her mind, but as her fingers flew over the keys, she kept coming back to him. To the familiar way he held the baby and the undefinable expression that entered his eyes when he did.

      To his denial of a woman in his life and the frisson of feminine response she’d felt when sitting across from him in his apartment yesterday.

      To the bleakness on his face when she’d joked about what he was doing the rest of the mornings of his life.

      Another delicious shiver rolled down Phoebe’s spine. Dark and mysterious men were lethal. But a dark and mysterious man who held a baby as tenderly as he might hold a woman’s heart…

      She pulled herself short of going down that path. Her focus was on being Rex’s mommy. He was the only man in her life that mattered, and it didn’t take a genius to realize that Jackson wasn’t exactly welcoming a relationship with Rex and her, anyway.

      Jackson was merely her neighbor.

      Just then she heard the sound of booted footsteps in the hall and the telltale jingle and click of keys in the lock next door. Her mere neighbor was home.

      Phoebe was glad Rex was quiet because Jackson was probably tired and hungry and ready to settle in for sleep right after another epicurean’s delight of dried meat and sugary soda.

      Ick.

      It was a short leap to the thought of the zucchini nut muffins she’d made the night before. Big fat ones, bursting with raisins, walnuts and cinnamon. Much better than beef jerky. Excuse me, turkey jerky.

      Couldn’t she just pop over with two or three? A kind gesture, wasn’t it, that would keep her focus on him as her neighbor rather than anything more dangerous.

      Because anything more was impossible.

      She was a woman with a new baby. He was a man moving on, in a very short while.

      So bringing over a little thank-you gift of home cooking would put her in the right frame of mind to put him out of her mind.

      There. That made sense.

      With Rex still snoozing away, she carefully locked her door, secure in the knowledge that the slightest peep from her baby would carry right through the wall between her place and Jackson’s.

      Still, outside his front door, with a plate of her famous muffins in hand, she hesitated. If she returned to her apartment—

      Today would be a rerun of the day before. She’d be squirming on her seat, thinking of him sleeping just a wall way. Oh, yes. Definitely best to force the focus onto that neighbor idea.

      Unlike yesterday morning he answered her knock right away. Wearing heavy construction boots, jeans and an unbuttoned shirt, he looked both weary and wary. He blinked at her slowly, for a moment hiding the bittersweet chocolate color of his eyes. “Another problem?” he asked