Raising Baby Jane. Lilian Darcy

head there was a fine growth of silky, dark-gold hair. On her plump rosy cheeks, there were two fans of extraordinarily long, satiny black lashes. Her skin was so peachy and translucent that a blue vein across her nose showed quite clearly. It was the prettiest, purest color.

      There was a short silence, then Allie carefully voiced a small part of what they were both thinking. “They’ll be very close in age.”

      “I know. Thirteen months apart.”

      “Jane won’t remember…” Allie began.

      “…what it was like before she had a baby brother or sister,” Karen finished. “Don’t worry about it, Allie, it’s not a problem. Really! John and I have been wanting a big family for so long. There were so many times we despaired that it would ever happen. And you know that nothing about what we’re doing with this is a problem for me. Whatever you decide about anything in the future, if you want—”

      “It’s okay, Karen,” Allie answered with difficulty. “I know. You’ve promised me that from the beginning. I guess I’m still working things out.”

      “It’s only that my energy levels are down at the moment. John’s away on business till Wednesday. I should have gone with him, taken a break, but the chance to do this book cover was too good to turn down. The movie rights for it have already been sold. Nancy Sherlock is huge these days.”

      “And with a temperament to match, evidently.”

      “With a temperament to ma—” Karen began to agree. Then she stopped abruptly and put her hand over her mouth, gripped by nausea.

      “Let’s get you out of this car, so you can walk around and get some air.”

      “I can’t open the door.”

      “I know. And I’m not letting you climb across to my side in your condition. Not with that big old gearshift in the way.”

      Allie quickly jammed on her dark blue velour hat and wriggled her fingers into warm woolly gloves, then jumped out of the car and went round to the driver’s side. “Hang in there,” she ordered her sister, both protective and stern. “I’m going to shovel back the snow as quick as I can. You still look like you’re about to throw up.”

      “Might,” Karen agreed through clenched teeth. She folded her arms across the steering wheel and buried her face in them, breathing carefully.

      Not caring that her gloves were immediately soaked through, Allie began to drag armfuls of snow out of the way of the door. It was slower work than she’d anticipated. The snow bank was like a big, puffy quilt, and the van looked as if it had decided to snuggle in for the night.

      “Would a shovel help?” said a male voice.

      Allie looked up, startled, and found the orange scoop of a snow shovel staring her in the face. She sat back on her haunches, a little breathless and hot, and looked up higher. A handle. A leather-gloved hand. A big, thick, black coat sleeve ending in an impressive shoulder. Finally, a man’s face beneath a black, stretchy wool hat. He had the bluest eyes she’d ever seen.

      There was something about him that immediately had Allie off balance. Literally. She stumbled and wasn’t steady as she straightened. It didn’t help that she hadn’t heard his approach across the slightly softened ice, above the effortful pant of her breathing and the sound of scraping snow.

      Karen still had her head hidden in her arms, but she had heard his voice.

      “Connor?” came her muffled query.

      “Yeah, hi.” He leaned an arm on the minivan’s door frame and examined Karen through the half-open window. “I guess you didn’t intend on parking quite so close to the lake, right?”

      “Right.”

      “Feeling sick?”

      “Right again.”

      “Yeah, it can shake you up, a near miss like that. That drop’s pretty sharp.”

      “Connor, this is Allie. Allie, meet Connor Callahan. Sorry…about the…informality.” She lapsed into silence once more and went on taking those deep, careful breaths.

      “Nice to meet you, Allie.”

      Connor stuck out his glove and she shook it, then saw his face as the action squeezed a trickle of icy water from the sodden wool. His grimace was designed to get a reaction from her, and it worked.

      She laughed. “Not exactly waterproof, I’m afraid.”

      Without another word, only a speaking glance, he began to shovel back the snow from the door. He moved with an efficiency that looked effortless, and he was singing what seemed to be a sea shanty under his breath. It was a very appealing sound and Allie almost felt like joining in.

      “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” she suggested after a moment.

      “Yeah, and I’m sorry I didn’t get to do it before you got here,” he said. “Some stuff came up at work that I had to deal with before I could take off. I’d hoped to get here a couple of hours earlier, and I should have told Karen to pack some snow chains.”

      “Nice idea,” Allie agreed easily, “assuming either of us knew how to put them on.”

      She peeled off the sopping gloves, dropped them onto the roof of the minivan with a gesture of distaste and tucked her hands beneath her upper arms to warm them.

      Connor straightened from his work for a moment and studied her thoughtfully.

      She was petite, a compact bundle of dark blue with her arms folded like that. She was smaller than her sister, and darker, too. Hair of a glossy black-brown escaped from beneath her hat and reached her shoulders.

      He couldn’t see much of her face. She had that velour hat jammed down so low, it shaded her eyes completely. All he could see was a soft mouth, not wide but gorgeously shaped, and high, well-defined cheeks that were pink from the cold. She would have looked about sixteen if there hadn’t been such a determined, contained aura to her pose and her expression.

      He’d never been slow to form first impressions about a woman. With this one, those impressions were good. He had a feeling that the favor his pretty neighbor had pressed on him might turn out to be interesting.

      Allie was hopping up and down now, trying to keep her feet warm. He hoped they weren’t as wet as her gloves in those leather boots, meant for city streets.

      “Your sister hasn’t told me much about you,” he said to her with a slow grin, “but I’m getting the impression you’re not the wilderness type.”

      “Not since I quit Girl Scouts at age twelve,” she agreed. “I’m a lot more the curling-up-in-front-of-a-blazing-fire-with-some-good-music-and-a-book-and-a-mug-of-hot-chocolate type. Is…uh…that going to be a problem this weekend?”

      Allie asked the question a little nervously. Her boots were leaking and her hands were throbbing. She really didn’t want to hear that this cabin they were headed for had no electricity and one smoky woodstove in a ramshackle kitchen.

      “You mean does my brother’s place have a blazing fire?” Connor asked.

      “For starters, yes.”

      “I can arrange it,” he drawled.

      He had a jaw as square and strong as his snow shovel, a body like a professional sportsman and a voice like gravel dripping with melted fudge. Allie resisted the impulse to conclude that the man could probably “arrange” just about anything he wanted. In the nicest possible way.

      As he returned to work, she had to fight the urge to say to him, “Sing that sea shanty again,” because the rhythm of it had meshed so well with the rhythm of his body, and he had the growling, rollicking singing voice of a pirate.

      “Okay, Karen, that’s freed it now,” he said, after a couple more minutes. “Why don’t you get out and I’ll move the