Their Instant Baby. Cathy Gillen Thacker

to being away from me.” Lola teared up again unexpectedly. Her chin quivered as she struggled to get control of her emotions, before she finished in a low, choked voice, “This separation is going to be hard enough on both of us as it is.”

      Amy saw Lola’s point. Dexter was probably going to have a difficult time coping without his mommy, never mind being thrown into a completely unfamiliar environment. “You’re right, of course,” Amy told Lola gently as she patted her on the shoulder. Amy turned and gave Nick a quelling look—the same kind her mother had given her father before the two had separated and divorced years earlier. “I agree with your sister, Nick. Dexter will do better if we both stay here. And don’t worry.” Amy turned back to Lola, promising, “Nick and I will manage. We’re adults.” The important thing was the baby, she thought. They had to do what was right for Dexter.

      Nick merely raised a brow, just as Amy’s father used to when he felt her mother had made a highly impractical suggestion.

      “Well, now, that’s settled,” Jack Granger said. He laid the papers neatly out on the coffee table and pulled up two chairs—one for himself and one for Sue, his notary. He motioned for Nick, Lola and Amy to sit on the small sofa.

      Lola perched on one end, Dexter still cradled in her arms. To give her friend and the baby enough elbow room, Amy had to scoot closer to Nick. He was warm and solid against her. Too warm and solid and male, Amy thought, as another sizzle of awareness swept through her.

      “Okay,” Jack said, appearing impatient to get on with it. “Let’s have a look at these papers. And I’ll explain what they all mean before you sign them.”

      TWENTY MINUTES LATER, the legalities were taken care of. Lola had gone over the emergency numbers and instructions she was leaving for Dexter’s care, and it was time to go. “You’re going to miss your plane if we don’t hurry,” Jack Granger said. He and Sue were driving Lola to the airport. “And there isn’t another airline seat available until tomorrow.”

      “Okay.” The tears Lola had been holding welled up and spilled down her pretty cheeks. She bent to kiss Dexter goodbye. “Mommy loves you,” she whispered.

      Dexter, not sure what was happening, screwed up his little face as if he, too, was about to cry. In an effort to avoid a calamity, Nick tenderly took Dexter from Lola’s arms. “Take good care of Chuck,” he told his sister in a low, gravelly voice as he cradled the baby awkwardly against his chest. “We’ll take good care of Dexter. And call the first chance—hell, every chance—you get. Amy and I want to know how you’re doing.”

      “And you’re going to want to know how Dexter is doing, too,” Amy said.

      Lola nodded. Too choked up for words, Lola kissed her baby one more time, hugged Amy and then Nick, and then rushed, sobbing openly now, out the door. For her infant son, the emotion emanating from his mother was too much. No sooner was she out the door when Dexter let out a wail that could be heard for three counties. Lola started back for the cottage. Jack Granger grabbed the young mother’s arm, shook his head and guided her implacably toward his car. Still crying uncontrollably, Lola got in. Dexter continued to wail. The sympathetic tears Amy had been holding back spilled down her cheeks. Nick turned back to Amy. His eyes, too, were suspiciously moist, but all he did was look at both her and Dexter and try to lighten the mood. “Lola was right, you know,” he said. “I’m a real novice, so for all our sakes, I hope you know a lot more than I do about taking care of babies.”

      His joke was exactly what she needed to get herself back on track. Amy drew a deep breath and wiped away her tears with her fingertips. “I know some things. Not everything.” And probably, she thought, not nearly enough to make this baby-sitting experience smooth sailing.

      “Well, that’s still probably more than I know, at least on a practical level.” Smiling as if he hadn’t a worry in the world, Nick lifted his hand and waved goodbye to his sister. When Jack’s car was out of sight, Nick turned back to Amy and shifted Dexter to a football hold. “So which one of us is going to take the first shift?” he asked casually.

      Wishing she weren’t so physically attracted to Nick, their enforced quarters so small and cozy and hopelessly romantic, Amy raked her teeth across her lower lip. “That depends.” She searched his pewter-gray eyes. “Have you really never changed a diaper?”

      Half of his mouth crooked up in an enticing smile. “I’ve seen it done. Does that count?”

      Amy rolled her eyes. She could see this baby-sitting mission was going to be a laugh a minute. Especially if it turned out that Nick wasn’t exaggerating his lack of prowess with infants. Amy shrugged and said, “Depends on how handy you are with the tabs on the disposable diapers, I guess.”

      Nick grinned and waggled his eyebrows at Amy. “There’s one way to find out, isn’t there?”

      NICK WAS PUTTING on a good front, but the bald truth was, his heart was breaking for his sister, too. This whole situation had to be torture for her. Lola loved Chuck every bit as much as Nick had loved Glenna, and Lola’s husband having been badly hurt so soon after they’d married and had a child, must be killing his younger sister inside. But there was a difference, Nick warned himself sternly. Lola’s child was fine. And though Chuck was very seriously injured, he did have a chance to recover and resume his life. The three of them could still be a family, provided Chuck made it through the surgery ahead of him and went on to recover as fully as they all hoped. Even if Chuck ended up in a wheelchair, his life forever changed, the three of them could be a family.

      The same had not been true for Nick.

      By the time he had found out what had happened, his fate had been sealed. His happy family life had come to an end. There had been no going back. And his heart and soul had turned to stone. Except where Lola and her family were concerned.

      He loved them with every fiber of his being. Because he knew they were all the family he would ever have. He wasn’t going through the loss again.

      But Amy Deveraux didn’t know that, because Lola hadn’t told her about Nick’s past. And that was the way Nick wanted it. He’d had enough pity to last him a lifetime. What he wanted now was a normal life, and any satisfaction his business dealings could bring him. That was it. That was all.

      Unlike Amy Deveraux, who, according to Lola, was still looking for that special man who would turn her life around and make everything new and exciting and wonderful.

      The kind of man he could never be again, no matter how much time elapsed.

      “Chuck is going to be fine,” Nick continued, knowing he had to say something to reassure Amy and Dexter, who was still wailing, as they went into the nursery. Hoping a dry diaper would make Dexter feel better and stop crying, Nick set Dexter down on the changing table just as he had seen Lola do. Keeping one hand firmly on Dexter’s middle, Nick reached for a disposable diaper. Also as he had seen Lola do, he opened the clean diaper and slid it beneath Dexter. He ripped open the tabs, saw that Dexter was just wet, and with some difficulty removed the old diaper and dropped it into the plastic-lined diaper pail beside the bed. “Our military doctors are the best in the world. They’ll see that he will walk and even run again.”

      “You don’t know that,” Amy protested quietly, her worry apparent. She cleaned Dexter’s diaper area with a baby wipe, and then sprinkled cornstarch powder on his lower half. “Sometimes families don’t get their happily-ever-afters, Nick.”

      “But Lola and Chuck and Dexter will,” Nick said firmly, aware he had no way of promising that. But he also knew it was important the two of them think that way, just the same. Finished fastening the tabs, he picked up Dexter. To his relief, the diaper, with its cartoon figures on the front, stayed in place, albeit somewhat loosely. Nick turned the momentarily subdued Dexter around and saw smaller cartoon figures on his backside. “Well, that’s interesting,” he said. Before, the bigger cartoon figures had been on the back of Dexter’s diaper, the smaller ones on the front.

      Amy peered at him from beneath a fringe of long dark eyelashes. “You realize you put that on backwards,