A Dad At Last. Marie Ferrarella

tightened her arms around her son, watching the only man she’d ever cared about, the only man she’d fallen in love with—not once, but twice—disappear up the stairs.

      Squaring her shoulders, she turned to Megan. “I guess maybe I’d better be leaving, too.”

      Megan shook her head. “You’ll do no such thing. You’re in no condition to drive anywhere tonight. Look at you—you’re flushed and your eyes look like they’re liable to close any minute. All we need now is to have you fall asleep at the wheel and drive into some ditch. You’re staying here tonight. The nursery’s still there for Chase, and you’re welcome to your pick of bedrooms.”

      “I wouldn’t argue with her if I were you,” Abby advised Lacy with an affectionate wink. “No one’s ever won.”

      Lacy smiled her gratitude. She was exhausted. “Then I guess I’m staying the night.”

      Megan patted her arm. “Smart girl. Now let’s go and get you settled in.”

      Though she liked the independence she had so recently embraced, it was nice, Lacy thought as she followed Megan up the stairs, being taken care of just this once.

      CHAPTER TWO

      CONNOR FELT like hell.

      He probably looked it, too, he surmised, making his way down the back stairs. It was early, and the others, he assumed, were still asleep. Just as well. He preferred it that way. Fewer people to interact with. He wasn’t exactly at his social best at the moment.

      He hadn’t gotten more than a thimbleful of sleep before he’d given up and gotten out of bed. There was so much on his mind, so many emotions running rampant through him, demanding to be addressed, that when his body had finally surrendered to exhaustion, the sleep that had come to him had been fitful, leaving Connor more tired, if possible, when he awoke than when he’d finally fallen asleep.

      He was no fresher this morning than he had been hours before. And therefore, he concluded, he was in no better condition to make decisions now than then. Worse, if he were being honest.

      So when he stumbled down the stairs, led by instinct to the kitchen and, he hoped, mud-strong coffee set on a timer, and came across Lacy and Chase instead, the reaction that suddenly came over him was not one he fully trusted. Likely, it had more to do with his physical state than his emotional one.

      But it was the emotional one that was responding.

      A feeling of awe and something Connor couldn’t quite put a name to filled him, pushing its way to every corner of his being like late morning sunshine seeking to chase out the last remnants of the night’s shadows.

      Lacy, her back to him, was feeding the baby. Connor leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb and quietly watched this tiny, shining moment of motherhood in action.

      He’d always kept his own counsel, playing everything so close to the chest, it was almost completely undetected by the average person who passed through his life. No one could ever have accused Connor of being an emotional man. He had always believed that emotions got in the way of things. To give in to them undermined your stamina, your resolve. The way to face life was stoically, shouldering responsibilities that came along and moving ahead one day at a time. If that sort of philosophy made the road lonely, at least the terrain was negotiable. And, ultimately, that was the most important thing.

      But this, whatever “this” was, didn’t fit into his way of life. This feeling didn’t even have a name, at least not one he was willing to affix to it. But it had breadth and texture and substance nonetheless, looming suddenly rather large in his world.

      And it had to do not only with the small being who had come into his life less than twelve hours ago, but with Lacy, as well.

      Connor straightened, trying desperately to straighten his thinking, as well. This thing he was struggling with was just responsibility under a different guise, nothing more, he told himself. That was what was nagging at him, defying definition. Just an overwhelming sense of responsibility.

      After all, he’d never been a father before. Fatherhood brought with it a wealth of obligations. Not the least of which was an obligation to the child’s mother.

      Lacy.

      He knew he had to do the right thing, by her and by the child. It was wrestling with what exactly the right thing was that was troubling him.

      And no wonder. He was forty-five years old, a hell of a time to have his world upended and find himself a father for the first time.

      Damn, a revelation like that, especially without warning, would have thrown a bigger man than him off, Connor reasoned.

      Lacy didn’t bother looking over her shoulder. Instead, she finally asked, “Are you going to hover by the doorway all morning, or are you going to come in and take a look at your son in the daylight?”

      Feeling slightly foolish, like a man caught where he shouldn’t be, Connor cleared his throat as he walked into the kitchen. “You knew I was there?”

      Her mouth curved. She’d sensed his presence even before Connor had reached the bottom of the stairs.

      Funny how someone who had been such a huge part of her life once had vanished from her mind for those long, lonely months she’d spent groping for her lost memory. Lacy would have sworn that nothing would have been able to erase Connor O’Hara from her thoughts. Maybe he wasn’t as indelibly imprinted there as she’d once believed. She hadn’t even recognized him when he’d first come into the diner.

      As she looked back now, that astounded her, amnesia or no amnesia. So much of her heart had been and still was tangled up with Connor.

      It always would be, she thought, now that she had Chase.

      Spooning some more cereal past her son’s very messy lips, she smiled. This felt so right. She blessed all the books on early child rearing she’d devoured once she knew of her condition. At least there would be no awkwardness with her son the way there was with his father.

      She glanced over her shoulder at Connor. He looked as if he hadn’t slept. Was that because of her? Or was it just because of everything that had happened last night?

      She told herself not to nurse any false hopes. She’d been that route before and been sorely disappointed. “You’re not exactly invisible, you know. Why didn’t you just come into the kitchen? There’s certainly room enough.”

      There was room enough in the kitchen for a minor convention. Megan—his mother, he amended—liked it that way, he’d heard. Enough room for everyone in the family to gather and bring a friend if they felt like it. Megan considered the kitchen the heart of the house. As if such things were possible, he thought, dismissing the notion as foolish.

      Connor shrugged. “You seemed busy with Chase, and I didn’t want to interrupt.”

      Letting Chase feed himself a finger of toast, she turned to look at Connor squarely. God, but she did love this man, no matter what. She knew she always would. But that was her problem, not his.

      “You’re not,” she told him briskly, then softened. He did look like thirty miles of bad road, but even so, he was as handsome as they came. “He’s yours as well as mine. He wouldn’t be here right now if not for you—twice over,” she added, her mouth curving in a whimsical smile.

      Last night had been a team effort. There was no way he could have gotten Chase away safely if not for Jake, Michael and Garrett.

      “I didn’t do that much. The others— Oh.” The full impact of her words finally hit him. She meant fathering Chase. “Yes, well…”

      His voice trailed off, led away by fragments of memory that drifted in then faded again, incomplete. He paused, grappling with questions, with things that needed clearing up.

      The time, he decided, was probably never going to be more right than now. If he didn’t ask, the opportunity would only drift further and further