The One Winter Collection. Rebecca Winters

perspective.

      “My late husband, Edwin, changed Jamey’s diaper twice. Twice. Both times it was a production. Clothes peg on the nose, gagging, brown blotches on the walls, the floor, the baby and his Hugo Boss shirt. The diaper was finally on inside out and backward to the declaration of ‘good enough.’”

      Edwin’s efforts, she remembered, had always been good enough. Hers, not so much. She had asked him to do less and less. Amy had hoped for something else. In her marriage. And especially with the baby. Shared trials. Magical moments. Much laughter.

      The pain of the remembered disappointment felt nearly as bad as the pain in her hand.

      Ty glanced at her sharply, as if he was seeing something she had not intended for him to see.

      “Twice?” he said. “And the baby was three months old when he died?”

      She nodded.

      “And he managed to be put out both times?”

      She nodded again. “But he was a CEO of a corporation,” she said. “Strictly white collar.”

      “I got that at the Hugo Boss part,” he said drily. “And you know what? His perception of his own importance is a damn poor excuse.”

      She had wanted this perspective. Needed desperately to know it wasn’t her, expecting too much, being unreasonably demanding.

      But now that she had it, she felt a guilty need to defend her husband.

      “He was a busy, important man. I’m afraid he had better things to do than change a diaper.”

      She remembered asking Edwin to do it. Insisting. Getting that look. All she had wanted was for him to empathize with her life. She had wanted him to be more hands-on with the baby. She had wanted him to appreciate what she did every day. Maybe she wasn’t even sure what she had wanted.

      But whatever it was, Edwin’s annoyed look down at his shirt, and his Are you happy now? had not been it.

      Ty rocked back on his heels and looked at her hard. She felt as if every lonely night she had spent in her marriage was visible for him to see.

      “You know what?” he said, his voice a growl of pure disgust, “I’m beginning to really dislike Edwin.”

      Her sense of guilt deepened. Why had she brought this up? “He was not a bad person because he didn’t like changing diapers,” she said. “That would make a huge percentage of the world’s population bad people.”

      “It’s not about the diapers,” he said quietly. “It’s about what you said earlier, too. As if you having an accident and burning your hand made you stupid. It’s about him making you feel like you were less than him.”

      She was stunned by that. Her relationship with Edwin had never been defined quite so succinctly.

      She had been so alone with her feeling of deficiency, questioning herself.

      “He’s dead,” she reminded Ty primly, the only defense left that she could think of.

      “Yeah, well, that doesn’t automatically elevate him to sainthood.”

      She thought of the shrine being built in his parents’ living room. In conversation, the new and improved version of Edwin was what her in-laws insisted on remembering and immortalizing.

      And her guilt intensified at how relieved she was that someone—anyone—could see something else.

      She changed the subject abruptly, feeling as if she was going to throw herself at him all over again. It was just wrong to be feeling this much kinship over a diaper change, of all things.

      He rummaged through the bag, held up a diaper for her inspection. At her nod, he said, “Check.”

      He laid out her whole checklist of items in a neat line on the blanket: baby wipes, petroleum jelly, baby powder and the diaper.

      “Isn’t that how soldiers take apart weapons?” she asked.

      “Precisely,” he said, pleased by the analogy.

      “Okay. Now you lay him down and take off his pajamas. They’re Onesies—

      “Whatsies?”

      “Onesies, one-piece jumpers, so you undo all the snaps down the front and right down his leg and slip him out.”

      “Like slipping a banana out of a peel,” he said. “It’s even yellow.”

      “Well, yes, kind of—”

      “Except bananas don’t leak, uh, brown blotches.” He grimaced, but there was no gagging, no drama.

      In one swift movement he had plump limbs out of the pajamas, and had them off. In another move, he slipped off the soiled diaper. He dispensed with both items with nary a flinch.

      Jamey kicked wildly, and Ty caught the little feet easily in one hand.

      “Hey,” he warned, “cut it out.” But it was a mild warning. He also did not flinch from cleaning Jamey up. He was methodical and thorough, and as he had promised, unfazed by the task. The minefield of petroleum jelly and diaper tabs did not claim him as a victim.

      In fact, in short order, the baby was in a new diaper, gurgling happily and kicking his legs.

      Ty picked up the messy items and disappeared. The diaper went out the back door, and then she heard him washing his hands in the bathroom.

      When he came back, he had a new Onesies and had snitched one of the cookies off the tree. He slipped the baby into the new jammies, and handed the cookie to him.

      “That should keep him busy while I look at your hand. I put the banana peel in the sink to soak the brown blotches until we have time to run a load of laundry.”

      She wasn’t running a load of laundry. She was leaving. The need to go was feeling increasingly urgent.

      Because watching him, and the apparent ease with which he adapted to what life threw at him—a baby and a woman invading his bachelor cave and the woman now nearly completely incapacitated—she felt sudden awareness of the tall self-assured cowboy shiver up her spine.

      As he came and sat in the chair opposite her, and then pulled it so close their knees were touching, she was totally aware of Ty Halliday as pure man.

      “Let me see your hand again.”

      This time she just gave it to him willingly, watched as he took it and steadied it on his own knee. He bent his head over it, and she felt a deep thrill at his physical closeness. His scent filled her world—clean, mysterious, masculine. The overhead kitchen light danced in the rich, pure gold of his hair.

      His touch was exquisite.

      After inspecting the damage thoroughly, he surrendered her hand back to her and got up. She followed him with her eyes as he reached up above his fridge and retrieved a first-aid kit.

      Amy felt as if she was in a lovely altered state of awareness where she could appreciate the broadness of his shoulders, the narrowness of his hips, the slight swell of his rear under the snug fit of his jeans, the impossible length of his legs.

      He turned back to her, his expression one of complete calm and utter confidence.

      He knew what to do. And he was not the least bit afraid or hesitant to do it.

      It struck her, as he moved back toward her, his grace and strength unconscious, that Ty had all the ingredients that had made men men since the beginning of time.

      As he sat back down, she saw the intensity of his focus in the amazing sapphire of his eyes. She saw him as a warrior, a hunter, a protector, an explorer, a cowboy and a king.

      Obviously, changing diapers and dressing wounds had not been in his plan for the day.

      But Ty Halliday had no whine in him. No complaint.

      What