Her Husband's Best Friend Became His Work Wife (Can this Marriage Survive #10)

Chapter 1

By eight-thirty on Saturday morning, the kitchen smelled like scorched butter, coffee, and the sour-milk sweetness that seemed to follow Owen everywhere no matter how often Miranda changed his clothes.

He lay in the center of the living-room rug beneath his activity gym, kicking one socked foot against a hanging fox while Garrett stood at the stove attempting pancakes with the solemn concentration of a man defusing a bomb.

“He’s going to roll into the coffee table,” Miranda said from the doorway. She had one hand pressed against the ache between her shoulder blades and the other wrapped around a mug she had reheated twice without managing to drink.

“He’s nowhere near the coffee table.” Garrett glanced over his shoulder, then abandoned the spatula when Owen twisted onto his side with a grunt.

By the time he reached the rug, the baby had fallen flat on his back again and was staring at the ceiling fan as though he had personally arranged it. “See? Perfectly safe.”

Miranda watched Garrett lower himself to the floor and offer Owen two fingers.

Their son closed both hands around them immediately, his face tightening with effort as Garrett helped him pull into a sitting position.

At five months, Owen still folded forward like a soft little hinge if no one steadied him, but he greeted every new physical achievement with the startled pride of someone who had not expected his body to obey.

“Strongest man in the house,” Garrett told him. “Your mother is terrified of your power.”

“I’m terrified of the amount of milk he can produce after he’s already swallowed it.” Miranda took the three steps into the kitchen and set her mug beside the toaster. “And I’m afraid your pancakes are burning.”

Garrett swore softly and pushed himself upright.

Owen protested the loss of his hands with an outraged squawk, but Garrett scooped him up before returning to the stove, settling the baby against one shoulder as though cooking one-handed had always been part of the plan.

A damp patch spread across the back of Garrett’s T-shirt almost at once.

“You’ve been christened,” Miranda said.

“That means he respects me.” Garrett slid the spatula beneath the nearest pancake and revealed a black underside. “This one is yours.”

“Of course it is.”

He smiled without looking at her, and for a moment the morning felt almost like the version Miranda had imagined while she was pregnant.

There would be slow Saturdays, she had thought.

Coffee while the baby slept. Garrett making breakfast badly.

Owen passed between them as naturally as conversation.

No one had mentioned that the baby would only sleep for thirty-seven minutes at a time or that her coffee would acquire a skin before she remembered it existed.

No one had mentioned how quickly a day could disappear into feeding, changing, washing, sterilizing, folding, and walking in circles with a person who could not explain why he was crying.

Garrett transferred Owen into the bouncer beside the kitchen table and returned to the stove. “I should be back by two,” he said. “Three at the absolute latest.”

Miranda looked at the clock above the refrigerator. “I thought the luncheon ended at one.”

“It does, but Dennis asked me to help clean up.” Garrett lifted one shoulder as though the extension were self-evident. “It won’t take long.”

Of course Dennis had asked him. Garrett’s office appeared to be staffed entirely by people who could not fold a table unless Garrett was standing nearby to demonstrate.

Miranda sat and adjusted the bouncer with her foot when Owen began working himself sideways. “You know I was hoping to shower today.”

“You should shower.” Garrett looked over at her with genuine concern, which made the answer worse rather than better. “You don’t need me here for that.”

“Owen objects to being set down lately.”

“He’s in the bouncer now.”

“He’s been in it for forty-five seconds.”

As though summoned by the accusation, Owen’s lower lip trembled. Miranda reached down automatically and rested two fingers against his round stomach, moving them in a slow circle until he settled.

Garrett turned back to the stove. “I’ll take him when I get home. You can have the entire afternoon.”

“After three.”

“Maybe before.” He slid a pale pancake onto a plate and seemed satisfied by its survival. “I’ll leave as soon as everything’s done.”

Miranda wanted to point out that he always said that. She also knew Garrett would return cheerful and apologetic, kiss the top of her head, take Owen for twenty minutes, and behave as though the timing had simply escaped everyone’s control.

It was difficult to accuse a man of abandoning you when he always came home carrying takeout.

His phone buzzed beside the fruit bowl. Garrett glanced at the screen, then laughed as he reached for it.

“What?” Miranda asked, though the laugh already told her the message was not from Dennis.

“Willa.” He turned the phone toward her, showing a photograph of several cellophane-wrapped raffle prizes crowded around a white convertible.

Willa stood beside them in oversized sunglasses, one hand lifted in surrender.

“She picked up all the baskets yesterday and apparently forgot she owns the least practical vehicle in the state.”

Miranda recognized the company parking lot behind her. “Why did she pick them up?”

“She offered.” Garrett typed something quickly, still smiling. “Dennis didn’t arrange delivery, and she said she could handle it.”

That sounded like Willa. She had been at Halcyon Creative for just under five months and had already become the person who volunteered for everything, which Garrett seemed to find both admirable and hilarious depending on whether the task went well.

Miranda had once been that person.

The thought arrived without warning, and she pushed it away before it could settle. She was still that person. She was simply on maternity leave.

Willa was covering her position for one year, no more.

The company had guaranteed Miranda twelve months, and Garrett had repeated the promise often enough that it had become part of the way they described this phase of their lives.

Miranda was home with Owen. Willa was keeping the seat warm. Next spring, Miranda would go back.

Garrett slipped his phone into his pocket and began stacking the pancakes on a serving plate. “She says I need to get there early or she’s tying them to the roof.”

“You’re taking your car?”

“I was planning to.”

“The stroller is still in the trunk.”

“I’ll move it.”

“And the portable crib.”

“I’ll move that too.”

“And the box of bottles we’re returning.”

Garrett glanced toward the mudroom as if the car had betrayed him personally. “Maybe I’ll take yours.”

Miranda looked down at Owen, who had begun chewing the fabric edge of the bouncer. “The car seat is installed in mine.”

“I can use your car and leave mine with you.”

“With no car seat.”

“You’re not going anywhere.”

He said it lightly, already reaching for the syrup, but the words landed with enough weight that Miranda looked up. Garrett did not notice. He was pouring syrup over the least burned pancake and humming under his breath.

She had not planned to go anywhere. That was true. She had not gone anywhere alone in nearly two weeks except the pharmacy, and even then she had taken Owen because he had refused the bottle Garrett offered.

Still, something in her resisted the casual certainty of it.

“I might want to,” she said.

Garrett glanced at her then, surprised. “Okay. I’ll clear out my car.”

His response was so immediate and reasonable that she felt foolish for hearing anything else in the first one.

Exhaustion had made her touchy. Her mother had warned her about that in a voice that suggested Miranda had invented postpartum sensitivity specifically to make family visits more difficult.

Owen began to fuss again, kicking both feet hard enough to rattle the bouncer. Miranda lifted him and tucked him against her chest, breathing in the milky warmth of his hair. He rooted immediately at the neckline of her shirt despite having eaten less than an hour ago.

“He cannot be hungry,” she said.

“He’s growing.”

“At this rate, he’ll be six feet tall by Christmas.”

Garrett carried the plates to the table and leaned down to kiss Owen’s temple. The baby turned his head at exactly the wrong moment, and Garrett’s mouth landed against his ear instead. Owen blinked at him in offended surprise.

“See?” Garrett said. “Already too tall to kiss properly.”

Miranda smiled, and Garrett bent again to kiss her this time. His mouth was warm and tasted faintly of coffee. The kiss was brief, familiar, and affectionate enough to make her feel guilty for the irritation still lodged beneath her ribs.

He loved them. She knew that with the easy certainty of knowing where the clean towels were kept or which floorboard creaked outside Owen’s room.

Garrett had spent the first two weeks after the birth sleeping in forty-minute stretches beside her, waking whenever she did even when there was nothing useful for him to do.

He had learned how to swaddle from a nurse who insulted his technique and had practiced until Owen could not work a hand free.

Whatever had changed since then was probably temporary. Everything about their life was temporary right now.

Garrett sat across from her and checked his phone when it buzzed again. “Willa says Dennis forgot the extension cords.”

“Of course he did.”

“I’ve got some in the garage.” Garrett ate half a pancake in three bites, then stood again. “I’ll grab them before I shower.”

“You haven’t eaten.”

“I’m eating.”

“You’re standing.”

“That doesn’t make it less nutritious.”

He leaned over her chair and took another bite from the pancake still in his hand. Owen watched him with deep concentration, his mouth opening slightly in imitation.

Miranda adjusted the baby higher against her shoulder. “You know you don’t have to fix everything for them.”