Chapter Nine
“Time for bed.” The entire family had taken to eating dinner early so that Emma could join them and then be put to bed before dessert. So far it had been working well, but tonight, Cooper didn’t know what to expect.
Emma lifted her gaze to meet Cooper’s, then looked to her other side. “Mama.”
“Yes, baby.” Tess smiled at her child.
“Mama.”
If he were to venture a guess, Cooper would bet money Emma’s clear enunciation of her mother’s name was not an announcement but a declaration. She wanted her mother to put her to bed. “Come on, little one.” The same as he’d done every night since her arrival, Cooper removed her dinner plates from the table, wiped her hands and mouth clean with the warm washcloth Hazel had left folded at her side, and then lifting the chair tray, unsnapped the safety buckle.
“Mama.” Leaning over, Emma snatched hold of Tess’s finger.
Tess lifted her gaze to meet his. A silent question of now what seemed to be crossing both their minds. At that moment, Emma’s lower lip quivered and panic slowly crawled up his spine.
Thank heaven for Grams. In a second, she was on her feet and taking Emma into her arms. “Let’s go upstairs, and your mommy will follow.”
Even though her lower lip stopped puckering, Emma didn’t seem convinced until her mother slowly rose from the chair. Understanding Grams could be trusted, the blonde cherub rested her head on his grandmother’s shoulder.
“Help her up the stairs,” his grandmother directed as she left the room.
There had been no need for the directive, he had no intention of letting Tess struggle on her own. Extending a hand to Tess, he added what he hoped was a reassuring smile.
She sucked in a deep breath and shoved to her feet. “Thanks, but I got this.” Walking very slowly, almost shuffling, she seemed to be running low on fuel.
He had his doubts she would make it across the foyer, never mind up the stairs. As a matter of fact, now that he thought about it, if driving was out of the question for at least ten days, where did stairs fall into the restrictions?
The moment they reached the bottom of the stairs, Tess lifted her gaze to Grams and Emma already at the top and starting down the hall.
“Allow me.” Without waiting for her response, he gently wrapped one arm around her waist and then scooped her up off the floor with the other.
A loud gasped escaped her throat, as her arms flew around his neck, and her mouth fell open. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” He took the first step and her hold on him tightened.
“You can’t carry me all the way up those stairs.”
“Watch me.” Whether that was an overestimate of her weight, an underestimate of his strength, or a potshot at his manhood, he didn’t know or care. Climbing the stairs on her own steam was simply not a good idea.
“I can walk on my own.”
“I’m sure you can. But if the doctor doesn’t want you driving, I doubt he wants you climbing up this massive staircase.”
Her lips pressed tightly into a thin line, and she huffed out a deep breath, not very different from a snorting bull, but at least he’d won the argument.
Stepping onto the landing, she loosened her hold on him. “You can put me down now.”
He shook his head. “Not till we get to Emma’s room.”
“She has her own room?”
“Sort of.” He shrugged. “It’s the nursery for my cousin Mitch’s little girl. The first great-grandchild in the family. Most likely with hopes of many more.” To one side of the open doorway, he set her down so that Emma would not see him carrying her.
“Thank you.” She blew out another heavy breath. “You were probably right. I’m tired already and you did all the work.”
That was the sense of humor he remembered from all those years ago. He didn’t see it often, but when she let her lighter side show, it always made him smile. “You’re welcome.”
In the room, his grandmother already had Emma washed up and in her pajamas. “There’s your mommy.”
Her head turned, Emma grinned widely at the sight of her mother.
“Why don’t you have a seat in the rocker, and I’ll put Emma in your lap,” Grams wisely suggested, already aware that Tess was not allowed to carry more than ten pounds.
Another minute and Tess was reading to Emma curled against her. He suspected strongly that Tess was enjoying this time as much as Emma. He’d already learned that reading to the sweet little girl just before bed was something he looked forward to, of course her mother had to enjoy it as well. He also suspected that tonight, Tess might take a little longer and read a little more to make up for lost time together.
Even though he hadn’t known what to expect, deep down he had feared that a small fit of some kind might have ensued with her mother here but with limited mobility. Considering Emma had yet to throw a true crying fit, he really shouldn’t have worried. As her eyelids grew droopy, her mother closed the book and nodded at him. Quietly over her down soft hair, he whispered a short good night prayer as he carried her to the crib. Another few minutes and she was snuggled in with her pacifier, her stuffed lamb and sound asleep.
“I’ve always thought this is what angels must look like.” Tess stood over her crib taking in the sleeping child.
“Can’t argue with that.” He rested his hand along the small of her back. “Do you want to return downstairs for dessert, or is it your bedtime too?”
“Actually, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any of Hazel’s apple pie. Do you think I could have a slice in bed?”
He chuckled. Crawling into bed with a good book and a slice of any of Hazel’s pies was always a good idea. “I bet something could be arranged.”
“Good. Where am I sleeping?”
“This way.” He gestured to the next-door over. “I’m sleeping in the adjoining room, and you’ll be on the other side of Emma. Close enough if she needs you.”
They’d barely made it into the hall when Margaret came onto the landing carrying a tray. “Miss Lila said that Miss Teresa should get some rest now also, but Hazel sent me up with pie and her special bedtime tea.”
“Excellent. Thank you, Margaret.” Cooper opened the bedroom door and gestured for Tess to go inside, then turned to Margaret. “Leave the tray on the dresser. I’ll see to it that she’s settled in.”
Margaret nodded. “Hazel sent up two cups and two slices of pie.”
“Thank you, Margaret.”
The woman quickly exited the room. Cooper turned to see Tess staring at her bed. A very high bed.
“Let me.” He went to lift her up the same as he had with the stairs.
“Do you have any idea how ridiculous I feel having you carry me everywhere?”
He shrugged. “Probably not, but you can’t climb up there on your own. Tomorrow, we’ll have Jeeves remove the box spring and place a board underneath for support instead. Then you should be able to sit more easily on the mattress.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. And once you’re tucked in, maybe over Hazel’s pie and tea, you can tell me about Emma’s real father.”
The conversation had to happen, Teresa knew that. Her palms sweating, she wiped them on her shirt. She’d never liked the unknown. She was a planner and there were too many unknowns in this conversation she was definitely not looking forward to. Especially since most of it didn’t make sense even to her. It didn’t help the situation at all that Cooper was being so kind and so ridiculously patient with her. Then again, those were some of the endearing qualities that she remembered about him all these years.
In the short while since he’d set her down on the bed, he’d gathered pillows to support her back, tucked her in under the covers as if she were a two-year-old like Emma, set her tea cup on the nightstand and handed her the plate with the warmed slice of pie.
Sitting across from her now, he lifted his fork in the air as though making a toast. “Bon appetite.”
She dug into the pie and actually sighed. “So good.”
One corner of his mouth lifted in a lazy smile. “No one makes pie like Hazel.” Setting his dish down on his lap, he tipped his head to one side. “Where shall we start?”
Sucking in a fortifying breath, she blew it out very slowly. “Do you remember the day you got your final grade for physics?”
“Absolutely, the only time in my life that I cheered for a C-plus. All I needed was a C to keep my GPA where it needed to be.”
“Your friends were cheering and rallying and everyone wanted to go celebrate.”
“We did too.”
“But not until after you took me to dinner.”
His smile tipped up again. “I owed you.”
“No. I owed you. If you hadn’t believed in me as much as I believed in you, I would never have gotten the Baron Scholarship when I graduated.”
“You didn’t need me for that. You were, and probably still are, the smartest woman I know.”
“Thank you for that, but I think there are probably a few women in your life, starting with your own sisters, who would disagree.” She lifted her hand to stop him from arguing. “But I digress. One of the things I’ve never forgotten was how you humored me.”
His smile slipped and his brows buckled in confusion. “Humored you?”
“Over dessert.” She waved her fork over her plate. “Not as good as this, but we had pie and laughed and joked and I told you if neither of us was married by the time I turned thirty, I’d come looking for you.”
From the way he chuckled, she figured he remembered. “That’s right. And I agreed. Mostly because I knew there’d be more than one man falling all over themselves to win you over by then, but partly,” his smile softened, “because I knew if that ever happened, I’d be getting the better end of the deal.” His head tilted to one side. “You must have been around thirty when you had Emma.”
“Thirty-one.”
“But you never married.” It wasn’t a question. He knew her records. “What happened to Emma’s father?”
“Nothing that I know of.”
His brows buckled and his gaze narrowed and his eyes turned cold. Not till his one fist clenched at his side did she realize where his mind must have gone.
“No. Nothing like that. Emma’s biological father is a frozen pop.”
“A what?” The utter confusion on his face reminded her of those first weeks trying to wrap his head around physics.
“I picked him out of a catalogue. Tall, blonde, green eyes, grad student, high IQ, no negative medical history. Just a number on a list.”
“Why would you do that?”
She shrugged. “I was never very good at making friends.”
“Of course you were. We were friends.”
They were. He didn’t know it, but he’d become her best friend by the time he graduated. And she’d been proud that they’d kept in touch from time to time. He’d even been kind enough to escort her to her senior prom. That was the night that the Baron family broke the news about the scholarship they’d created for her and other foster kids. “One friend. I hung out with a few girls at school from time to time, but no one came to my house and no one invites the foster kid to theirs.”
His frown deepened. “But you weren’t a foster kid in college. Surely you made friends there?”
“A few. But I was focused on school. Graduated in three years. Then I threw myself into my work. One day I looked up and I was thirty with no close friends, no man in sight. I tried the dating apps a few times and didn’t see that making any difference. My biological clock won. I had to do something if I wanted a family of my own and a frozen pop made more sense than a silly teenagers bargain.”
“We did pinky swear,” he teased.
She’d always loved how he’d find a way to make her smile when her serious side kept her uber stressed. Like now. “We did, but I don’t think you’d be smiling if I’d actually come by to collect.”
“Okay, so none of this explains how I wound up on Emma’s birth certificate.”
“It does if you’d been in labor for thirty-two hours.”
He sucked in a wince. “Having been here waiting when Gwyneth had her little girl, I have a better understanding of just how long that is.”
“Very long. I wound up with an emergency C-section—and a lot of drugs. I had an allergic reaction to something they gave me and they had a hard time waking me up at all. Somewhere my fogged brain had me slipping in and out of reality. When I gave them the baby’s name for the birth certificate, they asked me for my name, which I thankfully remembered. Though I may have first told them Princess Tess—”
“I didn’t think you liked it when I called you that.”
Not then and not now would she confess that she’d loved the silly nickname; instead she merely shrugged. “Fortunately, they knew better than to write that down and had me repeat my full name. Next they asked me the baby’s name. I’d actually planned to name her Emily, but in my loopiness, I’d said Emma, so Emma she is. And actually, I like it better anyhow.”
“I suppose that’s a good thing.”
“Emma Elizabeth. I liked the idea of double initials.” Carefully, she set her empty plate on the nightstand beside the tea cup. “And I apparently must have been dreaming of our little deal, because not only did I refer to myself by your nickname for me, when they asked for the father’s name, I gave them yours.”
“I see.” His chin dipped, and he leaned back in the arm chair. “And it didn’t occur to you to correct that once your brain was no longer in a fog?”
Heaving a sigh, she nodded. “Honestly, I didn’t remember what had happened until recently when I had to get a copy of her birth certificate for my insurance with Baron Enterprises. It was a bit of a shock when I connected the dots. But it also occurred to me that if anything were to happen to me, there was no one to take care of Emma. No one to keep her out of the foster care system, and deep down I knew, the way your family was so kind to me in school, and then created that scholarship and made sure that I had everything I needed in college, I just knew that no matter why, you and your family would take care of her.” Waving her hands in an upward gesture, she shrugged one shoulder. “The discovery got me thinking that I need a real plan for Emma if anything happens to me.”
He nodded.
“Knowing I was moving back to Texas, I considered asking you to be her guardian.”
“Me?”
She shrugged. “You were the closest friend I had, and the nicest person I know. But I thought it might go over better if I waited until after we’d settled in, and you’d had some time to get to know Emma—after all, no one expects to actually die young.”
Except for a slight shake of his head, he remained perfectly quiet and still.
“For what it’s worth, though I didn’t die in that accident, I now know I was right about at least one thing. Sight unseen, you stepped up to the plate for my baby girl.”
There, she’d said her piece and no one was ranting or raving or threatening to fire her or throw her and her daughter out on the curb. So far.