His Touch (9 page)

“What are you doing?”

He turned, straightened and found Kara standing in the living room wearing jeans and a T-shirt now. The high heels and the power suit were gone.

“I wanted to hear her chest. She’s much clearer.”

Kara nodded and stared at him. He stared back until she cleared her throat. “So, um, how do you want to do this?”

Right. The dummies. He quickly unlatched the cases, put each on the carpeted floor. “Okay, you remember the class? You come across baby Trevor, lifeless. What do you do?”

“Um, airway, breathing, and compressions.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “Don’t tell me. Show me.” He waved a hand over Trevor.

“Oh. Um, right.” Kara inched closer and lowered herself to her knees. “Um. Trevor! Trevor!” She shouted, patting the dummy’s feet and shaking his shoulder. “No response.” She put her hand on the dummy’s forehead and gently lifted his head up, putting an ear to his face. “I don’t see his chest moving or feel air on my face. Starting CPR.” She pressed her mouth over the dummy’s nose and lips and blew two fast breaths into the body. With two fingers, she pressed down on the dummy’s chest.

Reid noted her finger position. She began compressions. At thirty, she bent and administered two more breaths.

“I’d stop right now to call 911, then resume.”

“Good.” Reid checked off the boxes on the form. “Nice work.” He moved to Travis. “Okay. Same scenario. You walk in, find Travis unresponsive. What do you do?”

Kara stared at the figure and tucked her hair behind her ears. “Travis! Travis!” She tried to rouse the ‘child’.

She repeated her earlier actions but Reid noted her hand placement was incorrect. He leaned over, moved her hands up about an inch on the figure’s sternum. He drew his hands up her arms, stopped at her elbows, locked them. “Begin compressions.”

She performed the compressions properly so he checked that off his form.

“Ma! Ma! Ma!” Nadia whined.

“I’ll take her to the other room, Kara. Finish your test.” Elena scrambled to her feet, disappeared down the same hallway.

“Okay, you passed.” Reid handed her the form, showed her where to sign. “Sorry about the mix-up.”

She merely shook her head. He got a whiff of something sweet, like apples. Green apples. He liked it so he didn’t move away. He just stood there, looking at her. He liked looking at Kara Larsen. She was beautiful, even with the circles under her eyes and the anxiety puckering her forehead. He opened his mouth, about to tell her so.

And then that damn cell phone of hers pinged. She scrambled to check the display. “Nadia’s medicine. It’s time for her next dose,” she quickly explained and he winced.

Okay, so this time, it was a halfway decent use for a cell phone.

He watched Kara move to the kitchen, pour a dose into a cup.

“Hold it.” Reid put up a hand. “Don’t you have one of those medicine syringes?”

Kara sucked on a cheek and shot him a ball-shriveling look. “Yeah. In her room.”

“Okay, look. I get that I’m not your favorite person, but making sure little Nadia gets the right dose, the whole dose, is important. Will you let me show you?”

Brown eyes narrowed at him and she blew out a breath, ruffling the hair on her forehead. “Fine. Come on.”

She led him down the hall and into Nadia’s room. Elena was rocking the baby on a chair in the corner.

“It’s time for her next dose, Laney. Reid’s going to do it.”

Elena’s eyebrows shot up, but she said nothing, just stood and carefully transferred Nadia to Reid’s arms. Kara took a medicine syringe from a drawer, poured the cup full of medicine into it and handed it to Reid.

“Okay, right now, she’s a little mellow, but when she’s feeling better, she’s going to fight you. This is how you overcome that.” He sat on the rocker Elena just vacated, adjusting Nadia on his lap. From over her head, he cupped her face, and gently pinched her nose shut. When she opened her mouth, he squirted the medicine into the back of her throat. She coughed once, shot him the same look her mother so often skewered him with and said, “Gah.”

Reid laughed. “Yep. It’s not juice, that’s for sure. But it is good for you so you can get better fast.” He pressed her tiny button of a nose.

The baby squirmed on his lap and put her head down on his shoulder. The laugh died on his lips. He wrapped both arms around Nadia and wished he could just sit there for the rest of his life, rocking her. His eyes slipped shut and his entire body ached for Erin.

When the tears burned behind his eyes, he stood up, put the baby into Kara’s arms and thrust his hands deep into his pockets. “I know it’s not elegant but it works.” His voice was gruff. “Don’t mix medicine into food or drink unless you clear it with the doc first. And never tell her it’s candy or yummy or anything like that. I gotta go.”

He didn’t wait for a reply. He strode back to the other room, fastened Trevor and Travis back in their cases. Time to get the hell out of there.

*

“Oh. My. God.”
Elena collapsed onto the sofa, fanning her face. “That man is hotter than the sun. Totally PD.”

With the baby on her hip, Kara closed her front door, locked it, and rolled her eyes. “You’ve been married all of six months. Shouldn’t Lucas be the only guy you call
panty-dropping
?”

Elena waved a hand in annoyance. “Oh, trust me, Luke has nothing to worry about. Reid didn’t even notice I was in the room. Neither did you, for that matter,” she added with an eyebrow wiggle.

Kara joined her sister on the other end of the couch. “Oh, please. He can’t stand me. He thinks I’m a bad mother.”

Elena rocked her head from side to side. “I admit, he’s opinionated about the way things should be done. But I didn’t see disapproval in those very nice eyes of his. He checked out your boobs. And you kept looking at his butt.”

“Oh, God, Laney.” Kara shut her eyes and lowered her head. “I’ve been out of high school for a very long time, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t a Look.”

“What look?”

Elena’s smile widened.
“The
look, Kara. The one like a full page ad screaming,
I want you
.”

Kara’s face grew hot. “Okay. So I looked. It doesn’t mean we’ll be choosing china patterns.”

“Give it time. It obviously hasn’t occurred to you that this whole
there’s a problem with your certification form
thing this afternoon might have been just a ploy to see you again?”

Kara froze. It hadn’t. She thought about that for a minute and then shook her head. “No. If anything, he orchestrated that just to check up on us. Maybe he thinks I keep Nadia chained to her crib or something.”

“Ma!” Nadia squirmed and Kara put her down, happy to see Nadia interested in playing. She moved to the basket and pulled out a cardboard picture book to put at Kara’s feet. “Ma!” She said again.

“No, baby, that’s a book. Book.”

“Book!”

“Good girl!” Kara applauded with a bright phony smile pinned to her face. As soon as Nadia’s attention was caught by something else, it faded.

“Kara. She’s okay. She didn’t cough at all and the fever’s down.”

Kara didn’t find that thought comforting. “The doctor said it tends to hit at night.”

“Then I’ll stay here tonight. Just in case.”

Kara nearly leaped up to inflate the air mattress but then remembered her sister had her own life, her own job, both of which she’d skipped today to be there for her and her daughter. “No, honey. Luke needs you home.”

“Kara, you know Lucas wouldn’t even blink if I told him I was staying here to help you with Nadia.”

Kara shook her head. No. She had to do this on her own. She was the one who messed up, starting with her choice of men and now she was a single mother. Her mind flashed back to her first breakup. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen and was convinced the pain would never end. Somehow, Mom knew. She’d called her from her office and instead of yelling at her or feeding her dumb platitudes, her mother had told her to hop on a train and meet her in Manhattan. They’d spent the evening eating decadent desserts and trashing boys and by the time they’d gotten home, Kara had stopped feeling sorry for herself and was ready to move on.

Mom would have taken one look at Nadia yesterday and known she wasn’t feeling well. More importantly, she’d have known how to help her. Kara squeezed her eyes shut. She’d be so disappointed in her if she could see her now.

Maybe that’s why she wasn’t sending her any signs the way she had for Elena.

‡

T
he next morning
was sunny and warm, a perfect June day. She’d fastened a wide hat over Nadia’s curls and had sweaters for both of them folded in her bag in case it got chilly. She also had a picnic lunch packed. It was going to be just a Mommy and Baby day in the park.

Mom used to take them to the park nearly every day when she’d been little until Elena got to the age where she ruined whatever plans they’d tried to made. Elena had been… well, she’d been a brat.

“Ms. Larsen. And little Miss Larsen.”

Kara’s stomach did a long slow roll. She stopped, turned, and found Reid Bennett walking toward them, a broad grin on his face—a good look for him—and a to-go cup in his hand. When he smiled, she forgot her own name. He wore jeans and a T-shirt and dark sunglasses and she had to resist the urge to fan her face. Why? Why did her hormones surge for this guy, with his scowly face and disapproving attitude? Okay, yes, he wasn’t scowling just then but seriously, why?

“Ms. Larsen?”

Kara shook herself back to reality. She was a mother, for God’s sake. “Mr. Bennett.”

“It’s Reid.”

“I know.”

He laughed and scratched the back of his head. “Are you ladies out shopping again?”

She narrowed her eyes. Was that some kind of crack? “No. We’re heading to the park.”

“Ah. As it happens, so am I.”

Uninvited, he fell into step beside her and made a funny face at Nadia.

“Gah!”

Her thoughts exactly. They walked on, Reid sipping his coffee. “Mr. Bennett, are you following me?”

He glanced sharply at her. “Following you? Where the hell did you get that idea?”

“You have a habit of being wherever I am.”

“Maybe it’s a sign,” he said with a shrug and a wink and she tripped over a crack in the sidewalk, heart galloping.

A sign.

He grabbed her elbow with his free hand, steadied her. Oh, God. He couldn’t know. There was no way he could know. Unless—“Did my sister tell you the story of how she met Lucas?”

He frowned. “I haven’t said more than a few words to your sister.”

Kara cast her eyes heavenward.
Oh, Mom, please no. Not him.
She snuck another look at Reid. Oh, he was definitely attractive. Well-defined muscles filled out his T-shirt. He had close-cropped hair with stunning eyes. And if she were being completely honest with herself, he did make her pulse race. And yes, she had to admit the biggest bullet point in Reid Bennett’s
Plus
column wasn’t his looks… it was that he genuinely seemed to care for Nadia. After Steve’s abrupt departure, Kara would damn well not make that mistake again.

Reid turned his face, caught her staring with a lift to his eyebrow. “So are you gonna tell me the story or what?”

She sighed and debated that for a moment. Why not? “Okay. Nadia’s father bolted the second the pregnancy test turned positive,” she began. The distinct tightening of Reid’s jaw at that news added another point in his Plus column. “I considered not… not going through with it for exactly two minutes and then decided I would love this baby enough for both of us. But as I got near my delivery date, I started to panic. I couldn’t settle on a name. I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t do a damn thing.”

“You were alone?” He frowned down at her, stepping around a delivery guy.

“No,” she said, smiling. “Never alone. My mom has—um, had—this circle of friends. Four sorority sisters. They stayed friends from their first year of college on. And when all of them started families, they raised us to become the best of friends. More than friends. We’re family. I had a regular parade of visits from all of the aunts and Sabrina, Jade, and Cassandra.”