Free Not Quite Married by Christine Rimmer Page B

childbirth and how to care for a newborn. He bent and scooped them up. They would make good nighttime reading. By the time she went into labor, he intended to be well informed on how to help get her through that, not to mention how to care for their little girl.
    Another rocker, similar to the one downstairs, waited by the window. He found the room charming—and Clara all the more admirable to have pulled it together on her own while working long hours at her restaurant. No wonder she’d collapsed.
    The woman didn’t know when to take a break.
    She would be taking a break now, whether she liked it or not. He would see to that.
    Carrying the stack of baby books, he left the nursery and checked out the other two rooms up there: a spare bedroom and a sort of makeshift office/storage room, with a long folding table and an office chair, a laptop, stacks of file boxes. Deep shelves lined one wall and held rows of large plastic storage bins.
    All good. The spare bedroom and the office/storage room would do for his purposes.
    He left the baby books on the folding table, went back downstairs, grabbed a seat at the breakfast table, took out his phone and checked his messages and alerts. After dealing with the ones that couldn’t wait, he brought up the memo app and began listing what he would need to get himself set up for the next several weeks.
    Two hours later, he still hadn’t heard so much as a peep from Clara’s bedroom. During that time, the house phone had rung two separate times. He assumed she’d picked up from the bedroom as both times, the phone had rung only twice.
    It was almost noon. He stared at Clara’s refrigerator for several seconds, calculating the risk in making himself at home in her kitchen.
    No. He had to be careful at this point, to presume nothing, to do nothing that could be construed as commandeering her space. He needed to respect all her boundaries—at least until he had her agreement as to how it was going to be.
    He called his driver, Earl, who was waiting in the limo out at the curb, and asked him to go and dig up some lunch. Twenty minutes later, Earl stood at the door, arms full of to-go bags. Earl—who dressed like Johnny Cash, called Dalton “boss” and wore a black cowboy hat—was a prize.
    Dalton accepted the bags and told Earl to take some time for himself. “Be back by three.”
    “Will do, boss.”
    Dalton shut the door, turned for the kitchen—and spotted Clara, wearing pink workout pants and a huge purple T-shirt with Does This Baby Make Me Look Fat? printed across the front. She was standing in the arch opposite the dining room.
    Her face looked soft and slightly flushed, her eyes heavy-lidded. Her hair was flat on one side. “I had a shower.”
    “Great.”
    “After I talked to Renée, I got a couple of calls. And then I guess I fell asleep.”
    “Even better. Things okay at the restaurant?”
    “I can’t believe it. They seem to be managing without me—and something smells amazing. What’s in the bags?”
    “Lunch. Hungry?”
    “Starved. Please don’t tell me I have to eat my lunch in bed.”
    “How about the sofa? You can put your feet up.”
    “Were you a nurse in your last life?”
    “Are you saying you think I missed my calling?”
    She propped a shoulder on the archway, rested her arms on her belly and tipped her head to the side, studying him. “You’re being absolutely wonderful.”
    “Thank you. The sofa?”
    “Sure. Why not?”
    * * *
    Clara did it the way he wanted it. It wasn’t so hard.
    She sat on the sofa, propped up on several pillows, with her legs stretched out across the cushions. He tore open the bags and set the food on the coffee table, then took one of the wing chairs.
    They had pastrami on rye and chicken noodle soup from that great deli on Elk Street. She gobbled down several amazing bites before demanding, “How’d you know to go to David’s?”
    “I didn’t. I have Earl.”
    “Earl. The Man in Black driver,