That sounded like agreement to her. Rather than struggle with the stroller over the gravel driveway, she cut through the lawn and went up to the front door. It opened as she was turningaround to drag the stroller over the single step to the small porch.
Brogan stood there in the entry looking like a top-caliber male model—for a fitness gym. For a second, she went blank. The man made a plain gray T-shirt and worn, faded jeans lookreallygood. Then she caught herself and smiled.
CHAPTER2
“You heard us coming?” Pixie asked, already horrified by the idea that he might have heard her singing.
With a shake of his head, he said, “I tested the doorbell last night. It’s loud.”
He’d tested the doorbell?
“I didn’t want it to wake Shayna—she’s down for a nap—so I was watching for you.”
Andy shouted, “Fend, fend, fend.”
“Friend,” she interpreted for Brogan. “I hope you don’t mind that I brought my son.”
“Of course not.” He pushed the door open, bent, and lifted the stroller through the doorway as if it, with Andy inside, was no more cumbersome than a basket. “Come on in.” As he spoke, he crouched down to smile at Andy. “Hello, friend.”
Andy reached for him, but he was buckled in.
Brogan offered one finger to Andy’s little hand, and asked, “Okay if I get him out?”
“Um … sure.” She tucked her hair behind her ears, a little incredulous that this big, buff stranger would be so welcoming to her son. Andy sure liked him, though, and Pixie wondered if it was Brogan’s composure. He was used to that calm assuredness from Cort and maybe felt the similarity.
“You can close the door,” he said as he deftly opened the straps and then put his hands on Andy’s middle. “Okay to lift you out, big guy?”
“Out.” Andy leaned forward and fisted his hands in the shoulders of Brogan’s shirt.
Smiling, Brogan stood with her son in his arms. Andy grinned and said, “Fend.”
Okay, settle down, heart.
It didn’t, of course. Nope, it just thundered even harder. It was one thing to see Brogan as an attractive male specimen.
It was another to see Andy smiling at him, accepting him as if he’d known him forever.
“He knows a lot of words for his age,” Brogan remarked.
“He really does. I think it’s because he has so many adults talking to him all the time. He gets a lot of attention.”
“Nothing wrong with that.” Brogan did the guy thing of lifting Andy high—and since he was so tall, it was really high—until Andy laughed; then he lowered him again and, still holding him, asked Pixie, “Want to sit in the kitchen? That is, if those spindly little chairs will hold me.”
“They hold Cort, so you’ll be fine.” Still a little dazed by her new awareness of him, Pixie trailed Brogan to the kitchen. “Oh, you have Shayna in here, too.”
The baby, dressed in a T-shirt, diaper, and little fuzzy socks, was in her basket. She looked cozy with her face smooshed to the side, a light cotton blanket clutched in one fist.
“I always keep her close,” Brogan said. “Shouldn’t I?”
“I guess … I mean … Why do you?”
“I wasn’t sure I’d hear her if she was in the bedroom.”
The smile snuck up on her. “Babies have a way of being heard.”
A small, worried frown pinched his thick brows together. “Thing is, I don’t want her to cry.”
Yup, there went her heart again. Pounding hard, and then possibly melting.
