Keri smiled when she saw him. “I just fed her. Hoping if I sit here and rock long enough, she’ll take a nice nap.”
“I’m in the mood to sit for a while and you haven’t gotten to visit at all. Hand her over and I’ll rock her while she naps.”
“Don’t offer if you don’t mean it,” she warned.
“I mean it.”
She got up so he could sit down and then she deposited the warm lump of baby in his lap. Brianna squirmed and sniffled a little, but then he started rocking and she quieted down. Keri peeked at her daughter’s face, smiled at Sean and then ran, probably afraid he’d change his mind.
The rocking motion soothed his frayed nerves after a while and he leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He was too paranoid about dropping the baby to nod off, but he relaxed and let himself enjoy the summer breeze and the smell of freshly cut grass. The sounds of a happy, boisterous family in the backyard. The squeak of the chair every time he rocked backward.
For a few minutes he could even pretend it was what he’d wanted all along.
“Have you seen Sean?” Emma couldn’t find the big spatula and she was hoping he knew where it was.
Joe nodded. “Keri said he’s on the front porch, rocking Brianna while she naps.”
“That explains why Keri’s having a good time,” she said, which made him laugh.
Rather than go back through the house, Emma walked around the outside, her feet silent in the grass. And when she turned the corner, her heart did a painful somersault in her chest.
Sean was in one of the rocking chairs, the baby cradled in his arms as he gently rocked. His head was tipped back and his eyes were closed, but it was his mouth that drew her attention.
He was almost smiling. Not quite, but enough to give him a peaceful and content look that made her ache. They could have had this. They could have had a baby he would rock on the porch on midsummer evenings. She could have had a man like Sean.
Instead, she’d had a performance.
“I told you what happens when you stare at people,” he said in a quiet voice without opening his eyes.
“You weren’t sleeping.”
“No, but same principle.” He did open his eyes then, turning his head to look at her. “Were you looking for me?”
“I’m looking for the big spatula and thought maybe you might know where it is.”
“Check the pantry. I was putting stuff away and I had it in my hand and my phone rang. I might have set it down in there.”
“Okay.” She waited a second, but he didn’t say anything else. “Thanks.”
Rather than walk back through the gauntlet of loved ones, she went in through the front door and walked back to the kitchen. The spatula was on the second shelf of the pantry, and she gripped it in one shaking hand.
It was all wrong. Her Sean would have teased her about his putting something away in the wrong place just to push her buttons. There would have been warmth and humor in his eyes. This Sean was closed off, giving her nothing.
It made sense. Her Sean had never been anything but a lie. Just her luck to choose a man who lied so well she’d almost believed it herself.
“Emma?” It wasn’t until she heard Lisa’s voice that she realized she was standing in the pantry, holding a spatula and crying. “Emma, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she tried to say, but it got all caught up in a sob and didn’t come out right.
Lisa took the spatula out of her hand and tossed it on the table before pushing her toward the stairs.
“The burgers—”
“They’ll find the spatula,” Lisa said firmly. She pushed Emma up the stairs and down the hall to her room.
It hurt so much to look at the bed. The tears ran freely down her face and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to stop them. “I fell in love with him.”
“Oh. Oh, shit.” Lisa shook her head. “Kowalski men do that. They show up in your life and drive you so insane you want to slap them upside the head and then—bam—all of a sudden you can’t live without them.”
“That’s pretty much what happened.”
“Did you tell him?”
She shook her head, mopping at her face with a tissue Lisa pulled from the travel pack she always had in her back pocket. “I can’t do that to him. He disrupted his whole life to do me a huge favor and I’m not going to repay him by dumping my emotions in his lap.”
“I really think you should tell him, Emma. Mike told me they all think he’s serious about you.”
A glimmer of hope flickered to life in her chest, but it fizzled almost instantly. “When I told him it was over, he ran out of here like the house was on fire. He didn’t look back. And just now…he doesn’t feel anything.”
Lisa blew out a breath and crossed her arms. “Sometimes they need a little help.”
“It’s over, Lisa.” The words echoed like a mournful bell tolling in her mind. “But I’ll be fine. Really.”
“We know Sean almost better than anybody and he does feel something. We’ve all seen it.”
“Hell of an actor, isn’t he?”