Page 10 of One More Baby for the Boss

“So I get to make rules about who can come in.” She smiled at him. “Here’s the new rule. Any time the door is open, you can come right on in, okay? And if the door is closed, I just want you to knock first. Does that sound like a fair rule?”

Jack grinned. “That sounds fair,” he said.

“Perfect. Then that’s what we’ll do. So I’ll be over there getting unpacked with the door open. Come on over and visit me if you want to — but if you’d rather be on your own for a while, that’s okay too. We’ll catch up whenever you’re ready.”

She turned and went back to her own room, propping the door open with her sneaker.

Five minutes later, Jack was poking his head around the doorframe.

“You can come in,” she told him. “Do you want to help me get unpacked?”

“You don’t have very many things,” he noticed, looking at her suitcase.

“Not very many, no.”

“Why not?”

“Because I travel a lot,” she said. “I never stay in one place for a long time, and that makes it hard to keep a lot of things. Every time I move to a new city, I have to take everything I own with me. Imagine how tough that would be if I had a lot of things to pack up every time!”

“That would be tough,” Jack agreed. “But why don’t you just get a house somewhere, like me and Dad? Then you could have as much stuff as you want, and you wouldn’t have to worry about it.”

“Maybe I will someday,” Alex told him. “But if I had a house somewhere, I would never have come to Hope’s Creek, and then I would never have met you or your dad. So it’s kind of a good thing I don’t have a house, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “I guess that was lucky.”

Lucky.

Alex had never thought of herself as lucky. All her luck had always been bad. It was such a constant fact of her life that she had learned to laugh about it.

But now, looking at this beautiful room in this beautiful house, she had to wonder whether things might not be different. Maybe her luck had finally turned for the better. After all, being offered a job when she hadn’t been looking for one, having it come along just when she had needed it most — there was a lot of good fortune in that. There was a lot to be grateful for.

Maybe things are finally starting to turn around, after all the time I’ve spent feeling down and out.

She hoped it was true. All she knew for sure was that, even though she had taken a risk, she was happy to be here.

CHAPTER 5

ALEX

In spite of what she had been told to expect, Alex had to admit that she was surprised when Elijah didn’t join them for dinner that first night. She’d held out hope that he would. After all, it was her first day. He hadn’t been able to meet her upon her arrival, but surely he would want to spendsometime with her given that she was going to be caring for his only son.

Apparently not. He didn’t come to breakfast either. She and Jack sat at the kitchen table while the chef prepared omelets for them. It wasn’t in Alex’s nature to sit and wait to be served, but Gio had refused all her offers of help.

Now Jack was banging his fork idly on the table as they waited for their food. She reached across and put her hand gently on top of it. “Let’s not bang on the table, Jack, okay?”

He glowered at her and threw the fork down. “I can do what I want,” he said. “This is my house, not yours.”

“Well, it’s not very polite to the people around you,” she said. “Your dad wouldn’t want you to do that, would he?”

“He doesn’t care,” Jack said. “And you’re not the boss of me.”

Alex didn’t want to get into this kind of push and pull with him, but it was best not to allow a bad precedent to take root. “I am the boss while I’m here, Jack,” she told him firmly. “That’s why your father hired me — to be the boss.”

“I don’t need anyone bossing me around!”

“What’s the matter?” She hardly recognized him this morning. This was such a far cry from the good-natured boy she had met at the diner. “Is something bothering you this morning, Jack? You seem upset.”

He stared out the window and didn’t respond.

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