Blackbird Knitting in a Bunny's Lair (27 page)

Aiden listened to his stillness, the way he was thinking in the animal-breathing quiet of the barn.

“Yeah,” he said after a minute. “I’d really like to, you know, just
hold
that baby again.”

Aiden grunted. He remembered his mother on her sixth baby, running around to fix dinner and help him and Elaine with their homework and chase the toddlers and rock the new one on her hip.
Aiden
had ended up holding that baby, and Elaine had ended up chasing the toddlers, and they’d all gotten dinner eventually, but Aiden and Elaine had done a lot of homework after their bedtime.

“If Ariadne is like any mother since the dawn of time,” Aiden said seriously, “I have no doubt you will get your chance.”

T
URNED
OUT
Jeremy was
not
expecting Ariadne when she came into the stor
e.

Word had gotten out that they’d accept handmade donations to be raffled, and Mrs. Fullmer had chosen Project Linus, which, it turned out, only accepted baby blankets, so Jeremy had spent a night phoning women’s shelters and seeing if the donations could go there.

But it was okay, because blankets were
what everybody seemed to be making. Jeremy had even heard that people were making quilts and fleece blankets for the charity, just in general, and that made him feel good. Granby was currently experiencing an excess of baby goodwill, and he’d had something to do with it.

When Ariadne arrived with Persephone in her little car carrier, Jeremy was five bodies deep in a line to donate either to Project Linus (which suddenly Jeremy was in charge of, and he could never say how that had happened) or for the benefit. He took real good records—who donated which item, where it would go, and whose name it was in. A couple of the women—women he’d seen at the store or in town for nearing on three and a half years—told him quietly that it was for a child they had lost, and he’d been floored, devastated, and uplifted in the end, to realize that people with that much pain simply walked among the living and found joy in the world.

So he was pinning someone’s information to a blanket that was definitely going to be donated in Persephone’s name when Ariadne walked in, surprised and a little overwhelmed by all of the women. Suddenly Jeremy’s line diminished to only the few customers left who had something to donate, and all of the people gossiping in the line turned around and surrounded Ari and the baby.

Jeremy wanted badly to stand in front of that baby and protect it.

Her lip was still separated, her palate still a gaping pink hole when she opened her little mouth to cry. How could she be exposed to people yet? What would they say? How would they—

“She’s so beautiful, Ari! Look at those eyes—what color do you think they’ll be? Green, like yours? Blue, like Rory’s? Oh! She’s awake! I know you probably don’t want us holding her because she’s so new, but she’s precious, absolutely precious. Are you nursing? Of course you are—I can’t imagine you not. Are your nipples ready to fall off yet? Yeah—vitamin E oil should work, and it should help keep her from getting infections too. Check with your doctor—she’ll be able to help. Oh here, dear, sit down. Oh yes, we’ll take good care of you here, don’t you worry. The men here couldn’t make it without you, you know that? I mean, you’d think, given that they’re all G-A-Y, that they’d be anything but grumpy so-and-sos, but seriously, if it wasn’t for Jeremy and Ben, this place would be a powder keg!”

Jeremy heard a suspicious sound from Ariadne, and he looked up to see her regarding the deliverer of that last observation with wide, bright eyes. The woman—an elderly great-grandmother who had nothing but respect for the men at the mill but maybe not the most politic of manners—was nodding sincerely, and the women standing around her were grimacing with her bad taste, but that was okay.

She hadn’t meant any harm to Jeremy, and she certainly hadn’t meant any harm to Ariadne and Persephone—he held no grudges.

“Well, it’s good to hear I’ve been needed,” Ariadne said sincerely.

And the riot was on, no lines, no waiting, just one big verbal infodump from the hive mind.

“Oh you have! Especially since Jeremy has taken the benefit on. I mean, he’s still doing an amazing job in the shop—oh, Ariadne, you’d be so proud! He’s decorated and spiffed the place up and everything, but we do miss your spinning and technique classes. Maybe he can stay on and do some of that while you teach those—you could expand a little. But he’s been working like a champion, isn’t that right? Oh yes—he’s been so busy, and it all looks so good and like such a big deal! I mean, Ariadne, you and your baby are going to be the hostesses of the biggest party Granby’s ever seen! I just wish it could have been held at the library galleria instead of the pub, don’t you? Oh, no—I heard that Selma got her B-I-T-C-H on and she and the man in charge of the Elks club, well, they were going to stop that from happening. Did you hear that? No, I didn’t hear that! Why would they do that? Well, you’d have to ask Jeremy. Jeremy, why did they give you such a hard time about this? It’s going to be such a wonderful event!”

Oh hell.

Jeremy had been planning to tell Ariadne once she got settled in. Rory had been too busy with the real day-to-day dealings of bringing a baby with special needs home and such, so nobody had expected him to tell her.

It was obviously Jeremy’s job.

Except now it was not.

“Yeah, Jeremy,” Ariadne said, her voice rich with irritation and irony. “Why don’t you tell us all why you got blackballed from the Elks and the library galleria!”

Jeremy grimaced at her and met her eyes. She was sitting in one of the chairs they used for knitting class, holding the baby at her shoulder and shielding her, in a way, from all of those curious, kind eyes. But her
own
eyes, sharp and judging, focused on Jeremy as he put his last blanket in a box to send to Boulder now that the roads were clear and shipping didn’t cost a left testicle.

“Well, it seems they found my past a mite unsavory,” he said, his voice nothing but neutral. “But once we convinced the pub to host the event, people have been on board 112 percent. Seems everybody wants to help out your little baby bird, Miss Ariadne—they want you to keep living here and being happy.”

Ariadne nodded, and to Jeremy’s horror, her chin wobbled.

“Oh, now, Ari,” he protested, grabbing the box of tissues from under the counter. “You can’t cry on us like that. I’m sorry it was sort of a surprise. I just didn’t want you to hear about it until we knew it was going to work!”

And in the fluttery confetti of “She didn’t know? Jeremy, you mean we busted out with the surprise?” Jeremy ran to her side and handed her the tissue and was then the recipient of a fierce, protective one-armed hug around his middle.

“A benefit, huh?” she asked, wiping her eyes on his shirt.

He stroked her hair, which had grown out of its dye in the hospital and was now held back from her hair in a band, like any other Granby housewife’s.

“Yeah,” he said, trying to find words. “We’ll have a raffle, and the pub is donating a percentage of their business, and various businesses have donated prizes.” He touched the baby lightly on the back of the head. “We’re gonna take care of you, Ari—I promise. We’ve got a fund already—we started just raffling small items here. It had over four hundred dollars in it. We gave it to Rory for gas to get you home.”

She looked up at him, her eyes red and her nose swollen, and a fresh wash of tears flooded her eyes again. “You did all this?” she asked brokenly. “Jeremy, you just got out of the hospital yourself!”

Jeremy bent down and kissed the top of her head. “Well, yeah, but you know what they say. The best way to help yourself is to help somebody else.”

Ariadne let out a choked half laugh, buried her face against his waist again, and cried until the store emptied out.

Jeremy didn’t know what else to do but let her. He reckoned this must have been weighing on her heavy for a good long time.

Her first words when she could talk again were very blunt and very Ariadne. “Jesus Christ, Jeremy, I’ve got to pee.”

The bathroom was out of the store, across the mill, in Craw’s front door, and to the right. Either that or the one in the little apartment in the barn. Jeremy tended to use the one in the barn just because the thought of peeing in Craw’s house sort of gave him the heebie-jeebies.

“Oh my,” he said, backing up and preparing to help her pack the baby up.

Instead, he found the little bundle thrust at him without ceremony.

“Could you hold her for me for a sec?”

“Uhm—oh, yeah, sure.”

The thing in the blanket wrap wasn’t much heavier than she’d been three weeks before, when Jeremy had held her straight out of the oven. Suddenly his arms were wrapped around her little body and he was looking straight into her murky little eyes.

“Back in a second, Jeremy!” Ariadne called cheerfully, grabbing her purse and running through the door.

“Uh….”

But the bell chimed and Jeremy was left in the store, alone, holding the baby.

“Hi again.”

The flawed little mouth opened and quirked on both sides, and for a moment, Jeremy thought,
Oh jeez, she’s smiling at me!

And then there was the sound of escaping gas.

Jeremy couldn’t help it. He giggled. “Oh, baby—you are just as bad as Aiden in the morning.”

The baby wiggled—probably trying to turn her head toward the unfamiliar voice—but she didn’t cry, so he kept talking.

“It’s true,” Jeremy told her sincerely. “I don’t know what he eats, but in the morning, it’s like he’s trying to launch a rocket.”

She made a little sound then—probably more gas coming out the front this time, but he didn’t care. She was a woman and he was charming her, and as long as he kept her tight in his arms and didn’t drop her, that was all the encouragement he needed.

“See, thing is, I’m no stranger to roommates, right? And the trick was always to just ignore those things. What’s a little gas between faceless strangers? But he’s
not
a stranger, and it’s damned funny, ’cause I’m running for the bathroom in the morning to brush my teeth and he’s playing a brass band out his ass and with his gas. And he’s proud of it! I mean, everyone’s gotta let loose now and then, but my boy, he just rips ’er out, scratches his tummy, and says, ‘You ’bout done in there, Jer? Time for me to take over the throne room.’ I mean, it’s two guys in the same bathroom, and it’s not unheard of, but I just never thought he’d be so proud of it.”

“Well, yeah!” Aiden said, scaring him badly. “I grew up with a family, Jer—how else you gonna prove your superiority to your little brothers.”

“I did not
even
hear the bell on the door,” Jeremy muttered, clutching little Persephone to his chest and trying to still his thundering heart. “How much of that did you hear?”

“The part about me scratching my balls in the mornings.” Aiden did not seem to take exception to Jeremy spilling his guts about their privacy—but then, it wasn’t like Persephone was going to post it on the Internet, either.

“I said ‘tummy,’” Jeremy clarified, and Aiden laughed softly.

“Here, give her to me,” he asked, and Jeremy did, shaking out his arms when Aiden had her securely because the tension in his shoulders and biceps was terrific. He hadn’t realized how freaked out he’d been.

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she,” Jeremy said in awe.

Aiden turned softened eyes toward him and pulled up a corner of his mouth. “Only ’cause she’s ours,” he said seriously. “That’s the thing with babies. They’re really only beautiful if you love them.”

Jeremy stopped working out his bicep cramps and moved to loom over Aiden’s shoulder. “Sorry I complained about your morning gas.”

Aiden’s deep chuckle seemed to put the little goober to sleep. “No worries. I’m sort of relieved, actually.”

Jeremy looked at him, that square jaw and deceptively delicate face. “Relieved?”

“Yeah.” Aiden bent his head and sniffed the baby, smiling a little. “Nope, no poop. Lucky us—I would have felt obligated to change that. But yeah, relieved. Like, you know the worst of me, and you see it, but it doesn’t make you not want to wake up with me.”

Jeremy
hmm
ed and dropped a kiss on Aiden’s shoulder, sort of sinking into the enchantment of the quiet and the baby and the warmth of the man he loved. “No, but it does make me want to beat you to the bathroom.”

Aiden laughed some more, quietly.

Ariadne must have stopped to talk to Craw and Ben, because it was a while before she came back from the bathroom, but that was okay. Aiden sat and held the baby, and Jeremy cleaned up the store from the rush and packaged the blankets they were sending to Boulder. After twenty minutes Aiden had to go back to check on the blower, and Jeremy took the baby again, sitting down this time and just enjoying that warm, sweet weight in his arms.

Ariadne blew in, a flurry of cold spring wind chasing her back in the store.

“I’m sorry, Jeremy,” she said sincerely, moving up to take the baby from him. Perversely, Jeremy pulled Persephone a little closer.

“No, don’t be. We were visiting. Aiden came in and held her for a bit, and I got things done, and now it’s just her and me.”

Ariadne smiled and pulled up another chair next to him. “God, thank you. I mean, we’ve been home for four days, and Rory’s helped, but he’s trying to meet orders to feed us, and it’s just been me and the baby. I
swear
, I didn’t think I could get tired of holding her in the hospital, but—”

Jeremy looked over at his friend and smiled gently. He got it. “You need a break,” he said, and the look she sent him was grateful beyond measure.

“I haven’t knit in a week.”

He grinned. “Well, you’re in a good place for it. Grab some sock yarn and wind up a ball, girl. You’re back in the land of the living.”

Ariadne let out a little sigh of completion, and they talked quietly about anything
but
the baby as she wandered around, touching the new yarn they’d added since she’d been laid up. She chose a skein and wound it, then came back to sit next to him while she started a sock, because that was a comfort knit for all of them.