Baby Kisses

Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Not an Airhead

Tooty drove her old Ford Ranger, gray in color under all the oxidation, to the front of Jacob and Julie Hackstetter's cottage. Parking in a cloud of dust, she sat for a minute and tried to calm her nerves. She was about to meet Maxwell Henry—the famous author. Sarah Tanner, Julie's stepmother, had explained his real name was Miles Brightman, and he was staying at the cottage while Julie and Jacob visited Maude and Clyde Hix in Alaska.

Tooty had often heard stories about the former employees of the Lazy M Ranch and how they had struck it rich as gold prospectors. Now in their eighties and sixties, with Maude being the older, they still lived in the same cabin they'd built after moving to the wilds years earlier. Tooty understood her friends' desire to spend as much time as possible with the old-timers. They were going to have a blast.

Okay, you've stalled long enough. It's time to get the embarrassing part over.

Tooty bit her thumbnail and still didn't move to open her door. She remembered Miles from Julie and Jacob's wedding reception. He was the guy in the wheelchair. Actually, he was the hot older guy in the wheelchair. Even now, she cringed remembering their encounter. She'd gone in search of her mischievous four year old and seen him checking out the man's wheelchair. When she'd approached, she'd heard Harris say, "Hi, my name is Harris and, hey, that's a really cool chair. Ya wanna take me for a ride?"

Rushing forward, she hadn't reached Harris in time to stop him from climbing onto the man's lap. The startled expression on the guy's face had said everything. He wasn't used to kids. Besides that, she didn't know how severe his physical challenge was and whether Harris could injure him. When she'd reached to grab her son off his lap, he'd said, "No, leave him." After that, he'd told Harris about his wheelchair and shown him how to operate it, both manually and with battery assistance. Of course, Harris had been fascinated and oblivious to his faux pas of just climbing on the guy's lap. With a mixture of mortification and gratitude, she'd stepped to the sidelines to watch.

The man had finally said, "Well, Harris, looks like your mother is waiting for you, you better hop off now."

That's when Tooty had stepped forward. As she'd bent to help her son down, he'd glanced from her to the nice man and said, "Hey, I need a daddy. You wanna marry my mommy? Don't you think she's pretty?"

Tooty had looked from her son's innocent brown eyes into the man's Mediterranean blue ones and literally froze. She'd seen his shocked expression and then a slight quirk of his lips, like he was trying not to laugh. Before he could say anything, she'd jerked Harris off his lap. "I'm really sorry. My son just says whatever pops into his mind."

Harris defended himself. "But Mommy, Grammy says it too. She says I need a daddy and you need a man. What's wrong with him?"

"Ah...ah...I'm really sorry." Knowing there was no way to salvage their fiasco, she'd simply walked away carrying Harris. She'd never been so embarrassed in her life. Every cell in her body had felt on fire—even her scalp.

Shaking the memory and inhaling a calming breath, Tooty forced her hand to the door handle. She was turning scarlet just thinking about meeting Mr. Brightman and she had half a mind to flip the ignition key, back the truck up, and peel out of the drive, never looking back. Of course, she wouldn't do that. She needed to earn money, but, more importantly, she'd never forgive herself if she turned down an opportunity to work with a famous author—an author whose every book she'd read at least twice.

* * *

Miles shifted his wheelchair so he could see out the living room window. He watched the young woman step from her battered pickup. So this was the girl with the strange first name that Sarah had referred to him. Her dark, strawberry blonde hair looked familiar. When she'd almost reached the porch, recognition slammed him and he groaned. It was the girl from the wedding; the one with the cute, but rascally little boy—the boy who'd ask him to marry his mommy and become his daddy. He groaned again when the doorbell rang.