Bosom Buddies Read Free Page B

That’s your prerogative. But for me, I like my food to smell good and my girlfriends to smell good too. So, a bubble bath is in order.” She grinned, feeling as if she’d achieved some major accomplishment by making Ian Ryan joke.
    “Then what are your plans?” he asked.
    “Oh, a few drinks and maybe a good movie while we cuddle up on the couch. You know, a girls’ night in.” She picked up the baby and smiled at him. “Now, you’re in our way, so why don’t you leave. Girls need their space.”
    “Are you sure?” Ian asked again.
    “Listen, it’s okay to let your neighbors lend a hand. Everybody needs some help sometimes.”
    “Not me.” The joking Ian had retreated. There was something in his eyes, in his stance that seemed so lonely. Allie want to touch him, to let him know that he was wrong, people did need others, and that was okay.
    “Ian, everybody needs some help. Everybody. Even the big, strong Ian Ryan. And right now, Anne needs you at the hospital as much as you need me to stay with Ryane.”
    He sighed. “I just want to . . .”
    “If you thank me again, I’ll scream,” she warned.
    “You wouldn’t,” he said with absolute certainty.
    Oh, this man didn’t know her well at all. “I never lie and I always take a dare.”
    “Thank you anyway.”
    She gave a soft, shrill scream. “I would have gone full force, but I didn’t want to scare Ryane. I owe you one.”
    As if trying to figure out a complex puzzle, Ian eyed her suspiciously. “You’re different from other women.”
    She fluttered her eyelashes and put on her best swoonish look. “Oh, you flatterer, you. Compliments like that aren’t going to turn my head.”
    “How do guys handle you?” he asked, bemused.
    “They don’t. I’m not something to be handled.”
    No sense of humor tinged his voice when he murmured, “All women need to be handled.”
    She juggled the baby in her left hand and reached for the sneaker on her end table and lobbed it at him.
    “I think you’d better get before you’ve dug a hole you’ll never get out of.” She reached for the other shoe.
    “I should only be a couple hours.” He headed for the door and turned around and looked at her. “And, Allie?”
    “Hmm?”
    “Thanks.” He ducked out the door and slammed it as she threw the other shoe at him.
    She was pretty sure she heard him laughing.

CHAPTER TWO
    “You left her with a stranger?” Anne asked, her voice still painfully weak. Seeing her like this caused an almost physical ache in the pit of Ian’s stomach.
    “Not a stranger, a neighbor.” He stroked her hand and tried to look past her bruised and battered face. “Allie is a maternity nurse. She works with breastfeeding babies all the time and is the one who figured out how to get Ryane to eat.”
    “Ryane wouldn’t eat?”
    He could see the panic in her eyes. Wrong thing. Why was it that the only things that came out of his mouth these days were the wrong things? “Honey, Ryane’s a smart girl, she knows what she likes, and that’s you. I tried every bottle I could think of, tried everything, and couldn’t get her to take a drop.”
    Tears glittered on the edge of Anne’s eye. “Hey, don’t worry. Allie heard our little girl shouting her annoyance and came to the rescue. She had this bottle thing that moms are supposed to use when they don’t have enough milk. They tape the tubes by their nipples.” He could feel the heat rise to his face, but he continued. “And I thought she was thinking of taping them to mine.”
    Anne’s tears cleared, just as he’d intended. He had to admit the mental picture of him with tubes taped to his chest was more than a little funny.
    “You didn’t?” Anne asked, through her laughter.
    “No, but I was afraid that’s what Allie had planned. She has a warped sense of humor. What she did is tape that tubing to her finger and she had Ryane eating like an old pro in minutes.”
    “Ah, what does this Allie look like?” Anne