The Mommy Miracle by Lilian Darcy Page B

open her door and help her out. For a moment, she looked as if she might protest, but she was clearly too tired to manage on her own. The doctors and therapists had said it would be like this. The difference between what she could manage when she was fresh and what she could manage when she was fatigued might be huge at first.
    Sure enough, her body looked heartbreakingly awkward and frail in the passenger seat, and after several seconds of intense, futile effort, she told him, “I can’t.”
    He bent down. Slid his arm beneath hers and around her shoulders. “Hold on.”
    But she couldn’t do that, either.
    â€œI’ll carry you.”
    â€œDev, no, I’m—”
    â€œYou’re wiped.”
    He shifted position, one arm coming beneath her thighs. It was incredibly awkward, and if she hadn’t been such a featherweight, he couldn’t have managed it. Once he’d straightened, it was much easier. She laid her head against his shoulder, with her hip pressing into his stomach, and he felt this surge of tenderness and confusion and determination.
    Somehow… Somehow…
    Somehow, what?
    What did he have the power to do? To make her get better? To make her come to the right decisions about her future? What were they?
    â€œYou can put me down now.”
    â€œI’m fine. You don’t weigh much.”
    â€œPlease.” There was an insistence to it, the old stubbornness about her size and strength that had made him smile and piqued his interest at eighteen. How did such a small body house such a strong spirit?
    Gently, he let her down, still holding her firmly until they both knew that her feet would carry her weight. They did, but there wasn’t a whole lot of margin for error. “I’ll need to lean,” she said.
    â€œLeaning is fine.” Leaning was too fine, really. He liked touching her too much, felt too connected to the scent and softness of her skin. He had to fight to keep his awareness under control, with the slight weight of her breasts just above his hand and her silky fall of blond hair in kissing distance.
    They’d agreed on this. They weren’t dating. There was no place for this helpless attraction. Just imagine if they had a flaming purely-for-the-sex affair and then parted in conflict and anger. It happened all too often. Sex didn’t solve anything. It had too much of an agenda of its own.
    And where would that leave him? Shut out of DJ’s life forever? Or limited to a hard-won weekend visit every three months, exchanging her back and forth in the parking lot of a service-plaza fast-food restaurant halfway between here and New York as if she were a packet of cocaine? Meeting her at the airport, once she was old enough, and discovering she’d become a school kid or an adolescent or an adult since they’d last met?
    No. It wouldn’t be enough. No!
    He wasn’t going to be forced back to New York by the sheer strength of Palmer will.
    Barbara Palmer stood in the open doorway, having heard the car. She looked watchful and anxious, as if expecting them to have covered major mileage tonight in their talks about the future.
    They hadn’t.
    They’d barely talked about DJ at all. More about horses, in fact. And no matter how much Dev told himself to go with what Jodie needed, to give her time and space, it worried him a little. He didn’t want to lose his daughter to her mother, but he wanted her mother to love her. Anything else was unthinkable.
    â€œDid you have a good evening, honey?” Barb said to Jodie.
    She thumbed cheekily in his direction. “I never knew he could cook.”
    â€œAre you okay? You look—”
    â€œTired. Of course. But I’m fine.” She managed the steps into the house. In some ways she was better on steps than on the flat ground. “I think I’ll go up right away.”
    â€œShe’s asleep,” Barb said.
    But Jodie hadn’t been