Excerpt of Custody For Two by Karen Rose Smith

He couldn't believe his sister had entrusted her son to Shaye Bartholomew rather than to him. Still in shock even after two days of traveling, Dylan Malloy stepped inside the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. His gaze focused intently on the woman seated by Timmy's tiny bed...the woman who had custody of his nephew.

Walter Ludlow's call had been a severe blow, and Dylan was still reeling from it. His lawyer and long-time mentor, calling Tasmania from Wild Horse Junction, Wyoming, had hastily told him, "There's no easy way to say this. Julia and Will were in a serious accident. Will died on impact. Julia hung on until Timmy was delivered, then we lost her, too."

We lost her, too.

The words wouldn't fade out. They'd been a shout in Dylan's head ever since he'd heard them. Seconds later Walter had followed them with, "Julia gave Shaye Bartholomew legal guardianship. She didn't want to burden you again."

Dylan couldn't wrap his mind, let alone his heart, around losing Julia. The grief enveloped him like a dark shadow that continuously seeped through him, leaving no room for anything else.

"Fight, Timmy. Fight." Dylan heard Shaye Bartholomew encouraging Timmy, her voice breaking.

The doctor had explained Timmy's condition to Dylan. Born twenty-eight weeks into Julia's pregnancy, he was on a ventilator to help him breathe normally. He had a good chance to survive. But with so many tubes and wires connected to him, that was hard for Dylan to believe.

Did Shaye already think Timmy was hers? he wondered.

She hovered beside the baby, her lips moving silently. Maybe in prayer?

Dylan's work as a wildlife photographer had taught him stillness and patience. But now he had questions, and Shaye Bartholomew held the answers.

After crossing the room, he pulled her attention from the infant bed. "Miss Bartholomew?"

She gave a small sound of surprise when she saw him and recognition dawned. They'd met at Julia's college graduation. Shaye had been a year ahead of his sister, and the two women had become friends.

"Mr. Malloy. I'm so sorry about Julia." Her eyes brimmed with tears.

Why did he suddenly feel as if he wanted to take this woman into his arms to give both of them some comfort?

Dylan knew he looked unkempt. He hadn't shaved in two days, his hair was disheveled and needed a cut, his sweatshirt was streaked with lines from being slept in.

"I got here as soon as I could." He'd been photographing kangaroos when he'd gotten the call. That seemed like eons ago.

Standing, Shaye let him come in closer to Timmy's bed. Dylan could see the reflection of the fluorescent light on her shoulder-length, coffee-brown hair and noticed the sheen in her amber eyes. When their gazes locked, the grief inside him shifted a bit, but he let it settle back into place as he broke eye contact and stared down at his nephew.

Timmy had sandy-brown hair and green eyes...like Julia...like himself.

Softly, Shaye said, "During Julia's pregnancy we talked about baby names. She said she wanted to name a girl after her mother, a boy after her father. Your mother and father."

Ironically, like Julia and her husband, their parents had also been killed on a slippery road. That night, Family Services had taken the two of them to a holding facility in Cody. Back then, Dylan had had to break out of his shock to take care of his sister. Now he had to break through it to think about Julia's baby.

Forcing his attention back to Shaye, Dylan couldn't keep the edge from his tone when he said, "I want to know how you came to be named Timmy's guardian. I know Will's mother was too frail to consider —"

One of the monitors began to beep loudly. At once, a nurse appeared at Timmy's bedside while another rushed to call a doctor.

A physician in a white coat hurried in. One of the nurses put a hand on Shaye's arm and spoke to Dylan. "Please wait outside."

"I want to know what's happening," Dylan demanded, fear for his nephew beating hard against his chest.

"We have to let them work." Shaye tugged at Dylan's elbow. "They know what they're doing. The doctor will come talk to us when they get him stabilized. We have to do what's best for him. We're just in the way."

After another glance at the personnel around the baby's bed, certainty dawned that he was in the way. Dylan pulled from Shaye's clasp and strode to the door leading outside the unit.

Had Dylan Malloy come back to mourn his sister? Or had he returned to Wild Horse Junction to claim his nephew?

Shaye took a few shallow breaths, reaching deep inside for the strength that had kept her going since the call about Julia and Will. Once in the hall, she motioned to the waiting room.

Instead of going in, Dylan paced. "I don't want to be that far away." His gaze shot back to the NICU. "Surely someone will tell us if he's going to make it."

When he ran his hand through his tawny hair, when she glimpsed again the primordial pain in his green eyes, she wished she could ease his grief. But no one could. "Have you spoken with the doctor?"

"When I was waiting for my flight in London."

"Then you know this is all up to Timmy — how he responds to the antibiotics and the help they're giving him."

"I understand that. I certainly don't understand everything else. Why did Will have Julia out in bad weather? She was almost seven months pregnant, for God's sake!"

Understandably, Dylan was looking for somebody to blame, as people did when tragedy struck, and goodness knew Dylan and Julia had already experienced plenty of it. All Shaye could do was to tell him what she knew.

"Julia had been cooped up inside for over a week due to the bad weather. Will wouldn't even let her step onto a snowy sidewalk because he was afraid she'd fall. But she was going stir crazy. The morning of —" Shaye's voice broke in spite of her effort to put her own emotion aside.

Clearing her throat, she went on. "The morning of the accident, I stopped in to see her. She was in such a good mood. She said she'd cajoled Will into taking her to the Johnsons that night. The weather was supposed to hold and not turn until early morning."

"The Johnsons practically live in the mountains," Dylan muttered. "Those roads can be treacherous any time of the year, let alone when there's snow on them." He swore and turned away from her.

Unexpectedly, Shaye didn't know what to do, and that was unusual for her. In her job as a social worker, she routinely handled sticky situations. But this one was personal. Something about this man touched her in an elemental way, and that, as well as the crisis with Timmy, made her uncertain.

Dylan faced her again, everything about him shouting restrained energy, restrained emotion, restrained frustration. "Did you know Julia was going to name you as guardian?"

"Yes, I did," she answered quietly, bracing herself for whatever came next.

The nerve in his jaw worked. "Julia spoke often of you, Miss Bartholomew. I know you were good friends. But I need to know how this...legacy came about."

"It's Shaye," she murmured, needing to be on a first-name basis without knowing why. With a nod, she motioned to the lounge again. "Let's sit down."

After a glance at the NICU, he followed her into the waiting room. Although she lowered herself onto one of the fabric-covered chairs, Dylan remained standing. She felt like a schoolgirl sitting in front of a principal, which was ridiculous. In her position as caseworker for the department of family services in the county, she'd learned to stand her ground. With two brothers to take care of, she'd had to be assertive or she would have been snowed under or trampled. However, in the presence of Dylan Malloy, her confidence seemed to vanish.

Taking a breath, she plunged in. "You know Julia and I met in college."

He nodded, waiting. "Since we were both from Wild Horse Junction, we caught rides together from Laramie to come home. At first I thought she was reserved. Then I found out she just used reserve to protect herself. She told me about what happened to your parents and about spending time in foster care."

She remembered the story Julia had related about how Dylan and Walter Ludlow had become friends. At eighteen, Dylan had just graduated from high school and landed a job at the local paper. He'd walked into the attorney's office saying, "I need a lawyer to petition the court to become my sister's legal guardian."

Julia had been eight and Dylan sixteen when they'd been orphaned, and Dylan had known his sister was unbearably unhappy in foster care. He'd moved heaven and earth to gain custody of her. He'd made sure she was safe, happy and secure until she'd gone to college. Then he'd left Wild Horse Junction to follow his own dreams.

"Julia never stopped telling me how grateful she was that you rescued her," she added softly.

"Not soon enough," he murmured, as if he was remembering all too well.

"As soon as you could."

Seeming to ignore her comment, he said evenly,

"After you graduated, you went on for your masters."

"That's right. By the time I returned to Wild Horse, Julia had met Will and they'd eloped."

"She told me she didn't want a big fancy wedding," Dylan mused. "I wanted to give her one."

"I think Julia and Will just wanted to start their life without fanfare. So many times she told me she wanted a home and family and someplace to belong."

"She knew she could count on me," Dylan insisted.

"Yes, she knew that, but she also realized you'd sacrificed for her for eight years. Eight years you put your dreams aside for her. She knew how much being a wildlife photographer meant to you."

"Not as much as she did," he protested quickly.

"You proved that," Shaye reassured him. "You stayed here and worked on the paper when all you wanted to do was to catch a plane to someplace exotic."

His green eyes became piercing in their intensity. "You seem to know a lot about me." He rubbed the back of his neck. "It's an uncomfortable feeling when I don't know you. Have you had experience taking care of kids?"

"In my job I sometimes have to. But besides that — My mother died when I was ten. I had brothers who were eight and five. My father, a cardiologist, was gone a lot, so I had to take care of them."