Читать книгу Baby Business: Baby Steps - Karen Templeton - Страница 13

He hadn’t meant to read the text that appeared on the screen, but eyes will do what eyes will do, and before he knew it, he’d scrolled through five or six pages of some of the driest, funniest stuff he’d read in ages—

“Ohmigod … no!” He turned to see Dana striding across the carpet, a diapered Ethan clinging to her hip. “Nobody’s supposed to see that,” she said, slapping closed the computer, her cheeks flushed.

“You wrote this?” he asked.

“Yes, but—”

“But, nothing. It’s good, Dana. No, I’m serious,” he said when she snorted. “The old Southern lady going on and on about her ailments …” He chuckled. “Priceless. You should be published.”

Her blush deepened. “Yeah, well, it’s not that easy.”

C.J. took the baby from her, a little surprised to see how quickly he’d grown used to the squirmy, solid weight in his arms. How quickly, and completely, the instinct to protect this tiny person had swamped the initial shock and panic and anger. “Have you even tried?” he said, laying the baby on the bed, then holding out his hand, indicating to Dana she needed to give him something to put on the kid.

“Um … well, no. I mean, I can’t, it’s not finished yet.”

“Then finish it,” he said, taking the little blue sailor outfit from her and popping it over the baby’s head. Getting arms and legs into corresponding openings was a bit trickier, however, so it took a while for him to realize Dana had gone silent behind him. When he turned, her eyes were shiny. And, yes, wide.

“You really think it’s good?” she asked.

“I really do. And for what it’s worth, I’m not a total philistine. I minored in contemporary American lit in college. So I know my stuff.”

“Oh. Wow. I’m …”

“… extremely talented. Really.”

She blinked at him for another few seconds, then said, “So. Are you ready to storm Smith’s?”

Ah. He’d embarrassed her. She’d get over it. What he wouldn’t get over, he realized as they all trooped out to his car, in which he’d installed the Cadillac of baby seats in the back, was that he’d never championed anyone before. Had never met anyone he’d wanted to champion.

What a rush. A breath-stealing, heart-stopping, panic-inducing rush.

Once in the store, he gave her free rein, offering little comment as she filled the cart with vegetables and fruits and roasts and fish and whole grain breads, with things he had no idea what to do with, other than to consume them once they’d been cooked. A perk he hadn’t even thought about, when he’d asked her to move in. And one he couldn’t help feeling a pang of guilt about now. Not a huge pang—he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had roast pork—but a twinge nonetheless.

“Your cooking for me wasn’t part of the arrangement.”

After a smile for the baby when he grabbed for C.J.’s hand with the obvious intention of gnawing on his onyx ring, she said, “I’m not cooking for you. I’m cooking for myself.” She snagged several boxes of Jell-O off the shelf, tossing them into the cart. “May as well toss in a little extra while I’m at it.”

“So I take it you know your way around a kitchen?”

“People who love to eat generally love to cook.” She held up a small jar. “How do you feel about capers?”

“Just don’t put them in the Jell-O.”

“Deal.”

And so it went, their conversation. Careful. Circumspect. He talked about work, she intermittently grilled him about his food preferences. He’d have had to be blind to not notice that she didn’t look his way unless she absolutely had to, that her smiles were fleeting, rationed. Strike what he’d thought before about her not having any walls, because there was definitely one up between them now, transparent and flimsy though it may have been. Not that she was a whiner. In fact, it was the way she seemed to curl around her obvious bad mood, swallowing her true feelings, that annoyed him so much. He didn’t like this Dana, he wanted the other Dana back, the one who’d tease and flash that dimpled smile for him.

Periodically piercing the annoyance, however, was the swell of pride whenever someone stopped to admire Ethan. Which happened approximately every twenty feet. And Ethan took to his role as the charmer with equanimity, bequeathing wrinkle-nosed, two-toothed grins on everyone who spoke to him. After one gushing elderly couple continued on their way, C.J. looked at the baby and said, “How could anyone walk away from such a perfect kid?”

That was enough to earn him a sideways glance, at least. And a smirk. “Says the man who’s lived with the child for one night. Believe me, he has his moments—”

“Ohmigosh, aren’t you just the cutest little thing?” yet another admirer said, cooing at the baby as though she’d never seen one. “Oh, would you look at those two little teeth! How old?” she asked Dana.

“Six and a half months.”

“Aw, that’s such a wonderful age. Enjoy it, honey—it goes so fast. I had four, they’re all parents of teenagers themselves now, but it still seems like yesterday. And look at you, expecting again already, bless your heart! Well, bye-bye, sweetie,” she said to Ethan with a fluttery wave, then trotted off.

The whooshing in C.J.’s ears nearly obliterated the piped-in seventies oldie bouncing off the freezer cases. At last he turned to Dana, his heart cracking at the stoic expression on her face.

“You want me to go beat her up?”

“That’s very sweet,” she said with a fleeting smile, “but I think I’ll pass. And anyway, better she think I’m pregnant than I’m nothing but a lazy slob without the willpower to starve myself down to a size eight.”

“One isn’t better than the other, Dana.”

“Maybe not. But I’m used to it. Come on,” she said quietly, nudging the cart toward the checkout. “It’s getting close to Ethan’s bedtime.”

If she’d been subdued before, she was downright uncommunicative on the ride back to the house, his every attempt to draw her out meeting with little more than a monosyllabic reply.

Oh, man, not since he was a kid had he felt this … this extraneous. Not that he hadn’t been well aware of his inability to connect with another human being except on the most basic of levels, but if this didn’t drive it home, boy, he didn’t know what did. Because, whether he understood it or not, whether he liked it or not, he did genuinely care about this woman, about what she was feeling. He hated seeing her hurt. But even more, he hated not knowing what to do to make it better.

When they got back to the house, he offered to get Ethan ready for bed while Dana started their dinner. He wondered, as he carted his sleepy son down the hall, how he thought some biological connection was going to make him any more able to fix the inevitable hurts for his child than for Dana. With that, the resentment demons roared back out onto the field from where he’d tried desperately to keep them benched, fangs and claws glinting in the harsh light of C.J.’s own fear.

Ethan lay quietly on the changing table during the diaper-changing process, gnawing like mad on his fist, watching C.J. with those damn trusting eyes, and hot tears bit at the backs of C.J.’s. He hadn’t wanted this, he thought bitterly, stuffing plump little legs into a pair of lightweight pajama bottoms. Hadn’t asked for it—

The baby clung to him like a little koala when he picked him up, and C. J. clung right back, his hand cradling his son’s head, his cheek pressed against one tiny shell of a little ear.

How the hell was he supposed to be something he didn’t know how to be?

He lowered Ethan into his crib, unable to resist the tug to his emotions when the kid grabbed his blanket, his eyelids drooping almost immediately. “‘Night, Scooter,” he whispered, slightly startled when the nickname popped out of its own accord. Then he stepped into Dana’s room to grab the baby monitor off her nightstand, his emotions assailing him a second time at the basic here-ness of her—a pair of shoes, carelessly kicked underneath the chair, her lingering scent. The laptop, firmly closed, like an old woman with secrets.

Standing barefoot at the island, tossing a salad, Dana glanced up when C.J. entered the kitchen. Her forehead creased in concern. “Everything okay?”

“What? Oh … sure. I just …” He smiled, shook his head. “It’s nothing,” he said, setting the monitor on the counter. “Work stuff.”

Her expression said she didn’t believe him for a minute, but all she said was, “I fake-baked a potato in the microwave for you, but I thought we could do the steaks out on the grill?”

C.J. grabbed a beer from the fridge, then allowed a rueful smile. “Guess this is as good a time as any to tell you I’ve never used the damn thing.”

“Get out! What kind of red-blooded American male are you?”

“One who eats out a lot.”

Dana huffed a little sigh that eased his mind somewhat—at least his ineptitude as a backyard chef was giving her something to focus on besides herself. Undeterred, she picked up the salad bowl and the monitor, commanding him to bring the steaks, adding it was high time he learned this basic suburban survival skill. When they got outside, she shook her head in amazement at the built-in grill tucked into a low wall on one side of the patio.

“Heck, compared with my daddy’s little old barbecue, this is like going from a motorboat to a yacht. So maybe you should go sit way over there, so you won’t see me make a fool out of myself, trying to figure this thing out.”

But for all her concern, the steaks turned out fine. And as the sun set, the temperature dropped and a light breeze picked up, there they were, just two people enjoying dinner out by the pool.

Yeah, right.

“So if you can’t cook,” she said, dangling a tiny piece of steak for Steve, whose purr C.J. could hear from five feet away, “what can you do?”

“Well, I make a great deal of money. Does that count?”

“Maybe,” she said, her eyes sparkling for the first time that evening. “Of course, it depends on what you do with all that money.”

“Meaning, do I horde it like Scrooge? No. Although I do have quite a bit socked away in various retirement funds. The thought of ending my life living in a cardboard box does not appeal.”

“No,” she said softly. “It doesn’t.”

“But then, the thought of anybody else living in a cardboard box doesn’t appeal, either. So I support a lot of local charities. For the homeless, the food bank, things like that. In fact …” He took a pull of his beer, thought What the hell. “I’ve got a fund-raiser to go to a week from Saturday, and—”

“Oh, I can stay with Ethan, no problem.”

“—and I was wondering if you’d like to go with me.”

She stared at him for a second or two, then jumped up and began clearing their dishes.

“Dana? What the—? It wasn’t a trick question!”

Plates balanced in both hands, she turned. “Wasn’t it? I mean, why ask me now? Tonight?”

He stood, as well, taking the plates from her. “Look, if you don’t want to go, just say so.”

“It has nothing to do with whether or not I’d like to go.”

“Then what is it?” When she didn’t answer, he sighed. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with that woman in the store, would it?”

She snatched up their water glasses and headed inside. “You tell me.”

“You think I’m inviting you because … what? I feel sorry for you? Dana, for God’s sake.” He followed, setting the plates by the dishwasher. “It was a simple invitation, no ulterior motives behind it.”

“C.J., get real. Nothing’s simple between us.”

“Point taken. But I swear, I only asked you because I hate going to these things alone, and I thought you might enjoy getting out … and I’m just digging myself in deeper, aren’t I?”

She emitted a desiccated little sound that might have been a laugh, then looked at him. “You’re not exactly winning any major points,” she said, but without a lot of steam behind it. “What happened to the charmer who’s supposed to know exactly the right thing to say?”

“Is that what you think I am? A charmer?” When she shrugged, he reached out, taking her hand. “Fine, so maybe playing the game is what’s gotten me through so far. You say what people want to hear, they generally do what you want them to do.”

“And you’re proud of this?”

“I’ve never deliberately misled anyone, Dana. Or used anyone for my own purposes. There are ways of working it without hurting people. Still, to answer your question … no. I don’t suppose I am particularly proud of how I’ve lived my life. But what I’m trying to say is … the baby …” He stopped, shutting his eyes for a moment, trying to make the words line up, make sense. When he opened them again, it was to meet that cautious, careful gaze. “I look at Ethan, and I realize a large part of who I was won’t cut it anymore. I don’t really know yet what that means, what I’m supposed to do, or who I’m supposed to be. But I do know you’re somehow part of that revelation.”

She flinched. “Me? How?”

“Because when I’m with you, I don’t want to be who I was before, either. I mean, before tonight, I can’t remember ever being angry enough on someone else’s behalf that I wanted to hurt another human being. Not that I’m going to go off the deep end and start beating up little old ladies—”

“Good to know.”

“—but my point is, since Ethan came into my life, I suddenly … care. About how someone else might feel.”

She tilted her head. “Empathy?”

“Yes! That’s it! I mean, yeah, I’ve always felt I needed to help people who were down on their luck, or who’d gotten a raw deal, but never on a personal level before. And tonight, the more I realized how hurt you were, the angrier I got.”

Her eyes narrowed. “And yet you weren’t inviting me to this charity thing because you felt sorry for me.”

“No, dammit, I invited you because I like you! Because I want to beat people up for you! And that’s not all!”

“It … isn’t?” she said, looking slightly alarmed.

“No! Because I grew up in a house where nobody talks to anybody, and it sucks. Which is why I’ve always preferred to live alone. But Ethan’s here, and you’re here, and if you need to vent, I’m not going anywhere. In the meantime, get out of here, go write or whatever you want to do while I clean up.”

“Lord have mercy,” she said after a long moment, “but you are one strange man.”

“Yeah, well, if you felt like somebody’d just removed your brain, rearranged all the parts and crammed it back inside your skull, you’d be strange, too.”

She blinked. “Maybe … I’ll go sit out by the pool for a while, then.”

“Fine.”

She walked to the door, hesitated a second, then turned back around. “Okay, I’ll go with you. To the charity thing.”

“Taking pity on the strange man, are we? Hey, don’t do me any favors.”

“I’m not. Like you said, it’s been a while since I’ve been out.”

And she left. Fifteen minutes later, however, he was finishing the washing up when he heard the muffled double-shushing of the patio door opening, then closing. C.J. watched as she padded over to the fridge, pulling out a jug of orange juice. After pouring herself a small glass, she slid up onto one of the barstools.

“See,” she began quietly, “the skinny people of the world look at people like me and think, What’s wrong with her? Why can’t she control her weight? They never stop to think that, you know, maybe I have tried every diet known to man, maybe I’ve even gone to doctors about it, maybe I do exercise and eat right ninety-five percent of the time.” Her mouth pulled into a tight smile. “That maybe I would have done anything to stop the other kids from calling me Fatty when I was a kid. Except it doesn’t always work that way. For some of us, it’s not just a matter of eating less, or exercising more, or having willpower.”

“You’re not fat, Dana,” he said, meaning it.

“Oh, but according to every chart out there, I am. I weigh thirty pounds more than I ‘should’ for my height. Which, by the way, is thirty pounds less than I weighed about five years ago, when I finally realized scarfing down a pint of Ben & Jerry’s every time I got stressed was a bad idea. Then again, the thought of never again eating real ice cream, or a piece of cheesecake, or mashed potatoes with gravy, or a cheese enchilada …” She shook her head. “Now that’s depressing. But God forbid I go into a restaurant and order something besides a piece of broiled fish and a salad, hold the dressing. People look at me like I’m a criminal.”

“That’s their problem, honey. Not yours.”

“And most of the time I do know that. But every once in a while it gets to me, what can I say? Just like the other thing. Not being able to have kids. And with all this about Ethan … you happened to catch me at a bad time.”

“Lucky me,” he said, and she smiled. Not a big one, but enough to see the dimples. God, he loved those dimples.

“Okay, your turn,” she said, her expression brightening. “If I have to open up, so do you. So what’s your story … oh, shoot,” she said as Ethan’s reedy cry came through the monitor. Her gaze touched his. “Coin toss?”

“No, that’s okay, I’ll go,” C.J. said, barely managing to keep from jumping off the stool. “And anyway, it’s late, and I’ve got a seven-thirty breakfast meeting tomorrow, so maybe we should call it a night, anyway.”

Still smiling, Dana shook her head. “You are so transparent, C. J. Turner,” she said quietly. “But you know something? You can run, but you can’t hide. Maybe from me, but not from yourself. And one day, you’re gonna have to face whatever you don’t want to face. And deal with it, too.”

But as C.J. tromped down the hall to see what was up with his son, it occurred to him that “one day” was already there.

“Sorry I’m late,” Dana shouted to Mercy over the Friday-night crowd chatter in the little bistro by the university. “Traffic tie-up on the freeway.”

“It’s okay, there’s a fifteen-minute wait.” Mercy held up a small pager. “They’ll call us when the table’s ready. Outside or bar?”

“Your call.”

“This was a great idea, by the way,” Mercy yelled over her shoulder as they pushed their way through the throng. “If a surprise.”

“Yeah, well, it occurred to me that C.J. needed some one-on-one time with Ethan,” Dana yelled back. “And I needed the night off.”

“So naturally you decided to spend it with someone you already see five days a week,” Mercy said, slithering up onto a bar stool. “Makes total sense.”

“Says the woman who pounced on the idea like a cat on a grasshopper.”

Shortly thereafter, as Dana reluctantly sipped a glass of white wine and Mercy tackled a margarita larger than her head, her partner nodded appreciatively at Dana’s outfit, a low-cut blousy top tucked into a long, tiered skirt. “The cleavage is seriously hot.”

Dana glanced down. “Not too much?”

“No such thing, chica. Really, you should take the girls out more often, they look like they could use the air. Well, look at you, Ms. Techno Babe,” she said as Dana set her cell phone on the bar. “Welcome to the twenty-first century.”

“C.J. insisted I needed one. Because of the baby.”

“And you love it already.”

Dana smirked. “And I love it already.”

After a chuckle into her drink, Mercy poked Dana’s wrist with one long fingernail. “So. Have you slept with the guy yet?”

“Honestly, Merce. You really do have a one-track mind, don’t you?”

That got an unrepentant grin. “I live to yank your chain, you know that. But seriously. How’s it going? It’s been, what? Nearly a week, right?”

Dana took a small sip of her wine, flinching when some man brushed against her as he got up onto his bar stool. “Not quite. Five days. Seems longer.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“I’m not sure. In some ways it’s a lot easier than I thought it would be. I mean, we’ve worked out a pretty good routine, C.J.’s been a real trouper about taking care of the baby …”

“But?”

“But …” Dana frowned at the slightly trembling liquid in her glass. “No matter how gracious C.J. is, I’m still a guest.” She lifted her eyes to Mercy’s dark, sympathetic gaze. “And the question is, for how long?”

“Because of Trish, you mean?” Dana nodded. Mercy fingered the rim of her sombrero-sized vessel. “So you haven’t heard anything yet?”

“The investigator C.J. hired keeps running into dead ends, apparently. As though Trish dropped off the baby, then the planet—”

“Hey,” said a reasonably good-looking suit who’d popped up out of nowhere. His gaze bounced off Dana’s breasts, then zeroed in on Mercy in her bright red spaghetti strap top and matching, flippy skirt. “Can I buy you ladies a drink?”

“Thanks,” Mercy said, “but we’re fine.”

“Hey, you know, maybe it’d speed things up if we shared a table—?”

One French-manicured hand shot up. “No. Thank you.” She faced Dana again, pointedly turning her back to the guy. “So. You were saying?”

As the poor schlep trundled off, his wounded ego trailing behind like a strip of toilet paper, Dana smiled and said, “We don’t have to hang out tonight. I mean, if something better comes along …”

“Better than you? Never happen. Besides, when have you known me to pick up a strange guy in some bar?” At Dana’s raised brow, she huffed out, “Recently?”

Dana chuckled, then sighed. “But what does it say about us that, here we are, two women in our thirties, spending our Saturday night with each other?”

“That we’re comfortable enough with who we are to do that?”

“Or bored out of our skulls.”

“Yeah, that, too … oh! I’m blinking!” Mercy said, snatching the pager off the bar, then her drink. “Although you know,” she said as the hostess signaled them over, “at least you had an option. You could have stayed home with Mr. Gorgeous, flashing your girls at him instead of me. But no … Thanks,” she said with a bright smile for the hostess as they slid into their booth. Then she leaned across the table. “You’re here. With me. Instead of there. With him.”

And Dana leaned over and said back, “And maybe there’s a reason for that.”

“One can hope.”

Dana rolled her eyes, then told her about the whole “You make me want to beat people up” speech, which didn’t exactly elicit the reaction Dana had hoped.

“Dios mio, you little idiot!” Mercy’s dark eyes glittered in the dim light from the puny little votive in the center of the table. “This is huge, like something right out of a movie, when the guy suddenly realizes he can’t live without the girl! We ‘re talking When Harry Met Sally, or As Good as It Gets.”

“Oh, this is definitely as good as it gets, all right.”

Mercy’s eyebrows collided over her cute little nose. “Not following.”

“Merce, all this is, is C.J.’s coming to terms with being responsible for another human being. Meaning Ethan. I watch him, and I can tell being with his son is opening him up to all sorts of emotions he’s never dealt with before. Never let himself deal with before. And it’s as if …” She glanced away, trying to find the words, then looked back at her friend. “You know what it’s like, when you first fall in love, how the whole world seems brighter? And suddenly you love everybody, because what you’re feeling is too overwhelming to focus on a single person? That’s all that’s going on here, trust me. Only it’s with Ethan, not me.”

After a couple of seconds of introspective frowning, Mercy said, “So you think he said all that because, what? You happened to be in the vicinity? Like the victim of a gas cloud?”

“Basically, yeah. Nothing’s going to come of this, Merce,” she said firmly when the brunette pushed out a sigh.

“Well, it sure as hell won’t as long as you go out with me, or spend the night in your own apartment.”

“But that’s what it’s going to come down to eventually, anyway. Or did you think I was going to live with C.J. until Ethan graduates from high school? It was only ever supposed to be temporary, so the last thing either of us needs is to get too used to the other’s company.”

“I see. And you’re not just saying this because you’re afraid of getting hurt?”

Dana’s eyes snapped to Mercy’s, irritatingly astute under those perfectly arched brows. “I’m saying this because I’m a realist.”

“And?”

“And … I’d be a fool to believe the man’s done a complete about-face in less than three weeks, baby or no baby. Accepting his responsibilities as a parent doesn’t mean he’s changed his mind about anything else.”

“So this is about protecting yourself.”

She snorted. “Can you blame me?”

“No,” Mercy said gently. “But people do change, honey.”

“I know they do,” Dana said. “Because I have. Or at least, I’m trying to. And it’s going to take a lot more than a single impassioned declaration for me to let my guard down—”

She clamped shut her mouth, focusing on the flickering little flame between them. And Mercy, bless her, did nothing more than reach across the table to quickly squeeze Dana’s trembling fingers.

Somehow, though—probably because of the mutual, unspoken moratorium imposed on the subject of C.J. and/or anyone’s love life—she actually enjoyed the rest of the evening. For the most part they talked business, since the move into the new space was imminent, so by the time they went their separate ways a little after nine, Dana was beginning to feel at least a little less crazed.

In fact, she even thought she might get some writing done before she went to bed, only to remember she’d left her laptop and all her notebooks at C.J.’s. She was half tempted to forget it, except it seemed a shame to blow off her muse simply because she didn’t feel like trekking all the way back to C.J.’s.

Praying he wouldn’t notice her return, Dana let herself in and started toward “her” room, only to be waylaid by Steve, plaintively meowing and head-butting her shins as though he hadn’t seen her in three years. Or been fed, more likely. Honestly. She followed the cat into the kitchen, where, as she suspected, Iams abounded in his food dish.

Which is when she heard C.J.’s voice coming in low, angry bursts through the slightly open patio door.