Baby Business: Baby Steps

“Find Trish. Solidify custody arrangements. After that …” He shrugged. “Take it day by day, I guess. Although I guess I’ll be cutting back my hours, so I can spend time with … with my son.”

“Boy, those are two words I never thought I’d hear come out of your mouth.”

His mouth stretched. “You and me both.”

“Couldn’t you get one of those au pairs or something?”

C.J.’s stomach turned, even as he grimaced. “I suppose I’ll have to look into it eventually. But it has to be the right person. And I have to get the idea past Dana’s mother first.

“And what about the gal? Dana? How’s she fit into all of this? Long-range, I mean?”

“Hell, Val. Right now, I’m doing well to plan out the next ten minutes. I can’t even begin to wrap my head around ‘long range’.”

Any more than he’d been able to wrap his head around that bantering business this morning. Because bantering was not something he did, as a general rule. Oh, he could hold his own in a serious discussion with the best of ‘em, as long as the conversation stayed on safe topics. Like politics or religion. And as long as it was conducted from behind nice, thick impersonal walls.

But Dana had no walls. Dana, in fact, was the antiwall.

Dana not only made him banter, she made him want to banter. To indulge in playful, affectionate exchanges, like some happy couple on a sitcom.

And all this after less than twenty-four hours in his house.

He started at Val’s touch on his arm. “There anything I can do?” she asked gently.

“Other than promise me you won’t start sending out your résumé?” He shook his head. “Nope. Not a damn thing. I’m all on my own with this one.”

For the rest of the day, work crowded his thoughts, albeit with an occasional detour into the personal when he spoke with Elena (no, she hadn’t found anything yet, but it had only been a day, after all), and when the papers his father had promised finally arrived, prompting C.J. to realize he should probably tell the old man he was a grandfather, at some point. Not yet, though. Not until he’d come to terms with the whole thing himself. And one by one, he told the other agents he’d be turning over more clients to them. And why. If they were shocked, none of them let on. Not too much, anyway.

At six, he left. Just like that. Packed his briefcase and walked out the door. Not to see a property, or a client, but his own child.

And Dana, he thought with a tingle of anticipation that made him frown. It was okay to like her, he reassured himself as he steered the Mercedes across town, thinking how strange it was to be heading home while it was still this light, this early. But was it okay to look forward quite so much to being with her, to hearing her laughter, to being the brunt of her gentle teasing? Wasn’t it cheating, the one-sidedness of it?

It had been wrong, and selfish, to bring her here, he thought as he parked his car beside hers, already in the driveway. Even more wrong to have put her in such a tenuous position, he chided himself as he walked into the house, heard those silly birds of hers, then her laughter, blending with the baby’s from several rooms away.

He found them in Ethan’s room, where she was changing the baby’s diaper, still dressed from work, he assumed, in some floaty skirt and top, a pair of crazy shoes that made him smile. Made him … other things. She looked up at his entrance, her smile dimming slightly, and a brief, bright spark of annoyance flashed in his brain, that she should feel wary of him. That she needed to continue being wary, for her own good.

As if sensing C.J.’s entrance, Ethan twisted himself around, grinning. Trusting. After a moment of stillness, all four limbs struck out simultaneously, pumping the air in pure, joyful abandon.

“Somebody’s sure glad to see his daddy,” Dana said Oh, God. This was what it was like, having someone to come home to.

Having someone giddy with happiness that you’d come home.

Giddy. Not wary.

“Oh, shoot,” Dana said. “I brought home a whole bag of clothes for him from the shop, but I left them in the other room.”

“Stay there, I’ll get them.”

Grateful for a moment to regroup, C.J. sprinted down the hall and into Dana’s room, glancing around for the telltale bright blue Great Expectations bag, at last spotting it on a chair beside a little writing desk the decorator had called “too, too precious for words.” In grabbing the bag, however, he bumped the desk, startling the open laptop on top of it awake.

To a word processing program she hadn’t shut down.

Chapter Eight

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.”