Baby Business: Baby Steps

The smile relaxed, a little. “I gave him a bath. Or he gave me one, I wasn’t quite sure which. He asked where you were.”

“He …? Oh. You almost had me there for a second.”

C.J. slid his hands into his khaki pockets, his eyes fixed on hers. “You aren’t going to ask who I was arguing with?”

“Why would I do that?” she said, slightly confused. “It’s none of my business.”

“It’s not an old girlfriend, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I’m not thinking anything. Really.”

Actually, her brain was processing so many possibilities she half expected it to short out. But if he was hinting that maybe he was ready to talk … well. He’d have to do more than hint. Because almost every time she’d handed him an opening the past few days, he’d clammed up. So, tough.

Never mind that everything inside her was screaming to give him one more chance, one more opening. To be the sounding board she suspected he’d never had, or at least not for a long time. But torn as she was, the new Dana—the older, wiser Dana—had finally learned there were some roads best left unexplored.

At least, until she was sure she’d come out okay on the other end.

C.J. closed the space between them, taking her bag. “I’ll carry this out to the car for you.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Hush, woman, and let me be the man.”

The cat barreled past her when the door opened, streaking into the night. They walked to her car in silence; C.J. opened her door, setting the bag in back.

“Thanks.”

“De nada.” Was she hallucinating, or was he focusing entirely too much on her mouth? Then he lifted his hand, and she held her breath …

… and he swatted away a tiny night critter fluttering around her face.

Then, with what sounded like a frustrated sigh, he gently fingered a loose curl hovering at her temple.

“I’m a mess, Dana.”

“So I noticed.”

He dropped his hand. And laughed, although the sound was pained. “And here I always thought Southern women bent over backward to be diplomatic.”

“Clearly you’ve been hanging out with the wrong Southern women.”

“Clearly,” he said, his expression unreadable in the harsh security light. Then, gently: “Go, Dana. For both our sakes … go.”

Only, after she slid behind the wheel, he caught the door before she could close it. “That was my father,” he said. “On the phone.”

Her breath caught. “Oh? Um … I’m sorry?”

“Don’t be. I finally got some things off my chest. Someday, I’ll tell you the whole sordid story. If you really want to hear it, I mean.”

Afraid to speak, she simply nodded. He pushed her door shut; her throat clogged, Dana backed into the street, put the car into Drive, drove away. Noticed, when she glanced into her rearview mirror, C.J. still standing in the driveway, hands in his pockets, watching her until she got all the way to the end of the street.

“Oh, Merce,” Dana whispered to herself. “Now this is huge.”

“No news yet?” Val asked from the doorway to C.J.’s office.

He swiveled in her direction. “What? You’re bugging the phones now?”

“No, I was on my way to the kitchen and your voice carries. And when you’re the youngest of seven you get real good at deducing what’s going on from only one side of the conversation.” She waltzed in and plopped down across from him. “So what’d she say? That private investigator gal?”

“Not much. But if Trish is working off the books somewhere, or hasn’t used a credit card recently, it might be harder to track her down.”

“Well, the child couldn’t have just vanished. She’s bound to turn up, sooner or later.”

“That’s what worries me.”

“I don’t understand, I thought you wanted to get things settled. Legally. So there’d be no question.”

On a weighty sigh, C.J. leaned back in his chair, tossing his pen on his desk. Frankly, he doubted things would ever feel settled again. With Trish, with Dana …

Oh, God, Dana. The more he was around her, the less he could figure out if she was the best thing, or the worst thing, to happen to him. If she’d had any idea how close he’d come to kissing her the other night …

And then what? Take her to bed? Lead her to believe things were headed in a direction he couldn’t, wouldn’t go? That much of an idiot, he wasn’t.

At least, he hoped not.

He stuffed his thoughts back into some dark, dank corner of his brain and once again met Val’s quizzical, and far too discerning, gaze. “If Trish doesn’t reappear soon,” he said, “the law’s on my side. I’d get custody free and clear. It’s the limbo that’s killing us.”

“Us? Oh. You and Dana?”

He let his gaze drift out the window. “Until we know what Trish is really up to, we can’t make any permanent arrangements. Which we very much want to do. Need to do. For Ethan’s sake.”

The older woman eyed him for several seconds, then rose. “Well, I truly hope it all works out. For everybody. And soon. So … subject change—you ever decide who to take to the charity dinner Saturday night?”

Despite the permanent knot in his chest these days, C.J. chuckled. “It’s not the prom, Val. And I’m taking Dana.”

“‘Bout time you did something right,” she said, and waltzed back out.

Big whoop, he thought. One measly thing out of, what? A hundred? A thousand? Not that he didn’t want to do the right thing, or things, it was just that he still wasn’t sure what, exactly, that was.

Two showings, an office meeting and a closing later, he walked through the garage entrance into his house to be assailed by the mouth-watering aroma of roast pork, the pulse-quickening beat of bluegrass fiddle. Tugging off his tie, he followed his nose to the kitchen, where Dana—oblivious to his arrival—was stirring something in a pot on the stove, her white-shorted fanny wiggling in time to the music. In one corner, safely out of harm’s way, Ethan sat up in his playpen, gnawing on a set of plastic keys. The instant he caught sight of C.J., though, the keys went flying. With a huge grin, the baby lifted his arms, yelling “Ba!”

Dana whipped around, her hand splayed across her stomach. As usual, several pieces of her hair had escaped her topknot, curling lazily alongside her neck, the ends teasing her collarbone and the neckline of her loose tank top. She laughed. “Somebody needs to put a bell on you, mister! You’re home early!”

Home. The word vibrated between them, like a single note plucked on a violin, clear and pure and destined to fade into nothingness. A word C.J. had never associated with this house. Or any other place he’d ever lived, for that matter. A concept he’d never associated with himself, he realized as he set down his briefcase and scooped up his baby son, who began to excitedly babble about his day.

C.J. stood there, literally soaking up his baby’s slobbery smile. At that moment, he felt as though he’d stepped into some family sitcom, where no matter what tried to rip apart the characters during the course of the episode, family ties always triumphed in the end. Except real life wasn’t a sitcom, and the habit of a lifetime wasn’t going to be fixed in twenty-two minutes.

“What’s all this?” he asked, deliberately derailing his own train of thought.