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Two facts now echoed in her mind.
The baby wasn’t his.
He wasn’t married.
“Take a seat,” she said, moving over to the carafe of iced water she kept on a credenza. She poured out two glasses and placed one on her desk in front of him. “Here. I know we both could probably do with something stronger, but it’s all I have on hand.”
“It’s fine,” he said. He reached for the glass and drained it with one long swallow.
“I apologize for jumping to conclusions, and for speaking to you like that,” she said as calmly as she could. She settled behind her desk and looked at him directly. “And I’m deeply sorry for your loss.”
Her eyes raked over him, taking in the shadows that lingered under his eyes and the fine lines of strain that hadn’t been on his face the first time she’d met him. She must have been too preoccupied to notice them when she’d seen him at his house the other day. He looked haggard, as if he’d been on the go non-stop.
“Thank you. It’s why I had to leave you so suddenly the night we met. My father called to say my sister and her husband had been in a fatal accident. My nephew was born by emergency C-section immediately before his mother died. I left your room on autopilot. I wasn’t really thinking clearly, I just knew I had to get home. By the time I realized how unfairly I’d treated you, I was already back here, and when I contacted the hotel, they said you’d checked out.”
“I understand,” she assured him, her heart breaking for the shock and pain he must have felt. She was close to her sisters and couldn’t begin to imagine how she’d feel if the same thing had happened to one of them. “I would have done exactly the same thing.”
He dipped his head in acknowledgment. “It’s been hell this past week. So much to organize, so many people to see.” He swiped a hand over his face. “And the baby. It would have helped if CeeCee hadn’t been such a superstitious thing and had organized the nursery already. I could have simply transported everything to my house.”
“Or stayed at theirs?”
“No,” he shuddered. “That would have been too much. I couldn’t.”
“What about your parents? How are they coping?”
“They’re devastated. The stress is playing havoc with my mother’s heart condition.”
Ali felt her heart break a little at the note of sheer anguish in his voice. She could tell he was holding on by a thread. Had he even had the chance to begin grieving himself?
“Oh, Ronin. I’m so sorry. If there’s anything I can do, just name it.”
“There is,” he said, pulling himself together before her eyes. “Given the circumstances, you’ll understand why I need you to complete the nursery. I don’t want any mistakes or oversights. Everything has to be perfect.”
She was about to point out that she wouldn’t have put Deb on the assignment—with Best for Baby’s reputation hanging on it—if she hadn’t been confident that things would be done to his satisfaction. Instead, completely understanding how vital this all was to him, she murmured her assent.
“So you’ll come back on the job?” he asked, lifting his head and looking straight into her eyes.
She could see the worry behind them and his concern that everything be perfect.
“Yes, but better than that, you’ll have two of us for the price of one. Deb will continue to assist—for good reason,” she clarified when it looked as if he might protest. “There is a great deal to be done in a very short time. Two heads will be better than one in this case. She’s already coordinating the work crews. I’ll get started on the nursery supplies and furniture tomorrow.”
The tension that had gripped his frame from the moment she’d laid eyes on him seemed to slowly leach out.
“Good,” he said on a harshly blown out breath. “Good. You know, I always imagined that one day I’d fill my house with a family. I just never thought for a minute it would happen like this.”
He got up to leave and Ali rose with him. At the main door to her office he turned to her, composed once again.
“I’ll be working from my home office tomorrow. Will I see you?”
Ali ran through a mental checklist in her head before giving him an affirmative nod. “Probably after lunch time. I’ll bring some curtain swatches just to make sure we’ve got the right match with the walls.”
“Fine. I’ll key you in to the biometric reader at the gate and the front door so you can come and go as you wish.”
She blinked at that.
“You’d trust me with that?”
“Why not? You aren’t going to steal the family silver, are you?”
“No, of course not,” she laughed in response.
“Then what’s the problem? It’ll be more convenient while you’re coming and going in the next few days.”
And, no doubt, it would ensure that it was her and not Deb going to the house, Ali thought after he’d gone. The idea wasn’t unappealing—now that she knew he wasn’t a dirty cheater.
He wasn’t married. As the thought came back to her, she couldn’t help it—an ember of longing flickered to life deep inside her once more.
* * *
As soon as Deb returned to the office, Ali explained she’d be back on the nursery outfitting as well. Her friend seemed unfazed about the change in seniority.
“Many hands make light work, and there’s certainly plenty of work on this job to go around,” Deb said, cocking her head to study her friend. “I get the feeling, though, that there’s something you’re not telling me.”
Ali tried to hold her gaze and refute the underlying question on Deb’s face but in the end she gave in.
“Look, I don’t want to go into details, but long story short, I met Ronin once a little while ago and we kind of hit it off, but nothing eventuated. Of course, when we got this contract and I saw him again, I assumed the baby was his and that he had been married when we first met.”
“Oh,” Deb said on a long sigh of understanding. “I get it. You must have been pretty mad, huh?”
“You could say that,” Ali responded. Her stomach twisted sickly with the memory of how she’d spoken to Ronin earlier that day.
“But it’s all sorted now, right?”
“It looks that way.”
“So are you going to, y’know, see him again? And don’t get all coy on me and say that naturally you’ll see him in the course of the job. That’s not what I mean, and you know it.” Deb smirked and crossed her arms.
Ali shook her head slightly. Deb knew her too well. That was exactly what she’d been about to say. “No. We won’t start seeing each other like that. He’s just been through the wringer with the loss of his sister and her husband, and he has the additional pressure of keeping an eye out for his parents—not to mention the worry of the baby.”
“Sounds like he needs a bit of distraction then, wouldn’t you agree?” Deb said with a slow wink.
“I think distraction is the last thing he needs right now,” Ali replied firmly, determined to close the subject. “Now, tell me, how did the paint finish turn out?”
They discussed the dove gray walls with white trim that had been painted that morning, and Deb showed Ali a couple of photos she’d taken with her tablet. Ali gave an approving nod at the contractor’s work.
“They’re fast and they’re good, aren’t they? We should pay a little over their premium for doing the job on such short notice. There’s a large enough buffer in the budget for that, isn’t there?”
Deb agreed, and they went on to check the list of items Ali had planned for her shopping expedition in the morning. They divided the lists. Deb was to purchase a diaper bag and supplies along with car seats—one for Ronin and one for the nannies—as well as a stroller and a portable crib in case the baby overnighted with his grandparents when he was a little older. Ali took on the nursery furniture and final decorations for the room, as well as the clothing and feeding necessities. She made a mental note to ask Ronin to check with the hospital about which formula the infant was being fed so she could make sure there was a sufficient supply at the house for when the baby came home.
By the time their working day drew to a close, she was feeling excited. It was because she would deeply enjoy the tasks ahead, she told herself firmly as she locked up the office and headed for her tiny apartment in Mount Eden. It had nothing to do with seeing Ronin again the next day.
Liar, she admitted to herself with an illicit thrill. Dressing the nursery was a fun job, but it had nothing to do with the slow moving heat that was spreading through her veins at the thought of being near him again. For all the words she’d bandied in Deb’s direction today, she couldn’t help but wonder—what would it be like if she and Ronin had another chance? Ali dismissed the question almost as swiftly as she’d thought it. She’d made her decision to remain single after the devastation her marriage had caused her. She didn’t want or need the complications that a relationship with a man like Ronin Marshall would bring. Not one little bit.
Four
Ronin huffed in frustration as the doorbell rang for what felt like the hundredth time that morning. He’d had no idea how disruptive changing one room over for a tiny baby could be, but he was certainly finding out. He’d thought he could work quite comfortably at home but the steady stream of courier deliveries had negated that possibility. Now he had boxes strewn all over his foyer and no idea what was in them or where they needed to go.
“Feeling a bit under siege?” Ali asked with a sunny smile as he opened the door to her and she espied the stacks of boxes around him.
Relief seeped through him. Thank God she was there. Now I might be able to put my focus where it belongs and get something done.
“You could say that,” he replied. “I could have done with you here from about ten this morning.”
“I’m sorry. I came as quickly as I could.” She hefted a book of curtain samples a little higher, and he swiftly reached out for the heavy item.
“Here, let me take that for you.”
“Thanks. I have a couple more in the car.”
“Seriously?”
She laughed at his obvious surprise and he felt his lips curl in response. “Yes, seriously. This is important.”
She spun on a ridiculously delicate high heel and went straight to her car. Ronin followed and accepted the additional sample books from her, all the while trying to keep his gaze averted as the fabric of her neatly cut trousers pulled across the curves of her backside as she reached down into the trunk of her car. It occurred to him that nothing she wore stood out as particularly high fashion, yet everything still managed to deliver a punch when she put it on. He shifted his focus to the heavy books in his arms.
“All this for one set of curtains?” he asked.
“Oh, there were more,” she answered with a sweet curve of her lips. “But they didn’t have what I was looking for.”
He followed her back into the house, where she paused in the foyer and inspected the labels on the various boxes that had accumulated there. She pulled her tablet out of her voluminous handbag and made some notes before stacking a couple of the smaller boxes in her arms.
“Shall we go upstairs? I’d like your opinion on the fabric swatches.”
“Really, I know nothing about color. I usually left all that to...” His voice tailed off as that sweeping sense of loss tugged hard at his heart.
Decorating had been CeeCee’s forte and her business, and she’d been exceptional at it. It was part of the reason he’d teased her so mercilessly about not doing anything for the baby’s room. She’d never been superstitious growing up, which begged the question—had she had some intuition that something was going to go wrong? He shoved the idea from his mind before it could bloom into something further. He’d never held with that way of thinking and never would. To him intuition was, more accurately, picking up subconscious clues. No clue on earth could have predicted what would happen the night CeeCee and R.J. were killed.
He realized that Ali was waiting for him to finish his sentence. “To others who are far more adept at it than I am,” he finished lamely.
“Well, if you’re happy for me to make the final choice, I’m okay with that. I just thought that since it’s your home we’re working on you might like some input.”
“I’ll take these up for you and leave you to it. I have a conference call with a client in Vietnam shortly that should take about an hour. Please don’t leave until I’m done. I really can’t afford any delivery interruptions during the call, so if you could take care of opening the gate and getting the door, I would really appreciate it.”
Ali smiled calmly. “No problem at all. I’ll be here all afternoon. The furniture will be delivered by three, and I’d like to set it up as quickly as possible.”
“Good, I’ll get your fingerprint programmed into the biometric reader when I’m finished on the call.”
They went upstairs and Ali pushed open the door to what was to be the nursery. Ronin was a little surprised at how much had already changed. He’d gotten his two part-time groundsmen to remove the furniture and store it in the loft above his multicar garage, together with the carpet square that had been in the room. Last time he’d looked in, the wooden plank floorboards had been covered with paint-spattered drop cloths and the walls had been a patchwork of the original off-white with an array of softer lemons, blues and grays. He was pleasantly surprised by the solid block of pale but warm gray that now covered the walls, offset by pristine white-painted trim on the deep skirting boards and the window frame.
“I wasn’t sure what you’d decided on in here, but I have to say I like it,” he said, laying the stack of curtain books on the floor.
“It looks great, doesn’t it? Initially I’d thought to go with the pale blue on three walls and then to have a farm scene mural painted on one wall, but you only need to look out the window to appreciate that view more than anything that could be painted in place. Deb and I decided the gray was best and would work as baby grows older, too. Removable borders can provide features anyway, and they can be changed more easily, too.”
Ronin tried to envision what she was talking about, but it all went right over his head. He was far more comfortable talking specifications and load-bearing structures than he was visualizing what was obviously so clear in her head.
Ali bent and rummaged through the fabric samples, extracting a sheer white gauze and then flipping back and forth through each of the other books. Their samples were, to his eye at least, much the same color as the nursery walls.
“Here,” she said, holding one book open to a self-patterned fabric swatch a couple of shades darker than what was already on the wall. “Could you hold that up for me over by the window? I want to see how it works with the rest of the room.”
He did as she bid and was surprised to see her shake her head vehemently. “What? Wrong color?”
“Totally,” she muttered, digging back through the samples again. “Here, try this one.”
To him they looked identical, but he dutifully held the sample up for her.
“Yes, that’s better,” she said, tilting her head slightly to one side and taking a step back. “In fact, I think that’s perfect. We’ll put the drapes against the window with the sheers on the bedroom side. That way the sheers will soften the effect on the whole room when the drapes are closed.”
“I know what you’re saying should make sense,” he laughed. “But it sounds like a foreign language to me.”
Her face broke into a wide smile and she gave him a cheeky wink. “Then it’s a good job you hired Best for Baby, isn’t it?”
She looked just as she had when they’d talked over the dinner table in Hawaii. He’d been reluctant, after a taxing day with a client, to share his solitude. But when the restaurant hostess had requested he allow someone she’d had to turn away to join him, and had pointed Ali out in the bar, he’d recognized her as the woman he’d brushed against in the crowded restaurant lobby. The woman who’d unwittingly triggered a startlingly visceral reaction. His initial resistance had been demolished and he’d said yes.
He wanted that again. That carefree easiness between them. That sense of being on a voyage of discovery together.
“Ali—” he started, taking a tentative step toward her.
“Yes?”
God, he wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and kiss her. To revisit that exquisite oblivion they’d shared the night they met.
“I—” He broke off with a muttered expletive as his phone chirped in his trouser pocket. He identified the number of his office on the screen. “I’m sorry, but I need to get this.”
“No problem. I’ll be around here or downstairs if you need me.”
She took the sample book from him, and as she moved away again he caught the fresh floral sweetness of her perfume. It was so subtle he was unsure he’d even smelled it at all, but it had a very immediate effect on his body. Need bloomed low in his groin. The phone in his hand continued to chirp. He forced his attention away from the woman who’d ensnared him and fought his libido under control. This kind of thing didn’t happen in his normally rigidly structured world. Yes, he knew desire—what man didn’t? But he’d never known it like this.
He barked a greeting into his phone. Walking from the nursery, he forced himself not to wonder why each step away from Ali felt as if it were a mile rather than a mere yard.
* * *
Well, that was intense, Ali thought as she watched Ronin leave the room. For a moment there she’d thought he was going to close the gap between them and kiss her. His eyes had darkened to a deep denim blue and fixed on her, as if the world had narrowed to only contain the two of them. Her heart still thumped in her chest, pumping blood to her extremities and heightening her awareness to a fever pitch.
She bit down on her lower lip. A lip that tingled in anticipation of his caress. A lip that mourned the caress that hadn’t happened. Obviously their initial attraction was still there just as strongly as it had been an entire hemisphere away—their more recent contretemps notwithstanding.
She closed the sample books and stacked them on one side of the room. It was getting more difficult every time she saw him to remind herself she didn’t want to go there again—that she was totally wrong for him. She had to stay professional. He was her client and she was contracted by him to do a job—a job that involved a helpless, parentless infant. Something deep inside her ached at the thought. What she wouldn’t give to be that parent—to be that special someone to nurture and raise and love the child.
When she’d discovered she couldn’t bear children of her own, she’d imagined that she and her husband would adopt, but he’d been opposed to the idea. She had thought he just needed a while to adjust to the idea of their dreams taking a different shape. She’d tried to give him space and time—space and time he’d used to go behind her back and fall in love with the woman he’d left her for. His lover had represented a new start for Richard, a second chance on the path to the life he’d planned...while Ali was clearly nothing more to him than a dead end.
It had been a painfully hard lesson to learn. Never in their years of courtship, or their marriage, had he even intimated that his love for her was contingent on her ability to produce and raise a family with him. That knowledge had been even more hurtful than the news that she was infertile.
Infertility was something they should have been able to deal with together. Thousands of couples the world over did every day. While she’d railed against the unfairness of it all—especially when faced consistently with evidence of her three sisters’ abundant fertility and happy marriages—it had been her husband’s rejection of her, and his twisted belief that it somehow reflected on him as a man, that had been her undoing. Those scars still ran deep—still made her feel vulnerable and inclined to withdraw from placing herself in that position a second time.
She reminded herself she was not, and probably never would be, ready to put herself out there again. There was no way she would run the risk of being rejected again. Hadn’t she learned her lesson? She’d already felt dreadful when Ronin had seemingly abandoned her after their night together. What if they did get together and he did let her down again?
“Talk about getting ahead of yourself,” she muttered to the empty space around her. “Very shortly he’s going to be incredibly busy raising a child. He certainly won’t have time for you. Nothing’s happened and nothing will happen.”
But there was a piece of her that wanted something to happen, that wanted Ronin Marshall with an ache that went deep down to her core.
* * *
Ali busied herself over the next few hours unpacking the boxes that had been stowed in the foyer. Some of the items needed assembly, so she retrieved her tool kit from her car before kicking off her heels and starting to put together the change station and the crib. After a short time, even without all the finishing touches, the nursery began to look like a baby’s room. Just doing this, creating a safe and loving haven for someone else’s unknown child, filled the echoing hollow inside her. Even if only briefly. It was why she loved doing what she did.
A sound at the door made her look up from where she was kneeling on the floor, reading the final instructions on the change station. Heat flushed her skin when she saw Ronin. She scrambled to her stocking feet, only to feel at a disadvantage as he towered over her.
“Is everything going okay here?” he asked, his eyes scanning the room.
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