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“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.
“Nothing ‘all this’ about it. Business was slow so I took off early, figured I might as well throw the pork in the oven. We’re eating in the dining room, by the way.”
He glanced toward the room in question, saw the table set with place mats, cloth napkins, candlesticks. A centerpiece, for God’s sake.
“I never eat in the dining room,” he said.
“Then it’s high time you did,” she said.
Honest to Pete, she’d had no agenda behind dinner beyond feeding everybody. Roasts were no-brainers, for heaven’s sake. As were boiled potatoes and steamed asparagus. Okay, so maybe the gravy was a little tricky, but not if you’d been making it since you were twelve.
And really, she hadn’t been trying to impress him or anything with the table setting, she’d just thought it seemed a shame, never using the dining room. The man needed to start appreciating his own house, that’s all.
So the look on his face when he’d walked in, smelled the cooking, seen the table, taken that first bite of pork … was icing on the cake. Seriously.
His chuckle when she handed him a dessert dish of Jell-O topped with a fluffy mountain of whipped cream, however … priceless.
They’d progressed to the family room, ostensibly to watch a film. She’d raided her parents’ stash of DVDs, hauling back everything from old Hepburn-Tracy flicks to Clint Eastwood westerns, vintage Woody Allen to Indiana Jones, eighties-era chick flicks to over-the-top disaster movies. But the slim, colorful cases lay fanned out on the coffee table, temporarily forsaken. Instead, C.J. sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the fireplace with Ethan in his lap, halfheartedly fending off the baby’s attempts to steal his whipped cream, and Dana thought, Yeah, it’s like that.
Or could be, anyway.
“I’d forgotten how good this is,” he said.
“Isn’t it crazy?” she said, spooning a big glob into her own mouth. “Mama always used to make Jell-O for me when I was feeling down in the dumps.”
He lifted one eyebrow. “So it’s a comfort food, then?”
“Well, the whipped cream is the comfort food, actually. But squirting whipped cream directly into your mouth is really pathetic.”
“Or efficient,” he said with a grin. “Go away, cat,” he said to Steve, who kept trying to bat at the whipped cream. C.J. held the dish up out of the cat’s reach. “Mine. Mine, mine, mine.” Ethan’s eyes followed the dish, followed by a squawk. C.J. gave her a helpless look, and she giggled.
“Oh, go on, let him have some.”
C.J. blew out a sigh, but lowered the dish anyway. Only the poor cat couldn’t figure out how to attack something that wouldn’t stay still, his head bobbing along with the quivering whipped cream. C.J. laughed, and Ethan chortled, and the cat finally stalked off, thoroughly put out.
“So how’s the writing coming?” C.J. asked. Then frowned. “What?”
“Oh, nothing. It’s just that I hate that question.”
“Oh. Sorry. Why?”
“Because I never know how to answer it. I know you mean well, but—”
“It’s okay, I understand. Well, actually, I don’t, but if you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t want to talk about it.” He fed another bite of Jell-O to the baby, then said, “One question, though—does anyone else know you’re writing?”
“Not really. Well, my parents do,” she said on an exhaled breath. “My mother thinks it’s silly.”
His forehead creased. “Has she read any of it?”
“I doubt that would make a difference. It’s all a little too pie in the sky for her. Offends her practical sensibilities.”
“Because it’s a risk, you mean?”
“I suppose. She had enough trouble dealing with me going into business with Mercy and Cass, instead of getting a nice, secure accounting job with some well-established firm.” A smile flickered over her lips. “She worries.”
His dessert finished, C.J. set the dish up on the coffee table, then turned Ethan around to face him. Laughing, the baby dug his feet into the carpet and pushed up, clutching the front of C.J.’s shirt.
“Hey, look at you, hot stuff!” he said, clearly delighted, only to immediately suck in a breath. “Oh, God—when do they start walking?”
“Whenever they’re ready. Around a year, maybe later. He has to crawl first, though. At least, so I gather.”
And will I even be in the picture when that happens?
The thought pricked the haze of contentment she’d let herself be lulled into, propelling her to her feet to gather dessert dishes, which she carted back into the kitchen. C.J. followed, the baby in his arms.
“Hey. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Really,” she said with a forced smile when he frowned at her. “Just one of my moods again.” Then, because melancholy always led to masochism, she said, “So how exactly did you end up with my cousin, anyway?”
Clearly startled, C.J. pushed out a short laugh. “Where on earth did that come from?”
“I’m a chronic scab-picker, what can I tell you?”
He held her gaze in his for several seconds, then sighed.
“Trish had quit, maybe a week before, I don’t really remember. I was the only one in the office when she came in to pick up her last paycheck, except I had a little trouble finding it since Val had put it someplace ‘safe.’ Anyway, by the time I did, your cousin seemed very distraught. So … I asked her if she wanted to go get a drink.” His mouth pulled flat. “And things … took their course.”
She opened the dishwasher, started loading their dinner plates. “I see.”
“I’m not proud of it, Dana,” he finished softly. “It shouldn’t have happened. But I didn’t take advantage of her, if that’s what you’re thinking. Even if I did take advantage of … the situation. Just so you know, however,” he said, shifting the baby in his arms, “I don’t do that anymore. Start something I have no intention of finishing, I mean.” He smiled tiredly. “It gets old.”
“Yes,” Dana said carefully, once again all too aware of the warning in his words, no matter how mildly they’d been delivered. “I can see how it would. Well. Thanks. For being honest with me.”
“It’s the least I can do,” he said, and she thought, Geez, story of my life or what?
“Like hell you can wear that,” Mercy said, her face a study in horror.
Dana looked down at the black charmeuse tunic and ankle-length skirt, still in its transparent shroud from the cleaners, she was holding up to her front. They’d just locked up for the night, leaving only a couple of spotlights on in the front of the store, and Dana had—in a clearly misdirected moment—decided to show her partners what she was wearing. “What’s wrong with it?”
“You’ll look like a leech?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s even got sparklies. See?” She wiggled the bag in front of Mercy, who recoiled.
“Okay, a leech with a Cher fixation.”
Dana looked to Cass, who was also going to the shindig. Under duress, apparently. Blake had insisted it would “do her good” to get out and mingle, although, according to Cass, all she really wanted to do was stay home and sleep.
“What are you wearing?” Dana now asked the blonde.
“Some red jersey number I’ve had forever.”
Mercy blinked. “As in, the slinky little thing you wore to my sister’s wedding? The one with no back? And not a whole lot of front, either, as I recall?”
“That would be the one.”
Mercy gave Dana a pointed look.
“These hips don’t do slinky, Merce,” she said. “They do … softly draped.”
“Yeah, well, your hips need to break out of their rut. Hold on.” Mercy vanished into the back to return a second later with something … not softly draped. Or black. But not, at least, slinky, either. “Which is why I brought this. The color will go great with your hair, don’t you think?”
“Where did you get that?” Dana asked. “And why is it here?”
“From Anita, and because I consider it both an honor and my duty to save you from yourself. Anyway, ‘Nita’s more or less your size. But instead of hiding her body, she celebrates it.” She thrust the dress at Dana hard enough to make her lose her balance. “If that doesn’t work, there are others. And ditch the bra, there’s one built right into the dress.”
“You might as well humor her,” Cass said at Dana’s glare. “You know she’ll only make your life miserable otherwise.”
On a sigh, Dana snatched the dress out of Mercy’s hand and tromped to the bathroom to change. Five minutes later, upon glimpsing herself in the narrow, full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door, she let out a shriek.
“Let us see, let us see!” she heard from the other side of the door.
“No way! For God’s sake, I’d put somebody’s eye out in this thing! No! Don’t open the door!”
Too late. There stood her partners, one grinning like a loon, the other gasping.
“Get your butt out here,” Mercy said, grabbing Dana’s wrist and yanking her through the door, “so we can get the full effect.”
“Yeah, full is right,” Dana mumbled, then swung a pleading glance in Cass’s direction. “Tell her I can’t possibly wear this.”
After a pause, during which Dana assumed Cass was working to get back her voice, the blonde said, “Honey, don’t take this the wrong way, but I have never, ever seen you look better.”
“See, Merce, what did I tell y—” Dana’s eyes cut back to Cass. “What did you say?”
“You look unbelievably gorgeous. I swear.”
“These go with it,” Mercy said, handing Dana—who was too busy gawking open-mouthed at Cass—a small silver box, already open. Inside lay a pair of outrageously ornate chandelier earrings that, sad to say, immediately made Dana’s mouth water.
“Ohhhh,” she said on a soft sigh, almost not caring when she caught Mercy conspiratorially poking Cass in the arm.
He couldn’t take his eyes off of her in that dress.
Neither could any other straight man in the room. Including Cass’s husband Blake, who’d been trying so hard all through dinner not to stare at Dana’s breasts. C.J. almost felt sorry for the poor bastard. But who could blame him? Dear God, they were magnificent.
She was magnificent. And if C. J. found himself occasionally battling the urge to deck every guy whose eyes lingered a little longer over that magnificence than he would have preferred …
Man, this protective business really packed a wallop.
Not that Dana needed protecting. Except, perhaps, from him.
His reaction, when she’d come out of her room, knocked him clear into next week. The dress, in some shiny fabric the same lush, deep blue of the sky just before nightfall, was truly a marvel of engineering, both lovingly and aggressively displaying Dana’s no-holds-barred curves to perfection. But it was the woman inside the dress who’d set his pulse rate off the charts, the tilt of her chin that said Yes, I know exactly how I look in this dress, warring with the remnants of insecurity in her eyes, that made him want to do things to her, for her, he had no right to do. That he’d told her as considerately as he could he wouldn’t do.
So, yes, he’d given her an appreciative whistle, but he’d otherwise played it cool. Careful. Not letting on how much he ached to trail his fingertips along the line of her jaw, down her neck, across the swells of those flawless, oh-God-just-kill-me-now breasts.
He tore his gaze away to scan the ballroom, recognizing probably half the people there. Including more than one woman he’d dated over the past decade. All of them beautiful, stylish, classy. Some of them at least momentarily intriguing. Or so he’d thought at the time. And yet, he couldn’t remember ever anticipating being with any of them the way he did with Dana, simply preparing a meal together, or giving Ethan a bath, or just sitting out by the pool, shooting the breeze.
As if hearing his thoughts, she glanced over, a quizzical smile playing over her lips, and the thought of her leaving nearly made him dizzy.
Dinner over, the band started to play a run-of-the-mill pop standard that got people up and moving, but not too fast. C.J. suddenly felt, if not old, at least close enough to middle age to give him pause. The other couples at their table, including Cass and Blake, all headed toward the dance floor; C.J. smiled over at Dana.
“Shall we?”
“Uh, thanks, but no. I am, without a doubt, the world’s worst dancer.”
“I don’t believe that. I’ve seen your moves in the kitchen.”
She laughed. “Sorry, you’ll have to take my word for it…. What are you doing?” she said on a tiny squeal when he stood, took her by the hand, and led her out on the dance floor anyway. “I told you—”
“Hush,” he said, settling one hand at the small of her back, tucking one of hers against his chest. Stupid move, but whatcha gonna do? “It’s a slow dance, all we have to do is stand here and sway. Even you can sway, can’t you?”
“And you’re not afraid people will get the wrong idea?”
“Because we’re swaying?”
“Because of the position we’re in while we’re swaying.”
“Can’t sway without touching,” he said, pulling her closer to avoid colliding with another couple. “It’s in the rulebook.”
“And what rulebook would that be—?”
“C.J.! My goodness, I’ve been trying to catch your eye all night!”
Damn. And he’d been doing everything in his power to avoid hers.
“Cybill,” he said smoothly, even as Dana jerked out of his arms, bumping into the person behind her. Grabbing her hand to keep her from bolting (which earned him a brief but potent glare), C.J. turned, meeting the other woman’s glossy, predatory smile with a cool one of his own. Her nipples blatantly on display in a shimmery, silvery gown that looked more like something she’d wear to bed than a charity function, she was a mere illusion of womanhood, he realized, reeking of designer perfume and desperation.
“You are such a bad man,” Cybill said on a breathy laugh, completely ignoring Dana. “Pawning me off on that Bill person when I called your office and specifically asked for you.”
C.J. frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember getting a message.”
“Oh, this was a couple of weeks ago. Silly me, I should have used my maiden name, I forgot you wouldn’t have known my married one, which I only use for the children’s sake.” A cool, spindly hand landed on his arm. “Bill said you’d been really tied up, but I said I’d be more than willing to wait—” a brief glance speared in Dana’s direction “—until things had, um, calmed down.” Her smile veered back to C.J. “I’m in no hurry.”
He wondered now how he’d ever found Cybill and her ilk even momentarily appealing. Women who, for whatever reason, felt they were somehow entitled to whatever they wanted.
“I’m very flattered,” he said, “but unfortunately I don’t see my schedule easing anytime in the foreseeable future. And I can assure you, you’re in excellent hands with Bill.” He placed his hand at the base of Dana’s spine, gently tugging her to him. “You remember Dana Malone, don’t you?”
Recovering quickly from C.J.’s less-than-subtle brush-off, the woman blinked once, then turned her puppetlike smile on Dana. “Of course I do. A client of C.J.’s, isn’t that right? Did you two happen to run into each other here?”
Offended for Dana at the presumption, he casually roped one arm around her shoulders, knowing he’d pay dearly for the unspoken What the heck are you doing? practically vibrating from her as a result. “No, actually. We came together.”
Her smile frozen in place, Cybill said, “Well, isn’t that nice?” Then, to Dana, “And don’t you look absolutely adorable in that dress! I’d never have the nerve to wear something that … revealing.”
“I suppose it helps to have something to reveal,” Dana said sweetly.
C.J. managed, barely, to choke down the laugh. “Well, point to you,” Cybill said with a watery laugh of her own, the twin spots of color on her thin-skinned cheekbones completely ruining the makeup he guessed she’d spent hours perfecting. She lifted her hand, as though to touch him again, only to apparently think better of it. “I’ll call you,” she said.
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