Do You Take This Baby?

Chapter Three

Ethan had been friends with Scott Carmichael and his bride-to-be since they were in their tweens. He thought it was great that they had stayed together and were getting married after all these years. Scott hadn’t even asked him to be his best man; it was simply a foregone conclusion, and Ethan had been happy to oblige. Recent events in his life, however, were turning this wedding weekend into one giant pain in his neck.

Elyse had already hinted that she’d traded on his name to get a friend of hers from college to cover the wedding for The Oregonian. Ethan didn’t come home to Thunder Ridge often, and when he did he valued his privacy, but he’d figured he could grin and bear Elyse’s desire for a taste of celebrity. That, however, was before the Department of Human Services had called to tell him he was about to become the guardian of one very tiny baby.

“This is where we’re going to dance!” Vivian pulled her sister to the large wood-floored square in the middle of the room. The girls began to spin, watching their skirts swirl around their legs. Cute.

“Come twirl with us, Auntie Gem,” Vivian invited. “It’s easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy!”

“Twirl!” her sister echoed.

Ethan looked at Gemma. As long as he’d known her, she’d been serious, studious, responsible. Not exactly the twirling type. Smart in a way he could never be. He’d been at the Goulds’ once, hanging out with Scott and Elyse, when Gemma and a friend of hers were studying for an English exam. He’d barely known what she was talking about, but listening to the conversation, he’d felt a pang of envy and a yearning so deep he’d made some smart-ass comment to Scott just to cover his discomfort.

Having a friend like her would have been impractical. Impossible. They’d had zero in common. And then Elyse had convinced him to ask her to the homecoming dance. He’d been a sophomore, already making a name for himself on the football team, and she’d been a senior. Elyse had insisted that Gemma needed to attend at least one high school dance before she graduated. He remembered thinking how wrong Elyse was, how bored Gemma was bound to be, especially if a bonehead like him accompanied her.

“Are you going to twirl?” he asked now, nodding to the spinning twins. Gemma might not be interested in dancing, but her skirt was made for it. Sea-foam green with alternating sections of lace from the knees down, it flirted with her legs when she walked. Her silky top was deep purple, and on her very nice feet were coral-colored shoes with just a couple of straps. All those colors might have clashed on someone else. On Gemma, the outfit looked artsy. Joyful. Suddenly it occurred to him that her clothes had always been the least serious thing about her. “I like the way you dress.” He surprised them both by speaking the thought out loud.

“Thanks.” She blushed, her cheeks turning a deep pink.

Inexplicably not dizzy, the girls ran over and tugged on their aunt. “Come on!”

Gemma chewed the inside of her full lower lip.

A smile tugged at Ethan’s mouth. The women he knew had no problem dancing in public. They fed off the attention. Gemma, however, looked sweetly self-conscious.

Hoping to help her out, he bowed in his best impression of Prince Charming. “May I have this dance, Princess Professor?”

The girls giggled and clapped.

“I’m not a professor, yet. And there’s no music,” Gemma pointed out reasonably.

“You don’t hear anything, Professor?” He looked at the twins. They wore huge smiles, by which he concluded that small children were a lot easier to impress than tiny babies. Or maybe it was because they were female. He didn’t have a wide range of talents, but football and females? Yeah, he had that down. Tilting his head, he insisted, “I hear the castle musicians. Girls, can you hear it?”

“Yes!”

“It’s loud!”

“Then let the dancing begin.” As the twins resumed an energetic ballet, Ethan looked at Gemma. “We’ve danced before. I’m sure it’ll come back to us.”

At the reference to their single awkward dance at homecoming, Gemma narrowed her gaze. “You danced with me once. Then you spent the evening with a varsity cheerleader.”

Yee-ouch. He’d forgotten that part. The cheerleader hadn’t intimidated him at all. Wagging his head, he figured it was time for the apology he’d been too embarrassed or too egotistical to offer her back then. “I was a punk kid, Gemma. I didn’t think much beyond the moment. Or about other people’s feelings.”

He’d been too busy trying to protect his own. From the moment he’d arrived at Thunder Ridge High, Ethan had struggled to appear more confident than he’d felt. Actually, it was more accurate to say he’d been struggling since elementary school. His deficiencies had simply become more noticeable in high school.

Gemma Gould, on the other hand, had been the president of the National Honor Society and captain of the debate team, had started both their school’s geography bowl and Spanish club and led an after-school program called Community Kids, a group that performed socially conscious acts in their own neighborhood. Hadn’t she played the flute, too?

He, on the other hand, had played football and flirted with cheerleaders. When Elyse had told him Gemma needed to go to homecoming and would write an essay for him if he took her, he’d balked at first. His fall progress report had been worse than bad, however, and to keep playing football, he’d needed to pass social studies. So he’d agreed to accompany Gemma in return for an essay guaranteed to bring his grade up. When he’d picked his “date” up that night, she’d been so nervous and he’d felt so damn awkward when she’d presented him with a boutonniere that he’d started babbling about the paper she was going to help him with, and somehow the night had turned to crap really quickly. He wasn’t even sure why.

Fifteen years later, he still cringed. The more uncomfortable she had seemed, the more he’d started to act like a jerk, leaving her to find her friends while he hung out with his. And when another girl—the cheerleader with grades on par with his—had asked him to dance, he’d accepted. Gemma had paid him back but good for his behavior that night. Even though her brand of retribution had infuriated him at the time, deep down he’d figured he deserved it.

“Auntie Gem, you’re not dancing!” Vivian stomped her foot, came over and tried to mash the two of them together. “You need to start dancing.”

Sliding an arm around Gemma’s back, Ethan pulled her body closer to his, leaving what he deemed to be a pretty respectable space between them. Still, he could feel her go rigid.

“For their sake, hmm?” he murmured, though he realized that dancing with her was a good opportunity to get the guilt monkey off his back. “About that homecoming date,” he began, surprised by the nervous adrenaline that pumped through his body. He must be overtired. “I should have danced with you more. I should have danced with you the whole night.” He was merely stating the truth. He’d agreed to take her; he should have behaved like a gentleman.

“Don’t be ridiculous. We shouldn’t have gone to homecoming together at all.”

“Maybe not,” he said. “But I could have behaved better. I was young. And a jerk.”

Gemma stopped moving and gently pulled her hand from his. “This—” she gestured to the dance floor “—is awkward. I mean, there’s no music or anything. Maybe we should—”

“Here.” He pulled his phone from his pocket, tapping it a few times, and Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” began to play. The twins were delighted. He handed the phone to Vivian—despite his better judgment—and pulled Gemma toward him again.

Her head only came up to his chin, and she kept her gaze straight ahead. Because he wasn’t sure what else to say at the moment, he simply danced until she murmured something he couldn’t quite make out. “What’s that?”

“I’m sorry about the social studies essay.”

A reluctant smile curled his lips. “Don’t be. Best grade I ever got.”

“You were teased for weeks. That was my fault.”

“True. But I forgave you.” He stared at the top of her head, wishing she’d look up. “After the initial impulse to throw you into Long River.”

Ethan had felt like the world’s biggest jackass when his social studies teacher, Martin Oleson, had read his paper—the one Gemma had written—out loud in class. Gemma had penned a ridiculous, but grammatically correct, essay on how participating in a sport like football increased testosterone in young men and made them want sex all the time. How could they be blamed if that’s all they focused on, even when they were sitting in their social studies class? The paper had gone on to propose that school funding be put toward maintaining a library of men’s magazines, which would be far more useful than textbooks to retain student attention. Ethan had been mortified. His only recourse had been to brazen the moment out, laughing along with everyone else. Humiliation had been preferable to admitting he hadn’t written the paper, couldn’t have penned something that articulate no matter how hard he’d tried.

Gemma lifted her face, plainly revealing the guilt she felt after all this time. “I never expected you to turn it in, you know. I thought you’d look at it first and ask for an extension so you could write it yourself.”

Ethan stiffened. Look at a ten-page paper twenty minutes before he had to turn the thing in? Not damn likely. “Too lazy,” he lied.

Gemma frowned. “You’re not lazy. You play professional sports. You won the Super Bowl. You work during the off-season and you mowed my parents’ lawn every Sunday morning for five years.”

The discomfort began in his gut and spread. He pasted a glib smile on his face, as he always had in moments like this. “I’m academically lazy.”

“The brain is like a muscle. It grows and becomes stronger when you use it. If you ignore academics, you may as well cut your head off.”

“But my face is so pretty.”

Her outraged expression both shamed and amused him. Choosing to focus on the amusement, he laughed. A big dumb-jock laugh. “Calm down, Professor. We can’t all belong to Mensa. Every hive needs drones.”

“Oh! That is a terrible way to look at one of the greatest gifts you’ll ever have—your mind.”

She had no idea how ludicrous that comment was. If his mind had come with a return policy, he’d have traded it in long ago.

“How do I make another song play?” Standing beside them, Vivian tapped on his phone.

She was right; the music had stopped. He let go of Gemma. Her creamy skin reddened as she took a step back.

“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t know why I went on like that.” She shook her head. “Sorry.”

He didn’t want her to be sorry. Pretending school didn’t mean anything to him had always been easier than caring. That didn’t mean she should lower her standards. He’d be disappointed if she did. “You’re a teacher. You’re supposed to be irritated by someone like me.” He smiled, but it didn’t change his plummeting mood. “I’d better head home.”

“Home? But they’re serving dinner in—”

“I can’t stay. I already told Scott.” Turning from Gemma to reclaim his phone from a reluctant Vivian, he tapped the little girl’s nose gently with his finger. Violet presented her nose, and he tapped it, too. “I will see you two ladies tomorrow. Save me a dance.”

The girls beamed. “What about Auntie Gem?” Violet inquired thoughtfully. “She likes to dance, too.”

Ethan looked at Gemma, who appeared confused. “Dancing doesn’t seem to agree with us,” he observed softly. “Maybe tomorrow we could try again and improve our track record?”

Her smile was uncomfortable, but she nodded. “See you at the wedding.”

With a tip of his head, he strode from the ballroom, reminding himself that this part of his life—this crazy time with a baby in his house and more contact with people from his past than he usually had—would be over soon. This summer, he’d return to training camp, which was, at least, a world he understood. Being glib worked there. He’d be able to keep things light and...what had Vivian said? Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy. Which was how he liked his life.

He would stop thinking about Gemma Gould and her intimidating brain. And her calming presence. And her beautiful awkwardness.

They were oil and water, and even he knew that combo didn’t mix. Sometimes, though, when Ethan was with Gemma and there were few other people around, he had the strangest sensation that, for once, he wasn’t alone.

* * *

The next evening, Gemma felt like a plump pink sausage in a bridesmaid’s gown clearly meant to be worn by a woman several inches taller and at least two cup sizes smaller. Women like Elyse’s other ten attendants, for example.

Seated at the long bridal table amid the rest of the exquisite wedding party, Gemma felt restless. Ethan was to her right, currently engaged in discussing football with the other groomsmen. As discreetly as she could, she reached beneath her armpits and gave the strapless bodice of her fuchsia gown a healthy tug. Oh, was she going to be glad when the final kernel of birdseed was thrown and the happy couple drove away in their glossy white limo. Despite her sister’s constantly voiced worries, the ceremony had been perfect, and the reception was under way without a hitch. Still, seated at the elegantly appointed table while servers poured wine from vintage labels and placed dishes of filet en croûte before the laughing guests, Gemma couldn’t help but feel twinges of grief.

She frowned, idly plucking chia seeds off her house-made soft breadstick. Her own wedding, had it not been called off, would have been last month. A full year and a half before the date, she’d already chosen her gown (winsome chiffon skirt, no train), her location (on the beach in Manzanita) and the food (casual-but-authentic Mexican—crab-and-tomatillo quesadillas, street tacos, carnitas...yum). She and William would have had only one attendant each, and her four-year-old nephew could have worn a pair of swim trunks and his favorite Ninja Turtle floatie instead of the toddler tux he kept trying to struggle out of tonight.

“Whoa, what did that breadstick ever do to you?”

Ethan’s bemused voice jerked Gemma’s attention to the crumbles of bread over the table. “Dang.” She wiped bread crumbs off the white linen and into her palm, depositing the mess on her bread plate as a waiter placed her dinner in front of her. “Thank you.” She smiled at the server, then looked glumly at her meal. Pastry-covered filet mignon, wild mushrooms and Yukon gold potatoes in a dill-and-Gruyère cream sauce and an individual spinach soufflé—there had to be three thousand calories on that plate.

While everyone around her tucked in, Gemma mentally calculated the odds of living long enough to hook a man and become a mother if her heart was pumping dill sauce through her veins.

“Something wrong?” Ethan spoke close to her ear.

She glanced at him. Men, she thought, but didn’t say out loud. Men are the problem. In a dove-gray tuxedo that perfectly complemented his golden hair and tanned skin, Ethan had already drawn more attention than the bride. Betcha he could go home with any number of women tonight. Some of the willing ones were probably married. Love was too difficult for some and too easy for others.

“This food is a little rich,” she said.

“Aw, no. Don’t tell me you’re one of those.” He wagged his head tragically.

“One of what?”

“Bird women. The ones who barely taste their food and don’t take it to go, because they don’t have a dog, and there’s no way they’re going to eat anything more interesting than a celery stick, anyway.”

Gemma gaped at him. “You’re kidding, right? Do I look as if all I eat is celery?”

Apparently, he took her words as an invitation to let his gaze roam leisurely over the parts of her he could see while she was seated. He even leaned back a smidgen, as if he was trying to get a look at her bottom. When she glared at him, he grinned.

“You look good.” He nodded to her dinner. “Eat up.”

“I’ve seen your girlfriends,” she said. “Three of them standing together wouldn’t fill out a pair of size-eight jeans.”

“You keep track of the women I date?”

“Of course not.” She managed to sound highly offended. “My mother buys gossip magazines when you’re in them.”

He grinned. “I know. She has me autograph them when I’m in town. Between you and me, I think she’s selling them on eBay.” He nodded, sliced off more meat, chewed, then tried the cheesy potatoes. Gemma’s stomach growled. She picked up her fork and was about to give in to temptation when he observed, “So you read about me when you come home on weekends, then. I’m flattered.”

Abruptly, she retracted her fork. “That is not what I mean. My mother likes to discuss topics of interest to her. She shows me the magazine articles. I don’t seek them out.” Ooh, liar, liar, pants on fire. Raising her chin, she amended, “I have never bought a rag mag.”

That was true, actually. If she saw Ethan on the cover of a magazine, she would read it while standing in line at the market. No money ever transferred hands.

“From what I’ve seen,” she told him, “you prefer to date women whose physical attributes directly correlate to the norm in print and other media. A norm that is dangerously out of touch with a standard attainable for the average healthy American woman.”

He reached for another breadstick—his third—and lathered it with the sweet Irish butter Elyse had requested. “Could you say that again? In English this time, Professor.”

“You date skeletons!” She wanted his breadstick so badly she nearly grabbed it out of his hand. For the past two months, Elyse had begged her to diet. Her best efforts had led to a loss of four measly pounds, which would be back again before breakfast tomorrow. She needed food. She wanted food.

The breadstick, gorgeously buttered, hovered between them. She pointed. “Are you going to eat that?”

Flashing his most gorgeous smile, he held it out. “I’m happy to share. And happy you’re going to eat. I like you the way you are.”

Unexpectedly her heart filled the hole in her stomach. He liked her. The way she was.

Don’t get carried away. He offered you a breadstick, not a diamond ring. Who could blame her, though, if after a lifetime of being the “smart” sister, it felt good to have a man like Ethan pay her a compliment?