Bringing Up Babies

Lily felt as if time had come to a screeching halt. Looking confused and shocked, he peered at her hair, her face, and the bear-covered pajama leg that peeked out from beneath the hem of her pink chenille robe. A noise sounding like a groan or a laugh erupted from the back of his throat, but before Lily could be sure, he brought his hand to his mouth and pretended to cough.

“You can manage the kids alone, can’t you?” he asked slowly, his voice shaking as if he were desperately trying to control it.

She suspected he was laughing at her, and her chin lifted. “Why don’t you just go and get ready for your meeting…or change clothes or brief yourself on your notes. I’ll take care of the kids.”

“No,” he said, then coughed to clear his throat again. “That’s fine. I’m fine. Why don’t you go shower or whatever and I’ll finish up here?”

“Because we’re supposed to be working together,” Lily insisted, determined to make her point. She didn’t care if he didn’t like her hair, her lack of makeup or her pajamas. She wasn’t losing this job without a fight. “What do the kids usually do now?” she asked, walking to Taylor’s high chair. Seeing that Chas had dressed all three babies in little sweatpants, T-shirts and tiny tennis shoes, she said, “If they’re going outside, I can take them outside. If they usually watch ‘Sesame Street,’ I can take them to the family room. I’m perfectly qualified.”

“You’re also in your pajamas,” Chas said, sounding exasperated. “You can’t go outside.”

Lily glanced down at her robe. “I could still take them into the family room to watch TV,” she mumbled indignantly.

“Or you could take your shower and really be ready to care for them when I leave.”

Lily saw she was being foolish and combed her fingers through her unruly hair. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” Chas said patiently. “Working with the triplets takes a while to get used to.”

“That’s not it,” Lily said, deciding she had to get this out in the open or she’d make herself crazy. It was hard enough to deal privately with her attraction to him. She couldn’t handle worrying about being fired, too. “I’m afraid you’re going to fire me, and I can’t afford to lose this job.”

Chas busied himself with Annie again. “I’m not going to fire you.”

Though it wasn’t a sweeping declaration of competency, Lily recognized that it had to be enough. She was justifiably insecure, because her ego had taken a real beating when Everett had left her at the altar. But more than that, she knew if she didn’t soon trust someone about something, she’d never reenter the real world. Chas might not be promising her a job forever, but he was backhandedly telling her he felt she was qualified to care for his three children, and that was a big, important deal. Knowing how much he and his brother Grant adored these kids, she understood they wouldn’t trust them to just anyone.

She nodded. “Okay. Then I’ll stop driving you nuts. I’ll shower and get dressed, and everything will go back to normal.”

Long after she was gone, Chas continued to stare at the alcove. He stared so long that it took two squeals from Annie before he came back to the present. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew that Lily would have some self-doubt from being left at the altar. Anybody would. But he still found her last statement incomprehensible. How could anyone as absolutely stunning as she was—a woman who brought him to groaning despair even without makeup, with sleep-tousled hair, and wearing pajamas covered with bears—ever think any house in which she lived would be normal?

Chas left the house about two hours later but not without making a big production about saying goodbye, leaving telephone numbers and giving Lily so many instructions she knew there was no way she could remember them all.

Particularly when she was having such a hard time concentrating on what he was saying.

It hadn’t occurred to her that he would have to dress for a business meeting, and when he walked down the spiral staircase, looking like someone off the cover of GQ she almost fainted. But it was the way he kissed each child goodbye, giving them individualized words of affection to make each one feel special, that really snagged her heart.

Before it was all over she could have hugged him for being so charmingly sweet to those babies. But thinking about hugging him tumbled into thinking about kissing him, and the mere thought of his lips touching hers sent a bubble of excitement through her, and she couldn’t get him out of the house fast enough.

When the sound of his car finally faded into silence, she breathed a sigh of relief.

“What is the matter with me? How could I get flustered so easily?” she asked the three eight-month-old babies who sat in the play yard staring up at her. “You’d swear I’d never seen a man in a suit before,” she added, bending to pick up a spongy ball, that had been tossed over the net railing by one of the kids, though none of them had cried or squealed for it.

She was glad they were happily settled, because she needed a minute to deliberate on this. In spite of what she’d told the kids, she understood that the problem wasn’t merely that Chas was physically attractive—though that masked the real culprit. The truth was, in a matter of two days Chas Brewster had begun to endear himself to her because he was so loving with the children.

She confirmed that conclusion when Chas returned home that afternoon and barely put down his briefcase before he reached into the play yard, stroking Cody’s hair, as he scooped Annie out and cooed to Taylor.

Leaning against the den door, Lily smiled, confident that she would be able to keep herself in line, now that she had deduced she was losing control because he was a sweetheart with the triplets. Any woman would be charmed by a man who could be so genuinely good to kids.

Grateful that her attraction wasn’t unusual, she gladly deemed this particular dilemma to be manageable. But when Chas turned and pierced her with a look, one of those uniquely masculine expressions that turns most women’s knees to jelly, Lily felt as if her stomach had fallen to the floor. She decided that for every bit as adorable as he was around the kids, and for every bit as much as she believed that was the bottom line to her attraction, she couldn’t discount the fact that he was a virile, sexy man.

“You didn’t have any problems while I was gone, did you?”

“No. Everything was fine.”

He couldn’t have hidden his relief if he’d tried. “Good. Thank God.”

Lily ventured into the room. “Mr. Brewster, I’m actually very competent with children.”

“Please don’t call me, Mr. Brewster,” Chas said, walking away from her, Annie on his arm. “You make me feel like my father.”

“I’m sorry,” Lily said. He was doing it again. Avoiding her at all costs. He didn’t want her help at breakfast, now it appeared he didn’t even want to talk with her. She wondered if it was because she was obvious in her attraction for him, and felt the heat of embarrassment rising to her cheeks. “I’ll try to remember to call you Chas, but to be honest, I’m a little awkward with that.”

He turned, faced her. “Why?” he asked curiously.

“Well, you’re my boss, and I’ve always suspected that when a person had a boss, they should be respectful.”

“You are respectful,” Chas mumbled and again turned away from her, balancing Annie on one arm while he yanked his tie off with the other. “I don’t need to be called mister or sir or any of that nonsense. If we’re going to be living together, Lily, we’re going to have to get accustomed to each other.”

For the first time since she’d met him, Lily realized that getting accustomed to each other was probably going to be as hard for him as it would be for her. As long as everything was clear-cut and professional, he was all right with her, capable of doing whatever needed to be done. But the minute things turned personal, as they frequently did since they were living in the same house, he got quiet, evasive. He never seemed to want to be in the same room with her, didn’t like sharing the chores. Because she’d been wrapped up in her own reaction to him, Lily hadn’t seen he was reacting every bit as poorly to her.

She remembered again that he hadn’t wanted to hire her and that he’d had the typical initial male response to her. He either thought she was a bubble brain or riffraff, though she hadn’t yet figured out which one. She considered being angry, considered letting him deal with the problem himself, but didn’t want to live with anyone who had such a terrible impression of her. As a part of the stronger, more powerful person she needed to become, she chose to change his opinion of her.

“I don’t think it will be so difficult to get accustomed to each other,” she said brightly. “First off we share a very important bond.”

When he faced her he looked pained, as if sharing a bond with her hurt him somehow. “And what is that?”

“Well, we both love the kids,” Lily said carefully, praying she didn’t make things worse by being so bold. “I know I’ve just been around them two days. But it would be impossible not to love such beautiful babies.”

Chas smiled. “They are beautiful.”

“And well behaved,” Lily added hopefully, recognizing she had struck a cord and was making progress. “You and your brothers can be very proud of the good job you’ve done with them so far.”

“We’ve only had them three months,” Chas said with a self-deprecating grin that was so endearing and cute, Lily could have happily melted at his feet, but she didn’t because she had a mission to accomplish. She had to make this man like her, and she had to do it quickly before he lost patience and got rid of her.

Seeing small talk was working, she walked a few steps closer to the desk. “Your father and stepmother were killed in an accident, right?”

He nodded. “Yeah. It was a shock.”

“But at least you all had each other. It’s not like the babies went to strangers.”

“Actually, they did,” Chas said, taking the seat behind the desk and settling Annie on his lap. “My brothers and I had been estranged from our father. We hadn’t even been told about the triplets.”

“Oh,” Lily said, not knowing what else to say and not really wanting to probe, because they’d passed the boundaries of need-to-know information. Though she was anxious to help Chas grow comfortable with her, she knew what it was like to have people asking questions she didn’t want to answer—questions she sometimes couldn’t answer—and she refused to pry for information that wasn’t any of her business.

“It’s okay,” Chas said. “You’re going to hear the gossip in town, anyway. I might as well tell you the story before you hear various and sundry versions that are a little more colorful than they need to be.”

“All right,” Lily said, seeing that he meant what he said and understanding his reasoning. Usually gossip was far, far worse than the truth. He motioned for her to sit as he gathered his thoughts, and she took a seat on the chair in front of the huge mahogany desk.

For several seconds Chas didn’t say anything, and when he did speak it was softly. “My mother died suddenly. She had a heart attack, and the doctor said she went so quickly nothing could have been done for her.”

“I’m sorry.”

Chas nodded his acceptance of her condolence. “It was pretty bad. We all took it very hard. Grant was the worst. He drank himself silly and in general made a nuisance of himself in town. We were all so concerned about him that we hardly paid any attention to my father. The only thing I can clearly remember him saying was that life was short, and he felt he had wasted his.”

“That’s a fairly normal reaction,” Lily confirmed gently, leaning forward, listening to him.

Chas drew in a long breath, awkwardly aware of how good it felt to discuss the situation openly and objectively with someone. He hadn’t realized how much he’d needed to talk about this, and he suspected part of the reason everything seemed to want to tumble out of him was because he didn’t know Lily. She had no preconceived notions and didn’t seem judgmental. He also didn’t have to worry that things he said would come back to haunt him two years from now, because two years from now she might not be here. Whatever the reason for being able to talk to her, he was just glad to have the opportunity to get some of this off his chest.

“In our own grief,” Chas said, though he knew he was rationalizing, “we more or less ignored Dad. One day he came home with a spectacular-looking woman. A tall redhead with sad brown eyes. And we all suspected that he was going to try to set her up with Grant.”

“But he had married her,” Lily put in quietly when Chas fell silent.

He nodded.

“And they had the triplets….”

“No, we had a big fight, raised hell in the local bars for about a week, then stormed out of town as if we had every right to punish Dad.”

“Are you sure you didn’t?”

Chas smiled somberly when she seemingly took his side. “We’ll never know. We didn’t stay around long enough to hear the whole story. My brothers and I got together in Philadelphia, where I was going to school, and made a pact that none of us would ever go home. After a week or so, Grant ran into a family friend who had left Brewster County a few years before. Hunter had started a construction company but he had too much work and couldn’t handle it all, so Grant threw in his lot with him and moved to Georgia. Evan took his life savings and invested it in a company that buys and manages fast-food franchises. Because his entire future was on the line, Evan poured his heart and soul and all his time into that company.”

“And you?”

“And I made a mess of my life.”

“But you were already in law school.”

“Yeah,” Chas said, but in such a self-condemning tone he knew he had to explain himself. “Unfortunately, I also got married twice, divorced twice, was thrown in jail because my wife wrote bad checks and nearly went bankrupt.”

“You did all that in two years?”

“A little over one year. I work fast.”

Lily couldn’t help it, she laughed. “I’ll say you do. You make me feel lazy and slow for only having one relationship in six years.”

“Consider yourself lucky and smart for only having one relationship in six years.”

Lily sighed heavily. “I do, some days. Other days I just feel like an idiot because I didn’t see that Everett had completely lost interest.”

“You think that’s what happened?” Chas asked skeptically.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. All I know is that one day I was planning to spend the rest of my life with the man I loved and the next I was alone and didn’t have a future.”

“Trust me,” Chas said. “You’re better off.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. You don’t want to be in a relationship with someone who isn’t committed. I’ve been there and done that.” He shook his head.

Lily giggled.

“I’ve felt stupid, looked stupid and gone broke because of it,” Chas said, then he laughed. He laughed long and hard, for the first time seeing the humor in it. “I must have seemed like a real dope to the rest of the world,” he said, then suddenly he stopped laughing and looked at Lily. “Oh, I’ll bet my brothers thought I was absolutely crazy.”

“Or distraught,” Lily suggested kindly.

He grabbed her rationale like a drowning man grabs a life preserver. “Really?”

“Sure,” Lily said encouragingly. “For heaven’s sake, you’d lost your mother, then your father. You left your home, but your brothers deserted you. You were looking for company, companionship, maybe even a sense of the future. You weren’t crazy. You weren’t even so much lonely as you probably were grasping at straws.”

Juggling Annie on his lap, Chas considered that. “I spent most of the time I was away trying to figure out where I’d be twenty years from now. I wanted a plan. No, what I really wanted was a crystal ball. I wanted someone to show me that everything was going to turn out okay. And nobody could.”

Lily stayed silent for so long that eventually Chas glanced at her. He understood that she’d waited until she had his attention before she very gently said, “Nobody can. And nobody ever will.”

“I know,” he said. But after she’d left the room, Chas leaned back on his father’s old office chair and sighed. He wondered if she would be so sweet to him if she knew he wanted nothing more than to sleep with her. He’d deliberately told his story to the bitter end, because in a sense that’s truly what it was. A bitter end. He would never marry again. Not because he didn’t want all the things he believed marriage offered, and not because he was too busy setting up his practice, but because he absolutely refused to be a three-time loser. The first time he’d married and divorced he blamed fate and stupidity for his mistake, but the second he hadn’t been quite the idiot he let his brothers believe. He’d loved Charlene. She’d loved him. In the end love wasn’t enough. He would never trust it again, so he would never fall again. It was that simple.

So he had indirectly warned Lily and hoped she was smart enough to heed his admonition, because now that he knew she was as sweet as she was beautiful, he wasn’t exactly sure how much longer he was going to be able to hide his attraction to her.

Though Lily hadn’t wanted it to, Chas’s explanation of his past had made him more attractive because it showed he was a sensitive, honest man. But, thankfully, it also opened her mind to all kinds of new vantage points on the situation.

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