And Babies Make Four

Eloise tossed her head. “Fight this, of course.” There’d never been any doubt in her mind that she would. Above all else, she’d been blessed with the courage of her own convictions. She would have thought that had become evident by now to everyone.

“I’m not one of those socialites who likes to sit back and watch her nail polish dry. Manhattan Multiples is a long way off from closing its doors. We have fund-raisers to throw and legal issues to stand on. If Bill Harper thinks that we’re going to ‘go gentle into that good night,’ he definitely has another think coming.”

Twenty-something Josie Tate, Manhattan Multiples’ very own walking, breathing tribute to the sixties hippie era as well as their head receptionist, turned the corner just in time to catch the last part of Eloise’s declaration.

“Dylan Thomas, right?” Josie asked brightly, guessing at the origin of Eloise’s reference.

Glancing her way, Eloise nodded her reply. Josie was wearing a wide, ruffled skirt that contained every bright color known to civilized woman within its fabric. It was offset by a black velvet vest that seemed completely out of sync with the damp, humid July day outside the building. But then, Eloise had long since ceased being surprised by Josie’s choice of clothing. And, in an odd sort of way, the twenty-five-year-old pseudo hippie/poet/receptionist added to the charm that was Manhattan Multiples just as much as the pastel decor and soothing music that was piped in during the day.

Self-taught and pleased with herself, Josie grinned. “Hey, I wrote a new poem.” She held up the piece of paper she’d labored over all last night. It was filled with handwriting only Josie could decipher. “Anyone want to hear it?”

In her off hours, Josie wrote poetry and gave readings all over the city to receptive groups of budding poets and would-be musicians in search of lyrics. Her bright-blue eyes jumped from one woman to the other, as if eagerly waiting for a response.

“Only if it’s something that would inspire a fight rally,” Eloise told her.

Allison was already withdrawing. Although they were friends, they were as different in their approach to life and in their interests outside the center as night was to day. The expression on her heart-shaped face was apologetic. “Maybe later.”

Undaunted, Josie pretended to sigh. “A prophet is never honored in her hometown.”

“You hold that thought,” Eloise advised with a laugh, patting her shoulder. “And in the meantime, see if you can come up with something catchy that we can use to help fry our illustrious mayor’s butt.”

“That seems like a waste,” Josie confided. “The man’s got one hell of a cute butt.”

“Josie!” Allison looked at her friend incredulously. “He’s the mayor.”

“That doesn’t stop him from having a cute butt—although the odds are against it.” She grinned, turning toward Eloise. “I’ll see what I can do,” she promised.

Spinning on her heel, Josie headed back the way she’d come. Break was almost over and she had a desk to oversee and people to welcome.

It had been five days.

Jason flipped back the pages on his desk calendar. Time to stop trying to find fault with her, he decided. He pushed the calendar back on his desk. That was what he’d been doing, he thought. Consciously and unconsciously he’d been searching for flaws, for ways to get Mindy to give up and quit.

Who would have ever thought that he would one day be trying to push Mindy Conway away?

Mindy Richards, Jason reminded himself. She was Mindy Richards now, and with a husband in her life or not, she had no place in Jason’s.

Nothing and no one had a place in his life except for work. He owed the people who paid him good money for advice 110 percent of his abilities—and the same portion of his mind. They weren’t paying him to spend his time thinking about Mindy. Wondering about Mindy. Yearning for Mindy.

There, he’d said it, albeit silently. He wanted her. Wanted her in every sense of the word. That was no way for an employer to feel about someone who worked for him. That embodied the cornerstone of sexual harassment.

Except that he hadn’t, of course. Hadn’t touched her, hadn’t harassed her. Had hardly said very much of anything that wasn’t absolutely work related after that first day. The way he treated her, she might as well have been a stranger who had come in off the street.

Except that she wasn’t.

Still, it was doing her a huge disservice to try to fire her when she was so damn good, so damn eager. She actually looked as if she liked what she was doing. Nathalie was already saying that Mindy was invaluable and she didn’t know how they’d gotten along without her all these years.

Nathalie would say that.

Having someone competent as an administrative assistant freed her up to enjoy her own life a little more. Not that Nathalie had conducted her life like a cloistered nun before Mindy had come on the scene. Twice married, and divorced just as many times, Nathalie knew how to kick up her heels and enjoy life to the fullest. None of the inhibitions that plagued normal men and women seemed to have been woven into her makeup.

That he behaved like a monk in a secluded mountainside monastery had always been a source of discontent for her. Nathalie acted as if getting him to come around was her own personal crusade. He was certain that the temps she’d hired before Mindy had all been chosen not for their office proficiency but for their looks. Each seemed to have been more pretty than the last. And all had been largely empty-headed.

Which brought him back full circle to Mindy.

Beauty and brains. It was a hard combination for a man to resist, and he found himself less and less inclined to do so with each day that went by. If it wasn’t for the fact that he had a disastrous marriage in his background, he’d be sorely tempted to break self-imposed employer-employee regulations and ask Mindy out.

And ask for trouble along with it.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?

And right now, Mindy Richards was the best thing that had ever happened to Mallory and Dixon since they had opened their doors. If he didn’t want to scare her away, he knew he should just keep on going the way he had. Silently.

He had no business thinking what he was thinking. Had even less business getting up from his desk the way he was doing and proceeding to the outer office as if he was on automatic pilot.

Maybe he’d be lucky and she would have left for the day. For the weekend.

But he knew even before he set foot outside his own office that Mindy was still sitting at her desk. For one, she never left without saying good-night, her very words ensuring that at least it would be, as long as he could continue replaying the sound of her voice uttering them in his head.

For another, there was her perfume. It was still as gut-stirringly present as ever. He wondered if there was some way he could get her to stop wearing it so that it would stop haunting him.

He was right. She was there, in the process of powering down her computer and getting her things together. For a second he just stood and watched her. Why did every movement she made seem like poetry?

This was no way for a grown man to think, he told himself.

It didn’t stop him.

He had to say something before she turned around to see him staring at her. He didn’t want her to think he was stalking her. Even if they did belong in the same office at the same time.

Not wanting to startle her, Jason cleared his throat. “Getting ready to go home?”

He could see by the way she jumped that he’d startled her, anyway.

His deep voice shimmered along her skin, melting into her consciousness. Mindy swung around in her chair to look at him.

Jason hadn’t talked to her very much these past four days. Just small sound bites aimed at whatever detail he wanted her to see to. And then he’d been gone, lingering like smoke in her mind but not in fact.

She half thought she imagined the sound of his voice now, but there he was, in his doorway. The next moment he was walking toward her.

Mindy nodded toward the clock on the wall. “It’s after five. I thought I’d close up shop.” Nathalie had already left for what she’d announced was going to be a very long, very sexy weekend, hinting that she probably was going to spend most of it in bed. The vibrant woman had punctuated the last remark with a significant look aimed at Jason that neither he, nor she, had missed.

Her purse hovered over the drawer as she held it aloft. “Unless you need me for something.”

He couldn’t help it. The remark made him laugh. If she only knew, he thought.

Jason saw a wide smile crease her lips in response. “I forgot you could do that.”

He wasn’t following her. “Do what?”

“Laugh. Not that I heard you do it very often in high school,” she confessed. The times that she had, it had sent warm ripples through her stomach. It was the kind of deep, sexy laugh that pulled you in, painting improbable, unattainable scenarios in your head.

Surprised, Jason leaned a hip against her desk as he folded his arms before his chest. He probed a little. “I didn’t think that you were even aware of me in high school.”

“I asked you to sign my yearbook,” Mindy reminded him.

That had made an impression on him, but one that he’d thought was fueled only by his own imagination. He’d never possessed a bloated ego. “I thought you were asking everyone.”

She looked at him for a second. Was he serious? Didn’t he know how many girls would have loved to have gone out with him? That he’d been the school’s brooding man of mystery? They’d all held their breaths to see who he’d ask to the prom. And when he didn’t ask anyone, or attend, they’d all thought that was so typically Jason, to be above mundane things like proms and graduation parties.

“There was hardly room in my book for everyone. Just the people I wanted.” God, did that sound as much of a come-on as she thought it did? She sincerely hoped the blush she felt forming inside her wouldn’t rise up to color her face.

He lifted a shoulder, letting it drop. She was just being polite, nothing more.

“Our paths didn’t exactly cross.” She’d been part of every major event that took place in high school, while Jason had simply kept to himself, his focus on his goals. Only, his mind had remained on her.

Maybe he didn’t remember, she thought. Maybe she’d only imagined that he’d look her way. Maybe it was someone else who had caught his attention and she’d only been in his line of sight, as invisible as air to him. Still, her pride made her remind him. “You were in my math class. And in economics.”

He was really surprised that she’d even noticed that, much less remembered it. He truly doubted that she was aware of the fact that he used to come in early just to watch her walk through the door. And wish he were one of the guys who clustered around her.

But it wasn’t in his nature to cluster, and the risks he took were never truly risks, but completely calculated actions. Putting himself out there, exposed, was not the way he operated.

“Really? I don’t remember.”

To say that she did, that she even remembered some of the outfits he wore, like that black turtleneck sweater he seemed to favor and those tight jeans that had caused her to actually snap her pencil in two the first day she’d seen him walking into class wearing them, would have placed her in an awkward position.

So instead, to save face, something that she had very little of these days, Mindy merely shrugged her slim shoulders. “You were kind of hard to miss.” In case he got the wrong idea, she quickly added, “You sat in front of Terry Malone.”

Terry Malone. Tall, blond. Rich. Perfect. With three track-and-field letters adorning his school jacket. Had he been able to find a picture of the guy, Terry’s face would have adorned the dartboard on the back of his bedroom door.

“Right. Your boyfriend.”

Mindy looked at him sharply. Jason couldn’t have known that, if he’d been as unaware of her as he was leading her to believe.

A little ripple of satisfaction danced through her.

She smiled. “It all seems like such a very long time ago.”

“Yeah, well—”

Straightening, Jason looked toward the outer office door. He should be going. Now. Before he said something stupid and had to have his foot surgically removed from his mouth.

He was going to leave, Mindy thought. To go to whatever life he had outside of this office. Her evening and the weekend that was to follow was going to be spent trying to make the tiny one-room apartment she rented into a home.

Suddenly she didn’t feel like going there, didn’t feel like being alone.

She could always go to Manhattan Multiples, she supposed. There was always someone there to talk to, even as late as ten o’clock. She could even take Lara Mancini up on her offer, if the woman was there tonight.

Or she could go to see her parents. That was always a viable option. Her parents always made her feel welcome and wanted.

But she didn’t want to be someone’s patient or someone’s daughter tonight. She wanted to feel the way she used to, like someone who could have the world at her feet if she just applied herself.

Like someone whose husband hadn’t run her self-esteem into the ground and cheated on her. Like someone whose husband hadn’t said, “that’s tough,” when she’d told him she was pregnant.

She wanted the bright, shining life she thought she had when she’d graduated high school.

Without realizing it, Mindy allowed a sigh to escape her lips.

She might not have realized it, but Jason did. He heard her. It stopped him in his tracks and made him turn from the door. And say something he had absolutely no intention of saying.

“Would you like to go somewhere and get a cup of coffee?”

He watched Mindy brighten like a thirsty flower turning up its head toward the first spring rain. “I’d love to.”

Big mistake.

The warning echoed in his head. But the sound of her response drowned it out. So he smiled, ignoring the former, replaying the latter, and said, “Then let’s go. Places around here tend to fill up fast with people escaping to the first leg of their weekend.”

Purse in hand, she was on her feet instantly. “Let’s,” she agreed.

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