Baby Business: Baby Steps

The occasional rapacious glance aside. Yes, he might be willing to take responsibility for his own child, or a nondemanding stray cat, but that was it.

Which she knew. Had known all along. Remember?

“And just to set your mind at ease,” she said, “I learned a long time ago it’s easier to grow orchids in the Antarctic than to convert a die-hard bachelor into husband material. And lost causes ain’t my thang. Because, someday? You better believe I want ‘all that messy emotional stuff.’ And the strings. Oh, God, I want strings so bad I can taste them. But only from somebody who wants them as badly as I do. So you can quit with the don’t-get-any-ideas signals, okay? Message received, C.J. Loud and clear.”

His eyes bore into hers for a long moment, then he said, “So we’ll go shopping after we get off work tomorrow night?”

“Sure,” she said, then left the kitchen, Steve trotting after her, hopping up onto her bed as though he owned it. She and the cat faced off for several seconds, she daring him to stay, he daring her to make him get down. Finally she crawled into bed, yanking up the cover. “Mess with my birds and you’re toast.”

The cat gave a strained little eerk in reponse, then settled in by her thighs, absolutely radiating smugness.

No wonder C.J. hadn’t taken the thing to the pound.

Sunlight slapped Dana awake the next morning, along with the alarm clock’s blat … blat … blat. Like a sheep with a hangover. Groaning, she opened one eye to discover that she’d apparently hit the snooze button.

Three times.

Covers, and a very pissed cat, went flying as she catapulted from the bed and hurtled toward Ethan’s room, not even bothering with her robe since C.J. had said he’d be gone by eight, and—sad to say—eight had long since passed.

“Hey, sugar,” she sang, sailing through the door, “you ready to get up …?”

No baby.

She scurried across the room to check the crib more closely, because that’s what you do when you’re not firing on all jets yet and the baby entrusted to your care isn’t where you last left him, only to spin around and make tracks toward the kitchen, hoping against hope C.J. had lied about leaving at eight and/or that wherever he was, Ethan was with him.

But no. Oh, she found Ethan, who greeted her from his high-chair with a joyful “Ba!” But instead of a tall, good-looking man in his prime, there, beside the baby, stood (at least, Dana thought she was standing, she wasn’t quite sure) a short, squat, black-haired woman whose prime, Dana was guessing, had predated color television. But before she could get the words, “And you are?” out of her mouth, the phone rang. Whoever-she-was picked it up, said, “Sì, Mr. C.J., she is right here,” and held it out to Dana with what could only be called a beatific, if curious, smile.

“Hey,” C.J. said, “did I happen to mention Guadalupe?”

Dana’s gaze slid over to the smiling woman. “I take it that’s who answered the phone?”

“That would be her. She comes in to clean for me twice a week. It completely slipped my mind that today was her day. I briefly explained things to her when she came in this morning. I would have awakened you before I left, but Steve looked like he’d remove a limb if I tried.”

With a flickering smile at Guadalupe, whose steady stream of Spanish Ethan was apparently eating up as enthusiastically as his rice cereal, Dana carted the portable phone out of earshot. “Never mind that I nearly had a heart attack when I went to get Ethan out of his crib and he wasn’t there,” she whispered into the phone. “A little warning might’ve been nice. And how the heck does one briefly explain the sudden appearance of a baby and a strange woman in your house?” She put up a hand, even though he couldn’t see her. “Unfamiliar, I mean.”

After a barely perceptible pause, she heard, “You have no idea how tempting it is to say, no, you were right the first time.”

“And where I come from, bantering before coffee is a hanging offense.”

A soft laugh preceded, “In any case, I simply told her the truth, that Ethan’s my son and you’re his cousin, that neither of us knew of his existence two weeks ago, and that we’re trying to figure out the best way to handle a very complicated situation. She seemed to take it in stride. But then, taking things in stride is what Guadalupe does. You’ll see.” He paused, as though catching his breath. “I really do apologize for the brain cramp. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, now. Five minutes ago was something else again. Look, thanks for calling, but I’m running seriously late—”

“Right, me, too, I’ve got an appointment in ten. See you tonight, then.”

And he was gone. Dana told herself the sense of watching an un-subtitled foreign movie was due to the combination of severe caffeine deprivation and leftover heart arrhythmia from the earlier shock.

She returned to the kitchen, where Guadalupe was busy wiping down a squealing Ethan, who wasn’t taking kindly to having his attempts at pulverizing a blob of cereal on his high chair tray thwarted whenever Guadalupe grabbed his little hand to clean it. The older woman flicked a brief, but chillingly astute, glance in Dana’s direction.

“So,” she said. “Mr. C.J. says you are not the mother?”

Dana shook her head. “No. His mother’s my cousin.”

“She as pretty as you?”

Warmth flooded Dana’s face at the out-of-left-field compliment. She sidled over to the coffemaker and poured herself a huge cup. “Trish is … very different from me,” she said, dumping in three packets of artificial sweetener, some half-and-half. “Lighter hair. Tallish. Skinny.”

One eyebrow lifted, Guadalupe went for the other little hand. “So how well do you and Mr. C.J. know each other?”

“Not very, really. Oh, let me take the baby, I need to get him dressed to go to my mother’s.”

“I can get him dressed, just leave out what you would like him to wear. And while you shower, I fix breakfast, no? I bring eggs, chorizo, the green chile for Mr. C.J.,” she said when Dana opened her mouth. “There is plenty extra for you. Is muy bueno, you will like. So, go,” she said, shooing.

Fifteen minutes later, Dana returned, face done, hair up, body clothed in a silky loose top and a drapey, ankle-length skirt in jewel tones that coordinated with the plastic fruit gracing her high-heeled, Lucite mules. The baby was dressed and in his car seat, ready to go; from the tempered glass breakfast table, a plate of steaming, fragrant eggs and sausage beckoned. Her brain said, “Stick with the coffee,” but her stomach said, “Who are you kidding?”

After depositing her purse on the island, she clicked across the stone floor, sat at the table. Lifted fork to mouth. Groaned in ecstasy.

“Is good, no?” Guadalupe said, smiling, from the sink.

“Delicious. Thank you.”

“De nada. You cook?”

“I love to cook. But I’ve never gotten the hang of Mexican.”

“I teach you, if you like. I teach all my daughters, now my grandchildren. Twenty-seven,” she said with a grin, and Dana nearly choked on her eggs.

“Goodness. Y’all must have some Thanksgivings.”

The old woman threw back her head and laughed, her bosoms shaking. “Sì, last year we had three turkeys and two hams, and enough enchiladas to feed half of Albuquerque. Done?” she asked, when Dana stood, whisking away her empty plate before she had a chance to carry it to the sink.

“Well, this little guy and I better hit the road,” she said, moving toward the seat, which Guadalupe had set by the patio door in a patch of filtered sunshine. But the old woman touched her arm.

“I know I am a stranger to you, but I have worked for Mr. C.J. for many years, I am good with children, you could leave el poco angel with me….”

“Oh … I’m sorry, I can’t. Not because I don’t trust you,” she hastily added at the woman’s hurt expression, “but my mother would kill me. Because it’s very possible that Ethan’s as close as she’s going to get to a grandchild. At least for the foreseeable future.”

Confusion clouded the dark eyes for a moment, replaced by an understanding sympathy so strong Dana was glad for the excuse to squat in front of the baby’s seat. Steve shoved himself against her calves, mewing for attention.

“Hey, guy,” Dana said softly, crouching in front of Ethan, who gave her a wide, trembly smile when she came into focus. “Ready to go? You are?” she said, laughing, when the baby started pumping his arms. “Well, come on then, your Auntie Faye’s waitin’ on you….”

Just like that, the unfairness of it all squeezed her heart so tightly, she could barely breathe. Clutching the sides of the seat, waiting for her lungs to get with the program, she heard behind her, very gently, “What will you do when your cousin comes back for her niño?”

Dana stood, hefting seat and baby into her arms. “There’s no guarantee that she will.”

“But if she does?”

“Then I suppose we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

“And if the bridge is one you do not wish to cross?”

Balancing the seat against one hip, Dana grabbed her purse off the counter and slung it over her shoulder. “Thanks again for breakfast, it was great,” she said, making herself smile. “Will you be here this evening when we get home?”

Heat flooded Dana’s cheeks at the slip. We and home in the same sentence? After one day?

A little presumptuous, yes?

Guadalupe’s eyes narrowed, but all she said was, “I usually leave at three, there is not much to clean in a house where only one person lives. But anytime you need me to take care of this precious child,” she hastily added, “I will be more than happy to stay. You have a good day, Miss Dana, okay?”

Yeah, well, Dana thought as she lugged His Highness out to her car, she’d do her best.

During a lull between appointments, C. J. brought Val into his office, shut the door and told her about Ethan. Not surprisingly, the further into the story he got, the higher went her eyebrows, until he half thought they’d crawl off her face altogether.

“The Trish who worked here?” she said at the appropriate point in the narrative. “What the hell were you thinking, boy?”

“Could we please not go there, Val? The past is past.”

“Actually, it looks to me like the past just came up and bit you on the butt, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so.”

“If I did, I wouldn’t have told you. But wait. There’s more.”

There went the eyebrows again. “You mean, you can top a six-month-old son you didn’t know about?”

“I don’t know about topping, but …” His desk chair creaked when he leaned back in it. “You remember Dana Malone? The woman who was in here a couple of weeks ago?”

“Sure do. Cute little thing. Big eyes. What about her?”

“Trish is her cousin. And she kind of … left the baby with her. Granted her guardianship, actually. In writing. So she’s kind of … living with me. Well, they are. Dana and the baby.”

Three, four seconds later, Val blinked at him, then lifted her hands in an I-don’t-even-want-to-know gesture. Then she sighed. “I knew there was somethin’ goin’ on, I just knew it, the way you were acting mush-brained all last week. And didn’t I tell you I’d find out?” When he didn’t answer—because, really, what could he say?—she finally sank into the chair across from his desk, her eyes brimming with concern. “So what are you going to do?”

“Find Trish. Solidify custody arrangements. After that …” He shrugged. “Take it day by day, I guess. Although I guess I’ll be cutting back my hours, so I can spend time with … with my son.”

“Boy, those are two words I never thought I’d hear come out of your mouth.”

His mouth stretched. “You and me both.”

“Couldn’t you get one of those au pairs or something?”

C.J.’s stomach turned, even as he grimaced. “I suppose I’ll have to look into it eventually. But it has to be the right person. And I have to get the idea past Dana’s mother first.

“And what about the gal? Dana? How’s she fit into all of this? Long-range, I mean?”

“Hell, Val. Right now, I’m doing well to plan out the next ten minutes. I can’t even begin to wrap my head around ‘long range’.”

Any more than he’d been able to wrap his head around that bantering business this morning. Because bantering was not something he did, as a general rule. Oh, he could hold his own in a serious discussion with the best of ‘em, as long as the conversation stayed on safe topics. Like politics or religion. And as long as it was conducted from behind nice, thick impersonal walls.

But Dana had no walls. Dana, in fact, was the antiwall.

Dana not only made him banter, she made him want to banter. To indulge in playful, affectionate exchanges, like some happy couple on a sitcom.

And all this after less than twenty-four hours in his house.

He started at Val’s touch on his arm. “There anything I can do?” she asked gently.

“Other than promise me you won’t start sending out your résumé?” He shook his head. “Nope. Not a damn thing. I’m all on my own with this one.”

For the rest of the day, work crowded his thoughts, albeit with an occasional detour into the personal when he spoke with Elena (no, she hadn’t found anything yet, but it had only been a day, after all), and when the papers his father had promised finally arrived, prompting C.J. to realize he should probably tell the old man he was a grandfather, at some point. Not yet, though. Not until he’d come to terms with the whole thing himself. And one by one, he told the other agents he’d be turning over more clients to them. And why. If they were shocked, none of them let on. Not too much, anyway.

At six, he left. Just like that. Packed his briefcase and walked out the door. Not to see a property, or a client, but his own child.

And Dana, he thought with a tingle of anticipation that made him frown. It was okay to like her, he reassured himself as he steered the Mercedes across town, thinking how strange it was to be heading home while it was still this light, this early. But was it okay to look forward quite so much to being with her, to hearing her laughter, to being the brunt of her gentle teasing? Wasn’t it cheating, the one-sidedness of it?

It had been wrong, and selfish, to bring her here, he thought as he parked his car beside hers, already in the driveway. Even more wrong to have put her in such a tenuous position, he chided himself as he walked into the house, heard those silly birds of hers, then her laughter, blending with the baby’s from several rooms away.

He found them in Ethan’s room, where she was changing the baby’s diaper, still dressed from work, he assumed, in some floaty skirt and top, a pair of crazy shoes that made him smile. Made him … other things. She looked up at his entrance, her smile dimming slightly, and a brief, bright spark of annoyance flashed in his brain, that she should feel wary of him. That she needed to continue being wary, for her own good.

As if sensing C.J.’s entrance, Ethan twisted himself around, grinning. Trusting. After a moment of stillness, all four limbs struck out simultaneously, pumping the air in pure, joyful abandon.

“Somebody’s sure glad to see his daddy,” Dana said Oh, God. This was what it was like, having someone to come home to.

Having someone giddy with happiness that you’d come home.

Giddy. Not wary.

“Oh, shoot,” Dana said. “I brought home a whole bag of clothes for him from the shop, but I left them in the other room.”

“Stay there, I’ll get them.”

Grateful for a moment to regroup, C.J. sprinted down the hall and into Dana’s room, glancing around for the telltale bright blue Great Expectations bag, at last spotting it on a chair beside a little writing desk the decorator had called “too, too precious for words.” In grabbing the bag, however, he bumped the desk, startling the open laptop on top of it awake.

To a word processing program she hadn’t shut down.

Chapter Eight

He hadn’t meant to read the text that appeared on the screen, but eyes will do what eyes will do, and before he knew it, he’d scrolled through five or six pages of some of the driest, funniest stuff he’d read in ages—

“Ohmigod … no!” He turned to see Dana striding across the carpet, a diapered Ethan clinging to her hip. “Nobody’s supposed to see that,” she said, slapping closed the computer, her cheeks flushed.

“You wrote this?” he asked.

“Yes, but—”

“But, nothing. It’s good, Dana. No, I’m serious,” he said when she snorted. “The old Southern lady going on and on about her ailments …” He chuckled. “Priceless. You should be published.”

Her blush deepened. “Yeah, well, it’s not that easy.”

C.J. took the baby from her, a little surprised to see how quickly he’d grown used to the squirmy, solid weight in his arms. How quickly, and completely, the instinct to protect this tiny person had swamped the initial shock and panic and anger. “Have you even tried?” he said, laying the baby on the bed, then holding out his hand, indicating to Dana she needed to give him something to put on the kid.

“Um … well, no. I mean, I can’t, it’s not finished yet.”

“Then finish it,” he said, taking the little blue sailor outfit from her and popping it over the baby’s head. Getting arms and legs into corresponding openings was a bit trickier, however, so it took a while for him to realize Dana had gone silent behind him. When he turned, her eyes were shiny. And, yes, wide.

“You really think it’s good?” she asked.

“I really do. And for what it’s worth, I’m not a total philistine. I minored in contemporary American lit in college. So I know my stuff.”

“Oh. Wow. I’m …”

“… extremely talented. Really.”

She blinked at him for another few seconds, then said, “So. Are you ready to storm Smith’s?”

Ah. He’d embarrassed her. She’d get over it. What he wouldn’t get over, he realized as they all trooped out to his car, in which he’d installed the Cadillac of baby seats in the back, was that he’d never championed anyone before. Had never met anyone he’d wanted to champion.

What a rush. A breath-stealing, heart-stopping, panic-inducing rush.

Once in the store, he gave her free rein, offering little comment as she filled the cart with vegetables and fruits and roasts and fish and whole grain breads, with things he had no idea what to do with, other than to consume them once they’d been cooked. A perk he hadn’t even thought about, when he’d asked her to move in. And one he couldn’t help feeling a pang of guilt about now. Not a huge pang—he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had roast pork—but a twinge nonetheless.

“Your cooking for me wasn’t part of the arrangement.”

After a smile for the baby when he grabbed for C.J.’s hand with the obvious intention of gnawing on his onyx ring, she said, “I’m not cooking for you. I’m cooking for myself.” She snagged several boxes of Jell-O off the shelf, tossing them into the cart. “May as well toss in a little extra while I’m at it.”

“So I take it you know your way around a kitchen?”

“People who love to eat generally love to cook.” She held up a small jar. “How do you feel about capers?”

“Just don’t put them in the Jell-O.”

“Deal.”

And so it went, their conversation. Careful. Circumspect. He talked about work, she intermittently grilled him about his food preferences. He’d have had to be blind to not notice that she didn’t look his way unless she absolutely had to, that her smiles were fleeting, rationed. Strike what he’d thought before about her not having any walls, because there was definitely one up between them now, transparent and flimsy though it may have been. Not that she was a whiner. In fact, it was the way she seemed to curl around her obvious bad mood, swallowing her true feelings, that annoyed him so much. He didn’t like this Dana, he wanted the other Dana back, the one who’d tease and flash that dimpled smile for him.

Periodically piercing the annoyance, however, was the swell of pride whenever someone stopped to admire Ethan. Which happened approximately every twenty feet. And Ethan took to his role as the charmer with equanimity, bequeathing wrinkle-nosed, two-toothed grins on everyone who spoke to him. After one gushing elderly couple continued on their way, C.J. looked at the baby and said, “How could anyone walk away from such a perfect kid?”

That was enough to earn him a sideways glance, at least. And a smirk. “Says the man who’s lived with the child for one night. Believe me, he has his moments—”

“Ohmigosh, aren’t you just the cutest little thing?” yet another admirer said, cooing at the baby as though she’d never seen one. “Oh, would you look at those two little teeth! How old?” she asked Dana.

“Six and a half months.”

“Aw, that’s such a wonderful age. Enjoy it, honey—it goes so fast. I had four, they’re all parents of teenagers themselves now, but it still seems like yesterday. And look at you, expecting again already, bless your heart! Well, bye-bye, sweetie,” she said to Ethan with a fluttery wave, then trotted off.

The whooshing in C.J.’s ears nearly obliterated the piped-in seventies oldie bouncing off the freezer cases. At last he turned to Dana, his heart cracking at the stoic expression on her face.

“You want me to go beat her up?”

“That’s very sweet,” she said with a fleeting smile, “but I think I’ll pass. And anyway, better she think I’m pregnant than I’m nothing but a lazy slob without the willpower to starve myself down to a size eight.”

“One isn’t better than the other, Dana.”

“Maybe not. But I’m used to it. Come on,” she said quietly, nudging the cart toward the checkout. “It’s getting close to Ethan’s bedtime.”

If she’d been subdued before, she was downright uncommunicative on the ride back to the house, his every attempt to draw her out meeting with little more than a monosyllabic reply.

Oh, man, not since he was a kid had he felt this … this extraneous. Not that he hadn’t been well aware of his inability to connect with another human being except on the most basic of levels, but if this didn’t drive it home, boy, he didn’t know what did. Because, whether he understood it or not, whether he liked it or not, he did genuinely care about this woman, about what she was feeling. He hated seeing her hurt. But even more, he hated not knowing what to do to make it better.

When they got back to the house, he offered to get Ethan ready for bed while Dana started their dinner. He wondered, as he carted his sleepy son down the hall, how he thought some biological connection was going to make him any more able to fix the inevitable hurts for his child than for Dana. With that, the resentment demons roared back out onto the field from where he’d tried desperately to keep them benched, fangs and claws glinting in the harsh light of C.J.’s own fear.

Ethan lay quietly on the changing table during the diaper-changing process, gnawing like mad on his fist, watching C.J. with those damn trusting eyes, and hot tears bit at the backs of C.J.’s. He hadn’t wanted this, he thought bitterly, stuffing plump little legs into a pair of lightweight pajama bottoms. Hadn’t asked for it—

The baby clung to him like a little koala when he picked him up, and C. J. clung right back, his hand cradling his son’s head, his cheek pressed against one tiny shell of a little ear.

How the hell was he supposed to be something he didn’t know how to be?

He lowered Ethan into his crib, unable to resist the tug to his emotions when the kid grabbed his blanket, his eyelids drooping almost immediately. “‘Night, Scooter,” he whispered, slightly startled when the nickname popped out of its own accord. Then he stepped into Dana’s room to grab the baby monitor off her nightstand, his emotions assailing him a second time at the basic here-ness of her—a pair of shoes, carelessly kicked underneath the chair, her lingering scent. The laptop, firmly closed, like an old woman with secrets.