Having the Bachelor's Baby

He’d actually been thinking about introducing himself to her, wondering if he would discover that she was someone he’d known all along. But before he’d had the chance, two other women had spotted her and rushed to say hello, calling her by name.

That was how he’d found out who she was.

Clair Cabot.

Ah, Cassie’s friend…

She’d turned away from him to talk to the other women then, and Ben couldn’t very well hang around waiting for another opportunity to speak to her, so he’d returned to the school gym without saying anything.

Only once he was there, he’d kept an eye on the door, watching for her, still considering approaching her when she came inside. Wondering if he should pretend he remembered her as his sister’s friend….

Except that when she had come inside, she’d gone straight to the reception table to get her name tag and it had seemed as if she’d had an awkward exchange with another couple there. Old enemies—that’s the impression he’d had. Probably a high school rivalry or something. Then she’d disappeared in a hurry into the girls’ locker room.

And that was the last he’d seen of her for more than an hour.

It just hadn’t been the last he’d thought of her.

Which was probably why, when, by pure coincidence, Cassie had asked him to keep her friend Clair company some time later, he’d agreed. Without asking why. Without asking anything. Just feeling a little thrill that he was going to get to see Clair Cabot again and talk to her after all.

Ben pushed his speed up to an almost punishing rate for the last leg of his run, thinking that regardless of the fact that he’d been glad his sister had asked that particular favor of him at the time, Cassie still should have known better. She should have at least warned him that her friend was suffering some kind of post-divorce fallout so he would have had his guard up. So it wouldn’t have mattered how great Clair looked or how funny or sweet she’d been, or how much he’d ultimately enjoyed her company.

So he wouldn’t have done something as dumb as spend the night with her.

The school came into view just then, and the sight of it made him think and that’s another thing…

The school. The Northbridge School for Boys was his priority. His number-one priority. He’d reminded himself of that every time Clair Cabot and her running out on him had come to mind over the past two months.

The school was something he’d wanted to do since the day he’d been released from placement himself. It had been his dream, his goal, to work with kids who were like he’d been, and to do it the way he felt—the way he knew—it should be done.

Now that he’d reached that goal, he was devoting himself to it and to the boys he accepted into the program. It wasn’t something he would do halfheartedly, that was for sure. And until the school was well established, until everything was in order and it was almost running itself, he couldn’t let himself be distracted. Not by anything…or anyone.

And Clair Cabot—purple eyes and blond hair and cute little body or not—had to be strictly relegated to business status, he told himself firmly.

She was there to show him how her father ran the place. To walk him through the billing procedures and teach him how to do the necessary paperwork. She was there to fill him in on what had to be done for social services to certify him.

But that was all she was there for—business.

In fact, tending to business was the reason he’d made the suggestion that they start over—so they could put the night they’d spent together behind them and focus on what needed to be done now.

And when that business was taken care of, she could go back where she’d come from—where she’d run to the morning after the reunion—and he could forget about her.

Except, of course, he hadn’t been able to forget her.

That thought brought him full circle in his musings just as his run came to an end.

So, he asked himself as he walked the final few yards up the drive to cool down, if he hadn’t been successful at forgetting Clair Cabot before, how was he going to do it when she left again?

He wasn’t really sure.

He hoped that maybe it would help that he would be occupied with the opening of the school. That maybe he would just be too busy to think about her.

Or maybe, knowing now that not only was she someone who might disappear on him the way she had at the reunion but also that she was in the inordinately risky newly divorced category, would help cool his jets.

But deep down he didn’t feel too confident in any of those possibilities.

Because he wasn’t sure those jets she’d fired up two months ago would ever cool down.

Especially when so many of his thoughts about her came complete with memories of what had been one of the most incredible nights of his life….

It had taken Clair a while to fall asleep Monday night. Between being in the small, two-bedroom cottage where she’d lived with her dad, and all the mixed emotions she had about seeing Ben again, she’d been awake until after 1:00 a.m.

As a result she was late getting up Tuesday morning. And even though she only took a quick shower and raced through dressing in jeans and a crop-sleeved crewneck T-shirt, she still arrived in the kitchen of the main house after both Ben and Cassie.

“I’m so sorry to keep you guys waiting,” Clair apologized. “I overslept.”

“You didn’t keep me waiting,” Cassie assured from where she was standing at the entrance to the kitchen. “I just got here myself.”

“Okay then, I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” Clair amended, aiming that portion of the apology at Ben, who was sitting at one end of the long, rectangular table.

“Don’t let it happen again or I’ll have to give you extra chores and three days restriction,” he joked, clearly referring to a punishment he intended to mete out to any of his rule-breaking charges.

Then he raised his coffee cup and pointed it in the direction of the coffeemaker on the counter. “Help yourselves, ladies. This is fresh-brewed and there’s scrambled eggs, bacon and toast staying warm in the oven.”

“What kind of host are you?” Cassie chastised as she came farther into the room, sounding very sisterly. “You’re supposed to get up and serve your guests.”

This time Ben used his mug to motion toward the two unused place settings on either side of him. “I would have served you both if you’d have shown up when we agreed. But I’ve already had my breakfast and finished my second cup of coffee. Now I’m going down to the basement to get started while you two eat.”

“Are we that late?” Cassie asked Clair.

“About an hour,” Clair confirmed. “He told me seven-thirty and it’s eight-twenty-five.”

“I suppose we can’t fault you, then,” Cassie conceded as Ben stood, then took his breakfast dishes to rinse and put in the dishwasher.

Clair marveled at the fact that he didn’t seem angry with them.

“See you both downstairs,” he said then, disappearing through the door that concealed the steps leading to the basement.

“Looks like we’re on our own,” Cassie said.

“I think that’s what we get,” Clair confided as she removed the platter of food from the oven, taking it to the table as Cassie brought the coffeepot.

Clair bypassed the coffee to avoid the caffeine, and she and Cassie shared the remaining breakfast foods.

As they did, they only discussed what they’d decided to do today—retrieving, inventorying and putting away the bed linens, towels and other necessary items that had been packed in boxes and stored in the basement when the school had been closed after Clair’s father’s death. Then they joined Ben for what proceeded to be a very busy day of climbing up and down steps, sorting, counting, discarding anything that was too worn, and assigning closets, shelves and drawers to everything they kept.

Clair didn’t hesitate to let Ben know how her dad had organized things when he was in charge, but ultimately it was Ben’s decision as to what he wanted where, and she didn’t argue with him when he changed a few things.

They worked until well after dark that evening, and when they were finished, they were exhausted. It was too late to prepare anything substantial for dinner by then, so they had pizza and salads delivered.

They ate in the living room around the coffee table before Cassie confessed she was beat and left Clair and Ben still sitting on the floor—Clair with her back resting against the front of a leather easy chair and Ben angled so that one long arm was braced atop the matching sofa cushion so he was partially facing her.

Ben hadn’t had much to say most of the day—at least not in the way of anything that didn’t pertain to the work they were doing. It had been Cassie and Clair who had chatted while he had basically hung back, more involved with the heavy lifting and the matters at hand than in socializing.

That fact left Clair uncertain if he might prefer that she say good-night, too, now that his sister was gone. But Ben surprised and pleased her a little by not giving her the chance to make her own exit yet. Instead, he pointed his chin toward an old, battered cardboard box they’d brought up from the basement earlier in the day when they’d discovered it contained some of Clair’s childhood memorabilia.

“Did you find any treasures in there?” he asked.

“Like a long-lost antique I could take to one of those road shows they do on television and find out it’s worth thousands of dollars?”

“Maybe.”

“Unfortunately, no. There are just some dolls and doll clothes, a stuffed dog with one ear chewed off, and my first patent-leather Easter shoes. Nothing of any great value, only some mementos that somehow got stuck downstairs, I guess.”

“Who chewed the ear off the dog?” he asked with the hint of a smile shining out from the scruffy-looking day’s growth of beard that was reminiscent of what he’d had when he’d greeted her the evening before because he’d been too busy to shave a second time today, too.

“I’ve been told that I dragged the dog everywhere and gnawed on his ear whenever I was feeling shy or upset,” she informed him.

“Can I see?” he asked with what Clair thought was a hint of mischief in his expression.

“It isn’t pretty,” she warned, giving tacit approval.

Ben pulled the box closer and peered inside, surveying the contents.

Clair watched him.

He was dressed much as he had been the day before in jeans and a T-shirt—this one gray. But the T-shirt fitted him like a second skin, accentuating the well-developed muscles of his torso, and she couldn’t help wondering how anyone could look quite that good with so little effort.

And he definitely looked good.

After a moment of peering at the contents of the box, he reached in and extracted the dog as if he’d made his decision about what piece of Halloween candy to pick from the bowl.

The dog was ragged and soiled and, indeed, missing one ear.

“You must have been really shy or really upset,” he observed with a wry half smile.

“Potty-training can be hard on a person,” Clair joked defensively.

“How long did you drag this poor fella around?”

“Until I was seventeen.” She’d delivered that joke deadpan but he realized she really was kidding and laughed.

“You weren’t potty-trained until you were seventeen?”

“Sixteen and a half but I still kept Charmagne around until I was seventeen.”

Ben chuckled again. “Charmagne?”

“That’s her name. She’s Charmagne the Shih-tzu.”

“And she’s a girl, huh?” he said, turning her over with a devilry that no doubt helped earn him his bad-boy reputation.

But Clair laughed anyway. “Charmagne is a girl’s name, so yes, she’s a girl. You’ll just have to take my word for it.”

“No, I can see that you’re right,” he said as if he’d been able to tell.

He set the stuffed toy on the coffee table as if he wanted to keep it in sight, and then settled his gaze on her again. “So this stuff is from before you came here.”

“Long before.”

“I kept wondering today what it was like for you when you grew up here.”

“It was okay.”

“Not a rave review. Are you warning me that if I ever have kids of my own I should raise them somewhere else?”

Clair shied away from the if-he-ever-had-kids-of-his-own part of his question as if it were a live electrical wire loose from its moorings. But she did answer his question about her own time at the school.

“I didn’t hate it here. I guess what I sort of resented—and really, only sort of—was that no matter what happened, at any hour of the day or night, my dad insisted that he be hands-on involved in it.”

“For instance…”

“For instance, my sixteenth birthday. He promised me a dinner out, just the two of us, at the best restaurant in Billings. Only just when our salads were served he got a call from the school—he always left orders when he was going to leave the grounds that he was to be called for everything and anything that happened, and even if he didn’t hear from whoever was in charge when he was gone, he called to check with them every hour. Anyway, that night, one of the kids had had a nightmare, but even though it was already under control, we had to cancel the rest of our dinner and come back.”

Ben made a face. “It’s great for the kids in the program that he cared so much. But definitely lousy for you.”

“It wouldn’t have been so bad if it had only been real crises that he’d dropped everything to attend to. But it seemed like once we came here, he put every little thing ahead of me. Or at least that’s how it felt. Maybe he was throwing himself into his work to deal with his grief over my mom’s death, but—”

“I knew your dad was a widower but I never knew how your mom died.”

“A city bus ran a red light and broadsided her car at an intersection.”

“When you were how old?”

“I was fourteen.”

“And how long after that did your dad come here and start the school?”

“A year.”

Ben’s eyebrows arched. “So you’d just lost your mom and when you moved here and he became obsessed with this place it was like losing him, too.”

“Actually, I guess it was. A little,” Clair said. “I’ve never looked at it that way, but you’re right. Thinking back on it, that is how it felt to me.” And the fact that Ben had such insight was yet another thing about him that impressed her.

But even so she couldn’t let him think unkindly of her father, so she said, “Not that my dad wasn’t a great guy. He actually never neglected me or ever left any doubt that he loved me. He just… Well, I guess he just dealt with my mother’s death the only way he could. And for him, that meant quitting his job as a high-school teacher and finding something that filled more of his time.”

“So he taught high school before opening the school?”

“He did.”

“Then why did he opt for making it a treatment facility for younger kids when his experience was with older ones?”

“That was because of me. He decided only to take kids from eight to twelve so I wouldn’t be living and working in close proximity to boys my own age and older.”

“For safety’s sake to keep you away from someone who might be predatory or because he didn’t want some hellion like me corrupting you?”

There was that hint of devilry again that gave his oh-so-handsome face just an added bit of sexy allure. But again Clair tried not to notice. Too much, anyway.

“Both reasons—so I wouldn’t be in contact with someone who could do me harm and so he didn’t end up with one of his charges as his son-in-law,” she confirmed, thinking that if Ben had been around here when they were both sixteen or seventeen and turned on the charm, he just might have weakened her defenses that much earlier.

But she didn’t want him to know what she was thinking and so she continued talking about the boys her father had accepted into his program.

“Even some of the really young kids were a handful, though. My dad paid me to work around here after school, and there were times, with certain kids, when things weren’t pleasant.”

“I’m sure that’s an understatement,” Ben said. “While I was doing my master’s thesis I worked in a facility for kids even younger than your dad accepted here. I saw plenty that no one would expect from a small child. I had a five-year-old call a therapist a name that would have made a longshoreman blush and then slash her arm with a razor blade he had hidden in the sole of his shoe—something he’d learned from his big brother’s time in jail.”

“Wow,” Clair said, duly amazed. “Dad didn’t take any kids with a history of violence against other people, but he did have a few who could hurt themselves when they had a bad day.”

Ben’s mention of work and doing his master’s thesis seemed like an opening for her to ask about his education and credentials—something she was curious about since owning the school didn’t require anything more from him than that he hire the professionals he needed, and she didn’t know what he’d done after high school graduation. So rather than continue trading war stories, she said, “You have your master’s degree?”

“I have my bachelor’s in psychology and my master’s in counseling.”

That made her smile.

“What?” he demanded, smiling, too, albeit with some confusion tingeing it. “You don’t believe me?”

“Oh, I’m not doubting your word. I was just thinking that you were a long way from being the guy anyone in our senior class would have thought of as the person most likely to end up with a graduate degree.”

He laughed. “Predictability was never what I was known for, no.”

Which was also part of his appeal, part of what made him the bad boy in the first place. Certainly he’d taken her off guard that night at the reunion and led her to even surprise herself.

“I still don’t know exactly what you do for a living,” he said then. “Or how it is that you can take time off from it to be here.”

“I run my own day-care center,” she confessed. “And since I’m the boss and have a lot of comp time to get back, I left my assistant director in charge while I’m gone.”

Pregnancy hormones had made Clair unusually tired and her strenuous day caught up with her all of a sudden, making her yawn without warning.

“Oh! Where did that come from?” she said after the fact, embarrassed.

Ben laughed but she wasn’t sure whether it was at her yawn or at her embarrassment over it. “Looks like I wore you out today,” he said then.

“Hey, I made it longer than Cassie did,” she countered.

“Well, to be honest, you tried to cash it in when she did. I just didn’t let you,” he reminded. “But maybe I’d better let you go get some rest now so you’ll be ready to introduce me to the food wholesaler and the laundry service rep tomorrow.”

“Maybe you’d better,” Clair agreed, knowing the pregnancy fatigue wasn’t something she could ignore.

She stood and began to gather the paper plates and pizza boxes that still littered the coffee table but Ben put a halt to that.

“Leave it. I’ve abused you enough for one day. I’ll toss all this after I get you home to bed.”

Had he intended that to sound as suggestive as it had?

He must not have because he amended it, “Or at least after I get you out to the cottage.”

But there was still an edge of mischief to his tone that told her that even though he might not have meant his original comment to be as suggestive as it had come out, he was more amused by his slip of the tongue than rattled by it the way she would have been if she’d said it.

“I mean it. Leave the mess,” he repeated when she didn’t immediately stop cleaning up. “Come on, I’ll carry this box of stuff out for you.”

He stood then, took her one-eared stuffed dog from its perch on the coffee table and handed it to her. “If you have to have something to keep your hands busy, carry this poor, abused animal while I take the box.”

Clair didn’t have any choice but to accept her toy as he picked up the box, but still she said, “That’s not heavy. I can take it myself and save you the trip.” Although tonight she liked the idea of having him walk her to her door.

For no reasons she wanted to analyze too closely.

But Ben wouldn’t hear of her carrying the box herself. “It’s the least I can do after how hard I worked you today—even if you did stand me up for breakfast.”

“I’m sorry about that,” she said, omitting the fact that he was partly responsible because thinking about him had been the cause of her not getting to sleep early enough the night before.

“Yeah, well, tomorrow it’s nothing but dry toast, and I’m not doing that until you actually show up,” he threatened with only mock sincerity.

“Tomorrow I’ll be on time. Early, even. I swear,” she said.

“Uh-huh,” he retorted facetiously, as if he didn’t believe her.

He led the way from the living room through the kitchen and out the sliding doors with Clair following behind.

Following behind and unable to keep her eyes off the intriguing juggling act going on behind the rear pockets of his jeans with the rise and fall of a derriere that was easily one of the best she’d ever seen.

Then they reached the cottage and she barely managed to raise her gaze before he caught her, veering around him to open the front door.

“I can take that stuff now,” she said, replacing the toy dog she’d been holding tight to her chest and reaching for the box.

This time Ben gave it over to her and she expected that once he had he would say a simple good-night, turn and go back to the house.

But instead he waited for her to cross the threshold and still he stayed standing just outside the door.

“I haven’t told you how much I appreciate you coming here and helping the way you are,” he said then.

“It’s no big deal.”

“It’s a big deal to me. And a big help. And not something you had to do. And I want to say thanks.”

Clair suddenly had a flash of memory that had eluded her before that moment. A flash of memory of Ben walking her to her room at the bed-and-breakfast when they’d left the reunion. Of him beginning to say goodnight to her.

But kissing her instead.

And continuing to kiss her all the way into the room.

And despite the fact that the kiss itself wasn’t vivid enough in her mind to recall any details, that flash was enough to stir some of the same feelings she’d had at the time.

Feelings that had made her want him to kiss her.

Feelings that made her want him to kiss her again right at that moment….

Which she didn’t think he had any intention of doing and for a split second she couldn’t remember what, exactly he was doing.

Until she forced herself to concentrate on what he was saying again just as he said, “So, thanks.”

For coming back to Northbridge and helping him with the school—that was what he was doing, he was thanking her.

“You’re welcome,” she finally said, as if her mind hadn’t just drifted backward in time and into dangerous territory.

“Well, welcome or not, I still owe you big for this.”

“No, you really don’t,” she assured him.

But Ben merely smiled so sweetly it erased all the hints of bad boy she’d seen lurking around the edges and said, “I really do.”

For a moment he looked at her very intently and those thoughts of him kissing her flooded right back into her head.

But they still didn’t seem to be in his because then he said, “I’ll let you get some rest,” and took a step backward. “Good night.”

“Good night,” Clair responded, closing the door almost too quickly.

But she couldn’t help it because the image of that other good-night they’d begun to say was still haunting her.

And so was the feeling of wanting him to kiss her.

And that just wouldn’t do.

Not when she wasn’t sure whether she was back in Northbridge to let him know he was going to be a father.

Or back in Northbridge to help with the school and then disappear from his life forever without telling him at all.