A Diamond For The Single Mum

She waved goodbye to the movers and headed for Seth’s condo.

Though it was close to five, Seth had told her he worked until six and she knew he wouldn’t be home. Which meant she could have everything set up in his condo before he returned.

But when she arrived at his building, the doorman wouldn’t let her into Seth’s apartment. Not that she blamed him. She’d thought Seth would have already made arrangements, but apparently he hadn’t.

The doorman punched a few numbers into his phone and within seconds was talking to Seth. Then he handed the phone across the desk.

“He wants to talk to you.”

Oh, boy. He probably wasn’t expecting her until Sunday. Plenty of time for him to get adjusted or change his mind. Instead here she was, a little over twenty-four hours later, her car loaded with baby things.

What did a playboy need with a baby and broke widow?

“Hello. Seth.” Not giving him a chance to back out, she said, “I got lucky and found a mover who’d had a cancellation today. I packed last night and this morning, and now everything I own, except Crystal’s things and a couple suitcases of clothes, is in a storage unit.”

She hadn’t meant to sound desperate, but oh, Lord, she had. She squeezed her eyes shut, but Seth easily said, “Okay.”

Her heart started beating again.

“I have one more meeting before I can leave, but I’ll call my next-door neighbor, Mrs. Petrillo. She has a key and will let you in. Just go ahead to the condo.”

“Should I knock on her door?”

He laughed. “No. She’s something of a snoop. It’s why I want her to let you in instead of George. She looks out the keyhole every time the elevator arrives on our floor. This way she’ll know I know you’re there.”

Harper laughed. Her first genuine laugh since she’d realized how much trouble she was in. She liked the idea of a nosy neighbor. It felt less like she and Seth were all alone.

Because they weren’t. They had Crystal, the nosy neighbor and probably a hundred other people who lived in the building.

They would not be alone.

“I also have an extra parking space in the basement. I told George to get you a pass.”

“Okay. Thanks.” When she disconnected the call, George handed her the card that would get her entry into the garage. “Is your car on the street?”

“Yes. I was lucky to get a spot right in front of the building.”

“Good. I’ll arrange to have your luggage and baby things brought upstairs. Then I’ll park your car in Mr. McCallan’s second space.”

Balancing Crystal on her hip, she wondered how much Seth had promised this guy to be so accommodating. She handed him her car keys. “Thanks. It’s the blue Explorer SUV.”

He nodded once. “We’ll have your things upstairs in a few minutes.”

She rode the elevator to Seth’s floor and just as Seth had predicted a short gray-haired woman stood by his door, waiting for her.

“Mrs. Petrillo?”

“Yes. And you must be Harper.”

“Yes.” She presented her baby. “This is Crystal.”

The older woman lightly pinched Crystal’s pink cheek. “She is adorable. Aren’t you, sweetie?”

Crystal grinned.

Mrs. Petrillo inserted the key into the lock and opened the door. “Sorry about your husband.”

“Thank you.”

“Death is a terrible thing. I buried three husbands.”

Harper gasped. Knowing the pain of losing Clark and the emptiness that followed, the loneliness that never seemed to go away, she said, “I’m so sorry.”

“It never gets easier.” She turned to Harper with a smile. “My soap is on right now. But I’m next door if you need anything.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

The petite woman waved goodbye and was gone within seconds, but her comment that it would never get easier haunted Harper as a new wave of missing Clark swept through her.

But she barely had time to catch her breath. The doorman arrived with her and Crystal’s suitcases.

He led her to the extra room in Seth’s condo. A queen-size bed and a dresser easily shared the space, leaving more than ample room for Crystal’s crib. An adjoining bathroom with a shower made of black, gray and white glass tiles that matched a backsplash behind the white sink was small but not uncomfortably so.

The doorman left her suitcases on the bed and left. When he returned with the crib and high chair, he had two maintenance men with him. He introduced them, telling her they would set up the crib.

When they were done, Harper put Crystal in her bed to play with her favorite blanket and stuffed bear, and set about to unpack. She hadn’t brought a lot, only enough clothes for her and Crystal for two weeks. Everything fit in the one dresser and the small closet. Another indicator of how much her life had changed since she lost Clark.

Not wanting to dwell on that, she carried Crystal to the living space. A quick glance at the clock told her it was only six. Her stomach rumbled. She hadn’t eaten lunch. The mover was on too tight of a schedule.

Just when she would have gone into the tidy kitchen to see if there was something she could make for supper, something nice that could serve as a thank-you-for-keeping-us gesture, the condo door opened.

“Seth?”

The day before, she’d left as he’d walked back to his room to dress for work. She expected to see him in a suit, not a black crew-neck sweater with a white shirt under it and jeans.

Jeans to work? At his family’s prestigious holding company, where he wasn’t just on the board of directors, but was also a vice president?

“I canceled my meeting.” He ambled into the room and tossed his keys and wallet on the counter, along with some envelopes she assumed were his mail. “How’d today go?”

She couldn’t stop staring at him. Clark had gone to work in a suit and tie every day. He didn’t cancel meetings. He never came home early. But Seth was a McCallan. From what she knew of the family, they did whatever they wanted. Especially Seth. Joining the family business obviously hadn’t ended his rebellious streak.

“Busy. Exhausting.”

He picked up the mail. Rifled through it. “Mine, too.”

The conversation ended, and a weird silence stretched between them.

She sucked in a breath for courage. “I was just thinking about looking in your cupboards to see if there was anything to make for dinner.”

He sniffed. “Don’t bother. I’m pretty sure the cupboards are bare. There are takeout menus from a few local places. Order something for both of us. I have a credit card on file at all of them. Just tell them it’s for me.” He turned and headed back down the hall.

She frowned. “I thought you’d said you always have dates or dinner meetings or something?”

He stopped, faced her. “I did. Just like I canceled my last meeting, I canceled my date.”

Harper blinked as he disappeared behind his bedroom door. Canceled his date?

An odd sensation rippled through her. Not happiness. Surely, she couldn’t be happy that he’d canceled a date. She didn’t “like” the guy. He was good-looking—well, gorgeous, really—but he wasn’t Clark, a man she had loved. The feeling oozing through her was more of a recognition of how glad she was that she didn’t have to be alone.

The door closed behind Seth and he leaned against it, blowing his breath out on a long sigh. When he’d invited Harper to live with him, he hadn’t anticipated how uncomfortable it would be to have her in his house, but he was damn glad he’d canceled his date, so they could talk. About Clark. After a nice dinner, where he’d direct the conversation so she would remind him that she’d loved and married his best friend, he’d get his perspective back.

He took a quick shower. When he left his room and entered the living space, he found Harper at the table surrounded by boxes of Chinese food.

“I like Chinese.”

“Good.”

He walked over to the table, saw she’d found plates and utensils and took a seat.

“Your area of the city has just about every type of restaurant imaginable.”

“It’s part of the appeal.”

He lifted a dish, filled it with General Tso’s chicken, some vegetables and an egg roll.

“Oh, and I paid for it myself. I’m not destitute. And I’m not a charity case. I just need some help transitioning.”

Point number one to be discussed. How she wanted to be treated. “I’m sorry if I made you feel that way.”

“You didn’t. I just wanted to fix some misinterpretations.”

“Okay.”

She turned her attention to dishing out some food for herself. Her short hair gave her an angelic look, enhanced by the curve of her full lips. Her casual, almost grungy clothes took him back to a decade ago, when he was a kid who listened to hip-hop and lived right next door to the girl he thought the most beautiful woman he’d ever met.

And that was point number two they had to discuss. Eight years had passed since he’d had a crush on her and she’d started dating Clark. They weren’t those people anymore. He didn’t have a mad crush on her. He’d had a mad crush on the girl she’d used to be. Since then, she’d gotten married, lost a husband, had a baby alone. They weren’t picking up where they’d left off.

He almost rolled his eyes at his own stupidity. He hadn’t even asked how she was.

“So... How are you doing?”

She shook her head. “You mean aside from being almost homeless?”

“Don’t make a joke. Clark was my best friend.” There. He’d said it. Point number three that he needed to get into this conversation. Clark had been his best friend. “You lost him. You were pregnant. You went through that alone. And now you’re facing raising a daughter alone. If we’re going to do this—live together—we’re going to do it right. Not pretend everything is fine. We used to be friends. We could be friends again.”

She set down her chopsticks. “Okay. If you really want to know, I spent most of the year scared to death. It took me a couple of weeks to wrap my head around the fact that he was really gone. But the more I adjusted, the quieter the house got. And the quieter the house got, the more I realized how alone I was.”

“And you couldn’t even talk to your parents?”

“My mom never had anything good to say about Clark, so after a visit or two when I was lonely, I quit going over.”

She stopped talking, but Seth waited, glad he’d decided to go this route. He needed to know what he was dealing with, and if she’d been alone for twelve long months she probably needed someone to talk to.

“I didn’t shut them out completely. My mom came with me to a doctor’s appointment or two and then we’d have lunch. But every time, the conversation would turn into a discussion of what I should do with my life now that Clark was gone.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault. My mother’s a bulldozer. She sees the way a thing should go and she pushes. Whether it’s the right thing or not.”

“Have they seen the baby?”

“Yes. If I’d completely broken off ties, my mom would have mounted a campaign to get me back. So, I kept them at a distance. I let her stay and help the week after Crystal was born. But she couldn’t stop talking about remodeling the condo to bring it up to standards, insinuating that with Clark gone I could do it right, and the whole time I knew I was broke and going to have to sell. Every time I’d try to tell her, she’d blast Clark.” She lifted her eyes to catch his gaze. “That’s how I knew I couldn’t move in with them.”

Seth leaned back in his chair. “I guess.”

The room got quiet. Her mother wasn’t the hellish dictator his father had been, but he wouldn’t have wanted to live with her mom, either.

“So, what’s up with you?”

He laughed, glad for her obvious change of subject to lighten the mood. “Not much. Jake’s a much better businessman than my father was, so working with him is good.”

“And your mom?”

He snorted. “My mom isn’t quite as bad as your mom, but we have our issues.”

She nodded sagely. “Sometimes the best you can do is avoid them for the sake of peace.”

He’d never say that the feelings he had around his mother were peaceful. He had a million questions he’d like to ask. Like, why she’d said nothing when his father embarrassed or humiliated him and Jake. Or better yet, why she’d stayed married to a man who was awful as a husband and father? She’d known he was cheating. She’d known he wasn’t a good father. Yet she’d stayed. Forcing them all to live a lie.

Deciding he didn’t want to burden Harper with any of that, he rose. “Do you like baseball?”

“Sort of.”

“Sort of?” He sniffed a laugh. “There’s a game on tonight that I’d love to see. If you want to watch, too, I can watch out here. If not, I can watch on the television in my bedroom.”

“I don’t want you to change your routines for me.”

“I won’t.”

The sound of the baby crying burst from her phone. She held it up. “Baby monitor is attached to this. And it looks like I’m going to be busy for a while. Go ahead and put your game on.”

Harper walked into her room sort of happy. It had been nice to talk about Clark, her mom and even being alone. She wasn’t trying to make a new best friend, but she had been lonely. Having someone to talk to, to share a meal with, had been more of a treat than she’d expected it would be.

With Crystal on her arm she walked out to the common area and found Seth was nowhere around. Thinking he must have decided to watch the game in his room, she warmed a bottle, fed Crystal, played with her, let her sit in her little seat that rocked her sideways, then finally put her into bed.

After a quick shower, and still wired from their talk, she put on a pair of pajamas and returned to the living room to watch TV.

A few minutes later, Seth returned to the main living area. He held up his phone. “Work call. I also took a shower while I was back there.” He set the phone on the center island and pulled a beer from the fridge. “Want one?”

She shook her head. “No. I might have to get up in the middle of the night.”

That piece of information seemed to horrify him. “Really?”

“Crystal is a fairly good sleeper, but I never know.”

He twisted the top off the bottle. “So, on the off chance that she’ll wake up, you don’t drink?”

“Yes.”

He sat beside her. She liked his hair all rumpled from his shower. Whatever his soap was it made him smell like heaven.

Strange things happened to her pulse. Her breathing shifted. Probably so she could inhale the wonderful scent of his soap or shampoo.

She eased a few more inches away from him. It didn’t help.

“What are you watching?”

She handed him the remote. “Nothing. Put the game on. I need to get to bed.”

He frowned.

“You know...in case Chrystal wakes up.”

“Right.”

She walked into her room and closed the door behind her with a deep sigh. Her weird reactions around him shouldn’t surprise her. Her husband had been gone a year and she’d all but locked herself in her house. Primarily to prepare for and then care for her baby. And she might be too needy to be around such a gorgeous guy. But she also couldn’t risk slipping it to her parents that Clark had failed. Or, worse, having her mom or dad read her body language, realize something was wrong and grill her until she crumbled. That had kept her home, alone, more than she wanted to admit.

These feelings she was having around Seth were nothing but her reaction to being around a man again. A young, handsome, sexy-smelling guy who should not tempt her.

But he did.

Not because she was attracted to him. Though, she was. What woman wouldn’t be? The real bottom line was a combination of things. Her having been sheltered for months combined with his good looks and their close proximity was making her supersensitive.

But it was Clark she loved. Clark she still missed.

She crawled into bed and closed her eyes, thinking about his silly laugh, how he’d loved to cook, how much he’d wanted their baby.

And all thoughts of Seth vanished.

In the middle of the night, Seth awakened to the sound of crying. Recognizing it was Crystal and he was repaying a debt, he rolled over to go back to sleep, but sleep didn’t come. He put the pillow over his head. No help.

Finally, the little girl quieted, and he realized Harper must have given her a bottle or something. He fell back to sleep, woke when the alarm sounded and sneaked up the hall to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. Their conversation the night before had been good, but they were still uncomfortable with each other. And he was still fighting that attraction. So better not to wake her.

“Good morning.”

Damn. She was already up.

She wore the pale blue pajamas he’d seen the night before. They were much less revealing than things he’d seen in Vegas or Barcelona and his face should not have reddened. But it had.

She looked soft-and-cuddly sexy. Her sleepy blue eyes should have reminded him that she’d gotten up with a baby the night before. Instead they reminded him of warm, fuzzy feelings after sex.

“I just, uh, wanted a cup of coffee.”

“Okay.”

He neared the counter, where she sat holding the baby. The little girl looked at him.

“Hey.”

Harper shot him a confused expression.

“Just, you know, saying, hey, to the kid...the baby... Crystal.”

The little girl grinned.

“I think she likes you.”

“Well, she terrifies me. In a good way,” he quickly added. “I don’t want to hurt her.”

“You won’t.”

“Sure,” he said, knowing he wouldn’t ever hurt her because he wouldn’t ever touch her.

He got his coffee and went back to his room, where he dressed in his typical work clothes of jeans and a halfway decent shirt. When he returned to the kitchen for his keys and wallet, Harper and the baby were gone.

Wincing, he walked back the hall and knocked on her door.

“Yes?”

“Just wanted to let you know I’m on my way to work.”

“Okay.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. The melodious sound of her voice drifted through him like a blast of sweet summer air. She sounded so happy and content that pride surged through him, tightening his chest. This time two days ago, she’d been facing homelessness and he’d fixed that for her.

He started up the hall and picked up his keys and wallet. What the hell was wrong with him? Helping her should feel good, but he wasn’t doing this for her. He was doing it for Clark. To pay back Clark for taking him in when he needed help.

The very fact that he kept forgetting that meant it was time to get things moving along before his emotions got any more involved.

CHAPTER THREE

THAT EVENING, SETH returned a little later than he had the night before, looking like a sex god in a T-shirt that showed off his chest and shoulders and a pair of sunglasses he’d probably bought in Europe.

Harper’s breathing shivered. Her muscles froze. For the next ten seconds, she was sure her heart stopped beating.

“We’re going to do your résumé tonight.”

“That’s great.” She thought of Clark, realizing how happy he’d be once she was settled, and all the feelings she’d had about Seth lessened. “But I made dinner.” A thought occurred. “You haven’t eaten, have you?”

“No. But the résumé probably should come first.”

“Or maybe we can talk about it while we eat?” That way they wouldn’t have to discuss other things. Not that she hadn’t appreciated the conversation the night before. She had. It was more that it had warmed her a little too much.

“Okay.”

He set the table as she brought Crystal’s baby seat over and strapped it to a chair. She’d already put the pot roast and potatoes and carrots into a huge serving dish and he carried it to the table.

“Smells good.” His voice sounded funny, like he had caught the scent of the food and shivered around it.

“Thanks. I learned to cook after Clark and I got married. Mrs. Petrillo watched Crystal while I checked out the little grocery store a few blocks down.”

They both sat. Each of them dished up a plateful of food.

Seth took a bite and squeezed his eyes shut in ecstasy. “This is fantastic.”

It had been so long since anyone had complimented her that even a simple expression of pleasure went through her like warm honey. Luckily, they had work to do.

She bounced from her chair. “I’ll go get my laptop.”

She raced into her bedroom and found her computer. She turned it on, pulled up her résumé and headed to the dining area again.

When she got there, Seth was standing in front of Crystal’s seat.

He glanced up at Harper. “I wasn’t sure what to do. I knew you were probably okay with her sitting there. But I’m new to all this and when you were gone so long, I figured I’d better be safe rather than sorry.”

Crystal grinned and he laughed. “She’s really cute.”

The sight of him by her little girl warmed her heart, but more than that, he was getting accustomed to her baby. Maybe growing to like her baby—

He wasn’t supposed to like Crystal. Or her. She was here temporarily. They’d probably never see each other again after her short stay here. She needed to remember that.

“She’s fine as long as the she’s strapped in.” She slid the laptop on the table. “Here’s my résumé.”

Seth returned to his seat. He angled the screen toward him and started reading.

After only a minute, he glanced over at her. “What kind of a job are you trying for?”

“I’d like to be somebody’s assistant.”

“Okay. Good. I think your qualifications should line up. But you do realize there’ll be some other things like typing involved? Maybe writing reports.”

“That would be fantastic. I like to work. I think I’d like a job that would challenge me.”

He finished reading what she had in her résumé as he ate his roast and potatoes. After they’d cleaned the kitchen and dining area, she put the baby to bed.

When she returned to the living area, he pointed to the laptop, still on the dining room table. “Okay. We need to punch it up a bit, but we’ll figure it out together. If I’m going to recommend you, I want to know what’s in your résumé.”

Her spirits brightened. “You’re going to recommend me?”

“I saw how you worked when you lived beside me and Clark. I know you were dedicated to your clients. I know you put in long hours.” He shrugged. “I’m the perfect person to recommend you.”

She sat at the table in front of the laptop. He stood behind her.

Leaning in, he said, “Our first problem is that you haven’t worked in five years. We have to downplay that.”

The woodsy scent of his cologne floated to her. Her shoulder tingled because he had his hand on the back of her chair and every time she moved, she brushed it. Her mind tried to go blank, to enjoy the sensations, but she wouldn’t let it. They had a job to do.

She turned to make a suggestion about how to get around the gap between her work experience and the current date, but when she turned, the way he leaned in put them face-to-face. So close, they could have rubbed noses.

Close enough to kiss.

Her chest froze. Where the hell had that thought come from? She did not want to kiss him. This feeling tumbling through her had to be wrong. Seth was her husband’s best friend.

She started to turn away, but his eyes held hers. When she’d met him, she’d thought he had the eyes of a bad boy. Dark. Forbidding. But she once again saw the spark of wisdom or experience that she’d seen when he’d opened his condo door to her a few days before.

It was as if something had happened in the past five years. Something that had changed him. She knew what his dad had been like. She knew his mom had been oblivious—

She blinked to break eye contact. She wasn’t supposed to be curious about him.

“I, um, thought maybe we could just admit that I got married five years ago and hadn’t worked since.”