Caroselli's Christmas Baby

“Trust me when I say that it will be a mutually advantageous arrangement.”

“Advantageous how?”

“What I’m about to tell you, you have to promise not to repeat to anyone. Ever.”

“Okay.”

“Say, ‘I promise.’”

She rolled her eyes. What were they, twelve? “I promise.”

“Last week my grandfather called me, Rob and Tony to his house for a secret meeting. He offered us ten million dollars each to produce a male heir to carry on the Caroselli name.”

“Holy crap.”

“That was pretty much my first reaction, too. I wasn’t sure I was even going to accept his offer. I’m really not ready to settle down, but then you mentioned your plan …” He shrugged. “I mean, how much more perfect could it be? You get the baby you want and I get the money.”

It made sense in a weird way, but her and Nick?

“Of course, we would have to get married,” he said.

Whoa, wait a minute. “Married? Haven’t you told me about a million times that you’ll never get married?”

“You know how traditional Nonno is. I don’t have a choice. But the minute I have the cash in hand, we can file for a quickie divorce. An ironclad prenup should eliminate any complications … not that I expect there would be any.”

“That sounds almost too easy.”

“Well, we will have to make it look convincing.”

Why did she get the feeling she wasn’t going to like this? “What exactly do you mean by convincing?”

“You’ll have to move into my place.”

A fake marriage was one thing, but to live together? “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I have lots of space. You can have the spare bedroom and you can turn the den into your office.”

Space wasn’t the issue. They’d tried the roommate thing right after college, in an apartment more than spacious enough for two people. Between the random girls parading in and out at ridiculous hours—and the fact that Nick never picked up after himself and left the sink filled with his dirty dishes while the dishwasher sat empty, and a couple dozen other annoying quirks and habits he had—after two months she’d reached her limit. Had she stayed even a day longer, it would have either killed their friendship, or she would have killed him.

“Nick, you know I love you, and I value our friendship beyond anything else, but we’ve tried this before. It didn’t work.”

“That was almost eight years ago. I’m sure we’ve both matured since then.”

“Have you stopped being a slob, too? Because I loathe the thought of spending the next nine months cleaning up after you.”

“You won’t have to. I have a cleaning service come in three times a week. And for the record, I’m not particularly looking forward to you nagging me incessantly.”

“I do not nag,” she said, and he shot her a look. “Okay, maybe I nag a little, but only out of sheer frustration.”

“Then we’ll just have to make an effort to be more accommodating to each other. I promise to keep on top of the clutter, if you promise not to nag.”

That might be easier said than done.

“Think how lucky the kid will be,” Nick said. “Most divorced parents hate each other. Mine haven’t had a civilized conversation in years. His will be best friends.”

He had a good point there. “So that means you’ll be a regular part of the baby’s life?”

“Of course. And he’ll have lots of cousins, and aunts and uncles.”

Wasn’t a part-time father better than no father at all? And she would never have to worry financially. She knew Nick would take care of the baby. Not that she was hurting for money. If she was careful, the trust her aunt had willed her, combined with her growing web design business, would keep her living comfortably for a very long time. But Nick would see that the baby went to the best schools, and had every advantage, things she couldn’t quite afford. And he would be a part of a big, loving, happy family. Which was more than she could say for her own childhood. The baby might even join the Caroselli family business some day.

“And suppose, God forbid, something should happen to you,” he said. “Where would the baby go if he was fathered by a donor?”

Having lost her own parents, of course that was a concern. Now that her aunt was gone, there was no family left to take the child if she were in an accident or … Although the baby would probably be better off in foster care than with someone like her aunt. She would have been.

“With me as the father, he’ll always have a family.” Nick said.

As completely crazy as the idea was, it did make sense. “I think it could work.”

He actually looked excited, although who wouldn’t be over the prospect of ten million bucks? Why settle for the life of a millionaire when he could be a multimillionaire?

“So,” he said, “is that an ‘I’m still thinking about it,’ or is that a definite yes?”

Though she was often guilty for jumping into things without full consideration, maybe in this case overthinking it would be a bad idea. Or maybe she just didn’t want the opportunity to talk herself out of it. They would both be getting what they wanted. More or less.

“I just have one more question,” she said. “What about women?”

“What about them?”

“Will it be a different girl every other night? Will I have to listen to the moaning and the headboard knocking against the wall? See her traipsing around the next morning in nothing but her underwear and one of your shirts?”

“Of course not. As long as we’re married, I wouldn’t see anyone else.”

“Nick, we’re talking at least nine months. Can you even go that long without dating?”

“Do you really mean dating, or is that code for sex?”

“Either.”

“Can you?”

She could. The real question was, did she want to? But to have a baby, wasn’t it worth it?

“Maybe,” Nick said, “we don’t have to.”

“Are you suggesting that we cheat on each other?” Even if it wasn’t a real marriage, that could be an obstacle. And while she was sure Nick would have no trouble finding willing participants, with her big belly and swelling ankles, she was fairly certain no men would be fighting for the chance to get into her maternity jeans.

“I’m assuming you plan to use artificial insemination,” he said.

She felt a little weird about discussing the particulars, but he was a part of this now. It would be his baby, too. “That or in vitro, which is much more reliable, but crazy expensive. Either way it could take several months.”

“Or we could pay nothing at all,” he said.

She must have looked thoroughly confused, because he laughed and said, “You have no idea what I’m talking about.”

“I guess I don’t.”

“Think about it.” He wiggled his eyebrows and flashed her a suggestive smile.

Wait a minute. He couldn’t possibly mean—

“Why pay a doctor to get you pregnant,” he said,

“when we could just do it the old-fashioned way for free?”

Two

Terri gaped at Nick, her eyes—which were sometimes green and sometimes blue, depending on the light—wide with shock and horror. It took her several seconds to find her voice, and when she did, she said, a full octave higher than her usual range, “That was a joke, right?”

“Actually, I’ve never been more serious.” Nick would be the first to admit it was a pretty radical idea, but on a scale of one to ten, this entire situation had a weird factor of about fifty.

He had given Nonno’s offer a lot of thought and had come to the conclusion that he just wasn’t ready to settle down yet. It wasn’t so much the idea of being a father that put him off—he loved kids—but the marriage end of the deal that gave him the willies. His parents had gone through hell, and put Nick and his two older sisters through it, too. Now with his sister Jessica’s marriage in trouble, as well, the idea of marital bliss was nothing more than a fairy tale to him. And not worth the pain of the inevitable divorce. Not even for ten million dollars.

It had never occurred to him that the actual marriage could be a sham. Not to mention so mutually advantageous. And who in his family would question the plausibility that after twenty years of devoted friendship, his and Terri’s relationship had moved to the next level? The women in his family ate up that kind of romantic garbage.

Terri tucked her long dark hair behind her ears. He’d only seen her do this when she was nervous or uncomfortable, and that wasn’t very often. She was one of the most centered, secure and confident people he’d ever known. Sometimes this led to her being a touch impulsive, but in this instance could only work in his favor.

“The sooner this kid is born, the better,” he told her. “So why would we spend a lot of time and money on procedures that could take months to work?”

Indecision wrinkled the space between her brows and she picked at the frayed cuff of her sweatshirt. “Aren’t you worried that it might make things weird between us?” she asked.

“Maybe a little,” he admitted. “But, haven’t you ever been curious?”

“Curious?”

He gave her arm a gentle nudge. “You’ve never wondered what it might be like if you and I …”

It took an awful lot to embarrass her, but there was a distinct red hue working its way across her cheekbones. That was a yes if he’d ever seen one, even if she didn’t want to admit it. And he couldn’t deny that he’d thought about it himself more than a time or two. She was funny and smart and beautiful, so who could blame him?

“I’ve never told you this,” he said. “But there was a time when I had a pretty serious crush on you.”

She blinked. “You did?”

He nodded. “Yep.”

“When?”

“Our junior year of high school.”

She looked genuinely stunned. “I—I had no idea.”

That’s because he’d never said a word about it. Up until then, he’d never viewed her in a sexual way. Nor, it seemed, did many other boys. She had been a late bloomer, a typical tomboy, lanky and tall—taller than all the other girls and even a fair share of the boys—and as far from feminine as a girl could be. But she’d spent the entire summer after their sophomore year in Europe with her aunt and something intriguing had happened. She left Chicago a girl, and returned a woman.

Boys in school began paying attention to her, talking about her in the locker room, and he wouldn’t deny that she became the subject of a few of his own teenage fantasies. Not that he would have acted on those feelings. They were, after all, only friends, though that fact did little to erase the jealousy he felt when he saw her with other boys, or would hear the rumors of the things she had done with them. And as much as he liked how she changed, he resented her for it. He wanted the old Terri back. But he got over it, of course. What choice did he have?

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.

“Aside from the fact that I thought it would probably freak you out?” He shrugged. “It was a crush. I had them all the time. And our friendship was too important to me to ruin over raging teenage hormones.”

“But you would be willing to ruin it now?”

“Maybe if we were sleeping together just for the sake of doing it, but this is different. We have a legitimate reason to have sex.”

In his experience, romantic love and friendship occupied opposite sides of the playing field, and he would never let one interfere with the other. Which is why he was so sure that if they approached this situation logically, it would work. And when all was said and done, everyone would get exactly what they wanted.

“It’s a means to an end,” he said. “It wouldn’t mean anything.”

She shot him a look. “That’s just what every girl wants to hear when she’s considering sleeping with a man.”

“You get my point. And yes, it could potentially change our relationship, but not necessarily for the worse. It might even bring us closer together.”

She didn’t look convinced. Maybe she was opposed to the idea for an entirely different reason.

“Do you have moral objections?” he asked. “Or is it just that you find the idea of sleeping with me revolting?”

She rolled her eyes. “You are not revolting. And though it’s embarrassing to admit, I had kind of a crush on you once, too.”

If that was true, she’d done one hell of a job hiding it. “When?”

“It pretty much started the day I transferred into Thomas Academy school in fourth grade.”

He recalled that day clearly, when she’d walked into his class, bitter, sullen and mad as hell. It was obvious to everyone in the elite private school that she was an outsider. And trouble. A fact she drove home that very first day when she had come up behind Nick on the playground and pushed him off his swing, knocking him face-first in the dirt. He wanted to shove her right back, but he’d had it drilled into him by his mother to respect girls, so he’d walked away instead. Which only seemed to fuel her lust for blood.

For days he’d tolerated kicks in the shin, pinches on the arm, prods in the cafeteria line and endless ribbing from his buddies for not retaliating. With his parents in the middle of a nasty divorce, he’d had some anger issues of his own, and the unprovoked attacks started to grate on him. A week or so later she tripped him on his way to the lunch table, making him drop his tray and spill his spaghetti and creamed corn all over the cafeteria floor and himself. The other students laughed, and something inside Nick snapped. Before he realized what he was doing, he hauled off and popped her one right in the mouth.

The entire cafeteria went dead silent, everyone watching to see what would happen next, and he’d felt instantly ashamed for hitting a weak, defenseless girl.

He would never forget the way he’d stood watching her, waiting for the tears to start as blood oozed from the corner of her lip and down her chin. And how she balled her fist, took a swing right back at him, clipping him in the jaw. He was so stunned, he just stood there. But she wasn’t finished. She launched herself at him, knocking him to the floor, and there was nothing girly about it. No biting or scratching or hair-pulling. She fought like a boy, and her fists were lethal weapons. He had no choice but to fight back. To defend himself. Plus, he had his pride, because to a nine-year-old boy, being accepted meant everything.

It had taken three teachers to pry them apart and haul them to the dean’s office, both of them bruised and bloody. They were given a fourteen-day in-school suspension, though that was mild compared to the tirade he’d endured from his father, and the disappointment from his mother, who he knew were miserable enough without any help from him.

He spent the next two weeks holed up in a classroom alone with Terri, and as the black eyes faded and the split lips healed, something weird happened. To this day he wasn’t sure whether it was mutual admiration or two lost souls finding solace in each other, but they walked out of that room friends, and had been ever since.

“So, you beat the snot out of me because you liked me?” he said.

“It wasn’t even a conscious thing. Until I looked back at it years later did I realize why I was so mean to you. But once we became friends, I never thought about you in a romantic way.”

“Never?”

“Why would I?” she said, but a hot-pink blush crept up into her cheeks. She pushed herself off his desk and walked over to the window, looking out into the darkness, at the traffic crawling past on icy roads.

If she hadn’t, why the embarrassment? Why was she running away from him?

He knew he should probably let it go, but he couldn’t. “You never thought about what it might be like if I kissed you?”

With her back to him, she shrugged. “You kiss me all the time.”

“Not a real kiss.” But now that he’d gotten the idea into his head, he couldn’t seem to shake it off. He wanted to kiss her.

He pushed off the desk, walked over to the window and stood behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders and she jerked, sucking in a surprised breath. “Nick …”

He turned her so she was facing him. She was so tall they were practically nose to nose. “Come on, aren’t you the least bit curious?”

“It’s just … it would be weird.”

He propped a hand on the windowpane beside her head, so she was blocked in by his arm on one side and the wall on the other. “How will you know until you try?”

He reached up to run his finger down her cheek, and not only was it crimson, but burning hot.

“Nick,” she said, but it came out sounding low and breathy. It was a side of her that he didn’t see often. A softer, vulnerable Terri, and he liked it. And it occurred to him, as he leaned in closer, that what he was feeling right now wasn’t just curiosity. He was turned-on. And it was no longer the childish fantasies of a teenage boy who knew he wanted something, but wasn’t quite sure what it was. This time Nick knew exactly what he wanted.

“One kiss,” he told her, coming closer, so his mouth was just inches from hers. “And if it’s really that awful, we won’t ever do it again.”

Heat rolled off her in waves. Her pulse was racing, and as she tentatively laid a hand near the collar of his jacket, he could feel her trembling. Was she afraid, or as sexually charged by this as he was? Or was it a little of both? With her hand strategically placed on his chest, she could either push him away, or grab his lapel and pull him in.

Which would it be?

He leaned in slowly, drawing out the suspense. When his lips were a fraction of an inch away, so near he could feel the flutter of her breath, as her fingers curled around the lapel of his jacket … a loud noise from the hallway startled them both and they jumped apart.

Damn it!

Nick walked to the door and looked out to see a member of the cleaning crew pushing her cart down the hall toward the conference room.

He turned, hoping they could pick up where they left off, only to find Terri yanking on her coat. “What are you doing?”

“I really need to get home.”

“Terri—”

“This was a mistake, Nick. I think we’re better off using a doctor, like I originally planned.”

“If that’s what you really want,” he said, feeling disappointed, but trying not to let it show.

“I’ll cover the cost.”

As if he would let her do that. “I insist on paying at least half.”

She looked as if she might argue, then seemed to change her mind. She nodded and said, “That sounds fair.”

He grabbed his coat and shrugged into it. “I’ll drive you home.”

She didn’t say a word as they walked to the elevator, and rode it to the underground parking garage, but he could practically hear the wheels in her mind moving. As much as he wanted to know what she was thinking, he knew better than to ask. If she wanted him to know, she would talk when she was ready. If he tried to drag it out of her, she would clam up. He’d seen her do it a million times. As close as they were, there was always a small part of herself that she vigilantly guarded from everyone, and could he blame her? His parents’ relationship may have been a disaster, but at least he had parents. Despite their dysfunctional marriage, they loved him and his sisters. From the time she moved to Chicago, all Terri ever had was an aunt who only tolerated her presence. If she had loved Terri, she had been unable, or unwilling to let it show.

Though he knew it irked her, Nick opened the passenger door for Terri. Normally she would make a fuss about being completely capable of opening her own door thank-you-very-much, but she didn’t say a word this time. Anyone who knew Terri was well aware she always had something to say, or an opinion about pretty much everything. Tonight, she was quiet the entire ride to her condominium complex on the opposite side of town.

Nick pulled up in front of her unit and turned to her, but she was just sitting there, looking out the windshield. “Everything okay?” he asked.

She nodded, but didn’t move.

“Are you sure? You can talk to me.”

“I know. I just …” She shrugged.

Whatever it was, she wasn’t ready to discuss it.

“Well, you know where I am if you need me,” he said, even though as long as he’d known her, Terri never truly needed anyone. She wrote the handbook on self-sufficiency.

He leaned over to kiss her cheek, the way he always did, but she flung open the car door and jumped out before he had the chance. As he watched her dart into the building without looking back, he couldn’t help thinking that in her attempt to keep things between them from changing, they already had.

Three

Though she had hoped getting a good night’s sleep would make things clearer, Terri tossed and turned all night, then woke the next morning feeling just as confused as she had been when Nick had dropped her at home.

She didn’t want their relationship to change. But what she realized last night while he drove her home was that it already had changed, and it was too late to go back. They had opened a door, and there would be no closing it again until they both stepped through. Unfortunately, she had no idea what was waiting on the other side.

After a long and unproductive workday spent wondering what to do next, how they could pull this off without killing their friendship—if they hadn’t already—she realized that she’d made her decision last night in his office. She’d just been too afraid to admit it. Not only to him, but to herself. Which was what led her to his apartment this evening. He hadn’t tried to contact her all day, by phone or even email, meaning that he was smart enough to realize she needed time to work this through on her own. He was always there when she needed him, but he also knew when she needed space. She realized it said an awful lot about their relationship.

He opened the door dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, with a chef’s apron tied around his waist and smudged with what looked like chocolate batter. The scent of something sweet and delicious reached out into the hallway to greet her.

“Hey,” he said, looking not at all surprised to see her.

“Can we talk?”

“Of course.” He stepped aside to let her in, and she gazed around the high-rise apartment that would be home for the next nine months or so. It was painted in rich, masculine hues, yet it still managed to feel warm and homey, in large part due to the casual-comfy furnishings and the dozens of framed family photos throughout the space.

Nick may have had an aversion to marriage, but when it came to his family, he couldn’t be more devoted. She was also happy to see that most of the clutter that had been there last week was gone.

“Come on into the kitchen,” he said. “I’m trying a new cake recipe.”

A culinary genius, he spent much of his free time cooking and baking. He’d often said that if it wasn’t for Caroselli Chocolate, he would have opened his own restaurant, but he would never leave the family business.

On her way through the living room, Terri dropped her purse and coat on the sofa, then followed Nick into his state-of-the-art kitchen, half of which she wouldn’t have the first clue how to use. Nor did she have the desire to learn.

“Whatever it is, it smells delicious,” she told Nick as she took a seat on one of the three bar stools at the island.

“Triple chocolate fudge,” he said. “Jess wants me to make something special for Angie’s birthday party next Saturday.”

“She’ll be eleven, right?”

“Twelve.”

“Really? Wow. I remember when she was born, how excited you were to be an uncle. It doesn’t seem like twelve years ago.”

“It goes by fast,” he said, checking the contents of one of the three top-of-the-line wall ovens. Then he untied the apron and draped it over the oven door handle—where it would probably remain until someone else put it in the broom closet where it belonged. He leaned against the edge of the granite countertop, folded his arms and asked, “So, enough of the small talk. What’s up?”