Nothing But This

by Anders, Natasha

  She was both heavier and lighter than he would have thought. And if he had ever given any consideration to what it would feel like to hold a baby, he would have expected less movement and more . . . limpness. But she was alive, moving, restless. He could tell she was tense and wary of him. And that surprised him too. She didn’t know him, so she didn’t trust him. He would never have believed a four-month-old baby capable of such instinctive intelligence.

  Maybe it was just this one. Maybe she was a prodigy. Well, considering that her mother was a culinary genius, it wouldn’t surprise him.

  His kid was a genius. He liked that.

  He stared at Clara, his smile so wide it actually hurt his cheeks, and Clara stared at him. Her frown was back. And it reminded him of Harris. Only about a thousand times cuter.

  “Do I look this pissed off when I frown?” he asked, keeping his voice low so as not to startle Clara.

  “Well, she didn’t get that black look from me,” Olivia said. And Greyson wondered if she had deliberately phrased it in a way that would allow her to avoid actively acknowledging him as the father. He bit back a soft sigh. This visit hadn’t gone as planned. They hadn’t really resolved anything . . . but he didn’t care. At least he’d received this unexpected bonus. And he’d take this over almost everything else.

  He very carefully lifted Clara close enough to drop a kiss onto a chubby, still-tear-wet cheek. One of her flailing little fists grabbed hold of his earlobe and tugged.

  “Jesus. Ouch,” he muttered, cringing in pain but trying not to react because he didn’t want to startle Clara. Olivia made a muffled sound of amusement and reached over to loosen the baby’s death grip on his lobe. “How the hell is she so strong?”

  “Baby power,” Olivia said in a wobbly voice.

  “Does she know her name?” he asked curiously before, without thinking about it, injecting some falsetto into his voice and directing his next comments to Clara. “Hey, Clara. You’re so pretty. Do you know your name? Claaara. Pretty Clara. My gorgeous girl! My gorgeous, clever girl.”

  He was immediately embarrassed by the babble of high-pitched nonsense that had gushed uncontrollably from his lips and clenched them shut before anything even more ridiculous could escape. Olivia made a choking sound, while Clara’s already-big eyes got impossibly wider. They flooded with tears, and she immediately started crying again. More high, piercing cries that just about broke his heart.

  “God. I’m sorry,” he said, not sure if his apology was for Clara or Olivia. He attempted to rock her like he had before, but she was writhing in his arms. Undecided before, she now knew she didn’t want to be there, and she wasn’t prepared to be soothed into compliance.

  “What do I do?” he asked Olivia again, hating the fact that he didn’t know. That he was so terrible at this.

  “She’s tired,” Olivia said, reached for Clara. “Give her to me, she needs to get to sleep.”

  His hold on the baby tightened possessively as every cell in his body protested the idea of letting her go. Olivia’s eyes went cold as she recognized the movement for what it was.

  “Hand my baby over, Greyson,” she demanded frigidly, and Greyson reluctantly relinquished his hold on Clara. Olivia looked completely resentful of what had been an involuntary reaction on his part. Her eyes were shuttered and her entire body tense.

  “Olivia,” he tried, wanting to explain that he hadn’t meant anything by it. But she wouldn’t look at him as she cuddled the still-crying baby close to her chest. Greyson’s own arms felt empty, and he longed to pluck Clara from Olivia’s hold to soothe her. But he knew if he did that it would only make her cry more—she didn’t know him. He was a stranger to his own daughter, and he hated it. Hated himself because he knew the situation was entirely his own fault.

  “Time for you to go, Greyson,” Olivia said coldly, marching toward the front door and unlocking it. There was an odd metallic crack, and Olivia swore furiously beneath her breath. Greyson joined her, and they both stared at the broken key in her hand. He tried the door; it was unlocked. A quick look confirmed that there were no other latches or locks on the door. And no security gate.

  “You can’t lock the door,” he stated unnecessarily.

  “Thanks for the news flash, Captain Obvious,” she retorted with childish sarcasm.

  “You can’t stay here if you can’t lock the door.”

  “And what do you propose I do? Check into the nearest hotel? Share your hotel room, maybe?”

  “I’m not staying at a hotel. It’s fully booked.”

  She looked curious for a moment, and for a second he thought she would ask him where he was staying, but she tamped down her curiosity.

  “Nothing stopping you from leaving, Greyson. You’re not locked in.”

  “I’m not leaving if you can’t lock the door behind me.”

  “This town is perfectly safe.”

  “Do you really want to take that risk with Clara?” The question made her hesitate, and she swallowed as her eyes dipped to Clara’s crying face.

  “If anybody wanted to break in here, a simple lock wouldn’t keep them out.”

  “No, it wouldn’t, and that’s something that needs to be addressed at some point as well . . . but that simple lock was better than nothing. I can stay. I want to stay. It’s that or you find somewhere safer to sleep tonight.”

  Libby was still looking at Clara and knew that even though the odds of anything happening were minimal, she had to place her baby’s safety first. She briefly considered contacting Tina, but after their tense exchange that evening, she was very reluctant to reach out to the other woman for help.

  Greyson staying here was ridiculous. There had to be another solution.

  “I’ll call Harris. He’ll let us stay with him.”

  “That suits me fine. Since I’m sharing the house with Harris.”

  He was? That was news to her.

  “Fine. Harris can stay with us here.”

  “Why disturb him, when I’m here already?” Greyson asked between clenched teeth. But Libby couldn’t get the image of him tightening his hold on Clara out of her head. She may have made an error in allowing him so close without a lawyer present. Clara was a living, breathing child to him now. And Libby would have to be blind not to have seen the love bloom in his eyes when he’d held his daughter for the first time.

  She knew she was courting disaster if she allowed him to spend any more time than necessary around her and Clara, but the stupid key had snapped, and she didn’t have a spare. Until she had the lock replaced, there was no way she could lock the front door.

  She chewed at her lip while she gently rocked Clara. The baby’s cries were diminishing, and she was starting to drift off, suckling on her tiny fist.

  “It’s not like you’d be much protection against a determined evildoer,” she pointed out, giving him a scathing once-over. Or at least she hoped it was scathing, because while he was lean, he was well built and looked capable of taking apart most bad guys with his bare hands, and she couldn’t stop her eyes from lingering on some of the more pleasing aspects of his impressive physique.

  “You know I have a black belt in Krav Maga.”

  “I did not know that.” She kept her tone even, determined not to be impressed. But damn, from what she knew about the discipline, that was quite an achievement. “One of the very many things I don’t know about you.”

  “It probably didn’t come up,” he said, sounding uncomfortable.

  “Like the fact that you thought you couldn’t have children?” She couldn’t resist the completely unrelated barb. But it would take a bigger person than Libby to resist the allure of the opening he’d given her.

  He didn’t respond to that, his face expressionless and his eyes blank and frigid. Libby sighed before shaking her head impatiently.

  “You can sleep on the sofa.” She walked away without further comment, heading for her room.

  She placed Clara in her crib and quickly went through her c
loset for some stuff before going back to the living room. Greyson was on the sofa, toeing off his trainers.

  She still couldn’t get over the fact that he was wearing trainers. And jeans.

  She dumped clean sheets, a pillow, and a thick comforter on the sofa next to him.

  “If you use the toilet, jiggle the handle after you flush, or the cistern won’t fill. Oh, and open the kitchen cold-water faucet really slowly—if you don’t, your shirt will get soaked.”

  “Anything else?” he asked. She tilted her head, trying to figure out if she detected sarcasm in the two words. In the end she decided that she didn’t really care and shrugged.

  “Lots, but those are probably the things that will affect you most directly tonight.”

  “Please let me fix up some stuff around the place. It’s for both you and Clara. You’d be free to focus on her a lot more if you didn’t have to worry about faulty plumbing.” The kitchen light chose that moment to brighten with a loud hum and then flicker. He glanced at it before focusing his gaze on her face. An ironic smile flirting with the edges of that too-beautiful, too-cruel mouth, he added, “And faulty electricity.”

  “I may borderline loathe you, Greyson,” she admitted, and he winced at her frankness. “But you are Clara’s father, and I would hate for you to electrocute yourself trying to repair something you have no clue about.”

  “Then allow me to hire someone to fix it for you?”

  “Sorry, Mr. Moneybags, I refuse to allow you to pay for a single thing in my home.”

  “Then let me fix it. I can fix it.”

  She shook her head, and a half-amused, half-despairing laugh bubbled from her lips. She should let him, just to watch him fail. It would do him a world of good to be terrible at something for once.

  “Good night, Greyson,” she said, hoping she sounded icy enough.

  “Sleep tight, Olivia,” he responded in that disturbingly quiet voice of his.

  Olivia. Nobody else called her that, which she was grateful for because she didn’t care for her name. Yet whenever Greyson said it in that darkly gentle way of his, it sent a frisson of pleasure shooting up her spine. She had always loved that he called her that. Because he was the only one who did, it felt special. Intimate.

  Of course, I don’t feel that way anymore, she reminded herself. She didn’t care what he called her.

  Chapter Seven

  Greyson woke up with a stiff neck, a sore back, and a surly disposition. To say he had slept badly would be putting it mildly. The sofa was too short and too narrow to adequately house his tall, broad frame, and any movement had had the potential to send him tumbling to the carpeted floor. And he sure as hell didn’t want to wind up on that carpet. It was stained and looked like it hadn’t had a decent steam clean in years.

  Greyson would be the first to admit that he was mildly germophobic. Well, it wasn’t so much germophobia as a revulsion to anything less than a clean living space. He knew some people would probably call it snobbery. But if that meant wanting to exist in a clean environment, then okay, he was a snob! Truth be told, this entire little trip to the Garden Route was severely testing his boundaries. The place he shared with Harris was truly revolting, and now Olivia’s house was less than ideal too.

  He knew from living with her before that she liked to keep things neat and tidy too. She wasn’t borderline OCD about it like Greyson, but she wasn’t a messy person. Which likely meant that living here, with the house in its current state, couldn’t be too pleasant for her. And all he wanted to do was make it a little less unpleasant. For both Olivia and Clara. He reached for his phone, placed within easy reach on the small table in front of the couch. He wasn’t sure what purpose it was meant to serve, footrest or coffee table. It seemed like a random thing to just plonk in the middle of the living room.

  He checked the time on his phone—just after seven in the morning—and went through his messages. There was one from Harris.

  Where are you? Nothing more than that, but the three words conveyed a level of concern that Greyson wasn’t sure he deserved. He felt like an ass for not telling his brother he wouldn’t be back last night. It would have been the considerate thing to do.

  At Olivia’s place. I didn’t mean to worry you.

  Not worried. His brother’s response was brisk and to the point, and Greyson felt curiously let down by it. Until his brother’s next message: Okay maybe a little worried. I was concerned you’d skipped out on me without paying your half of the rent.

  Greyson’s lips tilted at the lame little joke. It was better than nothing.

  I’m good for it.

  What do you mean you’re at Libby’s? Why are you there? Are you saying you slept there?

  I slept on the sofa. I think it did my back in.

  Good. This time the unsympathetic reply startled a quick laugh out of Greyson. Anyway. Got to go. I have a coffee date.

  Greyson didn’t bother to reply to that and put his phone back on the coffee table–footrest–hybrid thing. The other room was silent. He was thankful for that because Clara had cried three times last night, startling him out of a sound sleep every time. It must have been exhausting for Olivia. He didn’t know how she did it. She had not once lost her patience. Her sweet voice had remained soft and crooning each time, and Greyson had been filled with so much admiration for his lovely wife. She was an amazing mother. Kind, attentive, and loving. He had found himself wanting to relieve some of her burden. If things had been normal, maybe he would have rocked Clara to sleep or changed her nappy. Anything other than uselessly lying in the other room and listening to her cry.

  He sat up and bit back a groan at the various aches and twinges that seemed to awaken with the movement of his body. Screw this crappy couch—it was a goddamned torture device.

  He contemplated the closed door of Libby’s room again. She’d probably be up in an hour or so to get ready for work. Since she hadn’t explicitly stated that she wanted him gone before she woke up today, he was going to overlook the possibility that it might have been an unspoken expectation. He needed a shower to ease some of the aches from his body, and he wasn’t going all the way back to Harris’s place for that.

  He quietly padded to the bathroom and contemplated the tub shower for a second. It was going to be cramped. The showerhead wasn’t tall enough to slot Greyson beneath it, but he’d have to make do. He wondered if there were any special tricks to the shower, like with the toilet and kitchen tap, but then shrugged and figured he’d soon find out.

  He was wearing only the boxers he had slept in and quickly shoved them down and off. He checked the water, and thankfully it was hot and the water pressure perfect. He used her soap, and the familiar fragrance of vanilla and honeysuckle wafted in the steam and surrounded him. It smelled like Olivia, and it made him hard.

  He groaned at the erection, his first in months. He hadn’t been aroused in so long. It was like his sex drive had died the day she’d walked out on him. Before that, during her pregnancy, even while he’d thought she’d cheated on him, he had seen her increasingly lush body and had wanted her. Every time he’d found himself in her presence, his cock had swelled and strained, forcing Greyson to will it away with the reminder that she’d betrayed him with someone else. Probably with Harris.

  It had been as effective as a cold shower . . . but now, surrounded by what felt like her essence, nothing could deter this erection, and he fisted himself, pumping up and down for a few strokes before groaning again and swearing. He forced himself to let go. He wasn’t going to jack off in his wife’s shower like some creepy pervert.

  He turned the water to cold and manfully refrained from yelling when the water doused both his libido and his will to live with a deluge of ice that he felt right down to his bones.

  “Jesus,” he swore viciously. It was beyond cold. But at least it succeeded in getting rid of that damned inconvenient hard-on. His teeth were chattering when he stepped out of the shower and folded the tiny towel around his waist.
Where were her large towels, anyway? This thing was so small it left a gaping slit over his thigh, and his dick and balls were on display with every step he took. He opened the bathroom door tentatively and cast a look down the hall. Thankfully, her bedroom door was still shut. Great—he didn’t wish to be harangued because he couldn’t find a towel large enough to accommodate him.

  He crept out of the bathroom, back to the living room, where he had left his clothing in a neatly folded stack on the coffee table. He had just bent and reached for his jeans when the bedroom door opened, and he froze, glancing over his shoulder to the stunned face staring fixedly at his ass and his junk, which he knew had to be on prominent display to her horrified gaze.

  She made a funny, squeaky little sound of dismay before her hand flew up to her mouth in shock. Her eyes were still on his tackle, and he shook himself out of his horrified reverie and cautiously stood upright again. Keeping his back to her while still watching her over his shoulder. All that staring had a predictable effect on his dick, and the erection was back.

  Fucking fantastic. She was never going to believe that he hadn’t planned this. Especially if she happened to catch a glimpse of his raging hard-on.

  “I grabbed a shower,” he explained unnecessarily. “It was quick; I’m sure there’s plenty of hot water available. You don’t have any adult-size towels in there, by the way.”

  He had to say the last thing . . . wanting to explain himself but knowing she wouldn’t be receptive to it. At least this way he could let her know that he had looked for other towels.

  “Just . . .” She waved a frantic hand in his general vicinity. “Get dressed, okay?”

  “Yes. Of course.” He reached for his jeans and hoodie again, trying to do it without bending.

  “I’m going to get changed,” she said, her voice still unusually high. She retreated back to her bedroom, and he could hear the sounds of quiet rustling around in there. He tugged his clothes back on, foregoing underwear because he didn’t have a clean pair; he felt very unlike himself, going commando like this. He wasn’t sure he liked it. But he had no other alternative.