by Claire Kent
The television was on, but the volume was turned very soft. And they discovered Liz stretched out on the sofa.
When Erin cleared her throat, Liz jumped up. “Hey. I wasn’t sleeping. Just resting my eyes.”
Erin chuckled, and even Seth smiled a little. “How was she?” Erin asked.
“Great. She’s been asleep for hours.” Liz’s eyes were skimming over Erin and Seth assessingly, and Erin could only imagine what her verdict was. “Did you have fun?”
“Yes.” She moved toward the nursery. “Now that Mackenzie’s getting older, she sleeps longer, which is really, really nice. I usually feed her at around 10:30 and she’ll often sleep until about six in the morning.”
She flipped on the hall light and then walked into the nursery. When she peered into the crib, Mackenzie was waking up, squirming irritably, and trying to rub at her eyes.
Erin smiled fondly, experiencing a familiar swell of affection at the sight of her daughter.
Seth had moved to stand beside her and was peering down into the crib too. He frowned. “We woke her up after all.”
Shaking her head, Erin reached down to pick her up. “Don’t worry about it.” Glancing over at Liz, who was waiting in the doorway, Erin asked, “When did she last eat?”
“It’s been about eight hours,” Liz answered, after glancing at her watch. “She was bawling her head off at eight o’clock, so I had to give her a bottle. Then she went right to sleep and has been a perfect angel ever since.”
Meeting Seth’s eyes in the dim room, Erin said, “Believe me, she was probably starting to wake up anyway.” She pulled a warm, sleepy Mackenzie against her chest, and the baby snuggled into her instinctively.
Erin brushed a kiss along the side of the little head and rubbed her back over the cotton sleeper. “Your daddy wants to say hi to you.” Erin felt kind of greedy about cuddling her daughter, after being away from her all night, but she managed to release the baby to let Seth hold her too.
He took his daughter in his arms silently, adjusting her against his chest. The little blue eyes blinked up at his face, and she made a couple of noises that sounded like, “Paah, paah.”
“I know,” Seth said soberly, nodding his head. “It was unforgivably rude of us to wake you up. It's a bad habit of mine.” With his free hand, he lifted her tiny one, letting her grab onto one of his fingers.
Mackenzie’s face was slowly growing grumpy, and Erin knew it was because she was hungry. Scowling up at Seth, Mackenzie flailed her other arm until she accidentally walloped him in the chin.
He didn't pull his head away. Just nodded again, gazing down at the rumpled baby in his arms. “I’m sure I deserved that. I’d resort to violence too if someone woke me for no reason except to gawk at me.”
When she heard Liz laugh, Erin glanced over toward her sister. And was surprised to find that Liz was watching (and laughing at) Erin rather than Seth.
It was only then that Erin realized that she'd had the most ridiculous, sappy smile on her face as she'd gazed at Seth and their daughter. So she quickly controlled her expression and tried to pretend that Liz wasn't still laughing at her.
When Mackenzie started to make ornery whimpers, Seth let out a breath and turned to Erin again. “I should get going and let you feed her and then get some rest.”
Erin smiled as she accepted her daughter again. “Thanks for tonight,” she said softly. “I had a good time.”
“I did too.” He’d taken a step over until he was very close to where Erin was standing with Mackenzie. He leaned over and brushed a light kiss on Mackenzie’s forehead. Then he straightened up and pressed a soft kiss just beside Erin’s mouth. Didn’t seem remotely conscious of the fact that this wasn’t their normal method of saying goodbye. “I’ll call you tomorr—.” Correcting himself, he amended, “I’ll call you later.”
Still smiling and kind of lost in the sweet, quiet mood, she murmured, “Maybe wait until this evening, since I’m hoping to take a nap this afternoon.”
“This evening,” he agreed, moving away with one last lingering glance at his daughter.
Without another word, he left the nursery.
Erin stood in place, hugging Mackenzie against her for a minute. Until she became aware of Liz, who was giving her a decidedly amused and curious look.
Erin felt her cheeks burning as she thought about what Liz had just witnessed. How it must have looked.
So Erin gritted out, “You promised. Remember? You said you'd be the soul of discretion.”
***
A ringing phone woke Erin from a sound sleep in the middle of the nap she took that afternoon.
Since her naps could last only as long as Mackenzie’s, Erin was not feeling charitable as she groped for the phone. “Wha!” she demanded incoherently.
“I woke you up,” Liz said, an unusual edge to her voice. “I’m sorry.”
“You better be sorry. What the hell do you want?”
“I just sent you a link. You need to check it.”
Erin tried to make her scrambled mind understand what Liz could possibly be saying. “Now?”
“Now. Call me back. I’ll be here all afternoon.”
Erin disconnected, groggy and confused and feeling a weight of growing anxiety that didn’t yet have a definite name or reason for being.
But she got up, heard Mackenzie fussing and so went to pick her up, and then found her tablet, pulling up the link her sister had sent.
It led to Mary Carlyle’s blog. The first things she saw were two pictures in stark detail. Both of Erin.
One of Erin holding Mackenzie on the street just in front of her apartment building. Erin couldn’t immediately place when it had been taken, but she looked hassled and sloppy, and Mackenzie appeared to be crying.
The other picture Erin could place immediately. It had been taken last night. On the staircase of the inn. Seth had her pressed up against the wall—the side of his head and lean body absolutely unmistakable—and his lips were on her throat. Erin’s head was tilted to the side, her mouth open and erotically expressive. Even in the slightly blurry photo, it was obvious that they'd been caught in the throes of passion.
Next to the pictures, the headline said in corny, predictable words almost identical to the ones Erin had imagined in her nightmares, “Seth Thomas Love-Child! Secret Affair!”
Skimming over the first paragraph of the story was enough to prove that Mary Carlyle knew exactly who she was—name, job, daughter, everything. The story explained that apparently this situation explained Seth Thomas’s mysterious retreat from socializing for the last several months.
Erin hugged Mackenzie more tightly, almost protectively.
For the second time in just over a year, she realized that her entire world had turned upside down.
She stared blankly at the screen. Forgot that innocent infant ears were inches from her mouth.
Muttered under her breath, “Oh, shit!”
Seventeen
“Give mommy a kiss, pumpkin,” Erin murmured, leaning toward Mackenzie, whom she held in her lap. Erin made a few smacking noises with her mouth as she brought her daughter closer.
When Mackenzie started to squirm, Erin eased up on the hug and held her upright so the infant stood on her lap. Mackenzie loved this and began to babble happily and incomprehensibly.
Mackenzie had rocked in her swing while Erin had a little breakdown about the pictures and then called both Liz and her father—trying to talk through what was still muddled in her mind.
Looking at her rosy-cheeked daughter in a purple t-shirt with a big red apple on the front, Erin tried to shake the sick heaviness she’d felt ever since she’d seen the story. “Oh, pumpkin. What are we going to do?”
Mackenzie didn’t have any answer except to giggle in choppy little gasps and bend her knees in a strange sort of squatting dance on Erin’s lap. The fine red hair stuck out all over her head, and her blue eyes looked more and more like Seth’s every day.
“I
don’t know what my boss is going to say. And I hate that you’re the feature of some trashy story.”
Mackenzie didn’t appear to care about either of these issues. She reached out one arm and—when she drew her daughter closer—Erin realized what she was reaching for.
A handful of Erin’s hair.
“Ow. That’s my hair.” She tried to loosen Mackenzie’s grip, but the girl clung resiliently. “Ouch. Let’s find something else to play with.”
Mackenzie wasn’t pleased with the interruption, but Erin stood up and carried her daughter into the nursery, where she found one of the bunnies Seth had given her—the first one, from California. Picking it up, Erin let the baby hold it.
While Mackenzie squeezed and patted and shook the soft toy, Erin watched and tried not to brood too much about how everything in their lives might have changed in the course of an afternoon.
Mackenzie held the bunny up by one of the ears and babbled, “Gah, gah, gah, gah, gah.”
Erin nodded and made sure she smiled, although she wasn’t feeling very cheerful. “That’s right. That’s a bunny. Your daddy gave it to you.”
Mackenzie stared at the stuffed bunny, as if she were trying to work out a complex equation.
After a few minutes, Erin realized that her diaper needed to be changed. Just as she was pulling off the dirty diaper, she heard a knock on the door.
“That better not be Mary Carlyle looking for a quote,” Erin grumbled. “Or else I’m going to have to hold your ears while I give her a piece of my mind.”
After a minute, the knocking continued, this time louder and more insistent.
Erin was trying to work on the diaper quickly, but Mackenzie wasn’t making it easy. She squirmed and kicked and writhed in protest.
Erin had just managed to wipe the baby’s bottom when the knocking at the front door started up again.
“Erin! Let me in!”
The voice was muffled through the door and half of the apartment, but Erin recognized who it was.
“Oh. It’s your daddy.”
Erin wasn’t sure how she felt about Seth’s impromptu visit. She hadn’t seen him since the night before—which had been unsettling for an entirely different reason. She hadn’t called him this afternoon because she wasn’t really sure what to say. It felt safer, somehow, to just hibernate. Talking to Seth would mean it was real.
When Erin had managed to put on the new diaper and then pull back on the red and purple pants, he was pounding on the door relentlessly.
Carrying Mackenzie with her to the door, Erin finally swung it open to reveal a very disgruntled Seth.
“What the hell were you doing?” he demanded. He was dressed casually in a crew neck sweater and gray trousers, and he looked tired as well as cross.
“Hey!” Erin objected, nodding down at Mackenzie, who had started babbling at the sight of her daddy. “Your language.”
“Sorry. But why did you make me pound on the door for five minutes? My shouting for you to let me in from the hallway is not going to make this situation any better.”
Erin scowled back at him. “I was changing her diaper. I’m so sorry I didn’t snap to attention at your summons the way I should.”
“I’ve been trying to call you all afternoon. Why are you ignoring my calls? I know this is hard, but I’m not going to let you shut me out.”
Erin had only briefly considered pulling away from Seth because of this new situation, but his overbearing tone provoked her immediate annoyance. “I’ll shut you out if I want to shut you out. You don’t get to boss me around.”
Seth swallowed hard, clearly trying to control whatever his instinctive response to her words had been. “Are we actually going to discuss this out here? Where we could be overheard? Am I allowed in or not?”
“Well, you’re not allowed in if you’re going to be mean. In case you hadn’t realized it, I’ve had a really bad day.”
“Apparently it hasn’t occurred to you that my day has been equally bad, compounded by the fact that you’ve refused to talk to me.”
Erin let out a frustrated breath. “I wasn’t refusing to talk to you. I’d turned off the ringer.”
“Why?”
Shooting him a significant look, Erin stood aside to let him into the apartment. “Why do you think?”
“Someone has been bothering you?”
“Mary Carlyle,” Erin said tiredly. She made her way into the living room and sank onto the couch with Mackenzie on her lap. Straightening the baby’s t-shirt so her belly wasn’t showing, Erin added, “After the third call, I just turned off the ringer.”
Seth had gone over to her phone without asking and was browsing through her call history. This bit of intrusiveness should have infuriated her, but she was too tired to be anything more than mildly exasperated.
After going through the incoming calls, Seth lowered himself onto the couch beside her. “Did you talk to her?”
“No. All I would have done is scream at her, so I just hung up instead. But eventually something will have to be done. The story might get picked up by other tabloids.”
“I know.”
Sighing, Erin pulled Mackenzie toward her chest. The baby wasn’t feeling cuddly, but Erin needed the security and comfort. “This really sucks.”
“Believe me. I agree.”
His tone still sounded rather grumpy. Almost sarcastic.
Erin hadn’t known what to expect from Seth, but she’d assumed he’d go into crisis mode, that he’d be careful and gentle with her and Mackenzie, and that he’d go out of his way to be supportive and encouraging.
She certainly hadn’t expected him to be bad-tempered with her.
“Is there some reason why you’re being so snide? I didn’t do this, you know. You don’t have to act like you’re angry with me.”
“I know you didn’t do this. And I’m not angry with you, as long as you’re not going to use this as an excuse to...”
“To what?”
“To pull away from me.” His voice was slightly hoarse as he explained, “I thought that’s what was happening when you wouldn’t answer my calls. I didn’t know you’d turned off the ringer. So I started to react to what I thought was happening.”
Erin was beginning to understand his mood. Part of her still resented it—if she’d decided to emotionally pull away from him because of this, she would have had every right to do so—but the rest of her ached for him.
Slumping back against the couch, Erin brought Mackenzie close again. She knew Mackenzie recognized Seth and was starting to love him, and every once in a while she felt the baby pull toward him, as if Mackenzie wanted Seth to hold her.
But Erin was far too upset this afternoon to release her baby quite yet.
“What do you think your boss is going to say?” Seth asked.
“I don’t know. He’s so conservative. And you try cases before him sometimes. He might think it’s a conflict of interest or some sort of threat to his reputation. He might...”
“I’m sorry.”
She’d lost her privacy. She might lose her job. And she could see he was blaming himself for it.
In some ways, this situation was caused by his notoriety. She wouldn’t be in this position if not for him.
But she also wouldn’t have Mackenzie if not for him.
They’d always been in this together.
She reached one hand out and laid it on his knee. She knew he’d resist any hint of pity, but she wanted to let him know that she cared about him. That she understood.
That she didn't want him to feel guilty.
Squeezing his knee, she said lightly, “You’re not the one to blame, but just wait until I get my hands on that Mary Carlyle.”
Her comment broke the tension between them, and Seth actually chuckled a little. At the sound of his laugh, Mackenzie giggled too. She’d been squirming in Erin’s arms, and now she reached out toward Seth’s shirt.
Giving up her needy hold, Erin offered Mackenzie to Seth.<
br />
He hesitated slightly, searching her expression, as if he weren’t sure she was serious. As if he weren’t sure Erin was willing to give up her daughter to him, even temporarily. As if he weren’t sure she could trust him that much.
Erin nodded encouragingly, even though she felt that same heavy sinking in her gut she'd felt all afternoon. “Hold her, will you?” she said casually. “I’ve got to go to the bathroom.”
She didn’t really. She just wanted an excuse, so the gesture wouldn’t seem as significant as it felt.
Seth took Mackenzie, and Erin hurried to the bathroom, where she splashed water on her face and breathed deeply, trying to recover from the heavy mood of the last few hours.
This was bad, but it wasn’t the end of the world. Seth wasn’t really a celebrity, so the story would quickly die down—assuming it took off at all.
Maybe there wouldn’t be a stir. Maybe her boss wouldn’t even hear about it.
It was possible.
Whatever happened, they would be all right.
When she returned to the living room, she moved quietly, thinking maybe she could catch Seth talking to Mackenzie again.
He wasn’t. He held her so that she stood on his lap, and the two of them stared at each other intently. Seth’s sweater and trousers were neat, stylish, and expensive. Mackenzie’s sweat pants were rumpled, with one leg hiked up around her knee, and there was milk dribbled down the big apple on the front of her t-shirt.
But the blue eyes gazing at each other held the same wondering expression.
Erin smiled fondly, despite the lingering anxiety. She flopped down on the sofa, closer to Seth than she’d been before.
“Is your daddy teaching you his intimidating stare?” she asked her daughter.
“She doesn’t need to be taught. I think she comes by it naturally.”
Erin chuckled and reached out to tickle Mackenzie’s sides, causing the baby to giggle.
“She’s good at laughing. She might get her looks and her intimidating stare from you, but I think she gets her laughing from me.”
“I hope so,” Seth said, his voice low and husky. He was looking at Erin now. She could feel it.
The sound of his voice made Erin’s heart flip-flop. She shifted uncomfortably and tried to think of an innocuous topic. “Do you want to stay for dinner?” she asked, before she could think through the suggestion. “I’m thinking I’ll start Mackenzie on a little bit of solid food today, so you could be here for her first try.”
