Baby Be Mine

by Victoria Pade

  She had adorable ears, too, he realized .is he scrutinized the one he could see. Small and perfectly curved in the midst of that curly, curly hair.

  He was crazy about her hair. Dark, burnished, cherry wood silk, that's what it was. And so shiny it nearly shimmered.

  There was nothing wrong with the bit of shoulder that peeked above the sheet, either. Straight and delicate.

  And her skin? Ah, that skin! It felt even better than it looked, under his palm and against him....

  He just had to touch her. He was itching to. So he reached over and took just one strand of her hair between his fingertips, rubbing it round and round.

  And as he did, as he indulged himself in the sight of her sleeping so peacefully in his bed, something welled up inside him with the power of a tidal wave.

  What had he thought in church yesterday morning? That when Clair left he'd have pangs? That he wouldn't be happy to see her go? That he'd miss her when she was gone?

  Well, he'd just been kidding himself, he realized suddenly. Because in the instant that his feelings for her burst through the floodgates, he knew he was in deeper than he'd ever thought,

  It knocked him for a loop, and he lay down on his back, staring at the ceiling to try to sort through what was happening to him

  How could this have sneaked up on him? he asked himself.

  Sure he had known he liked her. That he was attracted to her. That he wanted to make love to her. That he wouldn't be glad about her returning to Chicago.

  But this? This was more than that. Much more.

  This was a feeling he hadn't believed he'd ever have again after Stephanie.

  This was a feeling even stronger than what he'd felt for Stephanie.

  Oh, man, he was in trouble.

  He should have known. He should have seen it coming. He'd been enjoying her too much. He'd spent every day champing at the bit waiting for her. He'd liked having her around more than he should have. Her being there had even added a new element to tucking Willy in at night – a special, fuller element that had made it all the better. He'd hated it every time she'd left for the night. He'd been dreaming about her. He'd wanted her so fiercely it had been a driving need that most of the time had seemed greater than the need for food or water or sleep.

  And yet he'd still fooled himself into believing he had some control.

  Now he saw that that's just what he'd been doing – fooling himself. Because he hadn't had any control at all.

  Damn.

  She sighed in her sleep just then and wiggled around slightly, as if to get more comfortable, and Jace couldn't help letting his eyes wander ill her direction again.

  That was all it took for the tidal wave to hit him as forcefully as it had moments before.

  Only this time, for some reason, when it did it also washed up thoughts of those old home movies they'd watched out at the ranch. Movies of his family. Working and playing. Celebrating. Growing up. Just being together....

  It was what he wanted, what he'd always wanted – a family of his own. A wife. Kids. But he realized now just who it was that he wanted in that picture with himself and Willy and the other children he hoped one day to have. Who it was that he wanted to make a whole new set of home movies with.

  Clair.

  There shouldn't have been any surprise in that, either. Hadn't they been playing at being a family since she'd arrived in Elk Creek? A man, a woman and a child spending their days and evenings together, sharing their meals, relaxing on the sofa over wholesome movies and popcorn, looking after each other – that was all very family-like, wasn't it?

  And hadn't it been as good as he'd ever thought it would be?

  It had been. For him at least.

  But what about Clair?

  She hadn't seemed to hate it, that was for sure.

  He knew when a person was hating the way they spent their time. He’d been witness to plenty of that in Stephanie. But Clair hadn't shown signs of any of that. She'd shown signs of the opposite, in fact, of enjoying herself even when she was at her most inept with Willy.

  So maybe, unlike Stephanie, Clair might actually be willing to consider family life. With him. With him and Willy.

  She had come all the way from Chicago to meet Willy, Jace reminded himself. To be a part of his life. And he'd seen how the loss of her sister – both when she'd told him about Kristin running away and when she had talked about her sister's death – had affected her. Family meant something to her, too. Something more than it had ever meant to Stephanie.

  So maybe he had a shot.

  Maybe he'd been wrong about Clair from the start. Maybe she wasn't as much like Stephanie as he'd thought she was. Maybe what had developed between them – and after the night they'd just spent he honestly believed something had developed between them that was deeper than either of them had realized before – maybe what had developed between them meant that they could have a future together. That they could raise Willy together.

  Because he suddenly also knew that that was what he wanted. A future with Clair. A future as a family. A future raising Willy together.

  In fact, the longer he thought about it, the better he liked the idea.

  Especially if he'd been wrong when he'd decided Clair was too much like Stephanie to want Willy, if she really was in Elk Creek to get custody, then this was the solution to that, too. Clair could May, make a life in Elk Creek with him, and then they'd both be there to raise Willy.

  The whole thing just seemed right. A win-win situation. And maybe just what fate had planned, because the pieces seemed to fit so seamlessly – even if Willy might need a little more time to warm up to Clair.

  And one thing was absolutely certain, Jace decided as he turned the idea over and over in his mind – Clair was what he wanted.

  Clair and Willy and a lifetime together.

  But he wasn't going to get that by lying there staring up at the ceiling and fantasizing about it. He was going to have to lay his cards on the table and let Clair lay hers on the table, too.

  But that was okay.

  Because how could anything this right go wrong?

  Clair woke up to the sound of a shower running. For a moment she wasn't sure where she was. But then the scent of Jace's aftershave on her pillow reminded her of the night she'd just spent making love with him and sleeping in his arms.

  The memory made her smile even though she hadn't yet opened her eyes. Of course, it didn't hurt that in her imagination she also pictured Jace showering, that magnificent body she'd conic to know so well naked under the spray of water, droplets dappling his ruggedly handsome lace, those wonderful hands soaping up smooth, masculine skin...

  Maybe she should surprise him and join him...

  But just as she began to consider that, she heard the shower turn off, and it occurred to her that if he came out of the bathroom dressed or even in a robe, she didn't want to be without anything on.

  So she scrambled out of the bed, snatched up her panties and the shirt he'd worn and discarded the night before, slipping them both on.

  The shirt was huge for her. It was a navy-blue flannel that was as soft on the inside as it was on the outside, but the arms went well past her fingertips, and the tails reached her knees.

  Being nearly overwhelmed by it was worth it, though, she thought as she buttoned the front and rolled the sleeves up to her wrists, because it retained the clean scent of Jace's aftershave, which wafted around her, enticing her all over again and making her wonder if maybe she should have waited for him in bed – naked in bed – so he could join her there again.

  But she didn't have time to act on that because just then the bathroom door opened and out stepped Jace.

  He had a towel wrapped around his waist, one corner tucked in at his side, and nothing else. That glorious torso was bare beneath the kiss of the sun coming in through the window. Clair wanted to cross the room and slide her palms over every inch of tight washboard stomach, perfect pectorals, broad shoulders and bulging
biceps.

  "Hi," he greeted with a pleased smile the moment he caught sight of her.

  Obviously he'd had the same thought about closing the distance between them because that's just what he did, coming to take her in his arms, pulling her to him for a good-morning kiss.

  "I was going to make you breakfast and bring it up here before I woke you," he told her as she wrapped her arms around him and pressed her cheek to his chest.

  "That's okay. I'm not hungry." At least not for food. But he was another matter altogether....

  "I want to talk, then," he declared.

  Not what Clair had had in mind in lieu of breakfast. But something in his tone sparked her interest.

  "Okay," she agreed, standing straighter so she could look into his freshly shaven face, letting the pleasure of just that ripple through her.

  "I want to talk about us," he said. "And Willy. And why you really came to Elk Creek. And you stayin'."

  Nothing like cutting to the chase.

  "Oh," Clair said in response, her posture growing involuntarily stiff suddenly at the introduction of the subject matter.

  Jace must have felt it because he squeezed her slightly, as if that might loosen her up again.

  It didn't help.

  "I've been awake about an hour and doin' a lot of thinkin'."

  "Apparently."

  "Thinkin' about how I feel about you. About how nice it's been havin' you around. How much fun we've had. You know, up until yesterday, I was pretty worried that you'd come to Elk Creek to try to take Willy away."

  He said that so easily, as if it didn't really concern him at all.

  "Is that why you came here?" he asked amiably enough.

  Clair considered lying outright, something she'd avoided doing since her arrival in the small town. But what would be the point of that now?

  "Yes, that's why I came here," she admitted.

  Jace nodded but didn't seem alarmed. Actually it almost seemed to please him.

  "Why didn't you worry about it until yesterday?" she asked.

  "I got to thinkin' that maybe that wasn't the case. That you were too much like Stephanie, and Stephanie definitely didn't want kids, so you probably didn't, either, and weren't here to take Willy away. That maybe you really had just come to meet him, to make contact, but that was about as far as it would go."

  That seemed like a curious thing for him to have thought about so cheerily.

  Then he added, "Today I'm countin' on you provin' me wrong."

  Clair's heart began to pound, but for the first time since he'd started to cause that reaction in her, it didn't have anything to do with being attracted to him or wanting him.

  She was still so incredibly attracted to him and wanted him so badly that she could hardly think straight – especially with him naked except for that towel – but it was something more serious that was speeding her pulse. Something far less pleasant.

  "I guess I just did prove you wrong since I told you I came to Elk Creek because I do want Willy," she said very quietly, hoping to soften the effect.

  Jace nodded. "Which means you do want kids in your life and you must be ready to make a change in it to accommodate that," he concluded.

  "Yes," she confirmed tentatively, unsure where he was going with this.

  Then she found out.

  "So how about stayin' in Elk Creek and raisin' Willy together, you and me?"

  She couldn't be sure what "together, you and me" meant, but the other portion of that was what set off alarms in her. Alarms so loud she had to move out of his arms, away from him, as she said, "How about staying in Elk Creek? I can't stay in Elk Creek. What would I do here?"

  "Okay, we'll talk about work first,” he said, more to himself than to her and with an edge that let her know he wasn't wild about the order. "There are a lot of folks around here who telecommute. We might be a one-horse town but we do have phone lines and computers. Maybe you'd have to give up being an account executive and take a pay cut, but you could probably still do something in advertising – write ad copy or something. And less money and no title would just be a trade-off for havin' a life. Isn't it worth that?"

  "I have a life. I have a great apartment. A great job. Friends," Clair said defensively, thinking suddenly that while Jace might look a whole lot different – and better – than Lyle, underneath they could be more alike than she'd thought. Alike enough for Jace to be standing there calmly suggesting that she give up all she'd achieved just because he had some sort of whim.

  "But you don't have Willy. Or me," he pointed out in response to her list of all she did have.

  “I planned to take Willy back to Chicago with me," she said carefully, not sure how to address any thoughts of doing the same with Jace.

  "Why? So you can pass him off to a nanny or a baby-sitter or a day-care center? Or am I missin' something, and you're thinkin' of quittin' your job there to devote yourself to him?"

  "Of course I wouldn't quit my job. My job is the most important thing to me – '' She cut off her own words, hating the way they sounded, knowing what chord they were striking in him. "Not more important to me than Willy is," she amended then. "But you have to understand, Jace, my job is the one constant in my life. I had too many years of upheaval before that. It's my safety net. It means independence to me. And I like it. I'm fulfilled by it. Excited by it. I couldn't just not do it anymore. Besides, I have friends who work just the way I do and still manage to raise children."

  "Not well."

  "That isn't true."

  "It is for you, Clair, You aren't the greatest at parenting, even when that's all you're doing."

  That cut her to the quick, even though he was right.

  "Taking Willy back to Chicago with you would be the worst thing you could do," J ace continued. "You said yourself that you work six days a week, and more nights and Sundays than you can count. That it feels more like you live in your office than your apartment. If you had Willy he'd feel like whoever was taking care of him was his mother, not you. And what about saying that it seemed to you that my having Willy around while I worked was a 'hindrance'? You were talkin' from your own standpoint, and we both know it."

  Clair was even more on the defensive by then. She could feel it but she couldn't fight it. Any more than she could keep herself from saying, "I can go to court and probably be awarded custody if you won't agree to my taking him."

  Anger erupted in Jace, too. She saw it in the big hands that jammed through his short hair and in the jaw that clenched and unclenched.

  "I'm not talkin' about what some judge might say," he nearly shouted. "I'm talkin' about what's best for Willy. Or did so much of that Lyle-I-want-things-my-way-no-matter-what rub off on you that you can't see beyond yourself at all? That you don't care about anything but yourself?"

  "That's not fair."

  "Fair? I'll tell you what isn't fair. It isn't fair for a little boy to be ripped away from people he knows and loves and trusts to be around people he doesn't know. To be stuck in a day care center when he could be with me, outside in the fresh air every day. It isn't fair for him to be raised by someone who will spend more hours at her job than with him."

  Jace threw up his hands, shaking his head, breathing a disgusted sigh. And before Clair could say anything, he added, "I honestly didn't think this would play out like this." Then he seemed to stab her with those denim-blue eyes of his. "And what about you and me? What about last night? Was that all nothing?"

  Oh it was so much more than nothing!

  But it couldn't be everything...

  "No, it wasn't nothing," she said. "But – "

  "But what? Thanks for the tumble but now I'm going to take you to court and tear up your life and wreak havoc on Willy's, too? What about all that upheaval you're so damned determined to spare yourself more of? Is it just okay to submit Willy to it instead?"

  That struck home. Clair hadn't thought about it like that. And she didn't want to.

  "It would only be the one
time. I'd make sure he had stability after that."

  "One time? This is a boy who's already been handed off by his birth mother and lost the parents he knew to a car accident. Now you want to uproot him? At least losin' Billy and Kim didn't take him out of the home he knew, out of the town, away from every single living soul he's familiar with. How is it 'just one time' after all that?"

  "He should be with his blood relatives. His real family."

  "What blood relatives? You and a grandfather who's already failed as a parent himself? And I don't see him here. I'll bet he couldn't care less if he ever sets eyes on his grandson."

  Clair couldn't deny that, because Jace had hit the nail on the head – her father hadn't even wanted her to come, he hadn't wanted her to bother with Willy any more than Lyle had.

  "Willy will have me. I'm his aunt, after all," she said, hating that that was the best she could come up with for her own side of this.

  "He would have you if you stay here, too," Jace said again, his voice lower, deeper, more reasonable again. "And he'd have everything else he should have along with you. But you'd have more. I'd have more. We'd have each other."

  It was a tempting scenario – the three of them together....

  But even in the midst of her imagining it, a little voice in the back of her mind kept shouting that this was Lyle all over again wanting it all his way, wanting her to give up absolutely everything to accommodate him.

  "No," she heard herself say before she realized she was going to.

  "No?" Jace repeated. "No, you don't want to stay here? No, you don't want to try and make a go of things with me? No, you don't want to raise Willy together?"

  "Not if it means my having to sacrifice my whole life to do it, no," she confirmed, sounding even to her own ears as if her back were against a wall and panic was speaking for her.

  The answering look on Jace's face tied her stomach into knots. She knew what he was thinking. That she was no different from his ex-wife.

  And in that instant she saw something harden inside him. She saw him draw himself up and become her adversary.

  "I won't let you take Willy," he stated flatly, as if that were the only thing at issue, as if her refusal of all the rest had put an end to that portion of the discussion. A final end to them and what had developed between them.