His face relaxed and he pulled the bottle away from Lily as she sucked down the last few drops. He got a couple of burps out of her and she seemed content to be cuddled against her daddy’s chest.
Beth’s heart did another annoying backflip and she turned her gaze back to the television he must have turned back on when he sat down to feed Lily. The channel had moved on to a classic romantic comedy and she tried to lose herself in the banter.
Kevin chuckled at the on-screen antics and Beth forced herself to relax. She’d enjoy the companionship and take advantage of the extended mental break, as Lisa had put it.
But her eyelids were heavy and no matter how much she blinked, she couldn’t seem to keep them open.
“Sleep, Beth.” His voice was low and reassuring. “I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere.”
She let herself slide into sleep with his words playing through her mind. I’m not going anywhere.
***
“I’m not sure this is a good idea. She’s only three weeks old.”
Kevin made the turn into his parents’ driveway and killed the engine. “The weather’s beautiful and you need to get out and get some fresh air. You haven’t left your apartment since your parents flew back to Florida.”
She ignored him, which wasn’t a surprise. Not being very happy about his taking the baby out, she’d reluctantly insisted on going along, bad mood and all. He had Lily’s carseat unlatched and in his hand before Beth even got out of the Jeep. Most of her aches and pains from the accident had faded, but it would probably be a while longer before she was her old self again.
Thankfully Beth smiled when his mother opened the door and accepted her hug with no trace of her former irritation. His dad got the same treatment and Kevin started getting annoyed. Maybe her bad mood was just for him, even though he hadn’t done a damn thing to deserve it.
He set the carseat with a sleeping Lily in it on the floor at the end of the couch so her mother and grandmother could hover over her and went into the kitchen for a beer. His father followed him in and grabbed one of his own.
“How’s it going, son?”
Kevin didn’t know how to answer that. If he wanted to know how Lily was doing, everything was great. She’d totally aced her two-week checkup. If he was talking about his relationship with Beth, that wasn’t so great. “Okay, I guess.”
“She’s been on her own a few days now. How’s that going for her?”
“She says she’s all right, but she wouldn’t admit it if she wasn’t, so I don’t know. I do know she’s tired, but I try to help out and take Lily to my place when I can so she can get some stuff done or take a nap.”
Leo leaned against the counter, eyeing him over the rim of his beer can. “You don’t look too happy.”
Kevin shrugged. “I wish things were different between Beth and me, but if I push, she’ll just push back harder.”
They heard Mary’s voice getting louder, so that was the end of the conversation. A few seconds later, the three most important women in Kevin’s life walked into the kitchen. His mother kissed his cheek. Beth, who was holding Lily, gave him a small smile and maybe it was his imagination, but he thought he saw some apology in it.
Lily was awake and squirming, but she wasn’t squawking for a bottle yet. He peeked inside the receiving blanket she was cuddled in and brushed a fingertip over her cheek. She wiggled and—in a total shocker—Beth laughed softly.
“She definitely knows her daddy,” she said, “even when it’s the lightest touch.”
Kevin had pushed and prodded Beth into this dinner because he wanted his parents to have some time with Lily and because Beth needed to get out of her apartment, but it pained him. The togetherness without being together was even more pronounced now that Lily was born and it chafed. Sometimes a little and sometimes, like now, more than a little.
Mary stepped up beside them. “While Lily’s content, I want to take some pictures for the family album. You two go sit on the couch with her while I get my camera.”
Just like that, the anxiety was back in Beth’s face. He put his hand on her back and guided her toward the living room before she could argue.
“I already know what you’re going to say,” he said in a low voice. “Let her take a nice picture of you and Lily and then me and Lily. And then, please, let her take one of the three of us just to make her happy.”
She sat on the couch and peeled the blanket off Lily to reveal a cute pink dress. “What if someday—”
“Someday if I find a woman who’ll let me in her life instead of slamming the door in my face over and over, Lily still might like having a picture of her parents together.”
“Oh.” He could tell by the way her cheeks pinked up and how she sucked in her bottom lip that he’d hurt her feelings somehow, but she couldn’t possibly believe she could have it both ways. They could only spend so much time in the relationship purgatory she’d sentenced them to.
Mary returned with her camera before Beth could respond to that, if she even intended to. With his parents codirecting the impromptu photo shoot, they managed to get the three shots Kevin suggested, and he and Beth even smiled. They got pictures of Lily with each of her grandparents and then both of them together before she announced she was done by turning bright red and letting out an eardrum-piercing wail.
“She definitely gets her volume from your father,” Mary told Kevin.
Beth finished changing and feeding Lily as his mother put dinner on the table, so they were able to eat in relative peace. His parents had a bassinet and Lily was close enough to Kevin’s chair so she could watch him. Her eyes were brilliant blue and when he grinned at her, she just blinked.
They made small talk while they ate, chatting about Lily and the bar and Joe’s latest book. How Lisa was faring with her boys out of school for the summer. What they were going to do about the fact Brian and Bobby kept sabotaging the spinach in Mary’s garden and trying to blame it on rogue chipmunks.
It was familiar chatter and Kevin felt some of the tension easing out of his body and, with the stress abating, he could think more clearly. It had only been three weeks since Beth had gone through a car accident and childbirth on the same day. While each of the days since had seemed to drag by for Kevin, they had probably passed in the blink of an eye for an exhausted and slightly battered new mother.
For the umpteenth time, Kevin reminded himself he had to be patient. He’d made his feelings for Beth pretty clear, so all he could do was wait for her to sort through her own.
***
It had been three weeks since Kevin first told her he loved her, and he hadn’t said it again since.
She’d hated to do it, but she was running low on groceries—groceries she wanted, at least, rather than what Mary and her mother thought she should have—so she’d asked Kevin to stop at the store on their way home from the Kowalskis’ house. Now he was pushing the cart along behind her, babbling to Lily, whose seat was latched on to the seat of the cart. They probably looked like a real family to any shoppers who took notice of them, instead of neighbors who just happened to have a baby together.
As she tried to focus on the unit price of diapers, she found herself unable to stop dwelling on the question of whether or not he’d meant it when he’d told her loved her.
She’d told him it was a knee-jerk reaction to hearing about the accident and then seeing his daughter born, but she had no way of knowing if that was the truth or not. The fact he hadn’t said it again since made her believe maybe she’d been right.
The not knowing left her feeling uncertain and off-balance, so she said nothing about it. And she worked harder at keeping a distance between them, just in case his feelings for her really had been all wrapped up with her having a baby.
Knowing Mary, though, within a few days she’d be getting a beautifully matted and framed photo of Lily and her parents—an almost perfect family smiling for the camera.
“Are they going to do tricks?”
&n
bsp; Kevin’s voice jerked her out of her depressing thoughts and she realized she’d been staring at the shelves of diapers for who knew how long.
“Sorry.” She grabbed a package of store-brand diapers in the next size up, because Lily was growing like a weed, and tossed them into the cart.
Kevin took them back out. “Are you sure you want these? One of the magazines I read said these over here are the best. Super absorbent areas specifically placed for baby girls. Soft, stretchy elastic. Good for sensitive skin.”
“And the most expensive.” She grabbed the generic diapers out of his hand.
He grabbed them right back. “We can afford decent diapers.”
We? “The store brand is decent enough. And it’s bad enough I let you talk me into accepting a paid maternity leave. I’m not going to waste your money—or mine—on fancy diapers just because the package is pink instead of generic white.”
“Fine.” He tossed the package back into the cart. “I just want her to have the best.”
“Trust me, she’s not going to be traumatized because her diapers don’t have specially targeted absorbency zones for girls.”
He resumed rolling along behind her in silence until she started picking through packages of boneless chicken breasts. “Why don’t you just call down to the bar and have them make you something. You don’t need to be cooking meals right now.”
She wished, not for the first time, she’d left him in the car with the window cracked an inch. “Jasper’s has a great menu and the food’s delicious, but it’s still a sports bar, Kevin. Sometimes I just want a salad with some sautéed chicken on the side.”
“I’m sure if you asked, they could make that for you.”
Turning around to face him, she put her hands on her hips. “If you think I’m going to interrupt your staff with special-order demands from above, you don’t know me at all.”
“Okay, so that wouldn’t be like you.” He gave her a small smile, not at all like his usual ones. “Maybe I could take you out for dinner one night soon.”
“For God’s sake, Kevin, I’m perfectly capable of making chicken and a salad with a baby in the apartment.”
“That’s not what I meant.” The smile faded as his mouth tightened. “I was asking you for a date. I just timed it badly, I guess.”
Timed it badly? He could say that again. “I have a three-week-old baby, Kevin, and—”
“We. We have a three-week-old baby.”
“Which is why dating should be the last thing on our minds. Besides, I thought you were going to find a woman who’ll let you into your life and not slam doors in your face and blah blah blah. Whatever.”
She tried to turn back to the chicken in case he could see on her face how much his words had bothered her, but he caught her wrist. “You’re jealous.”
“Am not.”
“Are, too. You’re jealous of a woman who doesn’t even exist.”
She jerked her hand out of his and grabbed the first package of chicken her hand fell on. She put it in the cart with the diapers that weren’t good enough and walked away. Maybe if she ignored him, he’d keep himself busy talking to Lily. She was sleeping, but that never seemed to stop him. She was beginning to think the Kowalskis were genetically incapable of being quiet unless they were sleeping, and giving birth to one hadn’t done anything to negate that impression.
Sadly, even pushing the cart, he had no trouble keeping up with her. “If you’re jealous, that must mean you care.”
“Of course I care about you, you idiot. But we’re not going to date and I’ve told you why a million times.”
“So let’s go back to the whole chocolate cake thing.”
Her face felt like it was on fire and she kept walking, right past the salad dressings. Maybe if she kept him in motion, the shoppers around her wouldn’t be able to grasp enough of the conversation to cause her embarrassment. “Let’s not.”
“So you’re on a diet, but you’ve got a nice big slab of chocolate cake sitting in front of you. You won’t eat the cake because you think it’s bad for you even though it’s not, and you won’t let anybody else eat it either.”
“If somebody wanted to eat the chocolate cake, I’d have to let her because I’m not going to eat it. Be sad for it to go to waste.”
“What if nobody else likes that kind of chocolate cake and it was made special for you? If you don’t eat it, it’s going to get old and stale.”
She snorted. “Like you’re going to get stale. I hear women who kiss bar napkins are particularly fond of chocolate cake.”
“Jealous.”
“Not.” She circled back and grabbed a bottle of ranch dressing off the shelf without stopping. “You can offer your chocolate cake to whoever you want.”
She managed to get the words out in a flippant enough tone, but she was crumbling like stale frosting on the inside.
The thought of seeing Kevin with another woman made her stomach roll over and her throat tighten, but she was too afraid to tell him that. She’d never had a friendship like the one she shared with Kevin and she was too afraid to risk it trying to take their relationship to the next level. Or to the level it was at before, as the case may be. And it wasn’t just about Lily’s parents being friends—though that was important to her. She couldn’t bear losing Kevin’s friendship.
“You’ll cave eventually.” He was obviously going for cocky, but the sadness in his eyes made her look away.
It would be best for all of them if she didn’t fall off the wagon again.
Chapter Twenty-One
August
Beth was halfway through the pile of order forms on her desk before she realized she had no idea what she’d just read. With Lily napping in her portable crib at the end of the desk, she was having a few focus issues.
She’d been trying to keep up with some of the work in her apartment, but now that Lily was two months old, it was time to ease back into a real work schedule. Thankfully, Kevin had echoed her desire not to put their daughter in daycare yet, so a few things had been added to the office. The portable crib. A swing and her floor gym. It didn’t leave a lot of room to move around, but it would do as a temporary compromise.
After restacking the order forms, she started over, determined to pay attention. Lily was sleeping, so she needed to be working. That was the only way it would work. She owed it to Kevin who, not surprisingly, had provided a very generous, fully paid maternity leave.
Less than a quarter of the way through the pile of papers, she muttered under her breath and stacked them yet again.
Thoughts of Kevin weren’t any more conducive to concentration than Lily sleeping two feet away, and that made her very unhappy.
Her body was apparently well on its way to recovering from the strain of childbirth and it shared none of her mind’s reservations about reviving her attraction to Kevin. And since acting on it would ruin the delicate balance of friendship and co-parenting they’d found, she spent more time than she should trying to squash the shivers and the aches and the warm and fuzzies she got whenever he crossed her mind. She didn’t even want to think about what happened when she was actually in the same room as him.
It was embarrassing, really. And painful, to fight something she was pretty sure Kevin was willing to surrender to. He still looked at her the way he had before, with that unrelenting open invitation in his eyes. He was less aggressive about it than he was before, though.
He’d been unbearably sweet over the last two months, spending time with Lily whenever he had a free minute and making sure Beth had everything she needed without being pushy. He was getting a lot better at the just-being-friends thing, which was good since that was what she wanted.
No, not really wanted. It was what she thought was best for Lily and that made it the most important thing.
But there were still times, usually when she should have been sleeping, that she wondered what it would be like to be a real family. To wake up next to him every morning instead of him re
luctantly saying good-night and going back across the hall when Lily went to bed.
It was too risky, though. There was too much at stake if things went sour and she couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t. There hadn’t been a point in their relationship, other than one date, that hadn’t revolved around Lily and, even though Beth was no longer pregnant, that remained the truth. She didn’t want to be part of a package deal and there was no way not to be.
When Paulie tapped lightly on the door and then stuck her head in, Beth was as relieved to be dragged out of her thoughts as she was to see her friend.
“Come in. She’ll be waking up in a few minutes anyway.”
“Things are getting pretty rowdy out front. Joe stopped in and he’s buying rounds for the house. Seemed like a good time to take a break.”
Sounded like an odd thing for a guy with a former drinking problem to do, but Joe was in Jasper’s fairly often and always had a soda. “What’s the occasion?”
“Probably not my place to tell you, so act surprised, but Keri’s finally pregnant.”
“That’s wonderful!” From what Kevin had said, Joe and Keri had been trying to have a baby since they got married. Almost a year now, she mused, since Lily had been conceived on their wedding day.
“I’m happy for them,” Paulie said. “They’ll be great parents.”
“I’m happy for Lily, too. This means she won’t be the low man on the Kowalski totem pole very long.”
“And she’ll have a cousin close to her own age.”
Definitely good news all around. “How’s Sam?”
“Good.” Paulie leaned back in her chair with a contented smile. “He had some meetings in Boston this week, but I’m going to browbeat Kevin into giving me a few days off next week so we can go over to the coast and be bums.”
“Be a good time for a beach wedding.”
Paulie started to laugh, then clapped her hands over her mouth to stifle it when she remembered Lily. “No wedding for a while. Right now we’re just enjoying each other, though I’m sure we’ll get around to it someday. When we’re ready to deal with our families, I guess.”
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