The Baby Agenda

by Janice Kay Johnson

  She closed the refrigerator. “I can see that.”

  “I don’t want to work for anyone else.” He frowned. “I don’t think I want to run a business as big as Becker Construction again, either. I spent too much of my time shuffling papers, overseeing the books, hiring and firing. I guess I really do like building.”

  Moira smiled at him. “I understand. I didn’t like working in a big architectural firm, either.”

  Will was swept by the odd realization that, in all his adult life, he’d never had anyone he could talk to like this. He’d been the boss at work, the grown-up, the parent, at home. He’d become stuck in his roles. He had never felt able to confide, to talk problems out like this. Even though parts of this conversation had been oddly unsettling, Will thought he could easily learn to depend on having a real partner.

  But all he said was, “Thanks,” and that came out roughly. “I’ve committed to this job, but I think I’ll say no next time.”

  “You do take commitments seriously, don’t you.”

  Will tensed. “Shouldn’t I?”

  She seemed to shake herself. “Yes, of course. Don’t listen to me.” And she changed the subject, leaving him frustrated by his inability to figure out what she was really thinking half the time.

  HE GUESSED HE HAD BEEN getting restless, because something settled in him once he started leaving for work every morning and coming home tired but satisfied. A brief stretch of good weather allowed them to get the roof on and walls framed in on a strip mall that would house three businesses. Tenants were already lined up for all three, so they were building to spec instead of planning open spaces. Will made any decisions and Clay didn’t attempt to assert authority. During their brief business conversations, they were both tiptoeing around, Will realized, which reinforced his feeling that he shouldn’t take on another job for his brother.

  Damn, he looked forward every day to getting home to Moira and Caleb. Caleb changed so fast, and that was part of it. Will hated to miss anything. But mostly, he found himself thinking about Moira. He’d want to share something he’d heard, or a joke, or a random thought. He’d remember the plush feel of her lips beneath his, the delicate indentations of her spine when he slipped his hand under her shirt and tugged her close to him. He thought about the nightly pleasure-torture of sleeping with her, of waking up to find her head on his shoulder and her breasts pillowed against his side. He’d remember the luscious white swell of her breast revealed when she was nursing their son, and the occasional glimpse he caught of her nipple, damp and swollen, when Caleb’s mouth slipped from it.

  He kissed her every day at least twice. The brief goodbye kiss in the morning was becoming a satisfying routine. She’d blush, but lift her face to his so naturally he rejoiced. Come evening, he would touch her whenever he could, and sooner or later he’d bend his head and explore her mouth. Most nights, he read for a while or went online after Moira disappeared to bed. He had to cool off before he could get under the sheets with her so temptingly close. He might have been able to maintain his sanity better if he wasn’t sleeping with her, but he loved holding her at night. He was living for her six-week checkup and the all clear from the doctor. Will hoped and prayed she felt the same. Or—hell—that she was at least willing.

  Weekdays, she’d taken over doing most of the cooking. When he walked in the door, Moira would greet him, hand over Caleb and disappear to the kitchen, giving him some time alone with his son. By three weeks old, Caleb was staying awake more and holding his head up pretty well. He started cooing, a soft sound that always made Will smile. Usually Moira would nurse him again and put him down for a short nap while they ate dinner. Some nights he’d refuse to fall asleep, and they’d take turns bouncing him against a shoulder while they ate.

  Painting the bedroom only took a couple of days. Moira commented on how much more quickly he worked than she could have.

  “Dad made me learn the business from the ground up,” Will explained. “I painted the entire first summer I worked for him. Over the next few summers, I learned to wire and plumb a house along with framing a window, hanging a door, reading blueprints.” He shrugged. “I took the same tack with Clay and Jack.”

  Her brows rose. “But not with Sophie?”

  Will laughed at her tone. “Are you accusing me of sexism?”

  “Should I be?”

  “No. Sophie worked one summer in the office, but letting her even set foot on a construction site was out.” He chuckled, thinking about his sister’s quirks. “She’s really smart. You know that.” Moira nodded.

  “She couldn’t build a decent tower with wooden blocks when she was a toddler. I doubt that, to this day, she could assemble a Barbie house. She’s got a great memory, so she gets herself most places with no trouble, but she can’t read a map. We finally figured out it’s some kind of spatial thing. She worked in a vet clinic a couple of summers, she’s a whiz on a computer, but she’d be a menace with a tool in her hand.”

  “I’ve heard about people like that. I’d never have guessed.”

  “Sophie does plenty of things well. When she has kids, her husband can assemble the toys.”

  “Are there many that need assembling?”

  “Are you kidding?” He looked at her. “There was this pink plastic dollhouse that must have taken me four hours to put together one Christmas Eve. I was up half the night, determined to have it under the tree. I did a lot of swearing.” He grinned, remembering. “I kept worrying she’d hear me and sneak down the stairs. Maybe she secretly still believed in Santa Claus and found out he had a foul mouth.”

  He loved Moira’s laugh.

  Caleb was a month old when she took him for his first doctor visit.

  “He’s—what a surprise—in the ninety-ninth percentile in height,” she reported that evening. “Ninety-seventh in weight. He’s going to be big like his daddy.”

  “You mean, he’ll start tripping over his own feet before we know it,” Will said, pleased despite himself. He was amused to discover how much he liked the idea of his son taking after him.

  “Well…he has to learn to walk first.”

  Caleb was five weeks old when Moira called Will one day when he was at work. In the middle of talking to the plumber, he was going to ignore the call until he saw Moira’s number on the screen.

  He felt a jolt. Not Moira’s number. Their number.

  “Excuse me for a minute,” he told the plumber, and turned away. God, what if Caleb was sick? he thought with quick panic.

  “Moira,” he said, walking outside. “Is something wrong?”

  “No, I didn’t mean to scare you. I had to tell you.” Excitement rang in her voice. “Will, Caleb smiled! I was nursing him, and he let my breast go and just beamed. Now, every time I smile at him, he smiles back and flaps his arms. Oh, I can hardly wait for you to get home and see.”

  “Damn.” He closed his eyes, overwhelmed by a flood of emotion. “I wish I’d been there. Oh, hell. You make me want to come home right now.”

  “He’s about to go down for a nap, anyway. I—Well, I probably shouldn’t have called, but I had to tell you.”

  Voice low and husky, Will said, “I’m glad you did. I’ll never mind you calling me, Moira.”

  “Oh.” Abruptly shy, she said, “Okay. I’ll, um, see you when you get home. I’m making a stir-fry tonight.”

  Thoughts of stir-fry and smiles got him through the rest of the afternoon. He walked in the front door wondering if Caleb would smile for him, too, or only for his mommy, and not liking the twinge of jealousy.

  But Moira, her own smile glowing, was waiting for him with Caleb in her arms, and when Will reached for him and said, “Hey, big guy,” his son lit up. He focused hard on his daddy’s face and grinned a huge, toothless grin. Eyes that had turned brown sparkled. If Will hadn’t already been in love, he’d have gone down for the count.

  Moira had trouble pulling herself away to fix dinner, and he didn’t blame her. Who needed any other entertainme
nt?

  After Caleb fell asleep Moira told Will about her day. She’d grocery shopped with Caleb in the stomach sling he seemed to enjoy. “Mom called,” she reported. “I think she’ll visit again pretty soon. It’s killing her not being able to see Caleb.”

  “Has she ever considered moving over here?” Will asked.

  “I don’t know.” Moira’s forehead crinkled reflectively.

  “She seems to like her job, and she has friends. On the other hand, she’s been grumbling more and more about the cold. She’s getting arthritis in her hands, you know, and it’s worse during the winter.” She was quiet for a minute. “I think I’ll ask her.”

  Will nodded. He thought Moira would like having her mother nearby. He wished the idea didn’t feel like a threat to him. Would she turn to her mother instead of him?

  Feeling petty and uncomfortable with it, he listened as Moira continued to chatter. She’d talked to Gray today and to a new client.

  “I’m meeting with her and her husband next week. They’ve bought some property at Port Susan and want me to design a house for them. I thought I could start working here at home.”

  They’d talked about her doing some of her work from home, and perhaps hiring a part-time nanny instead of putting Caleb in day care.

  “You must be going stir-crazy,” he realized. “Unless you’re getting addicted to soap operas.”

  Moira scrunched up her nose. “I’ve taken to watching a couple of talk shows, but no soap operas. And no, I’m not going nuts yet, but…it has been a big change. It’s weird, having this completely different rhythm to my days. And no one to talk to. I can’t tell you how much I look forward to you walking in the door.”

  His voice roughened. “No more than I look forward to getting home.”

  “Oh,” she said softly. “I didn’t realize.”

  It was way too soon—too risky—to tell her how much he thought about her, how much she meant to him. She and Caleb gave him a sense of purpose. They were his purpose. That made him feel a little uneasy sometimes. He’d wanted to do something meaningful with his life, something bigger than being the devoted husband and father he’d fallen into being. He’d had no choice but to make the decision he had, and he wouldn’t change it if he could. He wanted to be here with his wife and son, not in Zimbabwe building medical clinics. He just wished… hell, he didn’t know what. That he could have his cake and eat it, too, he guessed.

  She was a little shy with him for the rest of the evening, and Will wondered what she’d seen on his face. When she finally said, “I’m going to bed,” he stood with her.

  “Let me kiss you good-night.”

  Her face warmed, but she came to him and wrapped her arms around his neck. Will bent his head and nuzzled her ear, her cheek, her throat, inhaling the scent that was Moira’s alone. The rush of desire was almost painful. He’d made love to her once, and that was ten months ago. He’d been sleeping with her now for over two months, and it was killing him.

  He brushed her lips with his. “When’s your doctor appointment?” he murmured.

  “Next week,” she whispered. “Wednesday.”

  He groaned and kissed her with more hunger than he’d meant to unleash. Damn, he wanted her. He ended up with his tongue driving into her mouth and his hands wrapping her hips and lifting her against him, so that she couldn’t help feeling how aroused he was. What gave him hope was that she held on tight and danced her tongue around his. They were both breathing hard when he let her go with another groan.

  “Go to bed.”

  Wide-eyed, she took in his expression, then backed away. “Um…good night, Will.”

  “Good night.”

  He paced the living room until the quiet sounds of her getting ready for bed had ceased. Then he grabbed his parka and went for a walk. He’d been taking a lot of late-night walks recently. Only heavy rain stopped him. The frigid night air worked as well as a cold shower. He could go back with some hope of actually sleeping.

  Will still didn’t feel ready for bed after his walk. Instead, he turned on his laptop and browsed the internet. He did that some nights, too, when he wasn’t in the mood to read. A foundation employee he’d known in Zimbabwe was regularly blogging and posting pictures. Will always started by checking if Gary had added anything new. Then he browsed for similar projects in Africa, or sometimes went to tourist sites. He wasn’t much of a photographer himself, but he liked looking at pictures of Victoria Falls or the fascinating wildlife. He hadn’t been in Africa long enough for glimpses of elephants or impala or even a lion lounging not far from the road to become routine.

  Tonight Will found photos posted by someone who’d recently gotten home from visiting grandparents still farming near Chinhoyi, and was admiring a spectacular one of cormorants roosting in the branches of a long-dead tree poking from the waters of Lake Kariba right at sunset when he heard a sound and turned his head to see Moira. She wore flannel pajamas with cartoon characters on them. Her hair was loose and tousled, her eyes fixed on the computer monitor.

  In an odd voice, she asked, “Where’s that?”

  “Lake Kariba, along the Zambia-Zimbabwe border. It flows into the Zambezi River then on to Victoria Falls.”

  “Oh.” She was already backing away. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I just got up to… It doesn’t matter.”

  He had a really bad feeling that it did matter. “Did you want to talk to me?” he asked.

  “No, I—It’s nothing.” She smiled, although it wasn’t much of one, said, “Good night again,” and disappeared down the hall.

  His body tensed with the desire to go after her, but he made himself stay where he was. He’d wake Caleb if he chased her to the bedroom. Something told him she wouldn’t want to talk right now, anyway.

  Somewhat grimly, he decided that Caleb needed to start sleeping in his crib, in his own bedroom. Sure as hell before next Wednesday night.

  Will had lost interest in browsing scenic pictures of Africa and closed out the internet, then turned off his computer. He rubbed his forehead and felt as guilty as if Moira had caught him viewing pornography. Damn it.

  The next moment, anger rose. He’d been doing something completely innocent. He was entitled to his interests. Why should he feel guilty? He’d quit the job for her, he’d married her. He was here, wasn’t he, giving her his all? She had no business looking wounded because he was browsing the internet.

  A rough sound escaped his throat. He hated his memory of the expression on Moira’s face. It made it hard to hold on to the anger.

  But maybe he’d been imagining things. Moira probably hadn’t read as much into what she’d seen as he feared she had. It was that damn, irrational guilt making him see what wasn’t there.

  Still, he had no desire to go back online or read. Instead, he followed her down the hall and went to bed. But when he quietly got in on his side, he stayed there, hoping Moira was sleeping and not lying very still, wanting him to keep his distance.

  SPYING WAS REALLY LOW and Moira hated herself for it, but the next morning after Will left for work, she turned on his laptop, went online and called up the list of websites he’d recently visited. What she saw made her feel as if she’d been kicked in the chest.

  Scrolling down, she realized he was obsessed. She’d let herself believe he wasn’t going to bed at the same time as she did because he was having trouble resisting the desire to make love to her. Now she knew. He could probably hardly wait for her to go to bed so he could go online and vicariously live his dream.

  The one she’d stolen from him when she told him she was pregnant with his child.

  Hastily, half wishing she hadn’t looked, Moira closed down the computer and went to her office. While Caleb was sleeping, she’d do rough sketches of some ideas for the Russells, the new clients she’d told Will about. Molly Russell had said enough on the phone about what they wanted to get Moira thinking, and she did that best on paper.

  But she felt too agitated to accomplish a
thing. She wasn’t used to not knowing how to handle a problem. It wasn’t like her to be so completely clueless.

  Of course, there was a reason she was. She had next to no experience in relationships. Worse yet, she’d never been in love before.

  But now she was. So desperately in love, and with a man whose life she’d seriously mucked up. A man who probably wished he’d never met her.

  She closed her eyes and remembered him gently rubbing her belly and saying, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere but here. And You think after holding Caleb I can regret anything?

  Yes! Yes, she thought he did. Oh, she did believe he loved Caleb. The tenderness on his face when he held his son was unmistakable. And she believed that he did want her. A man couldn’t fake an erection, which he seemed to have pretty frequently these days.

  But then…men liked sex. Getting a hard-on didn’t mean much.

  What should she do? Offering to let him go would be useless; he was fixated on a goal, the same way he’d been after his father died. He might be miserable, but that wouldn’t count. Marrying her, being a husband and father, was now his main goal in life, and she was pretty sure it would take dynamite to shake him from it.

  And—oh, God—she didn’t want to let him go. She could have survived without Will, if she’d never let him know she was pregnant. She knew she could have. But now that she’d had him, she couldn’t bear the idea of life without him.

  If only Gray hadn’t bullied her into telling Will.

  Moira made a face. She’d have contacted him sooner or later anyway. Later, maybe, without Gray’s push, but she knew she’d have done it. Will had deserved to know.

  She spent a really unhappy day, but pulled herself together enough to greet him when he got home as though nothing was wrong. She thought his gaze was rather searching as he took Caleb from her, but she had the excuse of needing to stir the spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove. And she got lucky in that Caleb chose tonight not to want to sleep, so he was a distraction during dinner.