“Now this time,” he whispered, “ring the bell, and tell Alicia we’re going to live in sin, if that’s what you really want to tell her. But when she doesn’t believe you, act as if it’s her that’s crazy, not us. Got it?”
“Nick? We are going to be living in sin. Right?”
“Yes we are.”
“Do you think this is a crazy idea? Trying to get our fathers together again?”
“Of course not.”
“But Alicia—”
“Diana, you said yourself she raised you. She probably has a better handle on what you’re like than your father does. She knows you wouldn’t do anything wrong.”
That made Diana feel better. If she could talk the talk about living in sin, she might be able to end the Logan/ Smith feud. But she didn’t want to lose the respect of those she loved in the process.
Alicia once again opened the door before Diana rang the bell. “Don’t you dare ring that bell,” she said.
“Have you been spying on us?” Diana crossed her arms and raised her right eyebrow.
“Of course I have. What do you think I am, stupid? How else am I gonna know what’s going on?”
Nick kept his arm around her waist as if to lay claim, even though she knew he couldn’t possibly be doing that, despite the kiss. That incredible kiss.
She smiled. For a day that had started out as the worst day of her life, it had turned into one incredible morning. She hoped it never had to end.
“Hello, Alicia,” Nick said, and he winked. “I’m Nick Logan, and Diana and I are going to live in sin.”
“That better make our parents sit up and take notice,” Diana said. “If that doesn’t work, we’re going to say we’re getting married.”
This time Nick gave her a grin that would have knocked her socks off. “That seemed like a good compromise,” Diana added. “See, I told you the Smiths and Logans can do that.”
“So can Logans and Smiths.”
“Ah, I see the pecking order is important to you.”
“Nope. Doesn’t mean a thing.”
“So Smith and Logan is okay?”
“No. Alphabetical order does mean something to me. Logan and Smith.”
“I can do the A-B-C order. That’s a good compromise.”
Alicia looked from one to the other, then handed Jessica back to Nick. “You two are sick. Really sick. I’m outta here.”
Diana glanced over at Nick and shrugged. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”
He smiled. “She’s playing with you, Diana. She’s all bark. What does matter is what our fathers think. Alicia,” he called to her retreating back. “Is Harry home?”
“He went to work right after Diana left this morning.”
“What about Sheila?” Diana asked.
“She went to the spa to get herself oiled and massaged.”
“Then we have some time.” Nick took Jessica into the living room to watch the football game, and Diana followed Alicia down the hallway to the kitchen. “Can you teach me how to make that wonderful macaroni and cheese you made me all the time when I was a kid?”
“You want to make macaroni and cheese?” the housekeeper asked. “What in the world for?”
“Breakfast for Jessica. You made the best. I want to give Jessica good memories, the kind I had when I was growing up, and you were cooking. I loved your macaroni and cheese. Every time you made it, the sauce was so creamy, the pasta cooked to perfection. All I’m asking is how you did it” Diana had pulled a piece of paper and a pen out of a drawer and was ready to write down the secret to her childhood favorite.
“Well…” Alicia hesitated. “You want to know the secret to my macaroni and cheese.”
“If you’ll share it with me.” Maybe it was a recipe that had been handed down in Alicia’s family for generations. Maybe ethics made it impossible for the housekeeper to share. The thought of never knowing how Alicia had made that wonderful macaroni and cheese, the one meal that brought warm and fuzzy memories that took the sting out of a very lonely childhood, disappointed her. “I guess I can understand if you’re not able to do that.”
“No, no. I can tell you.”
“I’m ready.” Pen and paper were poised in anticipation.
“I don’t think you’ll need that,” Alicia said, pointing to Diana’s pen.
“I want to write everything down. I don’t want to miss one word.”
“Go to the pantry. Third shelf on the right.”
Diana opened the door.
“Do you see a green box that says ‘Macaroni and Cheese’?”
Diana pulled the box off the shelve. “I’ve got it right here.”
“That’s the one.”
“The one what?”
“That’s my family-secret macaroni and cheese.”
“No way.” Diana waited for a denial. A sign that Alicia was pulling her leg. Nothing. “Are you telling me you didn’t add anything to it?”
“That’s it. You’re going to find that sometimes the best is the easiest So I’d suggest you follow the directions on the box.”
“I can do that,” she mumbled. Taken. That’s what she’d been. Taken in by soft pasta and creamy cheese.
“You don’t sound like you’re sure. Because this is me you’re talking to, and I know about you and your experiments. I know you like to mix a little here, add a little there. I’m telling you to follow the directions on the box and don’t deviate.”
“I won’t I promise.”
Alicia laughed. “Diana, when you make a meal, do as much as you can by the box, by the can, or frozen. I did, not that your father ever knew.”
“I loved your pizza.”
“You loved Briggardo’s pizza. Best takeout this side of the tracks. You have to understand that you needed me more than you needed a home-cooked meal.”
Diana smiled softly at the older woman.
“By the way,” Alicia said, “don’t marry a man that kids don’t like. That baby cries a lot around Nick.”
“We’re not getting married. We’re living in sin.”
Alicia rolled her eyes. “Yeah, tell it to the judge.”
“Okay, I will.” Diana, who had been leaning on the counter, with her chin in her hand, looked at the box of macaroni and cheese and sighed. “I think if I add paprika to this, it will really give the flavor a zing.”
6
NICK CARRIED a sleeping Jessica back down to his apartment. Diana unlocked the front door, and followed him to the guest bedroom.
She now knew that once Jessica fell asleep, the baby liked Nick just fine. It was when Jessica was awake she had problems with him.
She also now knew that Nick liked football and football put Jessica to sleep. So if Nick watched a football game, and at the same time held Jessica in his arms, within seconds Jessica would be sleeping, and not crying. Both would be happy and they could consider it quality time together. Besides, they were doing something each of them enjoyed, watching football and sleeping.
Nick laid the baby very gently in the crib. Two tiny fingers found their way into her mouth. Jessica sighed and sucked softly, never opening her eyes.
Diana hovered close behind while he covered Jessica with a yellow blanket and placed a small teddy bear in the crook of her arm.
The portable crib had been set up next to the queen-size bed. The rest of Nick’s apartment, from the deep green marble floors in the hall, to the wood floor in the kitchen, said, “I am man, hear me roar.” This bedroom, though, was the complete opposite. Everything sunshiny yellow and luminous lavender, lace and ruffles and feminine, right down to the plum carpet.
As if he knew where her thoughts were headed, Nick said, “This is where Cathy stayed during most of her pregnancy.” He spoke softly, as if the room itself dictated a different kind of speech and atmosphere.
Diana watched him while he fussed over the sleeping baby, determined more than ever that she would do everything she could to make things right with their families. Or
at least get Nick’s parents communicating with their own daughter and granddaughter. Not that she knew what to do, but she knew that she had to do something. And if all her efforts blew up in her face, well, it wouldn’t be the first time.
“Where does Cathy live now?”
“I had a piece of property in old Sugar Land that I signed over to her. We put a house on the land, and built a laboratory out in the back. She needed a place to work with her perfumes and soaps. Which is why she’s in Paris. A company there is buying her formulas.”
“She has her own lab.” Diana spoke reverently. Cathy was a woman to be respected.
“It’s small, but it’s a start for her anyway.”
“Did she ever have anything that…kind of…” Diana threw out her arms. “Exploded?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Some people have all the luck.” Nick’s sister mixed chemicals and created beautiful things that smelled good. When Diana mixed chemicals, she ended up with a mass evacuation of the building, and three fire departments in attendance.
If she got a chance to talk to Cathy, she’d have to ask her how she had such good luck in the lab.
“You bet she’s lucky,” Nick said. “Getting an all-expense-paid trip to Paris was about the best thing that’s ever happened to her.”
“That, too,” Diana murmured. “But I was talking about having a lab.”
“She needed that lab. She wanted to stay home with the baby. She was planning on going back to work. But then we discussed the pros and cons, and we figured that this perfume hobby she had was making pretty good money. If she could do it full-time, she decided she could double her revenue. But she was wrong.”
“I’m so sorry. So did she have to go back to work? I never thought about how hard it must be to be a working mother.”
“Don’t be sorry for her. She tripled what she estimated she’d make, and it’s going up. Now she employs other mothers, and she provides them with on-site child care.”
“Why didn’t she leave Jessica with them?”
“I’m blood.”
Everything was so simple. Blood. Family. The bonds that tied them all together were strong in spite of parents who did what they could to change that. Diana was finding out there were a lot of things she hadn’t thought about before. She never thought of herself as a selfish person, she had always wanted to make a difference in people’s lives. Yet, for some reason, meeting Nick again, being with Jessica, she was coming to see that maybe not everything she had planned to do to make the world a better place was such a great idea after all.
Maybe what she needed to do was concentrate on something closer to home. Like her family. Like Nick. “You were nice to help her.”
“I wasn’t nice,” he said. “It was in my best interest to see her taken care of. I love my sister, I want the best for her. By doing what I can to help her and Jessica, I’m really helping myself. Trust me, Diana, I was being selfish when I built her the lab.”
“I don’t understand why you’re saying that.” She glanced in the crib at Jessica. So sweet and innocent when she was sleeping. Looking at the child, no one would ever figure that she could be so hostile to a man who had been a fairy godfather to her and her mother.
“Nicholas X, the best aftershave in the world. That’s why I built her the lab. Smell me.”
Diana didn’t have to be asked twice. Nick bent down a little, she stood on tiptoes and leaned into him, her nose and lips touching the warm skin in the crook of his neck. She breathed deeply and filled her senses with the spicy-woodsy scent that was all male. All Nick.
She took in another breath, her eyelids heavy, her body relaxing. He turned his head slightly, his cheek a gentle caress against hers. His lips were so close, but still miles away. Time didn’t move, and neither did she. Was he about to kiss her?
“Should I change her diaper?” he asked abruptly.
Sometimes reality really stunk, she was finding out
Diana moved away from him. There had to be something wrong with her that while she’d been thinking about kisses, he’d been contemplating diapers. How could that be? Is it possible that all her instincts were so wrong?
Then she remembered Nick had been her dream. She hadn’t been his.
“Diapers? When she’s sleeping? Why?”
“So she can sleep longer and doesn’t get a rash. Cathy said something about that in the instructions she left me.”
So while their lips were so close, and she was sniffing his neck, and they were standing cheek to cheek, he had been thinking about diaper rash.
Okay. Her feelings weren’t in the gutter. She was fine with this. “You could change it if you want to. Or I could try and do it,” she said.
A look of relief passed over his face when she made the offer. Who knew that by saying she’d change a diaper, she’d get his gratitude? “I’ve never changed a diaper before,” she said. “I’m not sure how to do it, and if I do it, I’ll probably wake her up, and she’ll see you and start screaming. I bet you could do it while she’s sleeping and not wake her up.”
“Come with me.” Nick took Diana by the hand and brought her out of the bedroom and into the hallway. There they were, connected again, fingers entwined. And he was still talking about diapers.
“I don’t really want to wake her up right now,” he said. “Besides, we need to talk about what we’re doing here.”
“What’s wrong? Don’t tell me, let me guess. You want to back out of the living-in-sin part.” She just knew it and she told him so, too. “When we were upstairs and you slipped by saying to Alicia ‘marriage’ instead of ‘sin,’ I knew you were going to do something that would throw everything we talked about this morning out the window.”
“Saying the word marriage was a mistake. I’m a bachelor. A confirmed bachelor. Marriage wasn’t even in my vocabulary until this morning. I didn’t even know if I knew how to pronounce the word. Look at your father, five wives. Look at my father, one wife and years of misery.”
“Well…as long as you don’t want to back out of the living-in-sin part.” She had been so looking forward to that.
“I’m a guy. No guy walks away from sin. Especially not sin that’s definitely illicit, like ours would be.”
Diana swallowed hard. Even though she’d been dreaming and fantasizing about him, she wasn’t easy by any means. Okay, so she could be easy in her fantasy, but that didn’t mean she was easy in real life. He had to know that. Didn’t he? He was looking at her with hot eyes. Maybe he didn’t “Nick, we have to talk about this.”
“That’s why I brought you out here. I know I would say I’d do it, and I could do it if I had to. At least I think I could. But the truth is, I’ve never done it.”
Diana’s eyes widened. “No, you can’t mean what I think you mean. There must be some mistake.”
He shook his head. “No, no mistake. I’ve watched my sister do it, but I’ve never done it myself.”
Diana crossed her arms and scowled at him. “Do you take me for a fool? It’s because I’m a Smith, isn’t it?”
“No, of course not I wouldn’t lie to you.”
“I don’t believe you for a minute.”
“Believe what you want. Some people are teachers, some people are doers. I’m a teacher. So I can teach you.”
“You can teach me, but you can’t do it You want me to do it while you watch. Is that right?”
“That’s it. I could try to do it, but I would mess it up, and that’s not something you want to mess up. See, Diana, I would watch my sister do it and she made everything look easy. So I know I could instruct you. I would just watch over your shoulder, and tell you what to do. If you follow my instructions, and do it just like I say, which will be the same way my sister does it, then you’ll be fine.”
“Nick.”
“Diana?”
“Do it yourself.”
She stormed down the hallway, heading toward the front door and out of the apartment Fantasies blow up as f
ast as realities. Shoot
He came running after her, grabbing her on the shoulder, stopping her from going any farther. “Okay, I’m sorry. If you want me to change her diaper, I will. I won’t ask you to do that. Call me a male chauvinist pig, okay? Just get it all out of your system, and we can start over.”
Oh boy. She swallowed, licked her lips and swallowed again. No way was she ever going to go near the place where she thought he’d taken her. No way. She gave him her best, I forgive you for being a male, smile. “I would consider it an honor to have you teach me how to change a diaper.”
His hand, still resting on her shoulder, squeezed gently. “Thanks. It’s not that I wouldn’t change it, I would. It’s just that she cries, well, you know, you’ve seen her.”
“I’m here to help. Remember?” she asked softly.
He nodded.
They went back into the bedroom, and Diana carefully pulled back the blanket and pulled down the little pink cotton pants.
“Undo the tabs,” he whispered from behind. “But get one of those wipe things so you can hose her down.”
She did what he said, and Jessica still didn’t wake up.
“You have to put a clean diaper on the bed, and fit the top part between her legs, rest it over the stomach.” He waited while she did as he instructed. Then, “Okay, now let the sides meet, pull the tabs and hook the sides together.”
Diana was getting ready to pull the pants back up, when he told her not to. “She might wake up if you do that.”
She handed the dirty diaper to Nick. “I’ll agree to change the diapers if you’ll agree to flush them down the toilet I don’t want anything to do with dirty diapers.”
“You’re not supposed to flush them.”
Diana pointed to the boxes of diapers. “It says on the box disposable.”
“That means you throw them out, not wash them.”
She thought about that, and wasn’t sure he was right But she was in his house, and these were his toilets, so she figured he could throw the used diapers in his trash if he wanted to. Personally, if it had been her house, she would have taken the chance on the toilet rather than have a smelly diaper in the room.
Kidnapped / I Got You Babe Page 24
