“We need to get a monitor,” she told Con over her shoulder. “Yes, that’s a good boy,” she cooed to the baby in the same breath. “You like that, don’t you? Is Joey a happy baby? Say yes. Say yes. Come on…” Con wished the guys she worked with could see her now.
Except that he was kind of glad he was the only one seeing her this way. She was going to be a wonderful mother. To his son.
If they got custody.
Joey slapped his hand on the water, splashing Robbie, the counter and a brand new roll of paper towels.
Robbie laughed. “Oh! He’s a strong boy, a very big boy to splash like that…”
Con found himself grinning again, whether at the baby or the woman he’d married, he wasn’t sure. He fetched an extra towel and soaked up the puddles.
But he didn’t feel at all like grinning a few minutes later when she lifted Joey from the bath. The baby’s foot caught on the edge of her T-shirt, jerking it up above her breasts. The first thing he noticed was that she wasn’t wearing a bra. And the second was that his best friend had incredible breasts. He suddenly couldn’t breathe—and couldn’t look away.
And then he saw the painful-looking gash on the underside of her right breast. It wasn’t large, only an inch or so, but it angered him to see it there. He’d like to get his hands around the neck of the dog that did that to her.
“Let me take him,” he said, lifting the baby from her arms. “Your stitches are getting wet.” He didn’t mean to sound so harsh, but dammit, she should be more careful.
And so should he about where he looked.
“It won’t kill me,” she snapped, turning her back on him as she yanked her shirt down.
Even as he held the squirming wet baby, Con couldn’t get the sight of her out of his mind. He pictured himself touching her, tasting her. And castigated himself for his body’s hot response. Robbie was his friend, and his son’s mother.
He of all people had absolutely no business thinking of her as a woman.
Not only because he’d promised Stan he wouldn’t or because he’d led Robbie to believe he wouldn’t, but because he couldn’t. When Con went to a woman for sex, sex was all it was. Period. To him, women were like a shot of bourbon. A quick fix, nothing more.
And he was damned if he’d reduce Robbie to that.
Joey’s sudden wail brought his parents’ attention back to him.
“He’s cold,” Robbie said, reaching over to wrap the towel more firmly around him. Her movements were jerky, awkward.
Holding the ends of the towel together, Con carried the baby into the nursery and placed him on the changing table.
“Let’s see if I can get this right,” he whispered to the boy, hoping Robbie was behind him to. back him up.
She was. She was his coach, his judge and his part-time cheering section as he fumbled with flailing arms and legs, struggled with tape closures that insisted on sticking before he got both sides of the diaper around the baby’s leg. But eventually he managed it. And eventually he dressed his son.
Almost as if sensing the importance of the occasion, Joey was a gracious participant, amusing himself with his toes throughout the entire event.
“What time’s your doctor’s appointment?” Con asked Robbie an hour later as he rinsed Joey’s cereal bowl. Robbie was wiping the baby’s face and hands for what seemed the hundredth time.
“One o’clock.” She felt the blood suffuse her face at the reference to those damn stitches. He’d seen the gash she’d been trying to keep from him, after all. And a whole lot more.
“We can pick up a monitor beforehand,” Con said.
She pulled the baby from his carrier. “What do you mean, we?”
“I thought Joey and I would go along.” His back was still to her. He seemed to be taking an awfully long time to rinse one little bowl and spoon. And suddenly Robbie understood.
“You’re afraid to be here alone with him.”
His back stiffened and his hands stilled. “I’m not afraid.”
She held the baby up to her shoulder, rubbing his back. It wouldn’t hurt to have them come along with her. “You’ll have to keep him in the waiting room,” she said. She wanted it clear that Con wasn’t following her in while she had the stitches removed. He’d gotten the one good look at her breasts he was going to get in this lifetime.
“Fine.” He turned around, suddenly done with his chore. “We should take your truck. It’s bigger.”
And that was when it hit Robbie that they had a problem, after all, in spite of their preparations. “We don’t have a car seat.”
Con stared at her silently for several seconds. “I’ll go get one.” He grabbed his keys from the counter, checked to see that he had his wallet in the pocket of his shorts and started for the door.
Robbie waited.
He didn’t even make it out of the room. “What am I getting?” he asked, turning back around.
“Just make sure it’s a full-size infant seat, Randolph. Ask someone at the store to help you. And keep in mind that I’m going to be lifting the thing, too.” She grinned at him.
Con nodded, then said, his jaw tense, “I am not afraid to be alone with him.”
She turned the baby around, sitting him up on her lap. “Sure you are, Randolph, but it’s okay. Most dads are at first. It’s perfectly normal.”
He left without another word.
"MRS. RANDOLPH?”
“Yes?”
Con’s gaze flew to Robbie. Mrs. Randolph?
“The doctor will see you now.”
He didn’t have time to fret about being left in sole charge of his son. He was too busy thinking about Robbie as Mrs. Randolph. Besides, with an office full of nurses and a waiting room full of women, he had plenty of backup.
Joey was sleeping in his new carrier-cum-car-seat, clutching his scrap of blanket. “Just pick him up if he wakes,” Robbie whispered to him as she stood to go.
Con nodded. He knew what to do. He was the one who’d heard the kid cry during the night. Well, Joey hadn’t actually made it to the crying stage, but only because Con’s senses were acute from years of training, and the whimper that would have become a cry had woken him from a sound sleep.
He’d been unsure what to do, unsure of his ability to give the boy what he needed. But considering the alternative—going into Robbie’s room to wake her, being in the same room with her while she was in bed—he’d decided to deal with Joey himself.
At least Robbie was in the house, a sort of safety net. He could always go for her if he couldn’t figure out what to do. But to his surprise, he’d done just fine.
Give him another couple of years and he might even be ready to tackle the kid without anyone else within yelling distance.
He glanced at Joey and then looked again. His son. His flesh and blood. He’d never met another soul in his life who had his bloodline, his genes. The boy was family.
Mrs. Randolph. He thought again of the nurse calling out the name. Of Robbie answering. He’d never given enough credence to the brief ceremony they’d enacted for their “undercover operation” to acknowledge that it had actually changed Robbie’s name. Changed it to his. He supposed she was family now, too.
Joey was still sleeping when Robbie returned a few minutes later. Con’s brows raised in question, his gaze on her breast.
Robbie frowned at him, busying herself with the baby’s things. “I’m fine. All healed. He doesn’t even think there’ll be a scar,” she said, reaching for Joey’s carrier.
“I’ll get that,” Con said, standing, as well. No scar. Maybe not, but he’d always know where one might have been.
Ten minutes later Con waited in the car with a still-sleeping Joey while Robbie ran into the store for the baby monitor. He turned the air conditioner up to maximum. It was 115 outside. He didn’t want the boy sweating.
“It’s freezing in here,” Robbie said, shivering as she climbed back in the passenger side. They’d decided to take his car, after all. The ca
r seat required a shoulder strap, which, in the truck, would have required Robbie to sit in the middle next to Con. They’d both reached the realization at the same time, and without either acknowledging why, they’d moved to the car, instead.
Con turned down the air, wondering if they’d ever regain the easy camaraderie they’d had before the wedding, before he’d blown things by kissing her. Before Stan had made such an issue of her big lonely bed.
Before someone had called her Mrs. Randolph. Mrs. Randolph. His wife.
He needed a cigarette. “You feel like a burger?” he asked.
“Sure.” She fastened her seat belt, glancing in the back once more to check on Joey.
“You think he’ll be okay if we eat it there?”
Robbie shrugged. “I don’t know. Mrs. Muldoon said not to take him out too much. What do you think?”
They both looked at their sleeping charge. “I think we need to start as we mean to go on,” Con said. He planned to take his son with him everywhere. At least, everywhere a kid could go.
“Then let’s go get burgers. I’m starved.”
ROBBIE FOUND CON leaning against a pillar outside by the pool that night after dinner. Smoking a cigarette.
“Damn,” he said, putting the cigarette out when he saw Joey in her arms.
Robbie grinned. “Don’t talk like that in front of the baby.”
Con grimaced. “Sorry.”
He looked grouchy. But he was trying so hard it broke Robbie’s heart. She wished he trusted himself a little more.
“You want to go swimming?” Con asked suddenly.
A dip in the pool sounded like heaven. She’d been feeling too warm and clammy all day. “Yeah, I do,” she said. “Here, take him while I change.” She handed him his squirming son.
“We didn’t get a suit for him,” Con said, auto-matically settling the baby on one hip.
Robbie felt tears threaten as she watched him handle the baby. In just twenty-four hours he’d grown so much more comfortable with his son. “He can go in his diaper,” she said.
Robbie ran inside and slipped into her sleek one-piece racing suit. She and Con hadn’t swum together in ages.
Because the last time you did you drove yourself crazy lusting over his powerful chest, his hard-as-rock stomach, his long muscular legs, she reminded herself. But that wasn’t going to happen tonight. She’d have Joey to concentrate on. She wouldn’t even know his father was there.
And pigs fly.
CON AND JOEY had been in the water for quite a while when Robbie finally came out and dove into the pool behind him.
“How does he like it?” she asked, surfacing.
“He likes it just fine,” Con said as she stood up in the shallow water. And so does his father, he thought. Why in God’s name had he never noticed before what a great body Robbie had? And why was he noticing now? She, and her firm luscious breasts were off-limits. Period.
“Did he cry when you put him in?” she asked, watching as he bobbed the baby up and down.
“Nope.”
She reached out to tickle the baby and Joey giggled.
“Omigosh! He laughed!” she cried, tickling the baby again.
And suddenly Con felt like laughing, too. Joey’s delight in Robbie’s attentions was contagious.
She grabbed the baby under his arms, swung him up in the air and brought him down to splash in the water. Joey shrieked with pleasure, and she did it again. And then again, both of them laughing.
Con had never found a woman so sexy.
He backed slowly away, into deeper water, hiding his erection. Robbie’s breasts, straining against her suit as she lifted the baby, were a sinful temptation. He crossed to the other side of the pool and started to swim laps.
She was still playing with the baby when he’d exhausted his body to the point of numbness. But at least he’d be able to get out of the pool without embarrassing himself.
“I’m going in,” he said, reaching the shallow end.
“Then take him, would you, so I can swim.” She held the baby out to him.
He reached for the boy, unaware that Joey had a hold on the strap of Robbie’s swimsuit. The baby’s grip was strong, and when Con grasped him, together they pulled Robbie off balance. Her thigh brushed Con’s, smooth as silk, firm, feminine.
And just like that he was on fire again.
She gasped and started to laugh again, grabbing Con’s arm to steady herself, but Joey wouldn’t let go of her. She fell against them, instead, her hips bumping Con’s. He knew the very instant she felt his hardness.
The laughter died in her throat, her fingers dug into his arm, and her expression closed. She pried the baby’s fingers off her suit.
Joey’s little hand found a new target almost instantly—the mass of hair on Con’s chest, which he clutched and pulled. Hard. Con had never been more thankful for pain in his life.
“No, no, Joey, you’ll hurt Daddy,” Robbie said softly, releasing the baby’s fingers one by one.
Con’s chest constricted beneath her tender touch, his nerve endings taunting him. Testing him. She knew what she was doing to him. And she was still doing it. She wasn’t backing off.
But she had to. There was a very good reason she had to.
“You’re a little rascal.” She chuckled seductively as Joey, having discovered the fun to be had, tried for another handful of hair.
Her voice was husky, her fingers lingering against Con’s skin suggestively as she once again loosened the baby’s hand.
She was still the Robbie he’d always known. And yet she wasn’t. She was his wife. But not in the way that mattered. She couldn’t be. He’d given his word.
He thought of the promise he’d made Stan. Of the reason he’d made that promise. He’d agreed to Stan’s stipulation for one reason and one reason only. Because the old man was right. Robbie deserved much more than he could ever give her. She deserved love.
And all he had to offer her was sex.
“Enjoy your laps,” he said abruptly, then twisted away from her, the baby in one arm, and climbed out of the pool. Joey’s fingers found their mark again, yanking harder than he’d have thought a sixth-month-old baby could. Con didn’t even flinch and continued on into the house.
He didn’t place the baby in his crib, because he didn’t trust himself not to head right back outside to his mother.
CHAPTER NINE
IT WAS QUARTER after five Sunday afternoon. The time Robbie had been dreading since she’d gotten up that morning. She looked at the big face of her men’s digital sport watch again, hoping for a few extra minutes. But it was five-fifteen, not five-ten. They needed to leave by five-twenty at the latest if they were to have the baby back on time.
Con was asleep on the couch, Joey napping on his chest. Con’s arm curved around the baby, his hand resting on the baby’s back. They’d been that way for more than an hour, and the last thing Robbie wanted to do was disturb them.
But she was going to have to wake them, or wake Con, anyway. This was one instance when being late could mean life or death—at least for their dreams.
She arose from the chair she’d been sitting on for most of the past hour, tucking her T-shirt back into the blue-jean cutoffs she’d had on all day. She’d been strangely comforted by the steady rise and fall of Con’s chest, the stern set of his chin, even in sleep.
As she approached the couch, her gaze traveled lower, to his long muscular thighs. She remembered the feel of those hair-roughened legs pressing against her in the pool yesterday, the rock-solid hardness of him as the water rippled sensuously around them.
He’d wanted her. For one brief moment he’d found her desirable. Until he’d looked at her. Until he’d realized whose body was pressing so intimately against his own. Then he couldn’t have made it clearer that his response wasn’t for her. But she already knew that. Had known it for years.
She’d swum forty laps before she’d followed him into the house, attempting to dispel the pa
in his rejection had left behind, to numb her buzzing nerve endings, to convince herself she wasn’t as starved for the feel of a man’s body as she thought she was. Con’s body.
“Con?” she called softly.
He was instantly awake, his eyes alert, searching.
“It’s time to go.” She bent to take the baby, hoping to keep Joey asleep for a while longer. She didn’t want him crabby when they returned him. She didn’t want to give his foster mother any room for complaint.
Con stood up, his gaze averted from the baby. “I’ll get his things,” he said, leaving the room. Robbie watched him go, saw the stiffness return to his back, to his entire being.
This wasn’t going to be easy. Not for any of them. She hugged the baby to her breast, breathing in his sweet scent. We’ll miss you so much, little Joey. If only there were some way for you to know how much we love you. And please, oh, please, don’t forget us before we see you again.
“Let’s go.” Con was back, his face a study in control.
They took his car again and the forty-minute drive to Gilbert was accomplished in total silence. Con was at his most unapproachable, his eyes flinty, his body more like a marble sculpture than flesh and blood. She wished there was some way she could reach him, ease the hurt and frustration that was causing him to retreat into the armored shell he presented to the world.
As each mile passed, the knot in her stomach grew, the pain in her chest making it harder and harder to breathe. After only two days she couldn’t bear the thought of waking up without Joey, sitting down to eat without feeding him first, going to sleep at night without hearing his steady breathing on the monitor beside her bed.
She couldn’t imagine having him in her arms one second and gone the next.
They passed the Gilbert city-limits sign, and Robbie closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see the neigh-borhood, the peeling billboards and unmanicured lawns, to see pictures of the places Joey might already be familiar with, places he would recognize more easily than Con’s home. Tears burned behind her eyelids and she willed them back. Tears weren’t going to help.
Joey was still asleep when Robbie pulled him from his car seat and carried him up to the door of the faded-wood house. Con followed silently with Joey’s things, carrying an extra knapsack that contained a wardrobe of new outfits they’d picked up after their burgers on Saturday.
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