The Guy Next Door

by Toni Blake

  “Does tonight…include Emmy?” she asked.

  And he hesitated. He’d known it would be that way, of course. He just hadn’t decided how to deal with it. This is what happens when you move full speed ahead without a plan.

  “Yes, tonight includes Emmy,” he heard himself say then. Because what other answer was there? If he was seeing Holly, then he was seeing Emily, too. Something Aunt Marie had once told him came rushing back to him now. If you’re gonna jump in the fire, do it with both feet.

  “That makes me so happy,” she said, her voice brimming with joy. “And I’m so glad you called. After last night…well, I was afraid we were…you know, just done.”

  Like before, he hesitated. And then settled on still more honesty. “Maybe I thought that, too,” he confessed. “But I couldn’t help myself. I woke up with you on my mind.”

  ***

  Holly and Derek had agreed to have dinner at a nice Italian restaurant—a little fancier than his normal haunts—nearby. He liked the idea of actually taking her on a real date—even if he was still a little bummed out about the fact that there would be a baby in tow. Still, it wasn’t as if he disliked Emily. And when he weighed it, this was far better than the alternative—not getting to see Holly at all.

  When she came to the door, she nearly took his breath away. She wore a simple, fitted black dress and a short strand of pearls around her neck. And though he loved her hair down, tonight it looked elegant and classy pulled loosely up off her neck.

  “You look great,” he said, wishing his voice hadn’t come out sounding so breathy.

  She smiled a bit bashfully. “So do you.” He’d dressed up a little more than usual, too, breaking out a collared shirt and dark pants, and since he didn’t have much occasion for such clothes, he was pleased she approved.

  “Where’s Emily?” he asked, looking around. He hadn’t exactly meant to ruin what would probably be their only truly private moment of the night, but other than the evening of Holly’s seduction, he couldn’t remember having ever come into her house without seeing the baby right away.

  “She’s taking a late nap. I’ll go get her and we can be on our way.”

  He slid his hands in his pockets as he stood waiting in the living room. This is okay. Even if there’s a third party on our date, it still feels good to be taking her someplace nice. And we can still have a great evening. Baby or not, he looked forward to the coming hours.

  “Em dressed up special for you, too,” Holly called from the bedroom.

  And he let out a small laugh in reply. “She did, did she?”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Holly said. “She insisted on wearing her best outfit tonight.”

  He looked up to see them both appear in the doorway. As promised, Emily was indeed decked out in a black dress adorned with tiny pink rosebuds, complete with a white lace collar. She wore ruffled white socks and tiny black patent leather shoes with buckles. She even had a little pink bow somehow attached to her minimal hair. He couldn’t help smiling.

  “Wow, Emily,” he said. “And I thought your mommy was hot.”

  He looked up to find Holly casting an amused grin his way.

  “Don’t worry, Mommy,” he said, placing his hand on her shoulder and leaning in to drop a quick kiss on her cheek, “I don’t go for younger girls.”

  The sound of her laugh filled his senses. And then she handed the baby off to him, and together they got her buckled into her carrier and ready to go. Holly looped her purse and the diaper bag up over her arm, then reached for Emmy’s carrier with the other hand.

  “I can get it,” Derek said, picking up the carrier. She had her hands full already, after all.

  As the trio moved toward the front door, the phone rang—and Holly groaned.

  “Can you let it go?” he suggested.

  “No,” she said on a sigh, “it could be about my mother. Emily and I dropped by the hospital for a while earlier and things were fine—and Michelle arrived as we were leaving, so I’ve assumed things were still going okay, but…”

  Derek set Emily’s carrier on the floor and knelt down over her while Holly headed to the kitchen to answer the phone. The baby was smiling up at him and, somewhat to his surprise, he found himself smiling back.

  “Got your belly,” he said softly, reaching to tickle her tummy through the dress. He’d seen Holly tease the baby with those words and remembered her being quite entertained by it.

  True to his memory, she giggled.

  “Oh, you like that, do you?” he said. He tickled her once more, watching her tiny gold-flecked eyes light with joy.

  But when he sensed Holly behind him, he quickly stood and turned to face her, promptly wiping what he suspected was a very silly smile off his face. “Ready?” he asked.

  Only she released a long, heavy sigh and her distressed expression said it all. “You won’t believe this.”

  Damn. Already he knew their night out was not destined to be. “What?”

  “My mother has taken a slight turn for the worse. The doctors aren’t worried, but Michelle still thinks we should both go to the hospital just in case.”

  “Then you should,” he quickly told her.

  “But what about our date?”

  Despite his disappointment, he attempted a smile. “We’ll get around to it,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

  “You must hate me,” she replied glumly.

  “No, I…” I love you. God, he’d almost said that. “Of course I don’t hate you, silly,” he told her, recovering.

  But damn. I love you? He couldn’t believe it.

  Or hell—maybe he could. He’d pretty much felt it begin to happen back with that very first bending of his heart in her driveway on the day they’d met, and he guessed he’d just been barreling in this direction ever since. No matter how crazy it sounded to him.

  “I’ll stay here with Emily,” he told her.

  But still—love? Love? He hadn’t expected that. And yet, here it was, in one sense wrapping around him warmer than anything he’d ever felt, and in another slapping him brutally in the face.

  “Take as long as you need—we’ll be fine.”

  So, this was it—the thing poets wrote about and singers crooned about and young girls cried over. Well, at least that explained how wonderful and how horrible he’d felt lately—at the exact same time.

  “Oh Derek,” Holly said, “I’m so sorry to do this to you. You don’t know how sorry.”

  And it was the words she’d just said—along with the distress written all over her pretty face—that finally shook him from his big revelation. Because hell, on top of everything else, he didn’t want her to be sorry. He wanted her to know it was okay and that he would help her through this however he could.

  “Hey,” he said softly, “I just went through this with Aunt Marie. I understand. You need to be with your mom.”

  She peered up at him with wide eyes. “How can I thank you?”

  And despite all the uncommonly tender feelings pulsing through him, Derek felt a wicked grin sneak onto his face. “I’ll be thinking of ideas while you’re gone.”

  Her lips curved into a tiny smile, but it faded quickly. Looking completely depressed, she raised on her tiptoes to give him a kiss on the cheek—then she handed him the diaper bag. “There’s a bottle and a jar of baby food in here.”

  “Drive carefully,” he told her.

  She nodded, sad expression still in place, and he watched her walk out the door.

  He wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of spending another night alone with Emily, but he really had no choice. Offering to sit with her had been the only decent thing to do. And besides, he truly did want to help ease Holly’s troubles.

  “Well, Em,” he said, glancing down at the velvet-clad baby, “looks like it’s me and you—all dressed up and no place to go.”

  “Ah gooo.”

  He bent over the carrier and unhooked the strap that held her in. Then he looked around the room at his choices of ba
by paraphernalia. “Swing?” he offered. “Bouncer thing? Quilt?”

  “Gaaaaa,” she said, looking up at him.

  “Oh hell,” he muttered—then he picked her up and walked to the couch. No reason he couldn’t hold the kid.

  He positioned her sideways in his lap and peered down at her. “I don’t mind your company, Emily,” he told her. “I really don’t. But that doesn’t change the big picture, you know.”

  Because despite how easy it might seem in certain moments, and even despite the obvious rewards—namely Holly, Derek knew he simply couldn’t get involved in this child’s life.

  After all, he might screw it up. What did he know about being a parent?

  Besides, maybe he didn’t really want to care about someone in that all-consuming way.

  Too late.

  He wasn’t sure where those words had come from, but if he was in love with Holly, well…so far, that pretty much showed every sign of being awfully damn consuming. Which made this whole situation even more of a problem.

  “But I’m not even going to think about getting attached to you like that, Em,” he told her. “Nothing personal. You’re a great baby, but…I just can’t. You understand. You need somebody who can…be a real daddy to you. A guy who knows what he’s doing. I’m lucky just to be keeping you alive here, you know? You deserve somebody who…well, who was cut out for this. And I’m not. The fact is, I must have been last in line when they handed out dads, because I got a pretty lousy one. So I didn’t…um…get the proper training.”

  He realized then that Emily was gazing up at him very intently, and so he quieted his ramblings and met her gaze head on. He looked deep into her eyes and tried to guess what was going on behind them, tried to understand what she felt, tried to imagine the kind of person she would be when she grew up. He thought about some of the difficulties she would face along the way to adulthood—probably just the usual: acne, peer pressure, waiting for the right boy to ask her to the prom.

  Still, he imagined a father could come in handy during those hard times. And he knew better than most people that it was important for a child to have a dad. So thinking about Emily not having one suddenly pinched his heart.

  “After all,” he said, smiling softly down at her, “whose gonna scare your boyfriends into having you home on time?”

  She smiled back at him. “Aaaaa.”

  “And whose gonna walk down the aisle with you at your wedding?”

  Her eyes widened. “Aaaaaaaaa.”

  “And whose gonna tell you that there’s no way you’re wearing that dress out of this house, young lady?”

  She giggled, then tilted her head, still peering up at him with great big eyes. “Gaaaa.”

  And he suddenly began to get the idea that…

  “Oh-h-ho no,” he told her, “don’t look at me, Em.” Frustration washed over him, with a dash of confusion added for good measure. “I mean, haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?”

  Then he sighed. “The fact is, Emily,” he told her quietly, “I’m just not the right guy for the job.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Derek strapped Emily into her carrier seat, picked it up, and then walked next door. Things had been getting a little too heavy there for a minute, so he’d decided to lighten the mood.

  “Claws,” he called, stepping inside. “Here, Claws.”

  “Meow,” the white kitten answered instantly, frolicking from the kitchen.

  “Hey, pal,” Derek said, stooping to pick up the little cat.

  He’d decided that maybe Emily and Claws would like each other. And even if they didn’t, he sort of thought he’d been neglecting his new cat. Seemed kind of mean to adopt a cat, then leave it at home alone all the time. “Wanna come over to Holly’s with me tonight?”

  “Meow.”

  “Big party going on,” he explained wryly. “Yeah—me, you, and Emily. Didn’t want you to miss it.”

  Then he returned to the other house, cat and baby in tow.

  Once inside, he extracted the baby from the carrier and lowered her into her swing. He turned the swing on low, setting Emily in motion before he took a seat on the couch. Then he watched as Claws made himself at home, tentatively exploring some of Emily’s floor-strewn toys with one outstretched paw before finally curling into a ball at Derek’s feet.

  Derek tried not to let himself think about Holly, or wonder when she might be home and if their evening might be salvageable. Neither of the other two times he’d sat with Emily had their evenings continued very favorably afterward.

  Well, of course, after their talk last night they had kissed a little. But frankly, he was thinking about the sensual magic that had passed between them the evening before last, the one when Emily had been away.

  So it seemed more sensible, and less frustrating, to think about… “Feeding,” he decided aloud.

  “Meow.”

  “Not you,” he said, casting a chiding glance down at the kitten. “The baby.”

  “Aaaaaa,” Emily replied.

  “Right,” he replied, “you.” But first, he thought, pretty as Emily looked, he should probably change her into something more casual. He wasn’t good enough with the baby spoon yet to risk her good dress.

  He carried her to her room and lay her on the padded table where he’d changed her diaper on previous occasions. Using one hand to steady her, he reached with the other into a drawer on the chest next to the padded table. “Are you in a pink mood?” he asked, eyeing the pink cotton sleeper he held in his hand.

  “Ahgoooo,” she cooed at him.

  Minutes later, he returned the more casually dressed Emily to her swing in the living room. “Ready for some dinner?” he asked.

  “Gaaaaaa,” she happily replied.

  So he dug past diapers and stuffed toys in Emmy’s bag until he located a bottle and a jar of strained sweet potatoes. “Mmm,” he said, making a face to the contrary. “Orange mush. How delicious for you.”

  He uncapped the bottle and slid it into Emily’s waiting mouth, balancing it until her tiny hands reached up to hold it.

  “I’m thinking about livening things up tonight,” he told Emmy as she drank. “What do you think?”

  She didn’t reply, too absorbed in her bottle. So he looked to Claws. “Music?”

  “Meow.”

  He nodded, then rose and went to Holly’s sound system, near her TV. A few seconds later, he found his favorite local rock station on the radio—but when the loud music came blasting out, he flinched and quickly reached for the volume knob, turning it down low. He didn’t want to hurt Emily’s ears.

  “There,” he said, looking to Claws. “See, I told you it was a party. Food, music—” he cast a glance at Emmy, “—girls. We have it all, Claws. We’re a couple of wild men on the loose here.”

  Digging in the diaper bag once more, he came across a bib featuring Tigger. Then he settled on the carpet beside Emily, removed the lid from the jar of baby food, immersed the baby spoon inside, and pried Emmy’s lips away from the bottle, setting it on the floor beside them.

  “Waaaaa,” she said softly.

  “Don’t get upset,” he told her. “I just need to put your bib on you. See, it’s Tigger,” he said, holding it up. She smiled at the bib, which pleased him.

  Tying it around her neck, he fed her a few bites of the so-called sweet potatoes, glad to see she liked them better than applesauce. Like before, he reinserted the bottle from time to time for the sake of variety.

  An hour and a diaper change later, Derek felt it was safe to say the three of them were bored. He flipped off the music since it clashed hideously with the tinkling sounds that came from Emmy’s various musical toys. “Party’s over,” he told Claws. “But you’re obviously too drunk to drive. Why don’t you stay here and sober up for awhile.”

  Derek got down on the floor with Emily, who lay on her quilt looking desperate for some kind of entertainment. But lullabies were definitely out.

  On impulse, he reached
one finger in between the snaps of her sleeper, tickling her tummy through her T-shirt. She giggled, and he smiled down on her with wide eyes. “What’s that?” he asked in the most ridiculous voice he’d ever used in his life. “Is there a little snake in your sleeper?”

  He reached in and used his index finger to tickle her once more and another laugh from her made his heart feel warm. “Say ‘There’s a snake in my sleeper, Claws, and it tickles’.”

  Derek wasn’t sure how, but soon he had put his words to music and shaped it into a song. Still tickling with his finger, he sang. “There’s a snake in my sleeper, there’s a snake in my sleeper.”

  Okay, it wasn’t much of a song. So he decided to add a twist—dropping a letter each time he sang it. “There’s a nake in my leeper, there’s a nake in my leeper. There’s an ake in my eeper, there’s an ake in my eeper.”

  After finishing his newly composed tune, which, to his pleasure, seemed to entertain Emily immensely, he scooped the baby into his arms and moved to the couch. Then he glanced up and unexpectedly caught sight of himself in a mirror down the hall. It was an odd picture. He cuddled a baby in his lap. And a small white cat lay perched near his shoulder.

  “Look at me,” he muttered. Yep, he’d lost his edge—that was for damn sure.

  And yet he couldn’t help but feel deep down inside as if he were…getting something else in return. He couldn’t put his finger on it and wasn’t really sure he even wanted to—but it was there, hovering around him like a thin mist, and it felt safe and it felt good and…

  Okay, wait just a minute here—this is getting ridiculous. Spending so much time with a baby must be zapping my brain cells or something. Or maybe I’m just tired.

  And so whatever it was he was feeling, he vowed to just not think about it anymore.

  ***

  Holly stayed very quiet as she peered in through the screen door. Although she’d had to cover her mouth and stifle her giggle during the “snake in my sleeper” song. And this man didn’t think he was cut out for fatherhood? Holly suddenly didn’t think she’d ever heard a more ludicrous statement in her life.