by Lisa Plumley
“This letter is killing me,” she said, watching her freshly-sharpened number two ricochet off her paper on its eraser and spin end over end toward the opposite arm of her red plaid sofa.
Nick ducked. Her deadeye aim wasn’t doing him any favors, either. How had she gotten so much loft on that thing? The pencil thumped into the wall behind him, then dropped harmlessly to her wildly-colored, flower-splashed rug.
“I’m not writing something stupid and sappy, Nick,” she said. “I’m not. It’s just not me.”
“You’re right. You’re very intelligent.”
“Har, har.”
“Too intelligent to let the father of your child get away. Now concentrate,” he ordered, handing her the pencil.
She took it, smirked, and saluted him with it. Damn, he hated it when Chloe turned flippant. Probably because it reminded him of the pat answer she’d handed him on his patio that night.
I dunno, Nick. In your dreams?
Ha. That filmy orange bra of hers—along with the curvy, Chloe-worthy rest of her—had haunted his stupid dreams ever since then, sure as if she’d predicted it. Never mind that he didn’t want them to. Never mind that he had other things to concentrate on—mainly, his growth accelerator, which still hadn’t come together properly. Never mind that becoming lovers would probably ruin their friendship and her chances with Bruno alike. All he’d been able to think about was her.
Somehow, Chloe had gotten under his skin that night and stayed there. Memories tortured him … of her soft, warm body curved against him, of her breathless whispers, her dangerous roving hands. Memories of the cute way she’d wiggled when he’d kissed her and the husky way she’d moaned in the back of her throat when he’d slipped his hands inside her eye-popping, silky shirt. Memories of the shy surprise in her face when he’d told her she looked beautiful.
Yeah—beautiful. Another fella’s beautiful girl.
Specifically, Bruno’s.
Damn him.
And damn the last month Nick had spent being platonic with a capital “P.” It was making him cranky.
He swiveled past a stack of cardboard boxes bearing the pictures and pastel-printed names of more baby paraphernalia than even he—a four time uncle—had known existed, and looked straight at Chloe.
“Look,” he said, “you’ve put off writing this letter long enough.”
“Hey, I—”
“Uh, uh, uh.” Nick held up his hands and shook his head. “No more excuses. I’ve heard them all.”
She pouted her perfectly lipsticked mouth. It was just his bad luck the motion made him want to kiss off all that glossy, shimmering pink. It was just his bad luck he had an overactive, out-of-practice libido aimed in her direction. It was just his bad, miserable, luck that just when Chloe had finally found someone she cared about enough to make babies with—he wasn’t fooled for a minute by her, “we talked, we laughed, we’re over story’—he’d started falling for her, too.
Whoa. Falling for her? The hormonal soup surrounding Chloe must be getting to him, too. No way was he falling for her. Not with his invention’s production dependent on this summer’s work, and not with her Bruno-the-marine waiting in the wings. Not with her future happiness—and her baby’s—riding on patching together her temporarily off-track relationship.
Was he her friend, or wasn’t he? Friends wanted each other to be happy. They did not necessarily want to drag each other off to the big comfy carved-wood sleigh bed that just happened to be right in the next room. They did not typically imagine ripping off each other’s clothes, sinking onto the pillow-piled mattress and … . Hell. It was past time to end this and get down to business.
“No more excuses,” Nick repeated, trying to look stern.
She gazed up at him with one hand on her rounded pregnant belly, innocent as a new-minted angel. “But Shep really did need some fresh air the other day. That wasn’t an ex—”
“Right. And I suppose Curly needed home-baked hamster treats last week.”
“I—”
“And Larry was just dying to have his toenails—dog nails—claws!—painted purple yesterday?”
“It wasn’t purple.”
He raised his eyebrows, feeling his blood pressure approach the redline. “Oh, no?”
“No,” she said, all earnestness and precision. A saint, doodling on a notepad. “It was fuchsia. And anyway—”
“Arrgh! Write—the—letter!”
Flinching, Chloe flipped her notepad to a new page. “You don’t have to yell,” she grumbled, eyeballing the huge burbling aquarium separating her living room from the dining area.
“And quit looking for another excuse. Your fish don’t need fresh air or a manicure, and don’t even try to tell me they do. I won’t believe it.”
She mumbled something under her breath about stickin-the-mud scientists who needed proof to find their own pants, then gave him a brilliant smile. “Okay, dictate.”
“You didn’t like my letter.”
Unimpressed by his resistance, she ignored him and doodled hearts along the top of her paper. For some reason Chloe’s patience—her surety that he’d come through for her with a stupid Dear Bruno letter—annoyed the hell out of him, but Nick would’ve shaved his head before admitting it.
Tapping her eraser against the paper, she looked up at him. “I’m waiting, oh professor of love.”
He glared at her. She snickered.
He crossed his arms. “The professor of love has left the building.”
“Aww, come on,” she said. “I’m only kidding! Sheesh, what happened to your sense of humor?”
It got smothered beneath a month of wanting you.
“What happened to your sense of practicality?” he shot back, feeling out of control. And hating it. “You’re what, four, five, six months—”
“Five and a half months.”
“—pregnant now, and you still haven’t told Bruno. You’re more than halfway there, Chloe! Do you want to patch things up with the father of your baby or not?”
Her eyes widened. For an instant, she looked twice as vulnerable, twice as alone, and twice as tempting snuggled against the outrageously bright pillows littering her sofa. Then the old Chloe returned.
“I dunno, mister mind-meld. Do I? Do I really want to set things straight with junior’s daddy?”
Beneath her notepad, she rubbed her palm over her belly, probably without even knowing she was doing it. It had become a habit as her pregnancy progressed, he’d noticed. And now, at the worst possible damned moment, Nick found himself wondering exactly what it would feel like to put his own hand there. To feel the baby growing and kicking and—
Something dangerous flashed in her eyes, burying his tender thoughts along with it. “Why don’t you tell me?” she asked. “Do you think getting in touch with … with Bruno is the right thing to do?”
“Yes, dammit!”
She paused, staring at him, then flipped back to the page she’d been writing on. “Fine. Oh, darling,” she started reading. “I just can’t go on with—”
“Hold it.”
Something niggled at the back of his mind. Some … hint, some clue, some … thing hovering just on the edge of his memory. Damn, what was it?
“Read that again.”
“Oh, come on, Nick. A line-by-line critique? This isn’t meant to be read aloud, you know.”
“Humor me.”
Chloe put the pencil in her mouth, gazing up at him thoughtfully while she ran the eraser back and forth over her bottom lip. Her eyebrows dipped, as though she were trying to remember something.
“The professor of love always gets his way,” Nick said. “It’s one of the perks of the position.”
She shrugged. “Okay, okay.” Clearing her throat, she raised the notepad like a Shakespearean preparing for a soliloquy.
“Oh, darling!” Chloe intoned, flinging one arm wide. “I just can’t go on without—”
Moe yowled and fled from beneath the coffee table.
The drama of the moment vanished along with Nick’s tip-of-the-tongue sensation. Whatever he’d almost remembered, it was gone now.
“Never mind. Let’s start over.”
“Good idea,” Chloe said, ripping the letter they’d drafted out of her notepad. She crumpled up the paper with a flash of her yellow-painted fingernails and added it to the wadded-up pyramid on the coffee table. “I never call anyone darling, anyway. Except maybe you, darling,” she added with a wink.
There it was again. That niggling sense there was something he ought to have remembered, something … awww, the hell with it, Nick decided, setting his glasses straighter. It was probably just the strain of six months’ worth of celibacy, finally getting to him. Ever since his heartbreak over what’shername—dammit, what was her name, anyway?—he’d been spending too much time taking care of Chloe to date.
And not enough time working on his inventions. He had to get Chloe’s love life squared away, so he could quit worrying about her and get down to business.
“Okay,” he said in his most dog-determined voice. “Here goes. Dear Bruno—”
“Original opening.”
He made a face at her. “As you so succinctly put it—har, har.”
She laughed in earnest and threw a pink-fringed pillow at him. Nick ducked. In Chloe’s house, they weren’t called ‘throw pillows’ for nothing.
“Pick up your pencil,” he commanded, “and get busy.”
Dutifully, she picked up her pencil again. And balanced it on the bridge of her nose. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear she was trying to distract him from finishing the Bruno letter.
“Very nice,” he deadpanned. “For a trained seal. Come on, Chloe. It’s just a simple letter.”
The pencil rolled off, and she caught it. “Yeah. With a not-so-simple message.”
So that was it. “Well, we’ll make it simple then.”
Nick paced to the window, thinking. Outside, Danny and Larry the Wonder Beagle played in the yard, tugging a battered blue Frisbee between them. For the past few Saturdays, Chloe had invited Danny to her place for half the day—ostensibly so his Uncle Nick could get some inventing done. Nick suspected their time together was more of a ‘life with kids’ preview than anything else. Which was actually kind of endearing, when it came right down to it.
Danny looked up and waved. Nick waved back, then turned his attention to the problem at hand. “A simple letter. Simple. Okay.” Tapping his finger against his bottom lip, he said, “Dear Bruno. I’m writing to tell you that you’re going to be a father. The baby is due in December, and—”
“Maybe I ought to tell him to sit down first? That might come as kind of a shock.”
Her voice came from the wrong direction. He looked for Chloe and found her, not on the sofa writing, but at the other end of the room, bent over Curly’s hamster cage as she refilled his water container. She leaned a little closer, and her short stretchy sky blue skirt rode up her thighs. Her toned, shapely-enough-to-drive-a-guy-crazy, half-naked thighs. Thank God for power walking, Nick thought.
I mean, get a hold of yourself, his conscience replied. So what if Chloe had on a miniskirt that left her legs almost completely bare? So what if he could just glimpse a peachy scrap of undoubtedly lacy underwear underneath it? And so what if she was also wearing an oversized yellow and blue necktie-print silk shirt that was almost an exact duplicate of the one she’d worn … the one he’d unbuttoned … that night. So what?
He could handle it.
They were maternity clothes, he reminded himself as she put down the water and crossed the room. How sexy could they possibly be?
Except they were. Chloe picked up Moe and cuddled the mangy orange fur ball to her chest, and suddenly Nick was … jealous.
Of a cat.
Ridiculous.
He had to get out of here before he lost it completely.
She frowned and nuzzled Moe’s ears. “That’s putting it a little too simply, don’t you think so, Nick?” she asked. “I mean, what if poor Bruno reads it and drops dead with shock? What then, huh? I’m not trying to kill the guy, just inform him.”
“You’ve got a point,” Nick conceded. If someone was about to tell him he was going to be a father, he’d probably want it softened up a little, too. “All right, then. How about this—dear Bruno. I hope you remember me, because—”
“Nick!”
“What?”
“‘I hope you remember me?’” she mimicked, raising her eyebrows. “I’ll have you know, mister melodrama, that I am not that forgettable. Sheesh, what kind of girl do you take me for?”
The kind of girl I could love.
What the hell? There was something seriously wrong with him today. Nick wasn’t sure what it was, but he was pretty sure Chloe was causing it somehow. Scowling, he removed Moe from her arms, dumped the hissing armful of cat onto the cushy chair beside the sofa, and then grabbed Chloe’s arms.
“Look,” he said, frog-marching her backwards toward the sofa again. “This is important. You’ve got to tell Bruno. Send him a letter. A fax, a postcard, a telegram, an e-mail. Take out a billboard or hire a blimp to broadcast it. I don’t care how you do it—” He sat her down and put the pencil in her hand and the paper on her lap. “—just do it!”
“You forgot skywriting.”
“Arrgh!”
Chloe sighed. “You’re right,” she said. “It is important. Important to you! Why is that, Nick? You wanna tell me that?”
“Children should have two parents.”
“Two loving parents,” she specified, hugging her paper and pencil to her chest. “Not just two people brought together by
… by … by biology!” She flung her arm sideways, and the pencil went flying again.
Nick ducked. “Is this your white picket fence thing again? Get over it, Chloe. Maybe this isn’t happening in some picture perfect way, but you’re having a baby and Bruno has a responsibility to you. A responsibility he can’t fulfill if he doesn’t know about it.”
He retrieved the pencil from the leaves of a potted Philodendron near the window, and handed it to her.
“What about my responsibility?” she asked, tossing it aside along with her paper. She got up and stalked toward him. “What about my duty to provide a good home for this baby?”
“That’s my whole point!”
With a muttered exclamation, Chloe shoved her fingers through her hair and turned away from him. “No, your whole point is doing the right thing, no matter what the cost.”
“What cost?”
She wasn’t making any sense, and he wasn’t any closer to getting the damned letter written, either. He wasn’t going to, not if she kept pacing around the living room instead of writing. Crossing his arms, Nick gave serious consideration to super-gluing Chloe’s adorable miniskirted butt to the chair and the pencil to her hand until she got the job done, and asked the question again.
“What cost?”
She paused in front of the battered antique cupboard she used for a TV stand and ran her fingertips over the framed photographs arranged over the hundred-year-old wood. It was the only area in Chloe’s house that got dusted regularly, which was saying something for a woman who considered vacuuming hand-to-dustbunny combat.
“Nothing Nick ‘Steady’ Steadman would understand, I guess,” she said without looking at him.
“Try me.”
He saw her shoulders rise with the deep breath she took, then her fingers fluttered over the photograph frames again. “Duty at the cost of love,” Chloe said. “Partnership.”
She picked up an old photo of her father, a young man in John F. Kennedy clothes beside a Buick, and rubbed away a spot on the glass. “A sense of being wanted,” she whispered.
Then she put the picture down and whirled into motion. “Never mind, Nick,” she said, breezing past him toward the kitchen. “I can’t explain it and you can’t understand it, so let’s just drop it, okay?”
Understand it? What the hell
was he supposed to understand? That Chloe needed a stable family life for her child—soon—and all she could do was throw around pie in the sky concepts like love and partnership and living happily-ever-after?
I want the whole fairy-tale ending, she’d said. White picket fence, a ring on my finger … and a man who loves me.
Maybe she was in denial. Maybe she was hormonally-impaired. Or maybe she really wasn’t crazy in love with Bruno, and that was what was behind her reluctance to contact him again. The idea perked Nick up. Luckily, his conscience was there to keep him on the straight-and-narrow.
He followed Chloe to the kitchen and stood next to her beside the opened refrigerator door. She leaned forward, rummaging inside—probably looking for her secret stash of diet cola, Nick figured. The one he kept taking out and hiding behind Chloe’s unused ironing board. He leaned forward, too, meaning to say something that might put them back on track to finding a solution.
Instead, what emerged from his mouth was, “I’ve known you, what … three years now? And I never, in all that time we spent together, knew you were this naïve.”
“It’s just orange juice!”
He took the carton from her hand and slammed it onto the countertop. “Not the juice. You. This fairy-tale attitude you have about the way things should be.”
Her mouth dropped open. But only for a nanosecond.
“Not ‘things,’ Nick,” she said, shutting the refrigerator and leaning on it with her arms crossed. “My life. My baby’s life. But I guess you wouldn’t understand that, with your Father Knows Best upbringing and all your big plans for inventing fame and fortune.”
“It’s not about me!”
Chloe’s lips twisted, quivered faintly in the moment before she turned her face to the refrigerator and rested her forehead on its shiny surface. A muffled little sniff came from within the halo her arms made around her head.
“Awww, hell.” Scrambling sideways, Nick opened a cupboard and took out a plastic Snoopy cup. He filled it with orange juice, racking his brain to figure out what he’d said to make her cry. Chloe never cried. Never.
Except when he was around lately, it seemed.
