He tried to hear the subtext. It sounded like she was saying she was jealous, and had feelings for him, and she’d need to rewire all of those feelings if he were dating someone else.
“And Marcus is old,” she said, startling him with the change of subject again. “Like, fifty? Maybe. I don’t know. But not someone I’d date. That’s weird. I need to go. Bye.”
She hung up abruptly which wasn’t how they usually did things. They did normal goodbyes.
By now he’d reached his station, but when he settled into the train car, instead of settling in to read as he usually did, he made another call.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Hi, honey. How are the Alps?”
“Still alpine. Hey, I just talked to Tessa—”
“Is she okay? Is something wrong with Calvin? I talked to her yesterday, and everything was—”
“She’s fine, Mom. The baby too. We just had a weird conversation, and I don’t know what to think about it.”
“All right. Tell me.”
So he did, concluding with, “I feel like I messed up, but I’m not sure how, exactly.”
“Why did you ask her if she was dating Marcus?”
“Because I wanted to know.”
“Because you have feelings for her.” He didn’t say anything, and she correctly took his silence as agreement. “That girl is crazy about you. If she thought—”
“Wait, you think she’s crazy about me?” It was exactly what he’d hoped she would say.
“Can you hear how hard I’m rolling my eyes at you? She has been since the second I showed up on her doorstep. Probably before that, but that’s the first time I saw her for myself, so I can guarantee it was at least by then.”
“I knew we had . . .”
“Chemistry? Son, who taught you about hormones? Yes, you had chemistry. Have chemistry. Why else would you two be talking every single day? You don’t even talk to me that much.”
“Calvin . . .”
“Calvin is a precious baby angel on this earth, but he has nothing to do with why you two can’t leave each other alone even with oceans and mountains between you.”
“Mom? I messed up.”
She didn’t even bother disagreeing. “Damn right you did, and if you think it’s only that phone call you just had with her, then you have not been paying attention.”
“I have to go.”
“You going to call her back? That’s good—”
“No, actually. I need to make a different call. But I think I’m about to fix something big.”
Her eyes softened as she watched him from the screen. “I better be the first call you make when you do.”
“Of course, Mom.”
“Although my intuition will just tell me.”
He groaned. “Mom.”
“It never lets me down.”
“Then I guess I don’t need to call and tell you anything.”
“Ethan James Bedford, you had better—”
But he grinned at her and gave her a small wave as he ended the call. The person he most needed to speak to in the world was about to arrive at her desk any minute now, and he planned to be the first order of business in her day.
Chapter Nineteen
“All right, buddy. I’m going to take you to see Miss Becky, and we’re going to have a great day,” Tessa told Calvin as she buckled him into his car seat. He was fussy this morning, not his usual smiley self, but she hoped getting him to the daycare would settle him down. Finding the Little Stars childcare program had been worth the CPS red tape all by itself. The social worker assigned to Calvin had pulled strings for Tessa to get him into the center within a week of Lezlie leaving for Maryland after helping Tessa navigate her guardianship claim through CPS. Lezlie had stayed two weeks after Ethan had left for Zurich just to make sure everything went smoothly for Tessa and Calvin, and it had.
Calvin seemed happy enough to go to Miss Becky every morning, but then, he was pretty happy with most people. He was a much different baby than when he’d arrived on her doorstep. Maybe that was a result of him being four months older, but she liked to believe that she had something to do with it. This morning, though, he was back to the fretful cries that had characterized his first month with her, often seeming to come on for no reason.
“Is it because Ethan didn’t call again?” she asked Calvin. Maybe it wasn’t why he was bothered, but it really bugged her. Ethan’s calls had been shorter lately, and this morning he hadn’t answered when she’d tried him instead.
He didn’t owe her. She knew that. Maybe he was busy, maybe he was losing interest in their lives as he settled into his own life in Zurich, but . . . she missed him. And she suspected Calvin did too, even though their morning check-ins were always short and breezy.
She drove Calvin to Little Stars and felt better when he stopped fussing and smiled at Miss Becky, but it confirmed her fear: he was missing one of his favorite people. Maybe it was time to talk to Ethan and tell him that it was better for Calvin if he didn’t call anymore. The kid had endured more abandonment than anyone should before he could even talk. It meant confronting the reality that Ethan would probably fade from her life too, with fewer phone calls, farther between, until he was gone all together.
A smarter woman would sever everything now. Cut him off, wish him well, and throw herself into parenting and work until his absence didn’t hurt so much. But in this one way, Tessa recognized that she was very, very dumb, because she would absolutely take every second she could get with him, even over six thousand miles, nine time zones, and an entire ocean.
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
At BBMJ, she walked into the lab with a smile on her face, maybe to convince herself she was okay. Well, she walked into Lab One, she corrected herself as she noticed Darius’s empty desk. She’d have to get used to calling it Lab One now that the second one was about to come online. They’d known it would be soon, but “soon” looked like it was today. Darius was packing up the last of his Ghostbuster figurines for his move to Lab Two while two maintenance guys boxed up his computer.
“They found a project manager?” Tessa asked.
“Huh? Um.” He darted a look at Mary like he was seeking her permission, who nodded. “Yes.”
What was that all about? Darius had decided he didn’t want the annoyance of managing a large team, preferring to be free to focus directly on the details, so the hunt had been on to find an appropriate project manager in his place. Everyone knew that, so why was he looking at Mary like he didn’t know if he could say anything?
“So today’s the day, huh? I hate to see you go, but I’m happy for you. I wish you would have told us so I could have gotten you a cake or something.”
He ducked his head. “That’s why I didn’t say anything. I don’t want a fuss. I’m just a floor above you. It’s not a big deal.”
That might have been true for her a year ago, but over the last several months, she felt the absence keenly when people she cared about moved on. Ethan. Lezlie. Now Darius. Still, she didn’t want to make him feel any more awkward, so she smiled and said, “You’re right. I’ll come up and visit Jane Holtzman every now and then.” She loved the brainiac gadget queen from the Ghostbusters reboot.
“You don’t have to.” He handed the Holtzman figurine to her. “I’ll come down and visit her.”
Tessa accepted it with the reverence the gesture deserved, holding Holtzman gently in her palm. She wouldn’t insult him by protesting. “Thank you, Darius. I’ll make sure she’s in a good spot.”
“Good.” And then with a nod at Sanjay and Mary, Darius followed the maintenance guys to the elevator and disappeared.
Lab One had been changing weekly for two months. Baby Quad was gone, overtaken with desks, eight new transfers from other divisions, and rechristened Think Quad. Actually, it didn’t really make sense to call them quads anymore, because Think Quad took up almost half the room now, and that was just bad math and poor naming.
Her unsettled feeli
ng grew. She hated changes in routine. First no call from Ethan, now Darius leaving. She needed to get a grip, and the best way to get over her irritation was to jump into work. She took her seat, settled Jane Holtzman into prime real estate on her desk, pulled up her latest report on cadmium sourcing, and dove in.
Around 10 AM the elevator dinged, and Tessa glanced up, startled. Normally there wasn’t much coming or going until lunch.
“That’s for you,” Mary said, a split second before the doors slid open.
Ethan stepped out, his eyes going straight to her. “Hi.”
She half-rose, sat back down, then finally stood. “Ethan?”
But of course it was Ethan. Tall as ever, shoulders as broad as ever, smile as sweet as ever, but also more mischievous than she’d ever seen it.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. She turned to Mary. “What is he doing here?”
Mary only winked and leaned back in her chair like she was ready for a show.
“I work here.”
“You what?” Her eyes fell to the belt loop where he’d always clipped his work badge, and there it was—complete with the green stripe across the top they’d all gotten indicating that they belonged to the new Clean Energy division. “What’s going on?” She was paralyzed by conflicting emotions. Confusion, definitely. But also a strong desire to fling herself at him and kiss his stupid, wonderful face.
“Maybe we could talk in the breakroom?” he suggested.
“Nah,” Mary interjected. “You’ve got the day off, Tessa. And you’re not officially starting until tomorrow, are you, Ethan?”
“You knew about this? How long?” Tessa asked her.
“Since he called me a month ago asking if there was room on Darius’s team for him. It was a no-brainer to hire him back.”
“I called her the morning Calvin sat up. It just took a while to get everything in place,” Ethan said.
“But what about Klieber?” Tessa turned to Ethan in a daze, completely unable to put the pieces together.
“As much as we’d all love to hear the answers, maybe you should take advantage of your day off and have this conversation elsewhere,” Mary suggested, and Tessa suddenly felt the weight of a dozen gazes as everyone else in the lab watched them.
“Right.” She grabbed her work bag and headed toward the elevator.
Ethan followed behind her without a word, and when the doors slid closed, he turned toward her, an apology written all over his face. “I think I miscal—”
Before he could finish, she did exactly what she’d wanted to the second he’d stepped into the lab and threw herself at him, her arms wrapping tight around his neck until his own came around her waist and he pulled her close, neither of them speaking. She held on and rested her head against his chest, right over his heart which thumped with a strong, steady beat beneath her cheek.
She let him go when the doors dinged again, and they stepped out into the reception area in silence, but when they exited the building, he slid his hand around hers, and she let her fingers lace between his.
They hadn’t held hands before, she realized. It was strange to think that she was madly in love with this man, and they’d never shared even this simple intimacy.
“I’m so glad I’m home,” he said.
“Not quite. Um, I guess I should drive since I’ll need the car seat later. Where am I taking you? Are you moved in yet? Should we go to my place?” It was the least important of the hundred questions she wanted to ask him, but they crowded out anyway, her mind still buzzing too loudly to figure out how to ask them in an orderly way.
“I moved back into my same unit. I never let the lease lapse.”
“You didn’t?”
He shook his head, and she added a new question to her list. Why not? She decided to use the drive home to think through everything she was wondering. “My car is over there,” she said, pointing in the right direction.
“It’s okay. I can drive, and I have a car seat.”
She only had one question, she realized as they reached the parking lot and stopped beside a Tesla sedan with a new car seat installed in the back. The most important question. “Why did you come back?”
Instead of answering, he turned to face her, letting go of her hand to run a finger across her cheek, the bridge of her nose, her lips, studying her as intently as she’d ever seen him study a schematic. “How’s Calvin?” he asked.
She blinked at him, not expecting the question. “Calvin? He’s fine. At daycare. But why . . .” She trailed off when he shook his head softly.
“He’s good?”
“He’s great. I mean, you’ve seen him almost every day until recently.”
“Sorry about that. It was hectic trying to get everything ready to move back, and then I flew all day yesterday. Did he miss me?” He looked worried, not like he wanted his ego appeased.
She nodded. “He did.”
“But he’s still doing fine?”
“Yes.”
“Is it really hard, doing this by yourself?”
“Yes. But I have more resources than I expected to. Darius and Sanjay babysat for me on Saturday night so I could eat out and catch a movie. By myself,” she added when his face fell.
“Sounds busy,” he said.
“Exhausting. But somehow okay.”
“Do you think you have the room and energy for another guy in your life? Permanently?” He watched her, his eyes intent and hopeful and worried all at once.
“Is that why you’re here? For Calvin?”
He shook his head. “He’s a bonus, but I came back for you, Tessa. I never should have left. I think I fell half in love with you in college, but it took me about a day to fall the rest of the way when I saw you again. Everything I could ever want is right here. A job as good as the one I left at Klieber, the sweetest baby in the world, a time difference that doesn’t drive my mother crazy. But even if the only thing I had here was you, it would still be everything I ever wanted.”
He slid his arms around her waist and lowered his head to hers. She answered with a kiss that said everything she’d ever wanted to, and he answered in kind, his mouth hungry and sweet. She slid her arms up higher, desperate to pull him closer, hold him tighter, and he responded with a soft groan and deepened the kiss. Everything around her contracted to that moment, and she existed only where they touched, the heat flooding her veins with a honey-warmth that had her leaning against him for support.
“Tessa,” he said lifting his mouth from hers, and she murmured a wordless objection and sought it out again. “Tessa,” he said, with a smile in his voice. “I think we have an audience.”
She looked over her shoulder where a small group of people stood in front of the Building A doors, Mary giving Sanjay a happy hug and Darius high-fiving a half dozen people she didn’t recognize. She quickly stepped back. “This is slightly mortifying.”
“They don’t seem to mind. I guess that’s one way to meet my new team.”
“Your new team?”
“Meet their new project manager.”
She stepped back and waved toward the car. “Let’s go. You have a lot to tell me.”
He smiled and opened her door for her, but she caught his wrist before he could close it again. “I have one big thing to tell you first,” she said, smiling up at him. “I love you, Ethan Bedford.”
And when he leaned down to kiss her senseless again, she didn’t mind in the least when more cheers broke out.
Epilogue
Ethan sat against his living room wall and settled Calvin between his outstretched legs. “You can do this,” he said. “Go see Tessa.”
Tessa sat on the other side of the room. “Is your phone ready? Lezlie will kill us if she misses this.”
“It’s ready.” He kept one hand beneath Calvin’s arm and held up his phone with the other. “Let’s do this.”
“Come here, buddy,” Tessa called to Calvin. “Come see auntie. Walk to auntie.”
Ethan le
t go, and Calvin bounced in place a couple of times. “That’s a good happy dance, buddy. Now walk over to auntie and dance.”
“Come on, little C. Come see me.” She stretched her arms wide, ready to give him one of the dozen hugs she gave him daily. Tessa’s phone began to buzz and she ignored it.
Calvin took a step forward, then another. And when he was still standing instead of plopping on his diapered bottom as usual, he took a few more. “Six, seven, eight,” Ethan counted for his mom’s benefit on the video. “That’s his record. Nine! He’s going to do it!”
“Come on, Calvin. I’ve got you. Auntie’s got you.”
His little legs picked up some speed as Calvin got closer to his favorite person, and Ethan was ready to call it. “He’s officially walking!”
“Yay, baby!” Tessa cheered as she scooped him into a hug. “You are the smartest, best-walking baby in the world!” Her phone quit buzzing, and Ethan wondered if she’d even noticed in the excitement.
Ethan grinned. At fifteen months, Calvin was well behind the average age for walking, but the pediatrician had reassured Tessa that lots of kids didn’t walk until sixteen or seventeen months. His mom had told them that his brother hadn’t walked until fifteen months either.
He stopped the recording and crawled over to scoop them both into a hug, dropping a kiss on each of their heads. “Go, Team Fuller!”
Tessa’s phone rang again, and this time she wiggled her arm out of his embrace to scoop it up. Then she froze before scrambling out of his arms completely, leaving him with Calvin patting his cheeks and babbling, “Tee-Tee,” his version of “Auntie.”
“It’s Rachel,” she said. He froze too and they both stared at it like it was a scorpion ready to strike. The phone stopped ringing, and Tessa met his eyes, hers full of fear. “What do I do?”
He didn’t know. All he could feel was an overwhelming urge to snatch the phone from her hand and chuck it into the wall with enough force to obliterate it. Before he could answer, it vibrated again with another incoming call from Rachel.
He took a deep breath. “I think you have to answer it.”
Embracing Her Ever After: A Sweet Romantic Comedy (ABCs of Love Book 5) Page 17
