Hush, Little Baby

by Judith Arnold

  The car door swung shut and Corinne let out a little yelp. “Gerald!”

  Levi’s adrenaline level subsided as Corinne picked her way carefully through the muddy terrain, past the invisible patio and around the invisible garage to the front of the invisible house, where her left-brained boss stood. The few times Levi had met Gerald Mosley, he’d been more impressed by the guy’s open-mindedness than anything else. Mosley was a small man with a nondescript appearance. He had thick, tawny hair, eyeglasses, and a face that seemed settled into a permanently quizzical expression. His attire was stylishly ill-fitting, better suited to a teenage mall rat than a grown-up multimillionaire.

  Corinne greeted him with a bit more warmth than Levi would have expected a woman to greet the man she worked for. Following behind her, slowed by the stroller’s lack of maneuverability over the ruts and furrows, he watched her give Mosley an exuberant hug, then step back, plant her hands on her hips and shake her head. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  Levi couldn’t make out Mosley’s muffled reply, because D.J. was shrieking with pleasure at the bumpy ride he was getting in his stroller.

  “We just stopped by because I wanted to see how things were coming along,” she said to Mosley as Levi drew nearer. He assumed Mosley must have answered her question by turning it back on her. “Levi was showing me where the swimming pool is going to go. If you decide on the free-form pool, Gerald, you’re going to have to think seriously about how to landscape it.”

  “Why?” Mosley asked. “I was figuring you could take care of the landscaping.” Then he turned to Levi, his expression a strange hybrid of a smile and a scowl.

  Levi extended his hand to Mosley. “Good to see you, Gerald,” he said blandly, giving nothing away. Although Mosley had, if anything, a greater right than Corinne to observe how his dream house was progressing, Levi felt uneasy about his having come to Arlington without warning. He felt even uneasier about Mosley’s suggestion that Corinne could take care of the house’s landscaping.

  And uneasier yet when Mosley said, “What do you think of my car, Corey?”

  Corey?

  “Did you rent it?” she asked.

  Mosley shook his head, his smile a paradoxical blend of diffidence and bravado. “I bought it this morning.”

  “You bought it?” Her arms still akimbo, she glowered at the massive SUV. “What are you going to do with it?”

  “Drive it. I’m going to need a car here in Arlington. I figured I might as well buy one.”

  “But you’re not living in Arlington yet. Your house isn’t going to be ready for months. Right, Levi?” she asked, acknowledging him with a glimpse before continuing to scold Mosley. “Where are you going to park that thing in New York?”

  “I’ll rent a space in my building’s garage.”

  “That’s going to take up more than once space,” she predicted, eyeing Mosley’s new transportation with vaguely defined contempt.

  “Yeah, but it’s a cool car. I like being way high above the road.” Mosley’s gaze sloped from the Range Rover to Levi’s road-hugging sports car.

  “Poo-poo-poo!” D.J. chimed in.

  Mosley swung his eyes toward D.J. “That’s the baby?” he asked.

  Levi felt his defenses rise again, even though Mosley hadn’t said anything particularly troubling or offensive. Before he could speak, Corinne said, “Yes. This is D.J.”

  “Poo-poo-poo!”

  “He’s saying poop,” Mosley muttered, his upper lip curling.

  “No, he’s not. He’s talking about the pool.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Trust me—I can.” She hunkered down next to D.J., as if she could translate his baby talk better at his level. “D.J., this is my friend Gerald. Gerald, this is D.J.”

  Mosley stared at her as if she’d morphed into an alien creature in front of his eyes. “Corey, we’ve got to talk.”

  She straightened up and smiled hesitantly. “Can’t it wait until Monday?”

  “No.” Mosley’s eyes jittered from the baby to Levi to Corinne and back to Levi, this time faintly apologetic. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve got to talk to her.”

  “Go right ahead,” Levi said with more generosity than he felt.

  Gerald wrapped his fingers around Corinne’s elbow and guided her away from Levi and D.J. They walked across what would someday be the front lawn to the southern side of the foundation, as far from Levi as they could be without seeming rude about it.

  “Poo-poo!” D.J. commented emphatically.

  “Poop is right,” Levi muttered. He didn’t know why seeing Corinne and Mosley together troubled him, but it did. The way they bent their heads together, and the way Mosley’s hand remained on Corinne’s arm, the way they both seemed to be talking at once, as if they knew each other well enough to know what was being said without having to listen to it…

  Why wouldn’t they know each other that well? They worked together. Mosley trusted Corinne enough to have her negotiate the details on his house. He wanted her to landscape his pool.

  A curse escaped him, a less euphemistic term for “poop.” Corinne and Mosley were more than boss and assistant. One glance at them, one quick reading of their posture, the angles of their gaze and the undeniable comfort level between them told Levi that.

  She’d been in his bed last night, he reminded himself. And last week. She’d stood before a storm with him. She loved his baby.

  Two months ago, the sight of a woman he desired talking intimately to another man wouldn’t have irked him. He would either have competed for her or blown her off. But he didn’t want to blow Corinne off, and he wasn’t certain he had the strength to compete for her. He’d gone from being a carefree bachelor to a single father in one fateful instant, and the changes his life had undergone since then left him insecure. He had to ration his energy. He had to preserve his love for D.J., who needed it more than Corinne.

  As for Levi, he could do without love for now. He’d done without sleep in the past month and a half, without order, without his old routines, without his sister. He wanted Corinne, desired her, longed to spend night after night—and day after day—with her. But what he wanted didn’t matter as much as D.J. did.

  If she was going to landscape Mosley’s patio… Whatever the hell that signified, Levi had enough of a sense of self-preservation to convince himself he’d be better off if he didn’t let himself care.

  Chapter Thirteen

  EVERYONE WAS in a cranky mood. Levi’s face had darkened with shadow in the time she and Gerald had conferred. Gerald was in a snit. And D.J. was fussing and whining as plaintively as he had the first time she’d met him, when he’d been teething.

  Maybe Levi and Gerald had sore gums, too. Corinne didn’t know. She did know that if they didn’t cheer up soon, she’d be tempted to augment their teeth pain by giving each of them a fat lip.

  “That’s the baby?” Gerald had demanded to know, once he’d dragged her away from Levi to the far corner the house’s foundation.

  “Yes, that’s the baby. I told you Levi had a baby.”

  “But it’s just—it’s just an ordinary baby. I mean, what’s so special about it?”

  “It’s a he, not an it,” she corrected him. “What are you doing here, Gerald? Did you come to check up on me?”

  “I came to check up on my house,” he said indignantly, then faltered and gave a sheepish shrug. “And you. I’m worried about you.”

  “Why?” She held her arms out from her sides, displaying herself. “As you can see, there’s nothing to worry about. I’m perfectly fine.”

  “So what’s going on? Are you having an affair with Holt?”

  Was it that obvious? She hadn’t realized Gerald was astute enough to notice beard burns or flushed cheeks or…well, whatever transformation she might have undergone by becoming Levi’s lover.

  She didn’t want to discuss Levi with Gerald at the edge of a construction site. For that matter, she didn’t want t
o discuss Levi with him at all. But he was her friend, and at least part of his annoyance was due to her having denied their friendship by not confiding in him.

  There were plenty of other things she’d never told him, though. She’d never shared with him more than the most superficial details of her childhood. She’d never let him see how her parents’ multiple marriages and divorces had scarred her. She had never told him about her pet cat, about how devastated she’d been when her father had given Muffy away.

  One of the things she appreciated about Gerald was that they never had to share such intimate details of their lives. He didn’t demand the kind of openness Levi invited. She could not imagine lying in bed with Gerald, feeling troubled and having Gerald murmur, “Tell me about it.”

  She used to think that kind of detachment was exactly what she wanted.

  “Levi and I are close,” she told Gerald now.

  He raked a hand through his hair. Sunlight bounced off the lenses of his glasses, shielding his eyes from her. “When did this happen?”

  Suddenly. Strangely. She couldn’t explain it to Gerald. She didn’t want to—and that made her sad. While she and Levi might be close—more than close—she’d been close to Gerald a whole lot longer. She wasn’t prepared to welcome him into the special world she and Levi and D.J. had found together, but she wasn’t willing to shut him out, either.

  “Why don’t we all get some lunch and talk?” she suggested.

  “About what?”

  She couldn’t guess if Gerald was deliberately giving her a hard time or just being literal. “About your house,” she suggested. “About your new car. About the baby.”

  “It looks like a pretty ordinary baby,” Gerald muttered, glancing over at the stroller. Levi stood next to it, his arms crossed and his expression glowering. He cut a tall figure in the clear midday light, his dark hair mussed, his shoulders broad. His jeans fit his long, lean legs as if they’d been custom tailored to his physique. She let her gaze linger for a moment on his strong thighs, his narrow hips. A totally inappropriate pang of desire tugged at her.

  “The baby is a he, not an it,” she repeated, forcing her attention from Levi to D.J., who looked disgruntled, as well. Maybe he was an ordinary baby. She didn’t know enough babies to judge which were average and which were stellar. All she knew was that she and D.J. empathized with each other on some primal level, that D.J. made her want to sing lullabies, that when she held him in her arms she felt peaceful inside.

  “I don’t get it,” Gerald argued. “I mean, you and a baby? You told me it wasn’t a biological clock thing. If it’s just that you’re hot for the architect and you’re accepting the baby as part of the deal, that would make sense to me.”

  That would make sense to Corinne, too—but it wasn’t how things had happened. She’d been aware of Levi’s appeal from the first moment she’d met him, but only in an objective way. Her first real connection had been with D.J. If not for that evening when she’d sung to him, she might not have made love with Levi.

  “The thing is…” Gerald turned back to her, and the movement of his head allowed her to glimpse his eyes before the sun’s glare washed across his eyeglass lenses again. He looked perplexed. She’d presented him with a formula he couldn’t calculate, a proof that didn’t end in Q.E.D. “You’re like me, Corey. We aren’t into all that soft, gooey baby stuff. In all the time I’ve known you, I have never once seen you get warm and fuzzy.”

  “I know.” She sighed. “But this time it’s different. D.J. is different.”

  “D.J.?”

  “The baby. His real name is Damien Justice, and he—”

  “That’s okay,” Gerald cut her off. “I don’t really want to hear some long, touching story, all right?”

  “Have lunch with us.” She heard an edge of pleading in her voice. It was important to her that Gerald understand, or at least accept, that something had changed inside her. Whether the change was permanent she couldn’t say, but she wanted him to acknowledge it. “We’ll talk. You’ll get to know Levi and D.J. a little better, and maybe this will start to make sense to you.”

  A wry smile quirked his mouth. “Does it make sense to you?”

  She smiled back, just as wryly. “No.”

  “Are you in love with Holt?”

  “I—” She swallowed and looked away. Love had never made sense to her, either. But when she gazed back at Levi and felt more than just a physical urge but a need to be with him, a soul-deep yearning to touch him and kiss him, to hear his low voice, to feel his breath against her cheek… Was it love when two people could get a baby out of his car seat and into a stroller so smoothly, without conferring about it, without planning or even talking? Was love about being on the same wavelength, moving to the same rhythm, wanting the same thing? Even when all they wanted was a baby safely strapped into his stroller?

  “I’m not sure I know what love is,” she admitted, as honest an answer as she could give.

  He nodded. “All right. Let’s have lunch.”

  Smiling, she beckoned him to follow her back over the rutted dirt to where Levi stood and D.J. sat. As soon as she neared them, D.J. began powering his feet, kicking and swinging them in circles. They were bare, and his toes were tiny pink nubs, smooth and soft. “Hi,” she said brightly.

  Levi scrutinized Gerald and then turned to her. His smile was half-hearted and sub-arctic.

  “We’re going to have lunch,” she announced, wishing she could pull Levi aside the way Gerald had pulled her aside, and talk to him, and maybe thaw him with a kiss. Although why she had to thaw him was beyond her.

  “Lunch?” He arched one eyebrow.

  “Is there a restaurant anywhere nearby?” Gerald asked. “I could go for some Chinese food.”

  Levi angled his head toward D.J. “He’s got to get home. He’s been cooped up in a car all morning—except for now, when he’s cooped up in his stroller.”

  “Why don’t we pick up some food and bring it back to your house?” Corinne suggested, adding, for Gerald’s sake, “Chinese, if you’d like.” Whatever was bugging these two men, she was going to take care of it, fix it up, make it right. That was her job.

  A job she used to love but right now resented. In the past, she’d always hastened to step into the role of the fixer. But today, she didn’t want to solve Levi’s and Gerald’s problems, whatever they might be. If they believed themselves rivals for her affection, she’d just as soon they dealt with their competition themselves. She didn’t think they were rivals. She adored them both.

  “Fine,” Levi said crisply. “We’ll get Chinese food and eat at the house.” He spun around and stalked to his car. Reaching across the driver’s seat, he popped open the tiny glove compartment and pulled out his cell phone. “How spicy do you like your food?” he asked.

  “Very spicy,” Corinne said.

  “I hate spicy food,” Gerald said simultaneously.

  Levi’s left eyebrow rose again. He punched in a number—”I have the best Chinese restaurant in town on automatic dial,” he explained—and then turned his back on them so he could converse with the restaurant uninterrupted.

  Gerald eyed D.J. with a blend of curiosity and apprehension. D.J. shrank back against the curved canvas of his stroller seat. His eyes narrowing on Gerald, he thrust a thumb into his mouth and sucked pensively.

  “I don’t get it,” Gerald muttered.

  “Get what?”

  “He’s a baby.”

  She hunkered down in front of the stroller so D.J. could view her at eye level. “We’re going to go home in just a few minutes,” she told him, wondering if he considered that good news—wondering if he could even understand what she was saying. “This man is Gerald. He’s my colleague. This—” she gestured toward the concrete and lumber shaping the outline of a house “—is going to be his home once it’s built. Your uncle is building it. Uncle Levi.”

  D.J. removed his thumb from his mouth but kept it handy, resting against his plump lowe
r lip. “Lee-baa.”

  “That’s right,” she agreed. “Levi.”

  He considered her for a moment, then reached out, aiming for her nose. She leaned back in time to escape his fingers. “Lee-lee-lee!”

  “We’re going home,” she repeated, straightening up.

  Gerald was staring at her. “That was enlightening,” he said, sarcasm coating every word.

  “Okay. You don’t like babies.”

  “Neither do you.”

  “Except for this one.”

  Levi disconnected his phone and turned to them. “Let’s go. I have to detour to the restaurant to pick up our order. Mosley, do you know where I live?”

  “No.”

  “Why don’t you go with him, then?” he suggested to Corinne. “D.J. and I will meet you at the house.”

  Strictly practical, she assured herself. He wasn’t implying that he didn’t want her in his car. He was simply figuring out a strategy to make sure Gerald didn’t spend the next hour driving in circles around Arlington.

  “Okay,” she said. “We’ll meet you there.” She tried to hold his gaze with hers, but he eluded her, busying himself with the task of unstrapping D.J. and transferring him from his stroller to his car seat.

  The sun had reached its noon height, and she felt its heat seeping through her hair to her scalp. It added to the tension gathering behind her eyes and rapping against her temples.

  She didn’t want to fix everything. She didn’t want to make things right. She wanted Gerald to be her friend and Levi to be her lover, and she didn’t want to have to explain anything to either of them.

  The Corinne she’d been a few weeks ago would have gladly arranged a lovely luncheon where all the ruffled male feathers could be smoothed out. But that Corinne was gone. The Corinne of today wanted to snatch D.J. and disappear long enough for Levi and Gerald to resolve their antagonism themselves. Let them reach a consensus on the glass wall in the kitchen of Gerald’s damned house, on the fireplace in the bedroom—even on the landscaping around the free-form poo-poo. Let them be guys together, butting heads until they discovered they both had unbreakably thick skulls.