by Abby Gaines
As she loaded Ben’s dirty clothes into the washing machine, Bethany decided she was thankful they’d found Ben’s mom. She was looking forward to resuming her research.
What research? She realized with a shock she hadn’t pushed Tyler about the money at all these past few days. That she didn’t have any work to go back to unless the foundation paid up, and she was doing a miserable job of making that happen.
She’d let his kiss deflect her, take her mind off what really mattered. I need to persuade Tyler to give me the money, then I need to get out of here.
CHAPTER EIGHT
TYLER AND BETHANY’S visit to a surprised, scared sixteen-year-old in Augusta proved a false alarm. The girl had been pregnant, and her parents had forbidden her to reveal the pregnancy to anyone. They’d convinced her to hand the baby over to some childless cousins, who’d filed a formal application to adopt the baby.
Tyler was silent most of the long drive home; Bethany had no clue how he felt about still being Ben’s guardian. She, herself, felt only relief.The kind of relief experienced by someone who jumps off a sinking ship and hauls herself into a lifeboat, only to find the lifeboat is leaking. She and Tyler were back to square one.
Only it was a whole lot hotter in here now.
OLIVIA’S MAZDA RX-7 was far too conspicuous for the errand she had in mind, so she’d borrowed her friend Margie Biedermeyer’s maid’s Toyota.
Olivia couldn’t quite believe she was disguising herself so she could cruise the streets of Buckhead, Atlanta’s most elegant neighborhood—where she’d lived all her life—and check out Silas’s home.She had chosen this time of day, four-thirty, because it was just starting to get dark, which left her enough light to get a good look, but minimized the chances of Silas looking out a window and recognizing her.
Her hands tightened on the steering wheel at the thought of him seeing her skulking. But how else could she find out more about him?
“You’re acting like a lunatic,” she told her reflection in the rearview mirror. She’d had two dates with Gigi’s cardiologist, a charming, normal man, and yet here she was, pursuing a crank. Maybe her lunacy had nothing to do with Silas, who on every measure other than his good looks wasn’t her type. Maybe it was menopause’s parting shot.
She flicked her turn signal, headed left onto Armada, Silas’s street. Like much of Buckhead, the homes were large, prepossessing. Some of them had been divided into apartments, and she envisaged Silas living in one of those. Alone.
She didn’t know for sure he wasn’t married, but he didn’t wear a ring, and no woman would let her husband go out looking the way Silas did. No woman in Buckhead, at least.
When she got to the two hundreds, she slowed down. Silas had given 280 Armada as his address on his funding application. She left her headlights off to aid her anonymity…274, 276, 278…Olivia eased her foot off the gas, let the automatic transmission move the car forward at a snail’s pace. Number 280 had a high brick wall across the front, which meant she wouldn’t see much until she was right outside the gates.
There was only one letter box set into the wall—no indication that the house was apartments. The gates were beautiful black wrought iron, elaborately patterned. Most unusual. Olivia came to a stop across the road from the house.
And stared.
She buzzed down her window to get a better look. Silas’s home was stunning. A huge, gracious Federal-style brick house, three stories, shutters at the windows. The wide, paved driveway had a fountain in the center, and bisected rolling green lawns on its path from the gate up to the grand front steps that ran the length of the house, then back around to the gate.
It was Olivia’s dream home.
As she sat there, lost in wondrous contemplation, the gates swung open. Even with her window down, Olivia couldn’t hear any intrusive mechanical operation. They moved silently, as if by magic.
Too late, she realized why they were opening.
A car whose approach had been obscured by the brick wall appeared in the driveway. A black Maserati, sleek and gorgeous, its powerful Italian engine purring like a well-fed tiger.
The driver paused at the gates, checking for traffic in the street. Even in the half-light Olivia recognized the tall, broad figure behind the steering wheel.
Silas drives a Maserati.
She was so glad she’d come.
He moved forward and the car’s headlamps swept the road, bathing Olivia in their glow before she could duck down.
She froze.
Silas stared right at her.
ON SATURDAY MORNING, Tyler took Ben on a protest march in support of cheaper day care for low-income families.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Bethany said when he told her where they were going.“You said I could spend my two hours with him any way I like.” He jiggled Ben, who was getting fractious, against his hip. “You can come too, if you like.”
“I’m going back to bed. I was up three times last night.”
“Let the record reflect that you put your beauty sleep ahead of the crisis in day care,” he said.
“Let it,” she said, and went upstairs.
Naturally, it turned out Tyler wasn’t just attending the march. When Bethany switched on the TV news during Ben’s dinner that night, she saw him at the front of the protest—one of the leaders. He carried Ben in the front-pack, and held a placard that proclaimed, Poor Kids Need Day Care Too.
“If that was all you were worried about, you’d have been happy to walk at the back of the line,” she lectured Tyler as he grabbed a beer from the fridge.
“I would have been delighted to, but that wouldn’t have done the foundation any good,” he said virtuously. “It’s no picnic being constantly in the public eye, you know.”
“That’s why you’re taking Miss Georgia to the red-carpet premiere of that new show tonight.” She put her TV dinner in the microwave and set the timer. “I’m surprised she has time to date you when she’s so busy working for world peace.”
His eyes gleamed at the edge in her voice, which sounded, she had to admit, like jealousy.
He sighed. “She needed cheering up. Poor girl, I fear she’s losing heart over the peace thing.”
Right after he left, Bethany’s mother phoned to ask if she’d secured the new funding yet.
“I’m working on it.” Bethany decided it was an aspiration rather than a lie.
BETHANY WAS SURPRISED to hear Tyler let himself in before midnight. Had he and Miss Georgia had a fight?
Normally, she would have been asleep at this hour, but Ben had picked up a cold. This was the second time he’d woken already.Tyler appeared in the nursery doorway. “Everything okay?” He propped himself against the doorjamb, relaxed and self-assured in dark pants and a gray shirt. He didn’t look as if he’d had a bust-up with his girlfriend.
“Your protest march gave Ben a cold.” Bethany wiped away a trail of mucus from Ben’s nose.
“Hell, I’m sorry.” He came into the room, and she saw real remorse in his eyes. “Will he be okay?”
“Tyler, it’s a cold, not the bubonic plague.”
“You may not appreciate this,” he said, “but guy colds are much more serious than girl colds.”
“I’d heard.” She smiled—it was much easier to talk to him when he was fully clothed.
“Just so long as you’re aware.” He looked down at her, took in her shortie pajamas decorated with rainbow-pastel soft-freeze cones. “Did I ever tell you that you have great legs?”
“No, but you look at them often enough, I figured it was either that or you’re trying to creep me out.”
“Both,” he said.
There was a moment’s silence. Then Bethany said, too loudly, “Ben’s asleep, I’m going back to bed.”
BEN WOKE at one o’clock, fretting, unwilling to be pacified.
Tyler watched Bethany walk the baby up and down the small nursery. He started to walk alongside her, matching his steps to hers. Eight steps down, turn,
eight steps back. It soon grew tedious. “I prefer circuit training.”“Then why don’t you carry the weight?” She passed Ben, still wide-awake and peevish, to him.
They resumed their pacing. The room wasn’t that wide, so they were forced to walk close together. Maybe this exercise was more strenuous that he’d thought, because heat prickled all over Tyler.
“I forgot to ask how the show was tonight,” Bethany said.
Tyler grimaced. “It was one of those interminable family dramas—a whiny bunch of people who didn’t like each other much.”
“A pretty ordinary family, then.”
“You’ve been talking to your mother again,” he said.
She stopped midpace. “How did you know?”
“Maybe I’m not as self-absorbed as you think,” he said smugly. “I noticed last time you spoke to her you kept scratching your neck afterward. You’ve been doing that tonight.”
Since at that very moment Bethany’s hand was curled at her nape, she wasn’t in a position to deny it.
“I’m not allergic to my mother,” she muttered.
“No, but you’re tense.” He clasped Ben with one hand so he could jog her elbow. “Keep walking.”
She did as she was told. After a moment he said, “Where do your folks live?”
“In Madison.”
He’d never been there, but he knew the town was around an hour from Atlanta. “Any siblings you’re allergic to?”
She sucked in her cheeks and said reluctantly, “I had an older sister, Melanie. She died when she was fourteen.”
Tyler waited.
Bethany screwed up her face, revealing her struggle not to say more. Eventually, the pause became so pregnant it threatened quintuplets.
“Of acute kidney failure,” she blurted.
What the—
Bethany kept moving, staring straight ahead at the teddy-bear height chart on the wall. Tyler wondered why the baby planner he’d enlisted to stock the nursery had decided he needed a height chart for a baby he would have only a few weeks.
He halted Bethany with a hand on her arm. “How old were you when she died?”
“Thirteen. We were born fifteen months apart.”
“That’s tough,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He resumed walking, and Bethany followed. “Any other kids in the family?”
“My younger brother, Ryan—he was just a year old when Melanie died.”
Tyler exhaled against Ben’s head, and the little boy batted Tyler’s chest. “So that’s why you chose kidney disease as your specialty?”
“I guess.”
He searched her face. “Is it why you became a doctor?”
Bethany shifted. “Maybe…indirectly.”
Tyler was still trying to process what he’d learned. There had to be more to it. “I think it’s strange you didn’t say anything before, about your sister.”
“It was a long time ago.”
He reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Strange.”
“IS HE OKAY?” Tyler asked at 2:00 a.m. Once again, with an uncanny sense of timekeeping, Ben had woken almost on the hour. “He’s…snorty.”
“He’s blocked up. I need to get these saline drops into him.” Bethany squeezed the contents of a dropper into Ben’s nose, much to his outrage. She soothed the screaming baby with her usual lack of perturbation; as always, Tyler was impressed by the way she got on with the job without complaint. “He’ll be fine, we’ll just have to wait this thing out.” She peered at Tyler. “Or, rather, I will. You look tired, you don’t need to get up to him every time.”“Oh, yeah,” he said. “If I sleep through, I’ll have you accusing me of selfishness.”
She actually looked guilty. “I won’t,” she promised. “You’ve been great tonight.”
That unqualified praise hung in the air between them.
“Why don’t you go to bed.” She sounded as if she really, really didn’t want Tyler there.
Which had to mean he was getting to her.
Deliberately, he eyed her legs. “I don’t mind staying.”
So that’s what he did. He stayed, and let his mind wander to how Bethany’s legs would look and feel wrapped around him.
THREE O’CLOCK WAS TIME for Ben’s feed. Bethany hoped like heck Tyler hadn’t heard him crying, but he got to the nursery at the same time as she did.
“After you.” He sketched a bow in the doorway.Ben was both ravenous and ill, his face was redder than a tomato. Bethany hastened to heat his bottle.
Tyler picked Ben up. “His diaper is full.” A pause. “Shall I change it?”
“I must have fallen asleep for a second,” Bethany said. “I just dreamed that you offered to change—” Tyler’s darkening expression made her cut her little joke short. “Yes, please.”
He grumbled something about ingratitude as he untabbed Ben’s diaper, threw it in the trash can.
“Uh, Tyler, you might want to have the new diaper ready before you—”
Too late. Ben shot a steady stream of pee into the air. Tyler leaped backward, but not before the full force of the spray hit his bare chest.
“Damn.” Several other curse words followed as he grabbed a couple of baby wipes and began rubbing his chest with such distaste that Bethany burst out laughing. She fastened the clean diaper on Ben and put him back in his crib, which he protested loudly.
“Need any help?” she asked Tyler, still chuckling.
“No, no, my life’s goal is to keep you amused and I seem to be doing fine.”
She plucked the wipes from his hand and picked up a clean receiving blanket. “Let’s dry you off.”
The second the blanket made contact with his chest, she realized this was a bad idea. The soft flannel fabric afforded her hands no protection against the heat of his torso. Involuntarily she uncurled her fingers from around the cloth, then spread them wide in a futile attempt to span the firmness of all that muscle and sinew. Her wiping motions slowed, slowed. Stopped.
Tyler covered her hands with his own, securing them against his chest. Bethany felt the thud of his heart, felt his gaze on her, willing her to look up. She kept her eyes locked on their joined hands.
Then Ben squawked, and Tyler released her. They both turned their attention to the baby. Bethany gathered him in her arms; Tyler patted the back of Ben’s head, his fingers brushing across Bethany’s. Static electricity snapped between them, and she jumped back, fixed him with an accusing look.
He smirked. “Told you there was a spark.”
Bethany rubbed her fingers against her thigh. “That was science, not sex.”
AT 4:00 A.M., Bethany could hardly stand up straight, she was so tired. Yet one part of her—the sad, pathetic part that held out for any glimpse of Tyler seminaked in the middle of the night—was wide-awake. Each time he appeared in the nursery, she noticed something new about him. The shadow on his jaw, the whiteness of his teeth as he smothered a yawn, the cording of his biceps as he ran a hand around the back of his neck to ease his exhaustion.
Was it her imagination, or was he standing closer to her each time they leaned over Ben’s crib together? Like now, as she stroked Ben’s head to help him get back to sleep, she felt as if Tyler was only an inch behind her. To test the theory, she leaned back, and instantly encountered the hard warmth of his chest. When she would have pulled away, his hands descended on her shoulders, keeping her there. His chin dropped onto her head. “Tired?”“Uh, yeah.” Best to let him think that was why she was leaning on him.
“Me too.” He turned her around to face him, and his eyes were unfamiliarly compassionate. “But this has got to be tougher on you than on me. You’re doing all the work.”
“Not all,” she demurred. She added mischievously, “Ninety percent, tops.”
He laughed. “I don’t know where you get the energy to joke at this time of night.”
“You think I’m joking?”
He laughed again, and it chased away Bethany’s fatigue. Her whole body went on a
lert, every corpuscle pulsing with energy. His fingers burned into her shoulders, ten points of radiant heat. Even though he’d had as little sleep as she had, Tyler looked so strong, so vital, so red-blooded, that Bethany could stand it no longer.
She’d said this moment would never come, that she would never give him a signal. But she’d been wrong. Just plain wrong. Nothing to be ashamed of in that.
She lifted her hand, reached to a point just below Tyler’s left ear, ran a finger from there along his jaw to his chin.
She waited.
Tyler gazed down at her, intense, unreadable.
And yawned.
He ran a hand over his eyes, cutting her off from that intensity. “Guess I’ll hit the sack.”
He was turning her down! Bethany braced herself against the wave of mortification, somehow managed not to let it topple her.
“Good idea,” she muttered. Blindly, she turned back to the crib. “I think Ben’s asleep now.”
She waited, frozen in her humiliation, until she heard Tyler’s bedroom door click shut; then she made her way back to her own room.
WAS IT POSSIBLE to feel more tired, Tyler wondered as he sank into bed. His head swam, red and black spots hovered before his eyes like demented ladybugs. He hadn’t slept a wink tonight—he’d been unable to drift off between stints in the nursery, partly because he was worried about Ben, mainly because he was hyperaware of Bethany.
How did she manage to look so good when she must be every bit as exhausted as he was?She smelled good, too. Tyler had given up the fight to keep his distance and moved closer to her, just so he could absorb that fragrant blend of lemon and mint and something floral that he’d come to associate with her. Then there was the feel of her, her shoulders satiny smooth beneath his fingers.
And somehow she retained the energy to backchat him at every stage of the night. He liked the way her eyes sparkled with humor when she tried to stomp on his ego—she’d doubtless be disappointed to know it wasn’t as fragile as she thought.
