It's a Boy!

by Victoria Pade

  Heddy managed a faint smile at that. “No, she just reminded me of Tina. And that I don’t have her anymore. Being around a lot of kids—”

  “Must always make you think of your own baby,” Lang concluded. “And what did I do? I’ve been bringing Carter over here, I put you at the edge of a play area full of kids and made you a sitting duck for a mother with a stroller... I’m sorry! If I had known... Why didn’t you just say no to the play area today?”

  “After Carter had already seen Buz Bunny?” Heddy said with a small smile of appreciation for the little boy’s pronunciation. “It’s been five years,” she said. “Seems silly that I couldn’t do something that simple.”

  “Things in life that hit us hard change us,” he said as if speaking from experience of his own. “What we can and can’t do changes.”

  “Still, being around Carter has sort of reconditioned me, now that I’m thinking about it. I’ve stopped trying to imagine Tina as a two-and-a-half-year-old like Carter. And wondering if she would be the way he is—as happy and full of energy. Wondering if she’d say things he says, like the things he likes, do the things he does. Now, when I’m with Carter...” Heddy shrugged. “The Carter-isms are just the Carter-ism, and—”

  Heddy took a moment to let it sink in because she honestly was only realizing this as she said it. “Actually since being around Carter, I seem to be more able to choose when to think of Tina and in what way. It hasn’t just been flooding me out of the blue the way it used to. And that’s good...” It really was.

  “But today, with a whole bunch of kids, and then a baby...”

  “I did get blindsided by that baby,” she admitted, her own low spirits beginning to lift as she talked about it all. Plus Lang was rubbing the back of her hand with his thumb and his touch actually seemed to be infusing her with some of his strength. “And when something makes me think about Tina out of the blue,” she went on, “the bad feelings can still be hard.” She shrugged again. “But on the other hand, today has sort of opened my eyes to how being with Carter has made things better.”

  “I’m not sure you’re telling me the truth, but I hope so,” Lang said.

  Heddy managed a bigger smile. “I am telling you the truth,” she insisted.

  Lang squeezed her hand. “Still, I don’t know how you got through that.”

  “I wasn’t sure I was going to the first year,” she said, finding it easier to go on talking about this now. “I don’t think anyone else was too sure, either.”

  “Where did you live if you didn’t go back to that house?”

  “My parents wanted me to stay with them, but Clair wasn’t married yet, and when she offered, I took her up on it. It seemed better to do that than to just go home to Mom and Dad.”

  “But I can’t believe anything could make that situation better.”

  “No, it didn’t,” she confirmed. “I moved in with Clair but I was still just... I don’t know, barely conscious. Clair kept me going as much as anything kept me going at the time. Too many days in bed and she’d yank me out and make me get cleaned up. She got me to eat what little I ate every day. But most of that first year I don’t even remember. I just know that if it wasn’t for Clair I wouldn’t have gotten through it. And besides taking care of me, Clair hired a Realtor and got the house sold. It was Clair who got the family and movers in to pack everything, because I couldn’t face any of it. I couldn’t step foot in that place. It was Clair who went through every stage with me. Who was patient when I needed patience, let me cry on her shoulder and feel sorry for myself when I needed that, and gave me kicks in the pants when I needed those, too.”

  “And after a year? Did you just wake up on the anniversary and—”

  “It’s five years later and I’ve just gotten to the point where I can be around Carter,” she pointed out. “No. I just sort of knew I had to try to get back to... I don’t know, something. Clair’s wedding was coming up. She was going to move into Clark’s house and I had to do something with myself. Daniel had a life insurance policy—nothing huge, but it was a lump sum. And there had been some equity on the house, but I needed to get back to work.”

  “You didn’t work that whole first year?”

  She shook her head again. “I wish I could find a way to say this that didn’t sound nuts, but not only couldn’t I go back to working with kids, I guess somewhere in my grief-stricken brain, I sort of associated the job—the hours, certainly, but somehow the whole thing—with Daniel and Tina dying, and blamed that.”

  “You think if you had been home it wouldn’t have happened?” Lang asked, sounding confused.

  “I know it isn’t logical, but yes. Clair and the rest of my family always say that if I’d been there, I would have gone to sleep and never woken up, too. I wouldn’t have been able to prevent it from happening. But still...”

  “You couldn’t just go on the way things had been before. Back to what you’d been doing that night. To you, one thing is connected to the other.”

  “Yes!” It was amazing how quickly he understood what her family had never seemed able to grasp.

  “But I had to make a living.”

  “And that’s where cheesecakes came in?”

  “I’d made them before, gotten the recipes just the way I wanted them. People had always said I should sell them, so...”

  “That’s what you did.”

  “Well, I couldn’t sell enough of them or you wouldn’t be here, but yes.”

  His smile contained a hint of guilt. “And out of terrible, terrible tragedy for you came something that I’m thankful for—even though I am sorry for what you went through and all you lost,” he said quietly.

  Heddy acknowledged him with a small, helpless shrug.

  There wasn’t anything that could ever make her forget how tragic losing Daniel and Tina had been, but telling Lang had been surprisingly cathartic. And even sitting there with him, her hand still in his, felt somehow okay now, too.

  Probably because he’d taken her hand simply to console her, the way any number of people had over the years, she told herself.

  Although something about this wasn’t quite the same...

  Something about everything with Lang wasn’t quite the same as it had been with anyone else she’d talked about this to.

  It wasn’t as if there was instantly less pain over the losses she’d suffered, or that Daniel and Tina were forgotten.

  It was just that, for some reason, it all seemed to slip to the side. Into its own compartment.

  Leaving her feeling...what?

  She wasn’t quite sure.

  Daniel and Tina were still with her but she somehow felt a little freer. Freer and very aware of what was right there in front of her. For real and not just in her mind, in her memory, but in the flesh.

  Lang.

  He was looking down at his hand holding hers, and she was looking at his chiseled face, and for the first time the past and the present separated for her. It was as if she moved—without moving at all—more firmly into the moment.

  Lang lifted her hand to look at it more closely. Then he pressed his mouth to the back of it. And unlike the night before, nothing in her shouted for her to say stop. Instead she just yearned for those lips to be on hers again.

  Then he raised his blue, blue eyes to hers, searching, and she had the sense that he was torn between what he wanted and something else—knowing what he now knew about her, maybe?

  Heddy couldn’t be sure. But she did give in to her own inclinations to take her hand out of his so she could lay it on his cheek, so she could let him know that she was very much here in the moment with him and him alone.

  At first, when he arched his brows, she wasn’t sure he was convinced. But then he leaned forward and pressed his mouth to hers, kissing her tenderly, carefully, sweetly, giving her the
opportunity to shove him away if he was out of line.

  But Heddy didn’t shove him away. She tilted her chin into that kiss and deepened it, allowing her lips to part beneath his.

  Her response triggered more of a hunger in him than she’d expected, as if kissing her again was something he’d been dying to do all along. His lips parted further still, instantly turning up the heat.

  He cradled her head in one hand and encircled her with his other arm, pulling her closer, holding her as his mouth opened a bit wider still, wide enough for just the tip of his tongue to tease the tip of hers.

  For a split second the intimacy startled Heddy. But only for a split second. Soon she surprised herself by inviting a little play that just seemed to come naturally as the kiss enveloped her and carried her away.

  She toyed with the coarse hair at the nape of his neck as their mouths opened even wider and their tongues began a dance that was more sensual than playful. Darting and enticing and circling and caressing in ways that she thought she’d forgotten how to do.

  Her head resting in Lang’s hand, she gave herself over to the pure strength and presence of him, to the kiss that was all-encompassing and great and glorious and so, so good that she sailed away on it and could have let it go on for hours and hours....

  Except that suddenly, from somewhere very nearby, a sleepily chipper Carter said, “Wass ’at?”

  Heddy had been so engrossed that she hadn’t heard or even sensed Carter coming downstairs and into the living room to stand on the other side of the coffee table. Lang jolted slightly as he ended the kiss, clearly surprised, too.

  But dazed and confused or not, the kiss came to an abrupt and premature end as they both glanced over at the little boy. With Baby tucked under one arm, he rubbed his eye with a balled-up fist and pointed to the plate of cookies on the coffee table with his other hand.

  “Um... Those are the cookies we were having for dessert.” Lang answered Carter’s question foggily even as he dropped his forehead to Heddy’s, silently conveying his frustration and regret that no more kissing could go on.

  “I ha’ one?” Carter inquired.

  “Yeah. Sure. Then we should get going,” Lang said before he lifted his head from Heddy’s and straightened.

  “He was only catnapping...” Heddy surmised.

  “I guess so,” Lang said on a sigh.

  Then he pivoted in Carter’s direction while still holding Heddy from behind.

  The sleepy toddler had chosen a cookie and was eating it. “Goo’ cookie,” he said with his mouth full.

  Heddy couldn’t help smiling at the toddler in spite of the disappointment she was enduring over the end he’d put to that kiss.

  But there was no going back, so instead she went forward.

  Recalling something Lang had mentioned when they’d been going over the packaging, advertising and promotional material at his office, she said, “There was some P.R. thing you wanted to talk to me about?”

  Lang took a deep breath and sighed again, clearly—but only reluctantly—yielding to their new circumstances.

  “Right. I did,” he said stoically. Then, when he seemed to get his bearings, he went on. “Saturday night there’s a charity event at the Denver Country Club.”

  “The big leagues,” Heddy joked.

  “It’s an auction, and I was thinking that if you spent the rest of this week baking the way you did for your shop—at Camden Inc.’s expense, not out of your own pocket—we could donate all the cheesecakes to that.”

  “The list of things to be auctioned off isn’t already set this close to the event?”

  He grinned sheepishly. “I can pull a few strings.”

  The Camden name. And probably long-standing membership.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “I thought we could have small sample bites for bidders to taste to whet their appetites, and contribute the full-size cheesecakes to the auction. Part of it will be silent, so people can bid on each cheesecake separately.”

  “I was wondering if you were thinking of having open bidding, one cheesecake at a time. But sure, I can see how a silent auction would work—people could vie for the one they particularly like, I suppose.”

  “There’ll be news coverage of the event itself and I’ll make sure the cheesecakes are mentioned. We’ll get people tasting them, buying them and feeding them to their friends. And we can announce that it will all be for sale at Camden Superstores before long.”

  Heddy had been dreading the downtime of the shop being closed. “I think that’s a great idea,” she told him.

  “Now for the second part...”

  “It’s twofold?”

  “I think we should make an appearance along with the cheesecakes so I can introduce you around.”

  Heddy laughed as if he were kidding.

  But he wasn’t.

  “You want me to attend a charity auction at the Denver Country Club?” she said.

  “With me right by your side every minute, if the thought freaks you out.”

  “Oh, it definitely freaks me out.”

  Carter had finished his cookie and was reaching for a second one, but Lang got up in a hurry and snatched the little boy before he could. “Let’s get your coat on,” he said. As he got Carter ready, he glanced at Heddy again and went on talking about Saturday night.

  “It’s casual dress—not tuxes and formal gowns. I’ll wear a suit, and any dress you have would do just fine. And I promise you, I won’t leave you on your own for even a minute. My sister Livi is keeping Carter overnight—her one exception to the I-have-to-do-everything-with-him-on-my-own rule—so it will only be the two of us, and I will make absolutely sure that there isn’t a single minute that you feel uncomfortable.”

  “’Nother cookie,” Carter demanded once his coat was on and zipped up.

  “How about if I put them in a bag and send them home with you?” Heddy asked as she considered what Lang was suggesting.

  It was just business, she told herself.

  Business that would get her into the Denver Country Club on a Saturday night. With him.

  But still, just business...

  “Will the other contributors to the auction be there, too?” she asked.

  “Most of the donations are made by members, so sure.”

  Members, not people getting grants from members.

  “Come on,” Lang cajoled as if he could tell she was having doubts. “There will be cocktails and a nice dinner. You’ll meet a few people and get to see some cut-throat bidding by some of the members who are always competing with each other. Crazy things get auctioned off and even crazier amounts get paid for them. It’ll be fun.”

  She believed that because she suspected that he would go out of his way to make sure of it.

  And it was business. Not a date. If it were a date that would be something else. But this was to help launch the new avenue of her career.

  “It sounds like a dirty job but if someone has to do it...” Heddy finally conceded.

  “Great!” With Carter slung on his hip and the three of them headed for the back door, Lang leaned close to Heddy’s ear and said, “I can’t tell you how much I can use a night off!”

  Heddy laughed at him.

  “Go to our store on Ralston Road and ask for Ed—he manages it. I’ll let him know that you have carte blanche. Get everything you need and he’ll send me the bill. Then bake your little heart out and whatever you end up with is what we’ll donate. I’ll have one of our refrigerated trucks pick them up on Saturday and take them over to the club.”

  “Okay,” Heddy agreed as they reached the door.

  Carter had laid his head wearily on Lang’s broad shoulder and was drifting off again, clutching Baby and the plastic baggy of cookies. Heddy opened the door for them to go out
.

  But Lang only made it midway across the threshold before he stopped to peer down at her in a way that told her business was behind them again and this moment was purely personal.

  “I want you to know,” he said in a voice that was for her ears alone, “that even before what you told me tonight, I thought you were really something. Now I know it. You’ve been through more than I can imagine and you’re still standing—without any guards up that I’ve seen. That isn’t something I can say even about myself.”

  It was Heddy’s turn to be confused but now wasn’t the time to explore what he’d said.

  Anyway, before she could, he added, “I admire that. And you...”

  He bent and kissed her again, solidly, soundly, with the intimacy from earlier just around the edges to remind her.

  “I’ll talk to you this week,” he said when the kiss ended and he stepped outside into the night.

  Heddy closed the door after him, the feel of his mouth on hers still fresh and more wonderful than she wanted to admit.

  But even as she indulged for a moment in reliving this kiss and the much hotter one earlier, something else crept in.

  She remembered the feeling that had come over her after she’d told Lang about Daniel and Tina. The feeling that it had all slipped to the side just a little. That she was somehow just a little more free...

  And without understanding how or why, she knew that she’d turned a corner.

  A corner she hadn’t thought she would ever be able to turn.

  But for some reason, she had.

  Tonight.

  In just that one moment.

  With Lang.

  Chapter Seven

  “What does the zoo have to do with cheesecakes?” Clair asked.

  Heddy’s cousin had dropped in on Friday to find Heddy on her way out. After not seeing or hearing from Lang on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, he had called that morning. It was one of April’s perfect spring days and he’d decided to leave work at two o’clock to take Carter to the zoo. He said that he thought Heddy deserved a break, too, and he’d invited her to meet them at his house to go with them.