Let's Do It

by Ann Christopher

  “Yeah.” His grandmother’s death was still so recent, and her presence around here was so real, that it was hard to believe that she was really gone, as opposed to just on an extended vacation somewhere that had terrible phone service. “When I graduated from vet school. You should see the one she made for Ella when she was born. It’s upstairs in her room. I’ll show it to you sometime.”

  “You miss her,” she said gently, eyeing him with concern.

  He swallowed the hard knot in his throat and tried not to think about how much he’d’ve liked for Grandma to meet Reeve, or how they’d all manage Christmas this year without her, or how he thought he’d raise Ella to adulthood without Grandma’s wisdom to guide him.

  “I miss her.”

  She nodded, looking at the TV, probably to give him the chance to get it together. “Oh, you have the game on? Baltimore still leading? Awesome. The Yankees suck. Hate the Yankees.”

  Edward stared at her, slow to recover from his gape. All he could think about was the number of times he’d tried to interest Amber in going to a baseball game or watching a game on TV with him, only to have her look at him as though he’d started snorting dirt. “You like baseball?”

  “Love baseball. Hate the Yankees.”

  He tried to glare, which was hard when he kept discovering new and delightful things about Reeve. Every time he was with her, he felt like he’d won the lottery. “Disparaging comments about the Yankees will not be tolerated in this household.”

  “That wasn’t a disparaging comment about the Yankees. It was a comment about my personal feelings about a team that, in my personal opinion, sucks. There’s a difference.”

  “Will. Not. Be. Tolerated.”

  “Oh, Edward.” With a dramatic flare, she pressed her hand to her heart. “And I thought you had such potential.”

  “I have tremendous potential.” He gave her a pointed look. “As I think you know.”

  She laughed, a husky chord of pure seduction that tightened the nerve endings all up and down his arms. Then she turned to his shelves to examine his taste in books.

  “Agatha Christie. I approve. Oh, and Game of Thrones, like you said! I really approve. You like them bloody and violent, don’t you? I don’t see Crime and Punishment, though. What gives?”

  “Take it easy on me. I’m still trying to finish Moby-Dick.”

  She turned back. “Yeah? How’s that going?”

  He frowned. Was she for real right now? “Badly. I seem to have something else on my mind lately. It’s keeping me from thinking straight. Plus, now I have a sick kid.”

  “Wow. Poor Job’s got nothing on you in the suffering department, does he?”

  “No one does. How was your first day on the job?”

  “Hard. Exhausting. Fantastic. I love it.”

  “And your boss?”

  “He’s great. The nurses are great. I’m so glad I came back here for my residency.”

  “So am I.”

  “Are you trying to give me a big head with all the compliments?”

  That was a fair question. He’d never been this effusive before in living memory, except during the week Ella was born, when he forced every passing person to look at her pictures on his phone.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “This stuff keeps pouring out of my mouth when I’m with you.”

  “Maybe you should work on that before my ego gets out of hand.”

  “Yeah, no. You’re amazing. You should know it.”

  Cocking her head, she studied him with the kind of warmth that did gooey things to his insides. “Have I kissed you hello today?”

  “No, you have not.”

  “Come here,” she said, smiling.

  They split the distance between them, leaning over the baby’s head for a soft kiss that was as thrilling as it was tender. Then, when she would’ve pulled back, he balanced the baby in one arm, planted his free hand on the back of Reeve’s head to pull her back in, and kissed her again, harder.

  When he let her go, she was breathless, her eyes a little glazed as she rubbed her lips together.

  “That’s better, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “Much better.”

  Her attention strayed to Ella and lingered. Because he was so fascinated by Reeve’s expressions, so attuned to them, he was able to see the way her face filled with wonder—and maybe even a little longing.

  At last her gaze flicked back to his. “Can I hold her?”

  She had to ask? “Yeah,” he said quickly. “Of course.”

  “Hang on. I need to wash my hands first.”

  “Reeve—”

  He started to tell her he was way past those borderline OCD early days of parenting, when he’d been deathly afraid every random cough, sneeze and throat clearing would somehow kill his precious new baby, but Reeve had already dashed off, to the kitchen. And maybe she knew best, being the only one present with MD after her name.

  She came right back, her face aglow with excitement, and Edward passed along the solid but limp weight of his daughter. Reeve settled Ella’s head on her shoulder. Ella snuffled, whimpered and turned her head the other way. With a contented sigh, Reeve closed her eyes, held Ella tighter and pressed her nose into the baby’s freshly washed fluff of hair.

  Edward watched his two females together, riveted.

  Reeve sighed again, helplessly, raised one of Ella’s little hands and kissed the back of it.

  When Reeve opened her eyes and smiled at him across the top of Ella’s head, Edward knew—knew—that the last holdout corner of his heart, the one he’d clung to out of a healthy dose of caution and common sense, was now, irrevocably, Reeve’s.

  “I’ve never seen a more beautiful baby,” Reeve said. “It was all I could do not to grab her up in front of my boss this morning.”

  His heart skipping with joy, Edward took her elbow and steered her to the sofa, where they sat.

  “I was worried the whole snotty nose, temper tantrum thing might’ve given you a bad first impression,” he confessed.

  “Not a chance.” Reeve smoothed Ella’s hair away from her face, the better to kiss her forehead. Edward, turning to face Reeve, rested his elbow on the back of the sofa and smoothed Reeve’s hair. “She smells so good. Did you just give her a bath?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell me everything about her.”

  “Like what?”

  “What’s she like? What does she like to do? Has she got any words yet?”

  “Wow. Let’s see if I can get all that.” Chuckling, he raised his fingers and used them to tick off his answers. “She’s sunny, smart and headstrong. She likes to stack blocks, look at picture books and splash in the bathtub. Oh, and she’s got a tiny baby doll she plays with like she’s the mommy already. No was her first word, followed by baby. I’m working on dada, but it’s not looking too good at the moment.”

  “Is she trying to walk?”

  “Trying, yeah. I’ve got everything baby-proofed for when she really gets going.”

  “What’s your favorite thing to do with her?”

  “What, only one?” Grinning, he shrugged and tried to narrow his choices down. “We go jogging in the mornings. Well, I jog. She rides. She’s terrible about pulling her own weight. Really selfish. Then we stop at Java Nectar and share a cookie sometimes. That’s fun. And I love the quiet times, when she falls asleep on my chest and we have a nap. Everything about her is the greatest. I can’t describe it. She’s my life.”

  Reeve rubbed Ella’s back, beaming at him. “You’re a great dad, aren’t you?”

  He shrugged, trying to keep his feet on the ground so his soaring heart didn’t carry him away. “I’m trying hard. She deserves it, you know?”

  “I know. She’s amazing.”

  “So are you,” he told her.

  “So are you,” she told him.

  They stared at each other in a moment of exquisite perfection.

  This was his family, he realized. Reeve was the reason h
e’d felt restless and out of sorts on all those days and nights he’d spent with Amber, trying to convince himself he was where he belonged even though he knew deep inside that he wasn’t. Reeve was the reason he’d never taken things to any of the logical next steps with Amber.

  Reeve had been out there in the world, all along, the missing piece to his happiness.

  He just hadn’t found her yet.

  He opened his mouth, knowing he shouldn’t but helpless to stop himself.

  “Is it too soon for me to be crazy in love with you?” he asked quietly.

  Her eyes widened, but she did not look away. “Yes,” she said, then hesitated. “Probably.”

  Giving in to temptation, he traced the silky arch of her brow...The smooth angle of her jaw line...The velvety softness of her bottom lip.

  “Probably?”

  She tried to laugh, but it was shaky. “I’m not sure. I haven’t been sure of much since I met you.”

  He leaned back, resting his head on the pillows, willing to live here, in this moment, for the rest of his life. “So, I need to know you for, what? A week? A month? Three months?”

  “We need to get to know each other better. What’s the rush?”

  “I want to mark my calendar,” he told her, dead serious.

  A hint of sadness shadowed her eyes. “I need to keep my feet on the ground, Edward.”

  “Why?”

  “One of us needs to.”

  “Why?”

  She hesitated, dropping her gaze, then staring across the room. Ella sighed softly, turning her head again. Across the room, the cat leapt nimbly onto one of the lower bookshelves and continued his exploration, bell tinkling.

  “For one thing,” Reeve said, “your ex wouldn’t be happy to know I’m sitting here snuggled up with her baby.”

  That was true enough. “Ella’s my baby, too. We’ll be sensitive about it, but Amber’ll have to get used to it.” He paused, not certain how far he wanted to go with this, but then he thought, screw it. “She already knows.”

  Reeve’s brows shot together in alarm. “Knows what?”

  “I’d texted her to meet me at the doctor’s office today.” He shrugged. “She saw us together just before you got on the elevator. She just knew.”

  “But she knows you didn’t break up with her because of me, doesn’t she? I don’t want her to hate me forever.”

  “I told her, yeah. I’m not sure that makes the situation any less hurtful to her.”

  “Hurtful,” Reeve echoed faintly, staring off across the room again, and he could feel her slipping somewhere far away, somewhere where she was harder to reach. “There’s an appropriate word.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Ella stirred again. Reeve stroked her hair, soothing her.

  “The last time Adam was home on leave,” she began slowly, “the baby issue came to a head.”

  “Oh, yeah?” There was a sudden surly edge to his voice that he couldn’t quite control, but the idea of Reeve pregnant with some other man’s baby, even hypothetically, did that to him. “What happened?”

  “He wanted one. I wanted to wait until he came home for good and I was done with school and my residency. He reminded me that I always had an excuse.” Rubbing her forehead, she managed a wry smile. “He was right.”

  Edward kept quiet, watching the misery seep across her expression.

  “He forced the issue. He asked if the real reason was that I didn’t want to have a baby with him.” Her lips twisted with emotion, ruthlessly repressed. “I didn’t know, which is what I told him. It was really bad. The worst fight we ever had.”

  “Oh,” Edward said.

  “I’m not sure the marriage would have survived if he’d lived. We were both babies when we got together, and when we grew up, we grew in different directions. And I’ve never said that aloud to anyone.”

  “Thanks for telling me,” he said, because it was easier to focus on forging good communication channels between them than it was to think too much about the emotions and history that still tied her to some other man.

  “So, basically, one of the last things I ever said to my husband before he was killed in the war was that I wasn’t sure I loved him enough to have his baby. I broke his heart. It’s one of the reasons his mother still hates me to this day. She’s dying of lung cancer and she still hates me.”

  Edward nodded but said nothing, probably because the absolution she needed was something she’d have to give herself.

  She gave him a hard, searching look. “That’s it? Don’t you want to retract your whole ‘crazy in love’ statement now that you know what kind of woman I am?”

  “What kind of woman is that?”

  “Selfish, apparently,” she said bleakly.

  “What’s the alternative? Having a kid you’re not ready for? Is that doing the world a favor?”

  “You had an unplanned child,” she pointed out.

  “And I love her to death, yeah. Wouldn’t change a thing. But if Amber had come to me and said she wanted us to have kids? You better believe I’d’ve put the kibosh on that idea, same as you did.”

  “But I hurt him,” she insisted. “I never meant to do that to Adam. Never. He was a good man.”

  “You were true to yourself.”

  She slumped back, resting her head beside his on the pillows and slinging her arm over her eyes.

  “Sometimes I wonder if that’s the reason I got into pediatrics. Because I, I don’t know, want to make up for that baby Adam and I never had, or something. I don’t know.” She trailed off, flapping her hand. “Forget it. I’m just babbling at this point.”

  “Reeve. Look at me.”

  With a harsh, frustrated sigh, she lowered her arm and watched him with stormy eyes.

  He gave her a pointed stare. “There’s only one man you should be having babies with, and we both know it wasn’t Adam.”

  She went completely still, and the lamplight was just strong enough for him to notice the sudden dilation of her pupils.

  “Edward,” she began, her warning tone hinting at some sort of an automatic denial he wasn’t about to believe.

  “If I said to you, right now, that I want to make a baby with you, what would you say?”

  Even with her guard up, she couldn’t stop her expression from softening, just for a second, and that was all the answer he needed for now. So when she said, “I can’t answer that,” he let it slide.

  “Hmm,” was his only response.

  Looking relieved, she scooted to the edge of the sofa and stood.

  “I should go,” she said, giving Ella a final kiss and handing her back to him. “Muffin? Where’d you go? Come on. Time to go home.”

  But there was no sign of the cat, and even his bell was silent.

  “Muffin?”

  As far as Edward was concerned, this was no time for that cat, Ella or anything else but what he had in mind. So he quickly laid Ella on the sofa, wedged a pillow beside her so she wouldn’t fall off, and reached for Reeve’s hand.

  She’d been in the process of taking a step away from him, probably heading for the kitchen to search for the cat, but momentum swung her around and straight into his arms, which was where he wanted her. His entire being shuddered with pleasure at the pressure of her body, so warm and supple, up against his again, and he made a guttural noise he absolutely could not control.

  Her cry was soft and surprised, all the encouragement he needed.

  In a heartbeat, they were all over each other, her nails scraping over his back and neck, her breasts, with their pointy little nipples, mashed up against his chest, his hands full of her juicy ass. His mouth found hers and they kissed deeply, sucking and exploring each other’s mouths with wide sweeps of their tongues until they were both breathless. Ecstasy. One of her thighs came up, hooking around his waist, and he was just reaching between her legs to see how wet she was when she caught herself.

  “We can’t,” she gasped, getting both feet back on the groun
d with difficulty. “Ella.”

  He wanted to say, Forget the baby, but he knew she was right. Ella liked to wake up a random time or two every night, and he wasn’t so far gone that he was willing to do something that could scare or otherwise damage the poor child.

  But he was still pretty far gone.

  So he took Reeve’s arm again, yanking her around the corner, into the foyer, where they could still hear Ella, but she wouldn’t be able to see them if she woke. Once again, he backed Reeve up against the door. Still savoring her mouth, nipping and licking in between the kisses, he reached for her skirt and slowly pulled it up, bunching the fabric in his hands.

  “We can’t, Edward,” she said again, but there was a lot less conviction in her tone this time.

  “We’re not,” he assured her.

  “Then what—?”

  “Shh,” he said, resting his forehead against hers because he couldn’t keep kissing her and maintain his control the way he needed to. Gripping her skirt with one hand, he stroked over her damp panties with the other, enjoying her sharp intake of breath. “I need to see you come for me again.”

  “That won’t take long,” she said, laughing shakily.

  “Why?” He lowered his voice, staring into her overbright eyes as he glided his fingers under her panties and found the swollen, velvety skin beneath. “Because I own this?”

  He must have circled a particularly sensitive spot, because she let out an earthy moan, her flesh hot and slick, and her head fell back and her eyes rolled closed.

  “Edward.”

  “Look at me.”

  With great effort, she opened her eyes and, blinking and panting, focused on his face.

  “I own this, don’t I?” he asked, zeroing in on that spot again, making lazy circles with the tips of his fingers.

  “You’re too cocky,” she complained.

  “That’s because I own this,” he murmured, unwilling to concede any ground on this point. “I own all of you. Don’t I?”

  A teasing little smile lit her eyes, and she maintained her control way better than he was managing his. He had a raging erection that probably wouldn’t let him sleep tonight, even if he jacked himself off before he went to bed. But it was worth it. For Reeve? Absolutely worth it.