A Baby Affair

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “Because I don’t intend to take you to my place,” he said, glancing sideways to look at her. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I got the impression you’d think that too personal.”

  He wasn’t wrong.

  She was grateful that he was sensitive enough to have picked up on that.

  And acted upon it, too.

  Maybe it wouldn’t be completely foolish to relax a little bit.

  Maybe.

  Chapter Eleven

  The woman carrying his baby was far too unique to live life alone. Someone was being cheated out of an intriguing, somewhat frustrating, savvy and caring mate. Okay, he could see that he’d at least like a shot at perhaps being that someone...but also understood that Amelia didn’t want a partner.

  He even understood why.

  It just didn’t seem right. For her, more than anyone. She took on so much by herself. Because she feared her inability to love in a healthy way. As Craig had the thought, he knew that just because something seemed wrong, life still let it happen. Like a child with a leukemia diagnosis. A thirty-seven-year-old dropping dead of an aneurysm. A wealthy mother being killed in a car accident and leaving her young son orphaned and vulnerable to the father who’d never wanted him, but wanted his money. A woman spending her entire life in love with a man married to another family.

  A father walking out on his high school sweetheart and their two infants, and throwing away his second chance when one of the daughters contacted him almost two decades later.

  He’d slowed his ride once they were inside the gated community and she eventually rode up beside him.

  “This is so great,” she told him. “Just so peaceful, and yet, with that little bit of breeze against your skin... I’d forgotten how calming I used to find it, riding my bike.”

  Calming. He glanced her way, surprised she’d used that word. He rode to find his peace. Always had.

  She glanced at him and their bikes almost collided. Straightening her wheel, she said, “I imagine this is boring for you. I feel bad, slowing your pace.”

  “I ride slow sometimes,” he told her. “You see more that way.”

  They rounded a corner. Were on his street. A couple of blocks from his property. Which meant about four houses, all set back on their acres of greenery with the mature trees standing in the front yards. The first time he’d seen Tricia’s house he’d known he’d wanted to own it with her. Or, as it turned out, buy it from her.

  It was the perfect family home. Like something on the cover of a home design magazine or real estate brochure.

  “Thank you for this,” she said, her voice raised a bit to cover the few feet of distance she’d put between them. “Much better than the boring gym.”

  He was keeping track of her in his peripheral vision, but doing his best not to look directly at her after their near-collision. The fact that he found the mother of his child about as hot as they came didn’t have any good place in his life. He wasn’t an animal. He could overcome baser instincts.

  But as her perfectly shaped, strong-looking thighs moved up and down with the pedals, he had to fight the temptation to think about those legs without the leggings and T-shirt covering them. Even her cute little brand-new silver glitter tennis shoes were a turn-on.

  She’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail before she’d arrived that morning, and with the bike helmet on, she certainly wasn’t ready for a model runway, and yet, the damn thing just seemed to make her sexier to him.

  Tricia had worn the exact same helmet. He didn’t remember it looking like that on her. But then, Gavin had always been on bike rides with them.

  He’d let the boy take the bike he’d bought for him with him when he’d had to leave. And had been told that Gavin had traded it for a couple of joints the previous summer.

  “You told me you ride most days after work,” she said as they rounded a curve, and what could be seen of his house from the road came into view. The drive was circular and round, passing through trees to the house before going by a three-car garage and heading back out again.

  “I do.” He wondered if Talley knew he was out there. If she’d be wagging her tail thinking he’d be pulling in the drive. So far, his girl had been showing signs of improvement. He was hesitantly optimistic that they’d weathered the storm.

  “Is it some kind of training?” she asked. “Do you ride in marathons?”

  He shook his head. “My job challenges me all day long,” he told her. “I ride at night to unwind, not to bring on more challenge.”

  “I get it,” she said, and when he glanced over, she was smiling.

  And he had the sudden urge to kiss her.

  * * *

  They’d ridden through the entire neighborhood. Amelia felt kind of disappointed as she recognized that they were approaching the corner where they’d started. She found it a little odd that she hadn’t seen another soul outside during the entire ride, but with all the trees and the properties stretching behind the homes, she figured anyone who might be out that Sunday afternoon wouldn’t be visible from the road.

  “You good to go around again, or are you ready to get back?” Craig asked, slowing down as he rode close enough that they could have normal conversation.

  “I’m fine to go again,” she told him, glad that he’d offered her the chance to enjoy a bit more of the day’s beauty, the exhilarating feeling of pure, healthy enjoyment. Though she had a lot of work waiting for her and, more importantly, designs she was excited to work on, she wasn’t ready to be home alone for the rest of the evening.

  She could always call Angie. Their friends in LA were a bit far for an impromptu Sunday evening rendezvous, but she and her sister could have dinner together. She knew her sister had been planning to spend the afternoon and evening getting caught up at the office.

  Pulling her cell phone out from where she’d tucked it in the waistband of her pants, she dialed her sister and got her voicemail. Probably meant Angie was on an important call. Although Amelia was the one who would be getting any emergency contacts from the factory. And she wouldn’t be on with accounts on a Sunday afternoon.

  “You need to get back?” Craig asked, glancing at her phone.

  “No.” With one hand steering, she attempted to shove her phone back into the waistband that, as it turned out, had been much easier to pull from one-handed than push into. Feeling like an uncoordinated nut, she quickly shoved her hand beneath the neckline of her shirt and deposited the phone in the top of her sport bra.

  And noticed the flower beds around the trees at the house they were passing. The birdbath on the lawn. Was it Craig’s house?

  She didn’t see him as a flower bed kind of guy. But then, he probably had a landscaper who took care of his yard for him. The next house was more exposed than most—its yard almost bare, other than the massive fountain that was in the center of a circular drive. The house was blue.

  Didn’t seem like Craig, either. He wasn’t an opulent, fountain-in-the-front-yard kind of guy.

  Of course, Tricia could have been that kind of woman. The house had originally been hers.

  He was living in a house that had been purchased by his ex-lover. The thought gave her a stumble. And she straightened up inside.

  “Okay,” she said as they turned a corner. “This is kind of stupid. I appreciate that you respect the fact that we aren’t going to make this personal. And you’re right, I wouldn’t have accepted if you’d suggested I come to your home.” She was riding too close to him as she spoke. Thought she caught a whiff of the slightly musky scent that had lingered in her home after he’d left the night before. “But there’s no harm in you pointing out which is yours.”

  So she could quit obsessing over something so insignificant.

  If he didn’t want her to know, he shouldn’t have brought her to his neighborhood. While it was the perfect Sunday ride, it wasn�
��t the only quiet area in a city known to be a haven for some of Hollywood’s elite. The fact that Marie Cove had very little public beach area, and was out in the middle of virtually nowhere, also helped to preserve its small-town aura.

  “I’m happy to show you,” Craig said. “We can stop in if you need to use the facilities or anything, get more water.”

  She’d sipped a few times, but still had half a bottle. “No, I’m good,” she told him. There was no reason for her to see his home. Wasn’t a good idea. Curiosity killed the cat.

  Where that cliché had popped up from, she didn’t know, but figured it apropos.

  And because she wasn’t in line for becoming a cat, dead or alive, she purposely didn’t stare when, a few minutes later, Craig pointed to a storybook-looking place, white with black shutters, at least two stories, set within trees and far enough back from the road that you wouldn’t hear traffic. “That’s it,” he said.

  The lawn was a perfect green, freshly cut. “All of these places have the same circular drive,” was all she said.

  His house was perfect. If you were a person who believed what you read in storybooks. Who believed you got married and happily loved someone for the rest of your life.

  “You don’t like it,” he said, coming closer as they rolled past his property.

  “No, I do,” she told him, glancing his way without quite as much trouble now that she saw where that great bod lived. “It’s perfectly lovely.”

  “But?”

  “But what?” It truly was a gorgeous place. As gorgeous as the man who’d bought it so that it would be available for the boy he’d raised to come home to it...whenever.

  “I don’t know, that’s why I asked. Your expression... Is there something about the house you don’t like?”

  Okay, if they were going to know each other, even casually, he was going to have to quit reading her like that proverbial book.

  They pedaled slowly. Amelia concentrated on the warmth of the sun on her cheeks, mingling with the cool breeze in the seventy-degree air.

  “It’s truly a beautiful place,” she told him, meaning it. And if he was going to read her, he’d have to know that, too. “The lawn is immaculate. Like a Disney movie scene.”

  “Thank you, I work hard at it.”

  “You did it yourself?”

  “I mowed it yesterday, before I came to your place.”

  Shirtless? She immediately rejected the first thought that occurred to her. And was left with the second, which was that she liked the idea that he mowed his own grass.

  “You have a riding mower?” she asked. Duane had had one. And then had hired a kid to ride it twice a week.

  “Yes, and a push one, too. It’s easier around the trees.”

  She hadn’t thought of the challenge presented by so many trees. Thought how much easier it would have been to just cut them down rather than mow around them every week.

  And admired the guy who chose to keep them.

  “So we’re agreed the yard is lovely,” he said teasingly, and then more seriously, “but what don’t you like?”

  “From what I could see, which wasn’t much, I liked it all.” She had. And then added, “For someone else.”

  She paused and then continued.

  “I don’t believe in storybooks.” Didn’t matter if he knew. If he liked her or not. The only thing that mattered was him being satisfied that she was going to be a good parent for his child.

  “Homes like that...they give me the heebies. So many times, the stories that go on inside them aren’t at all how they appear from the outside.”

  “Let me guess, you grew up in a home like that.”

  She nodded. “Yep,” she told him, and pedaled hard enough to pull in front of him.

  * * *

  “Maybe if you were inside my house, you’d see that healthy love can live there.” Craig didn’t know why he’d caught up to her when she so clearly needed a moment. Why he was pushing when she was giving him so much more than she had to give.

  Amelia shook her head, but didn’t look his way. “You think I haven’t been inside a lovely home without a sad tale inside?” she asked him, and he realized he’d short-changed her with his latest assumptions. “I’ve got a couple of high school friends who grew up in my neighborhood who now have their own fairy-tale homes,” she told him. “I love visiting them. I love their houses. I just don’t ever, ever want to live in one.”

  He thought of her condominium—which easily matched the square footage of his home—and felt like he wanted to change her mind. Knew that he had no business even entertaining the thought.

  “I’m great visiting my friends’ homes,” she said. “I’m even fine visiting the home I grew up in. My mom and Duane are still there. But the thought of living in one of them...it makes my chest tight. Like I’m chained down.” She gave a huff. “For someone who needs you to know that I’m fine parenting material, I’m suddenly sounding slightly neurotic,” she added, but didn’t stop pedaling just as fast.

  “I didn’t have a fairy-tale childhood,” she told him. “You already know that. I’ve risen above my past. I’ve taken control of my destiny, rather than blaming others for my pain, but you don’t come from bad without any scars.”

  He’d circled them back around to the exit, cutting off the back half of the neighborhood, and she slowed to a stop as they came to the small gate. Swipe card in hand, Craig looked over at her and found her gaze locked on him. Completely open-eyed, looking him straight in the eye.

  “I’ve got issues,” she told him. “I’m aware of them. And I tend to them. My home doesn’t have a yard. Or an attached garage. And it’s not the only one in the building. But it’s as large, as quiet and, to me, as beautiful as any home on this street. I feel safe there. Secure. And I feel life around me, too. Other people, with other stories, facing other challenges, all of us getting through it all separately, but together, too. I need that. Other people, strangers, living their lives in and around mine.”

  Her honesty struck him hard. In a deep way. Good and bad ways. In some ways he felt so connected to her, oddly, almost ethereally—in part, he knew, because she was carrying his child. But in other ways, she was the antithesis of everything he wanted.

  A woman having his child who was not his wife.

  A woman who never intended to marry. A woman he admired more than he’d ever thought possible.

  Who turned him on in ways no other woman ever had. Turned him on because she was looking at him from beneath a bike helmet and still exuded a strength that spoke to him.

  “Fair enough,” he told her. “But I was thinking...” He let them through the small gate and started slowly toward their cars. “How about if we make this our thing, three times a week—the bike riding? We’ll just meet up—you get the exercise you need without dying of boredom, and I get to reassure myself that everything is going well with your child. It’ll be my way of checking in, and to find out if the baby needs anything that I can help with.”

  “I could just agree to call you if the baby needs anything.”

  “You could.” He slowed his pedaling as their cars drew close. “Or you could ride with me, enjoy the exercise and have something to tell your child about me when she grows up and has questions about her ‘Y’ component.”

  They were both using “her” more often now. Was that somehow a sign that she was having a girl? A daughter?

  Biologically, his daughter?

  He was a doctor. A man of science. Was this thought-stream a sign that he was losing his mind?

  “Can we try this another time or two before I commit to three times a week?”

  The air was crisp and sweet as he pulled in a healthy dose, feeding his lungs. “Sure,” he told her. “And if it helps you make up your mind, it won’t be forever. I wouldn’t recommend riding at all during your third trimester.�
�

  He’d already told her that. The night before.

  And warned himself that if he didn’t watch himself he could lose his mind.

  Over her.

  Chapter Twelve

  They rode every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday for the next six weeks. Sometimes their journeys were mostly silent, consisting of brief hellos and then the quiet they both craved after long days at work. Sometimes, usually on Sundays, they talked a bit more—generic conversations that left her frustrated sometimes, but mostly peaceful, too.

  And other than those rides, they never communicated at all. No phone calls. No texts. Each time they rode, they determined the location and time of the next meet, and they met.

  She was even getting used to the effect his body in riding gear had on her. Figured that eventually it wouldn’t faze her anymore.

  When her pregnancy hormones settled down. That’s all it was. The hormones. Craig Harmon was no different than any other man. He just was the only one in her close proximity and so perfectly handsome, while her hormones were raging.

  Every time they met, at different spots depending on where they were riding, Craig asked how she was feeling, his gaze landing on her stomach.

  And always, she wore a baggy T-shirt so he couldn’t see the way her belly was starting to fill with a baby. The child was hers. Not his. She needed to keep that designation firmly protected.

  She’d had her sixteen-week ultrasound. He’d known when it was, but hadn’t asked how it went. Just posed his usual, general query about how she was feeling and stopped there. She’d said, as she always did, that she was just fine.

  Angie had been with her for the ultrasound. They’d heard a healthy, strong heartbeat. Had cried a little. She didn’t want to know the sex. Not then.

  But as her body continued to fill out, as more and more evidence that her son or daughter was really growing inside her—her child, her family—she grew more and more curious. Now that the baby was viable, not just test tubes and doctors and biology...