Baby Be Mine

by Eve Gaddy

  “Yeah, a grain she’d like me to choke on.”

  He barely managed to swallow his champagne. “I thought you two were getting along better?”

  “We are. At least, she’s nice to my face. But I know she’s wishing I’d fall down an open manhole or something. Preferably before I get pregnant with any little Joneslets.”

  He laughed so hard he had to hold his side. “I don’t think she’s that bad,” he finally managed to say.

  “Huh.” She took another sip of champagne. “So, who was the last woman you were seriously involved with and why didn’t you marry her?”

  “You believe in getting it right out there, don’t you?”

  “I think it’s important that we know more about each other,” she said solemnly.

  “And besides, you’re curious.”

  She dimpled and toasted him. “That, too.”

  Tucker’s lips twitched. “My last relationship ended about seven months ago. She dumped me for a doctor, but I didn’t want to marry her anyway, so it was fine by me. Now, what about you, Maggie? How are you going to deal with being celibate for months?”

  She blew out a breath. “Trust me, it won’t be a problem. My last relationship was six years ago. Right before I moved back to Aransas City. It didn’t work out,” she said briefly.

  Apparently that’s all she meant to say on the subject. He tucked that information away to talk about later, but zeroed in on one aspect he found hard to believe. “You haven’t had sex in six years?”

  She sipped her champagne, then set the glass down. “Six and a half.”

  “Good God,” he said blankly. “That’s a long time.” Especially for someone as passionate as he suspected Maggie was.

  She shrugged. “I’m not very good at picking the right man. So after the last one, I decided I wasn’t going to sleep with anyone again until I was damn sure it wouldn’t be a mistake.”

  “He must have hurt you a lot. I’m sorry.”

  “Do you mind if we don’t talk about it? It’s not my favorite topic of conversation.”

  He got up to pour them more champagne. “Okay by me. What do you want to do, then?”

  “We’ve got champagne and a long night ahead of us. I know just the thing.”

  Somehow he doubted that what popped into his head was the same thing Maggie had in mind.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “GET YOUR MIND out of the gutter, Jones.”

  He laughed, finished pouring and brought her glass to her. “I didn’t say a word.” He sat again.

  “Trust me, your expression said it all.” Not that she held it against him. Given her job, she spent the majority of her time around men. She understood very well the way their minds worked.

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Movies. Old movies and champagne. How does that sound?”

  He grimaced. “Okay. Only we swear we’ll never tell anyone that we watched movies on our wedding night.”

  “It’s a deal.” She flicked on the TV and started channel surfing. “There doesn’t seem to be much on.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” He took off his shoes and socks and stretched out his legs, propping them on the coffee table. “We could watch old episodes of NYPD Blue.”

  “Let’s not and say we did.” She continued flipping until she got to a repeat of L.A. Law. “How’s this?”

  Tucker gave her a thumbs-down.

  “There’s not even a decent movie,” she said. “Here, you do it and I’ll get us more champagne.” She went to the bar and poured them both some more. “At this rate we’re going to run out before we even find a movie to watch.” She put the bottle back in the cooler, sat down and took a sip. “What’s that? It’s got Susan Hayward in it. My dad used to say I had hair the color of hers.”

  Tucker looked at her. “Yours is prettier.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “What are you after, Tucker?”

  “Nothing.” He raised a hand and said solemnly, “I speak the truth.”

  She punched him in the arm. “Ha. Do you know what movie this is?”

  “Yeah. I saw it once when I was home with the flu. Back Street is the name of it. It’s about a woman and her doomed love affair with a married man.”

  Her stomach pitched. Even after all this time, it still bothered her. “Can you change it?”

  “Sure.” He switched to another channel that was showing an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. “How’s this?”

  “Fine.” They watched Arnold blow up a compound in search of his daughter. Maggie wondered what it said about her that she’d rather watch an action movie than a romance.

  “Maggie? Don’t you like romances?”

  “Not doomed ones. Besides, I don’t think love affairs with married men are very romantic.”

  He took a sip of his drink and studied her. “Sounds like there’s a story there,” he said, echoing what she’d said to him a few days before.

  She didn’t answer immediately. He didn’t say anything. He wouldn’t push her to share, she knew. But maybe it was time she talked about it. She never had, not once in all these years. She’d nearly told Lana one time, but the moment had passed and she hadn’t. Maybe she shouldn’t tell Tucker, either. It didn’t exactly cast her in a good light.

  “I was twenty-one,” she said. “When I lost my virginity.”

  The segue didn’t appear to bother him. “You waited longer than a lot of people do.”

  “Yeah, I did. I wanted it to be special.”

  “Something tells me it wasn’t a great experience for you.”

  “Oh, the sex was good. He was very…skilled.” And she’d been like a ripe plum just waiting to be picked. “I was fresh out of the academy and so naive I probably had a sign tattooed on my forehead that said, ‘This girl’s from Podunk and dumb as a post.’”

  He frowned at her. “Aren’t you being a little hard on yourself?”

  Maggie shrugged. “No. You haven’t heard the whole story yet. He was about ten years older than me. Smooth and very charming. Good-looking. And married.”

  “Ah. That explains your aversion to the movie. Did you know?”

  He didn’t appear judgmental, which made her feel a little better. “Not at first. Later I did. But—”

  “Let me guess,” Tucker interrupted. “He told you he was getting divorced.”

  Maggie nodded. “I told you I was naive. He said he was legally separated and he wasn’t living with her and the divorce should be final, oh, anytime now.” It still amazed her she could have been so gullible.

  “It was a lie. Damn, Maggie, that’s terrible.”

  “Yeah.” She sipped her drink reflectively before continuing. “Two months after I first slept with him, his wife found out about us and called me. Seems she was six weeks pregnant and wanted her husband to stop fooling around with the slutty cop.”

  Tucker said something violent and obscene regarding what he’d like to do to the man. It perfectly described how she felt about the matter. To her surprise, she laughed.

  “Well, I didn’t do that, although I’d have loved to. But when he tried to convince me he’d only slept with her once and it really didn’t have to ruin the beautiful thing we had together I wanted to throw up.”

  “What did you do to him, Maggie?”

  Remembering, she smiled. “I threw him out of my apartment and locked the door. Then I flushed his keys down the toilet.”

  Tucker looked disappointed. “That’s not nearly bad enough for what he did to you.”

  “It gets better. He had to walk home. It was ten miles. In Dallas, at night.”

  “Why didn’t he just call a cab?”

  She bit her lip, finding humor in the situation for the first time. “No money. I picked his pocket. And this was in the days before everyone had a cell phone. He broke into his car, I guess he was going to try to hot-wire it. But I called my station house and anonymously reported a car theft in progress when I heard the car alarm go off. Even though he got
off eventually, he was hauled in and charged with attempted grand theft auto. No ID, no money. Very suspicious guy breaking into a BMW.” She laughed. “That was much better than him just having to walk home.”

  Tucker smiled but then sobered. He reached for her hand and held it, squeezing gently. “I hate that he hurt you like he did. Damn it, he should be strung up. Your first relationship should have been good for you.”

  She shrugged, still angry at herself over the whole thing. “I hate that I was so stupid.”

  “You weren’t stupid. You were naive and young and he took advantage of you.”

  She looked at him and shook her head, pulling her hand out of his. “Tucker, I had an affair with a married man. It was wrong and I knew it. Believing he was getting divorced makes it only marginally better.”

  “You’re too hard on yourself,” he insisted.

  “Have you ever been with a married woman?”

  He looked chagrined. “Yes.”

  Maggie said shrewdly, “You didn’t know she was married, did you?”

  “No, but that’s beside the point. Even if I’d known I’d still have done it.”

  Maggie wasn’t so sure of that. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

  “You’re not the only one who’s ever been gullible.” He reached for his drink.

  “Tucker, the last word I’d use to describe you is gullible. Just because you didn’t know she was married—”

  “No, not her.”

  He was silent for a long moment, so she said, “You don’t have to tell me.”

  He shrugged. “I’d been working in San Antonio for a few years. She was a lawyer with the same firm. Blond, beautiful. Ambitious. We started dating. I fell hard for her. So hard I even started thinking marriage.” He laughed, not happily. “Fortunately, before I did anything completely stupid, such as ask her to marry me, I overheard a phone conversation she had with a friend of hers. Seems I wasn’t the only man she was dating. She was juggling two of us. He was a wealthy banker. She was trying to decide who had the most money and was talking about hiring a private detective. She wanted to know who to dump and who to con into marriage.”

  Maggie stared at him. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. She said I was better-looking but she suspected he had more money and she had to be practical.”

  “God, that’s cold.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it. I was a little cynical for a while, but I got over it. The experience didn’t do my ego much good, though.”

  He acted as if it hadn’t affected him, but she thought it had more than he’d admitted. “You don’t hate women.” Who could have blamed him if he had?

  “No, I like women. I’m just very careful about who I get involved with now.”

  “I imagine you would be,” Maggie said. “But, Tucker, she was the stupid one, not you.”

  “I was supposed to be out of the office that day. If she’d known I was anywhere near I’m sure she wouldn’t have been talking so freely.”

  Maggie shook her head. “Not because of that. She was stupid not to realize there’s a hell of a lot more to you than good looks and the bucks.”

  He stared at her a long moment, then smiled slowly. “Maggie, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  She started to deny it but he was probably right. “Tucker, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “I asked you before but you didn’t really answer. Why did you agree to marry me?”

  “A number of reasons. But the main one is I care about you. I want you to be happy. Grace makes you happy. I wanted you to have a chance to keep her.”

  She wasn’t sure that was the entire reason, but she didn’t think he’d admit to anything else, so she let it pass. “We might find her mother. There’s still a chance. And there’s still a chance CPS won’t let us have her, after all.” Thinking about that depressed her. She could apply to foster another child, even without Tucker, but she didn’t want another baby. She wanted Grace. “I guess the marriage would be even more temporary than we thought if that happens.” That scenario also depressed her for reasons she didn’t care to examine closely.

  He moved nearer to her, then put his arm around her and hugged her companionably. “Don’t borrow trouble. And another thing, I think we should stop referring to this marriage as temporary. It serves no purpose, and if we want people to believe our marriage is authentic, then we need to treat it like it is.”

  She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Is this a way of convincing me I should rethink my ban on sex?”

  Tucker chuckled. “No.” He was quiet a moment, his hand rubbing gently up and down her arm. “Why, are you rethinking it?”

  She turned to look up at him. He wasn’t smiling now, and he looked at her with a hunger she hadn’t expected. She moved away quickly, before she did something stupid. Like kiss him. And she knew exactly where that would lead them. “Are you?”

  His gaze zeroed in on her mouth. “If I said no, you’d know I was lying. I was the one who suggested we make it real in the first place. So, yeah, I’ve thought about it. But…I think you’re right. It could screw up our friendship. And that’s important to me. More important than a roll in the sheets.”

  “You looked at me like you wanted to…” Not wanting to say the words, she let her voice trail away. Damn it, she should never have started this conversation. What did it matter why he’d married her? He’d agreed, they were married, and that was that.

  “Just because I might think about it now and then doesn’t mean I’m going to do anything.”

  “Because going to bed together would be a mistake.”

  “Right.”

  “Right,” she said, annoyed though she knew she had no right to be. “So, that’s that. Why are we talking about it?”

  “Because you asked me if—”

  “Stop.” She held up her hand, laughing. “I should know better than to ask a lawyer a rhetorical question. I’ve got an idea. You go pour us more champagne. I’m going to put my jammies on. And no, I’m not wearing what my mother packed for me to wear.”

  “Filmy nightgown?” he asked with a leer.

  “Of course. But you’ll just have to make do with the real me.” Boxers and a T-shirt were infinitely safer. And she needed safe. Because Tucker Jones was very, very dangerous. To her peace of mind, at the very least.

  And what about your heart?

  She couldn’t afford to fall in love with Tucker. She’d fallen for the wrong man before. Had her heart broken before. She’d been with three men and every single one had been the wrong man for her. She damn near hadn’t recovered from the last one. Six and a half years ago, the breakup that had sent her running home, heartsick and convinced she’d never fall in love again. Dead certain she didn’t want to ever fall in love again.

  She was not going to fall in love with Tucker. That could only lead to disaster. A disaster she couldn’t afford.

  CHAPTER TEN

  IT DIDN’T SURPRISE Tucker that Maggie took to skiing like a natural. Although he knew how to ski, he wasn’t too sure about his teaching capabilities, so he thought she’d be better off with a ski instructor, at least initially. Their first full day in Steamboat, Maggie took a lesson in the morning and then Tucker skied with her that afternoon. He liked sharing one of his favorite sports with her. He didn’t even mind when she crashed into him and they both fell.

  He liked watching her concentrate, liked seeing her deliberate movements as she focused on what she was doing. She was a natural athlete, not to mention extremely competitive. He couldn’t help laughing at her frustration over not becoming a world-class skier instantly.

  “Maggie, there’s a learning curve in skiing, just like in everything else.”

  “I don’t like the bunny slope,” she grumbled. “Why can’t I ski things like that?” She pointed to a run that was at least a single black diamond if not a double diamond. Expert. Steep, bumpy. He shuddered, think
ing of a novice skier on one of those babies.

  “Down, killer. Maybe next trip. Besides, you went down a run from the top. Most people don’t do that their first day out.”

  “It was an easy one, you said so yourself.”

  He laughed at her pouting and didn’t manage to get her to quit until the lifts closed. “Can you spell overachiever?” he asked her as they entered their condo.

  “I’m not an overachiever,” she said automatically, peeling out of her jacket and hanging it on the rack by the door. She linked her hands behind her back, stretched and groaned. “I have a feeling I’m going to be sore.”

  The way she did that thrust her breasts into prominent relief, something he didn’t think she realized. But man, oh, man, he noticed. He shook his head. Get a grip.

  “That’s what hot tubs are for,” he managed to say.

  They had reservations that evening at one of Tucker’s favorite restaurants, Café Diva. They soaked in the hot tub—another experience that brought him both pain and pleasure. Maggie in a bathing suit was something to see. It didn’t matter how much he lectured himself about looking at her as a friend, he still had eyes, didn’t he?

  After they cleaned up, Tucker watched Maggie flip through a sheaf of papers and mutter. His stomach growled and he wondered if Maggie would ever put away the paperwork about foster care that she’d been absorbed in for the last half hour. She’d pulled it out the day before and had been reading questions to him that they would have to answer in an interview. It seemed invasive as hell to him, but Maggie had warned him that it would be.

  “We’re going to be late to dinner,” he said as his stomach growled again. She had to be hungry, didn’t she? They’d both had water and munched on trail mix for lunch and hadn’t eaten anything else.

  Maggie glanced up at him and frowned. “Why do they want to know about our past relationships? I can see why they want to know about the current one, but my past is none of their business.”

  Maggie had been freaking out about the list of questions ever since she’d first looked at it. She said she’d only glanced at it before and this was the first time that she’d gone through all the actual questions the caseworker would be likely to ask.