“It’s after seven. Why were you taking calls, anyway?” Ben asked.
“This was earlier. I took the afternoon off,” Richard explained. “I thought I could get this all done during Melanie’s afternoon nap. Naturally she wasn’t the least bit tired today. And then I ran into a little problem with the actual papering.”
“I could order the pizza,” Kathleen offered generously. “Ben could help you.”
Ben scowled at her. “You don’t win, if you’re the one who plants the idea in his head.”
Richard stared at them, clearly confused. “You two have some sort of bet going?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ben assured him. “I’ll order the pizza and be right in. I can’t wait to see what you’ve accomplished so far.”
Richard shot him a look filled with pure venom, then hightailed it back to the nursery.
“I love what imminent fatherhood is doing to my big brother,” Ben said, watching him with amusement.
“I wouldn’t do too much gloating, if I were you,” Kathleen advised. “If Destiny has her way, you’re heading down this same path.”
She set off after Richard, leaving him to contemplate a future that not only included a wife but babies. His heart did a little stutter-step, but the effect wasn’t so bad. Once again, there was none of the expected panic at the idea.
Then he remembered what it was like to lose someone and his resolve to remain unattached kicked right back into high gear.
Forget the daydream about a house filled with rambunctious little ones. It wasn’t going to happen. There would be no wife filling the kitchen with the aroma of pies and cakes and bear claws. No Kathleen, he thought a bit despondently.
Dammit, for a minute there, the idea had held an astonishing appeal. No doubt that had been his hormones trying to rationalize what they wanted.
He picked up the phone and called for pizza, one loaded with everything, the other plain. Melanie didn’t need heartburn adding to her woes. She had enough to contend with just enduring her doting husband.
En route to the nursery, he stopped in the kitchen and picked up a few cans of soda, then went upstairs to find both women sitting side by side, feet propped up and instructions tripping off their tongues. He was amazed that Richard hadn’t bolted by now. He pulled up his own chair and was about to sit down when Melanie scowled at him.
“I don’t think so. Maybe you can line up the stupid stripes. Richard doesn’t seem to have an eye for it,” she said.
“Hey,” Ben protested. “I’m just here as an artistic consultant.”
“Not anymore,” his sister-in-law informed him. “You’re on the team.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re male and you’re a Carlton. I want all of you to pay.” She grinned at him. “And I want Kathleen to win that bet.”
Ben frowned at her. “If I didn’t love you so much, I would not let you badger me into doing this, you know.”
Melanie beamed at him. “I know. Now, please, help before we run out of paper.”
Ben took a look around the room to see what was left to be done. So far Richard had only managed to successfully hang a half-dozen strips, not even enough to finish one wall. A very large pile of soggy, tangled paper was testament to earlier failed attempts.
“Are you sure you’re going to have enough, as it is?” he asked skeptically.
Melanie gave him a smug smile. “I bought extra, since Richard insisted he was going to do it.”
Ben noticed that Kathleen was taking in the friendly byplay with an oddly wistful expression on her face. To his surprise, she struck him as someone who was used to being left out but who desperately wanted to be part of things.
“You know,” he said mildly. “I hear that Kathleen is amazingly adept at hanging wallpaper.”
Kathleen’s gaze immediately clashed with his. “I never said any such thing.”
Ben shrugged. “Pictures, wallpaper, how different can it be?”
She gave him a look brimming with indignation. “You can’t be serious.”
“You saying you can’t do this?” he asked.
“Of course I can,” Kathleen retorted. “But I never told you that and I most certainly never compared it to hanging pictures in my gallery.”
He held out a roll of paper. “Care to show us how it’s done?”
She gave him a suspicious look, but she accepted the paper and stood up. Winking at Melanie, she walked over, looked at the wall measurements Richard had jotted down on a board straddling two sawhorses, spread out the paper, cut it, smoothed on paste and had it on the wall in about five minutes flat. Richard stared at her in awe.
“My God,” he murmured. “What are your rates?”
Kathleen chuckled. “No charge. Actually I did the bedrooms in my house one Saturday afternoon. It was fun.”
“Fun,” Richard repeated incredulously. He turned to Ben. “She thinks this is fun.”
Ben kissed the tip of her nose. “I knew there was a reason I brought you along tonight.”
“And here I thought it was because you couldn’t resist my company,” she said.
He shrugged. There was little point in denying it, not even with his brother and sister-in-law paying avid attention to the entire exchange. “That, too,” he said. “Tell me what you need and I’ll help. Richard, you and Melanie can go and wait for the pizza.”
“I thought you were buying,” Richard complained.
“Hey, you’re getting two free workers, one of whom actually appears to know what she’s doing,” Ben retorted. “You can pay for the damn pizza.”
“Seems fair to me,” Melanie agreed, holding out her hand so her husband could help her out of her chair. “Come on, Richard, let’s give these two some privacy.”
“What do they need privacy for?” Richard asked. “They’re supposed to be hanging wallpaper.”
Melanie tugged him toward the door “Maybe your brother will get some other ideas,” she told him. “This is a bedroom, after all.”
“It’s the baby’s room,” Richard protested indignantly, even as he followed his wife out the door.
Ben glanced at Kathleen and saw that her cheeks were pink. “Don’t pay any attention to the two of them, especially Melanie. She may not be too fond of her doting husband, but she’s very big on romance these days. She’s as bad as Destiny.”
Kathleen’s gaze caught his. “Actually I was sort of hoping she was right.”
Ben stared at her, not entirely sure he was comprehending. This was one of those things he definitely didn’t want to get wrong. “Oh?”
“I was hoping you might have an idea or two that required privacy.”
“Such as?”
“I wouldn’t mind so much if you kissed me,” she told him, moving closer. “Being around those two has given me a couple of wild ideas of my own.”
Ben tucked his hands under her elbows and held her in place, scant inches away, close enough that he could breathe in her vaguely exotic scent. “I thought we’d agreed—”
“Don’t panic. This will pass,” she reassured him. “But right this second, I really want you to kiss me as if you mean it.”
“But—” he began, still trying to cling to a shred of sanity.
Before he could complete the thought, she was on tiptoe, her mouth on his. That pretty much shot their agreement to hell, he concluded, as his blood roared through his veins.
The kiss might have gone on forever, might have led to all sorts of things neither one of them had planned, if the sound of the doorbell hadn’t finally penetrated the sensual haze enveloping them. He had a hunch Melanie had deliberately let the pizza delivery guy keeping ringing that bell just to tip them off that it was time to quit fooling around.
Or, come to think of it, she might have been slow to answer because she and Richard were downstairs doing the exact same thing, he decided, smiling.
“Pizza’s here,” Richard called up, sounding faintly distracted.
Melanie gaze
d around, looking dazed. “We didn’t get the first sheet of wallpaper hung.”
“Hey, let them hire somebody,” Ben said unrepentantly. “My brother’s rich enough.”
“I wanted to help,” she said, that odd wistful note back in her voice.
He regarded her with surprise. “Why?”
When she didn’t reply at once, he took a stab at it. “Because it would make you feel like you’re part of the family?”
She nodded slowly. “Silly, isn’t it? It’s not as if they’re family.”
“It’s not silly at all,” he said, wondering again about the mother who could send her into a rage and the marriage she refused to discuss. “We’ll make this our baby gift and come back and finish it.”
Her eyes brightened. “Really?”
“Sure. Why not?” He winked at her. “As long as me helping you doesn’t mean you’ve won our bet.”
She laughed. “No, I’ll give you a pass this time. I have a few other tricks up my sleeve, anyway.”
Ben shook his head. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
Chapter Eight
Kathleen felt an unfamiliar sort of contentment stealing through her as she sat around the kitchen table with Ben, Richard and Melanie until nearly midnight. The pizza was long gone, every single slice of it. She had a nice burst of energy thanks to the caffeine in the diet sodas she’d consumed. And Melanie was making noises about wanting to make ice-cream sundaes, though so far she hadn’t summoned the energy to move. It all felt comfortable and friendly, the way a family was supposed to be.
She’d had that same feeling earlier in the nursery, which was why she’d volunteered to help with the wallpaper. She’d had an uncontrollable need to be a part of the anticipation for this new baby. She’d seen all the questions in Ben’s eyes when she’d said as much, but thankfully he’d simply agreed to work with her, rather than pestering her for answers. She wasn’t sure she could have explained her reasons, anyway.
“I think we should be letting you get to bed,” Ben told Melanie. “You have to be exhausted.”
She gave him a disgusted look. “From doing what? Richard won’t let me work more than a couple of hours at my PR business in the morning. You saw how he is about letting me do anything remotely physically demanding. I took a walk around the block today, and he almost had heart failure.”
“The baby’s due any second,” Richard reminded her. “What if you’d gone into labor?”
“I had my cell phone in my pocket and, believe me, I want to go into labor. This baby can’t get here soon enough for me. Otherwise I might be tempted to strangle my overly protective husband.”
Richard regarded her with a wounded expression. “I just want you and the baby to be safe.”
Melanie’s expression softened. She reached for his hand. “I know,” she soothed. “Which is the only reason I let you get away with this.”
Kathleen bit back a sigh that would have been far too telling. She glanced at Ben instead. “If this baby’s coming any day now, we’d better finish up that nursery. The gallery’s closed tomorrow. I can come by. Can you?”
He nodded. “I’ll be here.”
Melanie stared at them. “You guys don’t need to do that.”
“We want to,” Kathleen assured her. “It’s our baby present.”
“Oh, really?” Melanie said, looking a little too smug. “It’s from the two of you? Together?”
“Yes, and don’t get any wild ideas about it,” Ben warned her. “It just beats the hell out of shopping for itty-bitty booties and diapers.”
Melanie grinned at him. “You’re not fooling me, Benjamin. You’re as sentimental as the rest of us. You want to know that when that baby gazes around the room, he or she will know that Uncle Ben, the world-famous artist, decorated it.”
Ben rolled his eyes at the comment, but Kathleen thought she detected something else in his expression, maybe a hint of excitement. Not until they were finally in the car and on their way to her place did she call him on it, though.
“You had a brainstorm back there, didn’t you?”
He regarded her innocently. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, can the innocent act,” she retorted. “What’s your idea?”
“It occurred to me that since babies like things that stimulate them and that they spend a lot of time in their cribs on their backs, maybe this baby should have a mural on the ceiling.”
Kathleen stared at him in delight. “Oh, Ben, that’s a wonderful idea. And when he or she is all grown up, they can tell the world that the ceiling in their nursery was painted by a famous artist.”
He frowned at that. “We’re not talking Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel.”
“No, we’re talking about Ben Carlton and the Carlton nursery being painted with love.”
“Don’t make too much of this,” he said, clearly embarrassed.
“Of course not,” she agreed dutifully. “But is there time before the baby comes?”
“You hang the paper tomorrow and let me worry about the ceiling.”
“Fair enough,” she said happily. “What time should we get started?”
“I’ll pick you up at eight.”
“But that means you’ll be driving back into town in rush hour,” she protested.
He gave her a long, steady look. “You have a better idea?”
She knew what he was asking, but she wasn’t quite ready to say yes. Things between them were complicated enough without throwing sex into the equation. The occasional kiss was one thing, but anything more? Too dangerous.
The temptation was there, though. It was in the heat stealing through her, the quickening of her pulse. She forced herself to ignore all that.
“Absolutely,” she said at once. “You could stay with Destiny.”
To her surprise, he didn’t immediately scoff at the idea. In fact, his expression turned thoughtful.
“I could at that. It would give me one more shot at getting her to open up to me, since you won’t spill the beans about the conversation the two of you had.”
“I should have known you’d only stay there if you had an ulterior motive,” she said. “It’s not enough just to be there because she could use the company.”
“If there’s one thing we Carltons all have in common, it’s that we never miss a chance to seize an opportunity when it smacks us in the face,” he said.
“Sure you do,” she replied. “I’ve offered you an incredible opportunity, one many artists would kill for, and you’re ignoring that.”
“That’s not an opportunity, sweetheart. It’s a tangled web I don’t want to get drawn into, thank you very much.”
“Be careful what you say,” she warned him. “One of these days I might decide to believe you, withdraw my offer, and then where will you be?”
“Left in peace on my secluded farm?” he suggested hopefully.
“That’s not really what you want,” she said confidently.
“Yes, it is,” he said emphatically.
Kathleen studied his face intently, then shook her head. “No, you don’t.”
“You calling me a liar?” he asked with a hint of amusement in his voice.
“No, I’m saying you’re a bit confused and misguided. It happens to people sometimes. They lose their way.”
His gaze caught hers and held it. “Like you lost yours?”
She trembled under the intensity of his scrutiny. The question called for honesty, so she gave it to him. “Yes,” she said softly. “Exactly like that.”
“Something tells me that tonight you came close to finding it again,” he said, his gaze still on her face. “You ran up against an old dream, didn’t you?”
She thought of the contentment she’d felt earlier, the sense that she was finally part of a group of people she could like, maybe even love. She glanced at Ben, then amended that—people she could trust. Because, she suddenly realized, it wasn’t the loving that was going to hold her b
ack from finding happiness. It was the inability to trust.
She stole another glance in Ben’s direction. Maybe, just maybe, she was about to turn a corner on that.
Destiny was still up when Ben got back to her place after dropping Kathleen off. He found her in the den with the lights low, a seemingly untouched glass of brandy beside her.
“You okay?” he asked, taking a seat on the sofa opposite her.
She blinked as if she’d been very far away and hadn’t even heard him come in. “What are you doing back here?” she asked irritably. “If you came to pester me for more information, you’re wasting your time.”
“Actually I came looking for a place to spend the night. Kathleen and I are going to finish up the nursery for Richard and Melanie in the morning. We want to get an early start, so it made more sense to stay in town, if you don’t mind.”
Destiny’s expression brightened, then, as if she feared that too much enthusiasm on her part might spook him, she said cautiously, “You two seem to be getting closer.”
“She’s a nice woman,” he said just as cautiously. “Very thoughtful.”
“Yes, I like that about her, too.”
He gave his aunt a wry look. “She’s also damned discreet, in case you were wondering. She didn’t breathe a word of whatever you said to her.”
“And I imagine that’s driving you crazy,” Destiny said grumpily. “Well, too bad.”
“I’m not trying to pry. I’m really not,” he told her. “It’s just that if there could be a connection to what’s happening at Carlton Industries, I think maybe Richard has a right to know. Not even me,” he emphasized. “Richard.”
“I’m giving that some consideration,” she admitted. “And that’s all I intend to say on the subject for now. You might as well drop it.”
“Suits me,” he said agreeably. “So, can I stay here tonight?”
She regarded him with an impatient look. “Since when do you have to ask? This is the home you grew up in. You’ll always have a place here. You know that.”
“I thought you might prefer to be alone.”
“If I did, it’s a big house. I could go to my room. As long as you keep all those pesky questions to yourself, I’ll be glad of the company.” Her expression brightened. “Tell me about the nursery. I haven’t been by to see it yet.”
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