by Ren Benton
“Now who thinks who is a shitty human being?”
“Just human.” She shrugged. “When you make an enormous target of yourself, you get used to people taking shots. I’m over it.”
“Not enough to show me your arms.”
She reflexively checked her sleeves for coverage. It didn’t matter that her arms wouldn’t have fit through these sleeves a few years ago. The evidence of Heavy — as her sister had so cleverly dubbed her — would never go away. “Sometimes the targets shift.”
“You’ll trust me to protect your nephew from death by lawnmower, but you won’t trust me not to terrorize you if I see you naked.”
She wasn’t afraid of being terrorized. She was afraid the sum of her flaws, displayed all at once, would be undeniably not good enough. “You’re really not missing anything.”
He cupped the back of her neck, and the heat of his hand weakened her spine. “I’m missing more of you than I’m getting. You’re not invisible, Ivy. I see you. Stop trying to hide from me.”
He had seen parts of her she’d never shown anyone, and not just physically. That still wasn’t enough for him. He wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d seen how little else she had to offer. “What if you don’t like what you see?”
Anger flitted across his face. “Then I’m a shitty human being. Scrape me off the bottom of your shoe and move on to someone good enough for you. But give me a chance to be that guy.” He rested his forehead against hers. “Let’s go steady.”
Her heart cartwheeled, but she constrained her outward reaction to a crooked smile. “You’re only saying that because Rafferty likes me and expects to see me at dinner.”
“I like you. Rafferty could go to hell if it meant we could have dinner alone.”
“Your brother would love that.”
“He can keep Rafferty company.”
The clock tower in the park bonged the hour. Ivy jumped, cracking their skulls together.
The blow drove Griff back to his side of the car to nurse his half of the concussion. “So much for a leisurely make-out session.”
She rubbed her throbbing forehead. “You should get lessons from Mr. Hunter on talking less.”
“I like talking to you. I want time to do both. Say yes, Ivy.”
She wasn’t sure anymore what she was agreeing to, but she couldn’t tell him no. “Yes.”
16
Sarah’s eyes rounded when she saw Griff at the door. She shoved the baby into his arms before he could escape the introduction yet again. “Nathan, this is your Uncle Griff. Griff, Nathan.”
The baby was tinier than anticipated. Less sturdy than Cole. More likely to break if bobbled. Griff began to sweat over the line between dropping him and squeezing too hard. “Okay, you can have him back now.”
Sarah faded back into the foyer. “I think not.”
Oh, crap. He groped around his memory in search of Ivy’s safety tips. “Can I sit down?”
“Absolutely.” She led the way to the living room and waved him to a chair.
He sank to the floor in front of it.
Dan came in with a bottle. “Why are you on the floor?”
“Because the men in your family suffer from mass hysteria that they’re going to spike the baby in the end zone.” Sarah settled onto the sofa. “Give Griff the bottle.”
The bottle was warm and slightly moist and dripped on the baby’s chin when Griff tried to insert the nipple into the toothless maw. Fortunately, the kid was well versed in the procedure and compensated for his uncle’s ineptitude, latching on and sucking voraciously.
Dan looked around the room. “I’ll find the pillow.”
“Do not get that pillow,” Sarah warned in a glacial tone. “No species since the advent of procreation has needed a pillow to help hold a baby. How lazy do you have to be to think a baby-holding pillow is necessary in life?”
The last was directed toward Griff. Dan’s evident relief at being spared suggested it was a trick question. “I think they’re just trying to make it more comfortable for you.”
Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “Really, Griffin?”
It’s a trap! “I think they’re trying to make a buck off the illusion they’re just trying to make it more comfortable for you.”
“Illusion is right.” She appeared no less grumpy, but her wrath swung toward a distant corporate target. “It’s heavy. It’s hot. Once it’s on your lap, you have to wrestle out from under it while holding a baby because the people who love to bury you in pillows are nowhere to be found when you want to escape. And once it gets barf on it, the sour milk smell never goes away.”
He glanced at Dan. “Get that pillow out of this house before there’s an incident.”
Dan rolled his eyes and left the room — to dispose of the offending item, if he had any brains.
“You know what would make me comfortable?” Mercifully, Sarah didn’t wait for him to guess. “A tap for breast milk. Instead of dropping everything to attach my udders to the milking machine for half an hour, it just unobtrusively collects all the time, and all I have to do is open the faucet, fill a bottle, and hand it off to the nearest milkless person. Why are you holding the bottle like that?”
Griff had shifted his grip to the very tips of his fingers, as far from the nipple as possible. “I didn’t realize this was...”
When he couldn’t bring himself to say it, she did. “Breast milk. That came out of my breasts, as is the primary biological function of breasts. And that makes you uncomfortable because you can’t think of your sister-in-law’s breasts as anything but funbags? You’re going to be traumatized when I tell you where babies come out.”
Suitably chastised, Griff adjusted his bottle-holding technique to a more normal one. Body temperature warmth notwithstanding, holding the bottle was not, in fact, anything like holding a breast. “I’ve seen you in a bikini lots of times and didn’t think anything in particular about your funbags.”
“Of course not. They’re not for you, so I’m an asexual blob and now you can’t cope with the reminder that I’m a woman.”
“Exactly, and before you commit violence against me” — which he sensed was imminent — “you should know I will use your child as a meat shield.”
“You have to put him down sometime,” she foretold with an ominous glint in her eye. “I’ll be waiting.”
He would never see the noogies and tickling coming, but he breathed easier at the temporary reprieve. “Is Dan more enlightened than I am?”
“No, but if I give him a minute to think about what he’s said or done, he’ll do better. I never know if what he said or did first was just the easiest cliché that came to mind or a reflection of how he really thinks, or if the thoughtful second attempt is B.S. to appease me, but it’s comforting that the second thought at least exists in his head somewhere.”
The little guy in Griff’s arms had a clean slate. He hadn’t yet picked up any bad habits. His uncle would have to practice setting a good example for him, starting with owning up to mistakes. “A lot of the stupid things we say and do are reflex. We grow up being told it’s cool to be one specific kind of guy, and that doesn’t serve us well when we meet women who want us to be responsible, feeling adults. The stupidity is ongoing conditioning. The second attempts are trying to overcome and be better for you.”
“Must you wait for a woman who expects better before you try?”
“A woman is the only excuse for evolution the brothers we leave behind will accept.”
“For god’s sake, why?”
He’d been left behind when Mase found Neera, but he took it in stride. “Because we all want someone to come home to, and if we have to drop the B.S. to get that, then it’s okay.”
She looked at him with wonder. “There’s a whole side to you I know nothing about. You should hold babies more often.”
“I am pretty good at it,” he realized with no shortage of pride. “I figured I ought to practice with yours so I don’t drop Ivy’s.”
“Still unintelligible and squirmy, but bigger than this one.” Practically a different species. This experience really wouldn’t be applicable with Cole. “I don’t know how to get on the good side of someone whose idea of a great toy is an empty saltine wrapper. The older kids are easier to bribe.”
She sat forward on the sofa. “You’re seeing a woman who has kid-zuh? With an S.”
“What have you gotten yourself into now?”
Dan had snuck in behind his back just in time to find fault with his life choices again.
“Dan, go away. I want to talk to Griff.”
“Believe me, so do I.”
“No, you want to pick a fight. Go pick weeds instead.”
Her husband grumbled but retreated for the time being. Griff knew the rebuke was merely postponed.
“Is this the same woman your mom told me about?”
Word had a way of getting around, even if Dan didn’t think it worth repeating. “The soul of discretion strikes again.”
“As does the soul of evasion. I’m on your side. I know how to present frightening new experiences to Dan so he accepts them. He eats Brussels sprouts now and everything.”
“Ivy doesn’t need to be presented a different way to make her more palatable to Dan. If anything, he’d tell her she can do better than me and hook her up with a nice investment broker.” He added sourly, “With a ranch where each of the kids can have a pony.”
“But all her baby wants is a saltine wrapper, and Ivy wants you, so quit worrying about Dan and investment brokers and ponies and tell me about her.”
He didn’t know how to begin to describe her. “There’s nothing I can say that I wouldn’t have to elaborate on for half an hour to make you understand. She’s raising her sister’s kids, but whatever that means to you, it’s not enough. She’s like this... mother warrior goddess. And Mitch Rafferty would have taken his business elsewhere weeks ago if I hadn’t introduced him to her, but I can’t explain in ten words or less why he instantly fell in love with her.”
Sarah was looking at him oddly again. He checked his grip on the bottle, which seemed normal to his untrained eye. “Am I holding the baby wrong?”
“You’re a pro. Relax.” The odd look remained. “I’ve seen you talk to a million women. I have never known you to talk about one.”
There wasn’t much fit to tell the family when relationships, by mutual agreement, didn’t get deeper than screwing. When he knew what a woman looked like naked and felt like through a layer of latex but not who she was with her clothes on, how many kids she had or wanted, whether she was married. Sometimes not her name.
It started the same with Ivy, two thousand miles from home. No name. No thought of a future. Bumping into yet another one-night stand here should have been a passing this-is-awkward moment, laughed off, forgotten. But she clung like her namesake. Crept over him. He’d tried to prune her and been left bare, ugly, and cold — exactly as he’d been before but unbearable now that he knew how it felt to be covered by her.
Now all he wanted was to nurture her until she grew all over him.
“When can we meet her?”
His laugh lacked humor. “I need her to like me a lot more before inflicting Dan on her.”
“If I can endure the sibling pissing contests, so can she.”
“Dan has a bigger bladder and uncanny aim, and I don’t want her to see me dripping.”
Or to know all the ways he’d earned the shower of condemnation.
“Sweetie, if she deals with kid-zuh, she’s familiar with all forms of dripping. Maybe she’ll discipline your brother for bullying you.”
He pictured the warrior goddess smiting Dan. “That would be so hot.”
“It might turn me on a little, too. I’d feel very warmly toward anyone who joined me in the buffer zone.”
“Not to imply you should be an asexual blob” — he’d learned that lesson, sort of — “but I’d never forgive you for taking my girl, so keep it in your pants.”
A little fist bumped his chest, reminding him of another presence he’d somehow gotten comfortable with. “Are you feeling ignored, Goblin?”
The baby gave a nod that was probably less assent and more being milk-drunk and ready to pass out, but the timing was heart-melting.
“They really don’t do much at this age, do they?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Is my newborn boring you?”
“Yes. He’s also sweaty and turning to lead.”
“That’s how his father falls asleep, too. Burp him before he conks out.” Sarah rose from the couch to drape a blanket over Griff’s shoulder.
“Do you burp Dan before bed, too?”
“Yes, but you don’t want to know how.”
Nate’s lips puckered in displeasure when the nipple was removed from his mouth — or perhaps he’d picked up enough language to be grossed out by his mother’s innuendo.
Either way, I know the feeling, buddy. “What do I do?”
“Standard procedure is to hold him upright against your shoulder. He’s usually good to go with rubbing his back. You don’t have to pound on him.”
His protective hand completely covered the kid’s tiny back. “Anybody pounds on you, tell your Uncle Griff. I have salad forks, dinner forks, serving forks...”
The baby barfed a tablespoon of fermented cottage cheese onto Uncle Griff’s collar, avoiding the blanket entirely.
“Now you’ve been christened. Welcome to the inner sanctum of Nate.” Sarah ground the curds into his shirt with a corner of the blanket. “Membership is for life.”
17
Rafferty’s dinner was scheduled for Wednesday. While Roger had dad night with the kids, Jen celebrated her night off from parenting by babysitting for Ivy.
“Why aren’t you more excited?” she asked, bouncing with all the enthusiasm Ivy lacked. “Including you in his business entertaining is a big step forward in your relationship.”
The step where Griff acknowledged her special form of allure was best suited to dining with elderly business associates.
It would not be the first time Ivy played the part of Respectable Wife Facsimile at a professional gathering. She knew very well what the promotion signified. This step was so big, it transcended any primitive interest in fornication. She had evolved into a good companion. A valuable asset. Like a spaniel with a pleasant disposition.
While she didn’t mind being helpful, she would rather be rewarded for her effort with hot, sweaty sex, not a scratch behind the ears for good teamwork.
An affair defined by sex and uncertainty about tomorrow fit her as poorly as a sample wedding dress. She could squeeze herself into it and appear passable from one specific angle, but she wasn’t comfortable and looked a mess from any other viewpoint. She would welcome more certainty, more exclusivity, more time in addition to the raw physical aspect, but she didn’t want to trade one ill fit for another by giving up sex entirely.
Griff said he would find a way for their relationship to work, but so far, what they’d done together since mending the separation bore little resemblance to what they’d done prior. The brief, searing kiss at the driving range had been the only heat between them since the night before her disastrous news appearance.
She wasn’t interested in playing the role of platonic helpmate again. If being with a man didn’t make her feel more than herself, better than alone, energized, what was the motivation to squeeze him into a schedule that barely allowed her time to breathe as it was?
Blake looked away from the front window, where he had taken up a sentry position. “He’s here.”
She opened the door before Griff had a chance to knock. He looked her over and evidently deemed her black wrap dress and silver high heels neither dangerous nor succubus-like. “All ready to go?”
“She’s very punctual,” Jen marketed for her.
Don’t forget my silky ears and loyal nature.
Griff was to
o busy greeting the kids to detect her ugly mood in that uncanny way of his. “Your flowers out front are getting big, Chrysanthemum. Very pretty. Are your teeth growing as fast?”
Lily flashed her still-toothless gap.
He crouched in front of her and dutifully inspected her gums. “Nope. Maybe they need more water and sunlight.”
She giggled.
He turned to Heather. “How’s your snapdragon, Snapdragon?”
“Rodney is in the plant hospital,” she said without looking up from her coloring book. “We don’t know if he’ll pull through, but his spirit will live forever in our hearts.”
Griff looked to Ivy for direction. All she could offer was a shrug. She had no idea where Heather had picked up her new favorite mantra, but if it helped her cope with Rodney the Snapdragon’s failing health — and everything else she was going through — she could keep it.
Griff solemnly asked Heather, “Is there anything I can do for Rodney?”
Blake suggested, “Send him flowers.”
Griff gave a grave nod. “Of course, but it would be more beneficial to the patient if we got screened for organ donation.”
Blake pretended not to grin. Griff pretended not to notice him pretending not to grin.
While her date used his finger to test Cole’s mighty grip strength, Ivy briefed Jen one last time. “Dinner, homework, and baths are done. TV off an hour before bedtime. Standard babysitting contract otherwise.”
“You make this too easy for me. You two have a good time.”
She kissed each of the kids and told them she loved them, starting with Cole and aging up. When she got to Blake, he asked, “Will you be back tonight?”
“Yes.” How many times had Holly left them overnight instead of bringing them to her? Every day, there was a new consideration that chilled her. “If you’re asleep when I get home, do you want me to wake you?”
“Yes. Promise.”
“I promise.” She anticipated his dodge and landed a glancing kiss on the moving target of his forehead. “It’s a school night. Don’t stay up too late.”