The Baby Truce

by Jeannie Watt

  But for how long?

  She finally got out of bed at eight, when Mims walked over her for the sixth or seventh time, demanding breakfast. Now.

  Reggie slipped into her robe, scooped cat food into Mims’s bowl and started water for herbal tea. The smell of coffee didn’t bother her as much as it had when she’d first discovered she was pregnant, so she thought about investing in some decaf. Perhaps today.

  And maybe she’d stop by the Home Depot and look at paint chips for the baby’s room. She didn’t want to make hard-and-fast color choices until she knew if she was having a boy or a girl, but now that she could barely button her pants, some planning was in order.

  She walked into the living room, opening blinds as she went, letting the sun in, then stopped and backed up a few steps to take another look out the front window. She knew that car.

  And the dark-haired man sitting inside.

  What the heck?

  The teakettle whistled, since she’d barely filled it, and she went back into the kitchen, grabbing her cell phone off the end table on the way. She punched in Tom’s number after turning off the burner. He answered on the first ring.

  “Are you sitting in a car in front of my house?” she asked, dropping a tea bag into a cup.

  “If you’re asking that question, then you probably know that I am.”

  “Why?”

  “Can I come in?”

  “Yes. I think you better,” Reggie said, her heart beating harder. This had to be bad news. What had happened? Did he have a job? Had there been a mishap in the kitchen?

  She went to the door after quickly pouring water over the tea bag. She had a feeling she’d need a drink of some kind after talking to Tom.

  “Why are you here?” she asked after letting him in and closing the door again.

  “I made an error in judgment yesterday.”

  Just as Reggie had thought. Disaster after the perfect service. “What kind of error?”

  “This woman—a Mrs. Bremerton—showed up with an invoice.”

  Instant bad feeling.

  “Did you argue with her?” Reggie guessed.

  Tom shrugged. “I told her what I thought of people who tried to weasel out of paying what they owed.”

  The sinking feeling reached Titanic depths.

  “How did she respond?” Reggie asked flatly.

  “Well, she threatened me. But you don’t need to worry about the invoice. It’s paid. In cash.”

  “You didn’t extort money from her?”

  “No. I paid the invoice—”

  “You paid!”

  “Someone had to. Then I told her the conversation never happened, and sent her on her way.”

  “Politely.”

  “Under the circumstances.”

  Reggie held in a rant. “Good customer relations, Tom.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “She was…aggravating.”

  “Do you want some tea?” Reggie asked, hoping to get a few more details so she knew what she was up against.

  “No. I drank about a gallon of coffee waiting for you.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Since six. I wanted to talk to you before you went to the kitchen. And I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Because of Mrs. Bremerton?”

  “Because of a lot of stuff.”

  For some reason, the thought of Tom not sleeping bothered Reggie—probably because nothing ever bothered him. If he wasn’t sleeping, then…well, she didn’t know what. She’d never known him not to sleep.

  “My tea will oversteep if I don’t get to it,” she said, leading him to the kitchen. She pulled the bag out and dumped it in the trash. “Have a seat.”

  Tom took the chair she indicated, tapping his fingers on the table as she situated herself opposite.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  He gave her a recap, which didn’t include much more data than she already had, so when he was done, she asked, “Do I send flowers?”

  “Hell, no. You’re better off without her business.”

  “Reno’s a little smaller than New York City.”

  “Even if you do, I think her beef is with me.” His mouth tightened momentarily before he said, “She recognized me as ‘that rude chef.’”

  Reggie laughed. Rude chef. She couldn’t help but love the description. And while she’d lost a customer, the curiosity factor of having the rude chef in her kitchen would quite possibly mitigate any damages Tom may have done. “You denied it?”

  “She didn’t believe me.”

  “I’m never leaving you in charge again.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “I don’t think I’m ready for public relations.”

  Reggie stretched her feet out under the table, her toes brushing the side of his canvas shoe. She shouldn’t feel this relaxed about his confession, but what was she going to do? All she could do was keep it from happening again.

  “Am I forgiven?” Tom asked, not moving his foot away from hers.

  Reggie nodded slowly, picking up her tea and taking the first slow sip. Somehow lemongrass flowing into her system wasn’t quite the same as caffeine, but it tasted good.

  “Thank you.” He leaned back, settled his eyes on her face, raised his eyebrows. “When are you going to the kitchen?”

  “I’m not. Eden’s orders.”

  “Good for Eden.”

  “No. Good for me for following them.”

  He smiled. “So what are you doing today?”

  “I, uh…”

  He held up a hand. “Never mind. I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “Paint. I’m going to look at paint.” She had to stop shutting him out.

  “You’re painting?” He looked around at her cheery red walls, then a look of dawning comprehension crossed his face. “Nursery?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wow.”

  Reggie laughed again. She couldn’t help it.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. It’s just that…I know the feeling. This has been a life changer.”

  “Yes.” He reached out to take her free hand, and she didn’t pull back. His hand was big and warm and safe feeling. “I should pay for at least half of that paint.”

  She allowed her fingers to curl around his. “You should.”

  “What color?”

  “I’m not making a decision until I know if it’s a boy or girl.”

  “Maybe we could get a neutral color.”

  She bit back the “we?” that formed on her lips. “You’re right. Traditional pink and blue is kind of…”

  “Traditional?”

  “Well put.” Reggie slipped her hand free and clasped her cup in her palms. “You want to come?”

  His eyebrows lifted. “Yeah. I do. But I have to be done by two.”

  “What’s at two?”

  “Barbecue with my neighbors.”

  Reggie almost dropped her cup. “You’re going to a neighborhood barbecue?”

  “With the old guys next door. They blackmailed me into being their sauce consultant. Want to come?”

  “Why don’t we see how the morning goes? If we haven’t killed each other, then maybe I will.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  TOM WAS EXPERIENCING A MAJOR disconnect. Reggie was definitely pregnant; his child was growing inside her. Over the past few weeks, she’d gone from being upset about the pregnancy to, well, nesting. Seeing her so excited about paint drove home the point that they had very different perspectives on this pregnancy.

  Why did the kid still seem so surreal to him? Why wasn’t his paternal instinct kicking in?

  Maybe getting involved with painting—preparing the baby’s room—would spark some paternal instincts and he’d know what he needed to do to be a decent father, because right now, he hadn’t a clue.

  Reggie didn’t talk much on the drive to the home-improvement store, but once they hit the paint section, she lit up. And for a person who had a bright red wall in her kitchen, Reggie seem
ed hopelessly drawn to pale pastels. Tom favored the bright and the bold.

  “I’m thinking peaceful, restful colors,” she said, holding up a pale lavender chip.

  “I’m thinking stimulation.” Tom grimaced at the color. “I read babies need a lot of stimulation.”

  “They also need sleep.”

  Tom continued on down the long row of paint cards, pulling whatever happened to catch his eye, until he had a handful. Then he turned and propped the cards against the gallons of paint on the opposite side of the aisle.

  “How about this green?” he asked. “I know you said you didn’t want green, but this one is kind of peaceful and at the same time kind of stimulating.”

  She cocked her head, studied the color. “Put it in the pile.” So far they had a muted blue, an apricot, a pale yellow that Tom hated, and the green.

  Reggie looked at the back of a paint card. “Which of these are the really nontoxic paints?”

  A store associate in a red vest walked by within seconds of her asking, and Tom called him over. “Which of these paint brands are nontoxic?”

  “All of them,” the associate said proudly, rocking back on his heels.

  “So, I can eat this paint and nothing would happen to me?”

  The man’s eyes bugged. “What exactly are you planning to do with it, sir?”

  Reggie laughed. “We’re painting a baby’s room.”

  “Ah.” He smiled with exaggerated relief, ready to play along and make a sale. “Well, I can understand your concern. These paints are all nontoxic, but I still don’t recommend eating them.” He led the way to a special display. “These are the least toxic and also, unfortunately, the most expensive.”

  “The colors we picked aren’t this brand…except for the yellow,” Reggie added with a note of triumph, holding up the color chip.

  “Oh, we can create the tones with any base paint,” the associate assured them in a conspiratorial voice.

  “Great,” Tom said, suspecting Reggie already knew that from the look on her face. “Thanks for your help.”

  “Wait until you see the yellow in the room,” Reggie said as they headed for the exit twenty minutes later, each with a handful of favorite colors. “It’ll be great.”

  “Kids fight more in yellow rooms.”

  Reggie stopped walking and stared at him. “How do you know that?”

  “I read a lot.” And he did. Every night, with his laptop balanced on his legs and Brioche curled up beside him. What else was he going to do during the evenings? He’d learned a lot, but it ate at him that he couldn’t visualize his kid—even after searching in vain for the perfect nursery paint color. Did all guys experience this? Was he destined to be a failure as a father because he had no paternal instinct? Is that why his dad was able to spend so much time away from him?

  Tom shoved the matter out of his mind. Or tried to.

  They’d driven to the store in Tom’s rental car, so after he got behind the wheel he said, “Let’s get something to eat.”

  “I thought you had a barbecue at two.”

  “Part of going to a barbecue, done properly, is sitting and smelling the meat cooking for three or four hours.”

  “You’re right. We need to eat.”

  “Now all we have to do is find a good peanut butter joint.”

  Reggie laughed and Tom felt a deep sense of satisfaction. It felt so damned good not to be at odds with her. He was beginning to believe that hanging out in her kitchen really had been a good idea. The baby would benefit.

  Tom pulled into a breakfast place in a small mall.

  “Internet?” Reggie asked.

  “Yep.”

  The food was good. Not stellar, but satisfying. When the server brought the check, she asked, “How was it?” with a perfunctory smile as she set the slip on the table.

  “The eggs were good. The bacon overdone and, frankly, the home fries would have benefited from a little hot paprika.” He held up his thumb and forefinger. “Just enough to color them, but not overpower the potato flavor.”

  The server nodded blankly and said, “I’ll, uh, tell the cook,” before she hurried away.

  “I think that was more of a rhetorical question,” Reggie said with a laugh, reaching for one of his leftover fries.

  “If you don’t want to know, don’t ask.”

  It felt so much like old times that Tom had to remind himself it wasn’t.

  “Do you want the ham bone for your dog?” Reggie pushed the ring of bone across her plate with her fork.

  Tom shook his head and reached for the check. “I try to regulate her diet.”

  Reggie gave him a who-the-hell-are-you stare. “The dog you aren’t going to keep.”

  “Right now she’s good company. I’ll find her a home when I leave. I’m working on the old guys.”

  “Will you miss her?” Reggie asked, an odd note in her voice.

  “Of course I will. A lot, actually. But…if I end up in a city, I won’t be able to care for her.”

  “Does she have a name yet?”

  “Brioche.”

  Reggie’s eyebrows shot upward. “You named your dog Brioche?”

  “You saw her. She’s got many briochelike qualities.”

  Reggie nodded slowly. “I guess.” But she continued to look at him as if he were some kind of alien.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  When Tom parked in front of Reggie’s house, she turned in her seat and said, “If you don’t mind, I’ll take a rain check on the barbecue.”

  “You don’t want to come?” Or maybe she didn’t want to spend more time with him.

  “I plead exhaustion.” She was tired. Tom could see it in her face.

  “All right. I’ll go alone.” He walked her to the door, feeling like a high school kid delivering his date home…although he’d never done that, having been away at boarding school.

  When they reached the porch, she asked, “Do you want to come in and see the baby’s room?”

  In an odd way, the idea seemed intimidating. “I’d like that,” Tom said, manning up. Why should a room be threatening?

  Reggie unlocked the front door and led the way through her living room to a hallway. The first room they came to was obviously her bedroom. He recognized the purple afghan lying across the foot of the bed—a present from her mother many years ago.

  Reggie opened the next door and stood back, allowing Tom to go in first. The room, empty and smallish, had a closet and a window looking out over the flower garden in the backyard.

  “It used to be my office,” Reggie said, “but now that I do everything on a laptop, I prefer to be out in the living room when I work.”

  “It’s nice.” Tom had a hard time visualizing his child living here, in this room. He glanced down at Reggie and asked the question that had been on his mind as he’d watched her debate about paint and plow through two lunches.

  “Can you feel it?” A perplexed expression crossed her face. “The baby,” he said softly. “Can you feel it move yet?”

  She shook her head. “Soon, the doctor tells me.”

  He nodded. Looked out the window again. She couldn’t feel the baby yet, but still had a parental instinct. Maybe it was just him. “Nice view.”

  “Stimulating,” Reggie agreed. She took in a deep, audible breath.

  “Do you get lonely, Reg? Living here alone?”

  A shadow crossed her features. “Sometimes. But everyone gets lonely. And I spend a lot of time at the kitchen.”

  “No friends?”

  “I have friends. Just…not a lot of time, you know?” She jutted out her chin. “But I’ll have time for my baby.”

  “I know you will.” He’d never doubted that. Reggie was a caregiver.

  She turned off the light. His signal to leave.

  He didn’t want to. He wanted to go back to the past. Have things between them be the same as they used to be.

  But they couldn’t, because he and Reggie hadn’t yet discovered
where they belonged in the world back then. The equation hadn’t been complete.

  When they reached the living room, Tom went for the door, even though he didn’t particularly want to leave. She followed him out onto the porch.

  “Reggie…are you still angry with me?”

  She contemplated the question for a moment as she dug the toe of her shoe into the porch planks. “You are who you are, Tom.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “It is,” she said. “You have this ambition that overrides everything else.”

  He didn’t want to admit it, but there was more than a grain of truth to that. What was wrong with wanting to be the best?

  “I’m sorry, Tom.” Though he wasn’t sure why. She rose up on her toes and planted a chaste kiss on his jaw. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Yeah. Tomorrow.”

  She turned and went into the house, leaving him on the porch.

  As he walked back to the car, he touched his jaw, wishing that he’d really kissed her. There on her porch, for the entire world to see.

  THE FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS ON Sunday morning, before Eden started cooking for her families, was a meeting on the Reno Cuisine competition. Eden had made good use of her downtime, designing both a menu—which Tom had also worked on while the rest of the crew was at the wedding—and a set based on a French bistro theme. She had lists of supplies, building materials and costume necessities, which she distributed to Tom and Justin. Reggie already had a copy. As near as Tom could tell, the purpose of the meeting was to bring a yawning Justin up to speed.

  “I assume you’ve taken that weekend off from the hotel, right?” Eden asked her brother.

  “I haven’t heard back, but yeah, I requested it.”

  “You’d better hear back soon.”

  “Tom will take my place if I have trouble getting off.”

  “If I’m here,” he said. Reggie cut him a quick glance, but said nothing.

  “We’ll wear white shirts, black pants and suspenders,” Eden said.

  “Suspenders?” Justin echoed with a grimace. “Why?”