by Floyd, Jacie
“He’s right over—” Wyatt began, but Kara put her finger to her lips, motioning him to silence.
“Where’s Sean?” Her voice rose with exaggerated theatrics. “Oh, dear, does anybody know where Sean is?” She zeroed in on his broom-closet hiding place and pulled him out for a hug. “There you are.”
“Me want juice.” His arms circled her neck.
“All right, but what do you say first?”
“Pease?”
“Good boy! One mug of juice coming up.”
“Uh, about juice.” Wyatt rubbed his hand against the back of his neck. “I’m afraid I haven’t been to the grocery yet.”
Kara rummaged through the diaper bag for a bottle of juice and a sipper cup. “Don’t you handle shopping the same way you handle cooking—by having someone else do it?”
Wyatt crossed his arms. “Not always.”
With the sipper cup filled, Kara looked around the magnificently equipped kitchen. “Where’s your highchair?”
“Highchair.” He scratched his head for a moment. “I think it’s in here.” He couldn’t have surprised Kara more if he had emerged from the walk-in pantry with a harem of dancing girls instead of a big cardboard box. “Hang on a second and let me get it open.”
“Why in the world do you have a highchair?”
“For Sean. Same reason I intended to go to the store. I bought the chair Consumer Reports recommended. It’s the same brand as the one he has at your house. That’s how I chose the car seat and crib, too. I hope that’s all right.”
Put firmly in her place by his thoughtfulness, but more panicked than impressed by his forethought, Kara returned her focus to Sean, now tugging on one of her knees. “Cookies, too, pease, Mommy.”
As Wyatt assembled the highchair, Kara located a small box of animal crackers in her well-stocked bag.
“If you’ll make a list of his favorite foods,” Wyatt said, “I’ll keep them on hand.” He scooped Sean up and put him in the seat, fastening the belt and arranging the tray. “Sorry, but the kitchen table and chairs haven’t been delivered yet. We’ll have to stand or sit on the floor.”
“No problem.” Kara placed the snack in front of Sean. “It won’t take him long to polish this off.”
After a potty break and a face washing, Kara held firmly to Sean’s hand as they followed Wyatt upstairs.
“Those are spare rooms.” Wyatt motioned to one side of the upper landing. “Empty, nothing special.” Heading the other way, they passed a room with an open door. “That one’s mine, and here on the other side is Sean’s.” Like it was part of a ceremonial right, he took the boy from Kara. “Are you ready, Sean? Are you ready to see your room at Daddy’s house?”
With a flourish, Wyatt opened the door. Decorated in a circus theme, the nursery looked like a child’s fantasyland filled with a striped tent canopy on the bed and miniature trains chugging around on a shelf that circled the room. Whimsical animals and colorful clowns decorated the border and walls. Sean scrambled down, giggling and running from one new toy to another. “Mine? Trains are for me?”
“All yours.” Wyatt met Kara’s eyes over their son’s head and shrugged. “I knew he liked trains.”
Kara felt her throat close, which was just as well, because she couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say. This was much worse than Rosalie’s gifts. That over-the-top shopping spree had probably been no more personal than placing a call and ordering some clerk to send one of everything the store had in stock. But Kara could see Wyatt’s hand in every single item in this room. Every item chosen with Sean in mind.
And, like everything Wyatt dabbled in, it was perfect—which only added to her misery. It sounded crazy, but she didn’t want him being nice. She liked it better when she could convince herself that he was an aloof, self-absorbed, intellectual billionaire incapable of making a commitment. Of course, a bedroom, highchair, and car seat didn’t qualify him as father of the year, but it was impossible to pretend he didn’t have Sean’s best interests at heart.
Chapter Fourteen
While waiting for Kara to finish Sean’s bedtime preparations later that evening, Wyatt’s patience came to an end. Every time he rocked the chair in Sean’s real room in Sean’s real house, Wyatt felt like the rocker was passing over a cat’s long tail. And he was the cat. He tried to keep his many contradictory feelings about Kara separate from the issue of Sean, but she was making it impossible.
He had turned his life upside down to move near them, but did Kara appreciate it? No.
He had gone to great lengths to set up a room Sean would like, but did Kara give him any credit for it? No.
Did she intend to ever allow the child to spend any time with him? No, again, damn it.
Rock, cringe. Rock, cringe.
Maybe she was right about him not having experience with small children, but that didn’t diminish his resentment. He was an intelligent person. He could learn.
Rock, cringe.
Followed by his mother, Sean darted into the room fresh from his bath, wearing footed pajamas decorated with a cartoon space man. “Me want story,” he said, dashing over to his bookshelves in the corner.
“Okay.” Kara knelt down beside him. “Which one do you want? Cat in the Hat, The Little Train that Could, or Goodnight, Moon?”
“This one.” His little hands grasped a book too big for him to carry. It slipped to the floor with a thump. “Oops.”
“Oops is right. Did you smash your pigs?” Kara picked up the book and placed it back in his hands, helping him hold onto it until he had a firm grip.
Sean looked down and wiggled his toes. “Nope.” Struggling, he made it to the rocking chair with his burden.
“That’s too long,” Kara said. “Let’s pick one or two stories from it, okay?”
Sean held the book up to Wyatt. “Daddy read it.”
“Daddy?” Kara’s mouth dropped open.
“Me?” Equally surprised, Wyatt took the thick volume from Sean as he climbed into his lap.
“Yes, Daddy read it.”
After the child snuggled against Wyatt’s chest, Sean opened the book, and flipped inexpertly through it. This was one parental task right up Wyatt’s alley.
“Here’s one I know. ‘Will you step into my parlor,’” he began in a sinister voice, “‘said the spider to the fly...’”
By the time the poem was finished, Sean had developed an unstoppable urge to sing about an itsy-bitsy spider, complete with hand motions. The boy wasn’t happy until Wyatt and Kara joined in.
“Read him something else,” Kara instructed after the sun had dried up all the rain for the third time. “A more soothing one this time.” She brought Sean his blanket as Wyatt turned to another page in the book of children’s poems.
“Here’s a good one.” Wyatt went with his instincts and ignored the urge to see if his choice met with Kara’s approval. “‘Wynken, Blynken and Nod one night, sailed off in a wooden shoe...’”
Before the fourth verse revealed Wynken and Blynken’s true identity, Sean’s little eyes had drooped and anchored shut. Wyatt rocked him a little longer, savoring the unfamiliar pleasure of his son asleep in his arms. Now, with each rock of the chair, his earlier resentment seeped away. His determination to become a permanent part of this picture expanded and enlarged from a wish and a hope into a vow.
After laying Sean in his crib and covering him, Kara made her own adjustments to the sleeping child, and then motioned Wyatt out of the room.
Downstairs, Kara headed him toward the door to see him out, but Wyatt stopped her. “You can’t keep brushing me off. We need to talk.”
He sympathized with the fear that darted through her eyes, but he didn’t quite understand it. By now, she should know he wouldn’t do anything to hurt her or Sean.
“All right.” With an expression like Joan of Ark’s, she turned into the sitting room, and took a seat on one of the chintz-covered chairs, folding her hands primly in her lap. “Talk.”
She hesitated. “It’s time to set up some guidelines.”
Stretching his legs out in front of him, he crossed them at the ankles and wished they were having this conversation in the more comfortable environment of the family room. “That’s what I’ve been trying to do, but you keep freezing me out.”
“The first rule,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “should be that there will be nothing of a personal or physical nature between us.”
Aha, so that explained her problem. Good to know she hadn’t been able to brush aside the memory of their kiss. “Don’t kid yourself, darlin’.” He smiled at her, daring her to remember the episode as vividly as he did. “Your kiss said differently.”
“There will be no more kissing, no more prediction of affairs.” Twin red flags of color blazed across her cheeks.
Without a doubt, he intended to have her in his bed again, but it had probably been idiotic to tell her so. If he hadn’t seen her so cozy with Dylan that night, he would have never rushed her. But an uncomfortable jealousy had stemmed from seeing his old friends flirting with the woman he...wanted? Desired? Cared about, for want of a better description. And that jealousy had caused him to act uncharacteristically rash.
“I was dealing with you quite well,” Kara said, “until you introduced an unwelcome physical aspect to our relationship. Our situation will be difficult enough for Sean to understand without muddying the waters with sex.”
“I can put my sexual plans aside for the time being, if that’s what it will take to put us on common ground concerning Sean.”
A lengthy hesitation spoke for itself. He wanted to comfort her, to reassure her, but giving into the urge every time he wanted to take her into his arms hindered rather than helped gain her confidence regarding his relationship with Sean. “You’re going to have to face this. I’m here now, and I’m going to make a place for myself in Sean’s life whether you want me to have a place in yours or not. You can’t keep on ignoring me.”
“I’m not ignoring you.” She failed to meet his gaze.
He took her chin in his hand, lifting her face toward his. “You’re sure as hell trying to and I want to know why.”
She swallowed against his palm before she jerked away. Her pulse raced at the base of her throat. “Sean is my son. He’s my responsibility. Every moment of every day, my primary concern is his well-being.”
“I applaud you for your diligence, but why do you have to be the only one who can care for him? Why does my involvement threaten you so?”
“Because you don’t know anything about children. I know you don’t mean him any harm, but you don’t know anything about taking care of him. He has a busy little mind and body that can go from quietly watching a movie one second to climbing the bookshelves to see if he can fly the next.” She raised her chin in challenge. “Would you know what to do if he ran a fever, or ate a poisonous leaf, or choked on a hot dog?”
Wyatt understood her fear, but surely she exaggerated the danger. “How many new parents know what they’re in for? Kids don’t come from the womb with a set of instructions attached to their big toes, but love and instinct go a long way. And, in the past three months, I’ve bought and read just about every child-care book on the market.”
“If I’m not all that crazy about seeing him spend time with you, I’m sorry.” Her expression was combative, rather than sorry. Beautiful, rather than contrite, but that was a separate issue. “He hardly knows you.”
“But he’s getting to know me and like me and trust me.” He couldn’t resist pointing out his proudest fatherhood moment to date. “Tonight he asked me to read him a story, remember? I want to learn everything I need to know, and I’m willing to take any steps in that direction that are necessary, but I want to see some steps being made in that direction. And soon, or you’ll be seeing me in court.”
“Oh, that’s right.” She jumped to her feet. “I wondered how long it would be before you started making threats. Just because you have more money than God, you Maitlands think you can have anything you want, don’t you?”
He unfolded himself to his full height, looming over her. “For the record, God still has more money than the Maitlands, and I’m simply advising you of my intentions, not making threats. All I want is the right to get to know my son. I’d like to do it the easy way, but you’re the one making it hard. Do you really want to force me into staging a legal battle over my rights here? That won’t be good for anyone.”
She crossed her arms and glared, purple sparks practically shot at him from her eyes. “What do you have in mind?”
“Just so you can be sure I know everything I need to know about taking care of Sean, you can teach me.”
“Why should I agree to do that?”
“Because I’m not going to go away, and because it’s the best thing for Sean.”
“I don’t have the time.”
“Then come up with an alternative.”
As she opened her mouth to speak, he held up a finger. “Make it a constructive one.”
Sighing, she suggested, “Maybe you can come over when the Tag Team has their hours, and they can instruct you.”
“That would work.” Not what he wanted, but it was progress. Once he was inside her house on a regular basis, he would be in a position to remind her how well their relationship had worked before Sean. He could impress her with his devotion to Sean. And he could begin to intertwine both phases of their lives.
She scrunched her eyebrows together while mulling over the details. “How would you want to set the hours up?”
He shrugged, pleased to see her showing signs of cooperation. “Except for my class schedule, I can be available any time.”
“What about your social calendar?” Her sarcastic tone caught him off-guard. Did she really care what he had on his social calendar, or was she just being disagreeable to annoy him?
“Except for the time I spend in Atlanta, my calendar is yours to command.”
She eyed him suspiciously. “Do you promise not to try and take Sean anywhere until I feel comfortable with your abilities?”
“Sure.”
“I don’t want you taking him around any of your… women.”
“You’re the only woman in my life.”
“Right. For how long?” She held up her hand. “Don’t answer that.”
Still, she regarded him intently, her focus boring into him as if trying to get inside his head to forecast his future intentions.
He nudged her toward the agreement he wanted. “This is the best way for us to both get what we want.”
“All right.” She sighed hard enough to ruffle curtains. “Let’s synchronize our schedules. What days do you have class?”
Exasperated, Kara highlighted the text on her computer screen and hit the delete key. She couldn’t seem to produce a coherent sentence. The clear and concise notes propped up next to her keyboard weren’t the problem. The problem came from the knowledge that Wyatt hovered somewhere nearby. It seemed like he was always somewhere in her house lately.
True to his word, he spent as much of his free time with Sean as Kara would allow. At first, she ignored his visits by working in her office, but Wyatt’s time with his son began to infringe on her time with her son. Why should Wyatt and the Tag Team get to enjoy her child’s company more often than she got to?
Wyatt learned his child-care lessons quickly and well. She didn’t know how much longer she could make excuses to keep him from taking Sean out on his own. Even she could see that further supervision was unnecessary.
Both fascinated and horrified, Kara had watched the growing interaction between father and son. She often found herself mooning about in the doorway while Wyatt dressed Sean or joined him in a game of Chutes and Ladders or comforted him after some little disappointment. Sometimes she wished she could just go in and join them, but it wasn’t that simple.
She thrust her
hair away from her face with an impatient stab then picked up her notes, trying to re-collect her thoughts rather than set off in search of her child and his father. A tap on the door interrupted her.
As she turned toward the sound, Wyatt poked his head inside. “Marco wants to know if you’re ready to take a lunch break. He’s heating up some lasagna his mother sent over.”
“Well, all right.” She tried to pretend reluctance about being torn away from her work. “I guess I can take a break.”
She stood, but Wyatt crossed his arms and didn’t move out of the doorway.
“Was there something else?” She resisted the urge to check the buttons on her shirt.
“Have you seen the new show at the Emerson?” he asked after several long seconds.
“The Flemish pottery? No, Stella covered it when I reviewed the traveling Monet exhibit at the Met last week.”
“I’m going to see it tomorrow night. Would you like to go? With me?” He shifted his weight from foot to foot. “We could have dinner later.”
“You and me? Like a date?” Her breath hitched at the prospect, and her nerves stood on end.
“Well, it’s not so much a date as a shopping exhibition. Mother’s birthday is coming up, and I want your advice on a piece I’m thinking of buying for her.”
Flustered, she groped for common sense. “Why do you want my advice? You know her taste better than I do.”
“What I have in mind is a sizable investment, and a second opinion, especially from someone so knowledgeable...”
Tempted despite herself, Kara checked her calendar. “Sorry, I have an opening at Chenault International for that Japanese porcelain artist, Ritsuko Myoshi.” She didn’t know if she felt relieved or disappointed.
He held the door wide for her to pass in front of him, accepting the refusal with good grace. “Maybe some other time.”
The next evening Kara looked up from a display of porcelain water lilies and spotted Wyatt coming toward her. Tall, freaking gorgeous, and in-charge of his world, the other people in the room either moved aside for him or stopped and stared.