Must Like Kids

by Jackie Braun

  Forget that foolish dream she’d had. It now paled in comparison to the real thing. What had she been thinking, letting him kiss her and then kissing him back like that? She should have pulled away at first contact. She should have stepped away before contact was made. His expression had made his intention plain, even if it all had happened so quickly. She couldn’t plead ignorance, only insanity.

  Now, no matter how hard she tried, that kiss refused to be exiled to the outer reaches of her mind. It remained front and center as the pair of them worked their way through a park packed with babies, toddlers and the harried young mothers who were running herd over them. With just a brush of his lips, he’d stoked to life the flames of a fire Julia had thought long burned out. She would be lying if she claimed not to have found Alec physically attractive from the very start, but she hadn’t seen all of that heat coming. Or the need it would ignite inside her.

  His words taunted her now. Is that your idea of fooling around? If so, you need to get out more. It entails a whole lot more than kissing.

  Indeed it did.

  Her friends would agree with Alec that she needed to get out more, as would her sister Eloise, who had tried more than once to fix up Julia. But Julia had too many responsibilities to take time out for romance. Besides, she was content with her life just as it was. She ignored the rebellious voice inside her head that insisted she was a liar.

  “What next?” Alec asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  He frowned and she realized he was talking about what he was supposed to be doing now that the contest was over and the cutest baby had been crowned. The judging had gone surprisingly well, even if the initial reception Alec received had been on the cool side. No one had booed outright when the coordinator introduced him, but the crowd’s applause had been more perfunctory than enthusiastic.

  Julia cleared her throat. “What I mean to say is you should mingle and start handing out coupons.”

  She reached into her oversized handbag and produced a thick envelope, which she gave to him.

  “Marketing emailed these over and I printed them out this morning.”

  He took the envelope, which he stuffed into his back pocket. “Mingle. Right.”

  Despite his casual attire, Alec stood out amid the crowd, in large part because he was one of the few men in attendance. All around them, mothers were scurrying after little ones who were eager to see how far and how fast their chubby legs could carry them. Children squealed in delight and cried out in frustration at being told “no.”

  “It’s a zoo around here,” Alec murmured.

  Before Julia had children of her own, she might have agreed with him. “It takes some getting used to,” she allowed. “For the record, though, that’s exactly the sort of comment you should not make in public.”

  “I don’t think I have to be worried about being overheard. I can barely hear myself think.” But he lowered his voice all the same.

  They made a loop of the park, circling past where a clown was transforming balloons into animal shapes. A little farther down, children were lined up to have their faces painted. When they reached the hot dog stand, Alec asked, “Want something to eat?”

  “It’s tempting since I didn’t have lunch, but I think I’ll pass.”

  “You haven’t eaten?” He frowned. “It’s after two o’clock.”

  The reminder was unnecessary. Julia’s empty stomach knew exactly what time it was. In fact, it had been protesting at nearly audible levels for the past couple of hours. “I’ll grab something before I pick up my kids from school.”

  “Does Colin have a T-ball game tonight?”

  “No, but Danielle has soccer at five-thirty.”

  He glanced up. While the sky directly overhead remained blue, purple-hued clouds were crowding in from the west. “I don’t think the rain is going to hold off that long.”

  “I have a feeling you’re right.”

  “A free night, then,” he replied.

  She shook her head and tried not to focus on his mouth. “Probably not. The teams play rain or shine. Throw in some thunder and lightning, though, and it’s a different story. The refs will cancel a match in short order if there’s an electrical storm.”

  “Are you rooting for a bolt or two then?”

  One side of Alec’s mouth lifted after he said it, drawing her attention to his lips once again. Lightning bolts. She’d experienced a few of those earlier. Enough to remind her exactly what she’d been missing. Julia swallowed.

  “You know, now that I think about it, I wouldn’t mind something to drink.” Suddenly, her throat was parched.

  “Come on then. I’ll buy.”

  The man who stood behind the stainless steel pushcart selling refreshments had a shaved head, pierced eyebrows and a scraggly goatee that reached nearly to his Adam’s apple. Asian symbols of some sort were tattooed on either side of his neck, and both of his arms were heavily inked from wrist to shoulder and likely beneath the sleeveless T-shirt he wore. He would have been right at home working a traveling carnival, but his smile was warm and his demeanor not at all intimidating when they stepped up to order. It just went to show that appearances could be deceiving, Julia thought, even if image was everything in her business.

  Her gaze slid to Alec and the outfit he was wearing. She’d picked it out, each piece chosen for the image it would project and the emotional response it would garner. What he was wearing said: I’m safe. You can trust me. Again, she thought, appearances could be deceiving. Alec wasn’t safe. She couldn’t trust him. Or more aptly, she couldn’t trust herself when she was around him.

  “Do you know what you want?” Alec asked. His hand came to rest on the small of her back as he spoke.

  She frowned. “I can’t seem to decide.” Which was so not like her.

  “Maybe it would help to look at the menu board,” he suggested.

  Julia gave her forehead a mental slap. “Right. Um, a diet cola and a plain soft pretzel will do.”

  Alec ordered a regular soda for himself as well as a bratwurst heaped with sautéed peppers and onions. She tried to eat healthy, but her mouth watered when he handed her the brat to hold while he fished out his wallet. He paid for their purchases and smiled knowingly as he took back the brat.

  “Are you sure you don’t want a little bite?”

  She shook her head and brushed some of the salt off her pretzel.

  “Come on,” he coaxed. His tone was low and seductive. “You know you want some.”

  Did she ever, though to her mortification, she wasn’t thinking about food. For the second time that day, her willpower pulled a disappearing act and she gave in to temptation.

  “Maybe just one bite,” she murmured.

  His smile was smug until she bit into the brat. Then his expression faltered. Was that kiss on his mind, too?

  “You’ve got a little...” He motioned with his index finger before reaching over with a napkin and dabbing at the corner of her mouth.

  She couldn’t be sure the heat burning in her cheeks was solely the result of embarrassment. Regardless, it didn’t slip his notice.

  “You’re blushing.”

  “I’m not blushing. It’s...it’s hot out here,” she replied and fanned her face for effect. It wasn’t exactly a lie, even if it wasn’t the whole truth.

  “I’ll say,” Alec mumbled.

  He took a sip of his soda and then tossed it and the rest of his brat in a nearby garbage can. His gaze was on her mouth again. His head was dipping down. Uh-oh. She knew that look. She knew what it meant and exactly what would happen next, even though she thought she’d made the boundaries of their relationship clear mere hours earlier. It didn’t escape her notice that she wasn’t backing away. Indeed, her chin lifted. If he kissed her again, she knew she was going to kiss him right back.

  Help!

  It arrived in the form of a wayward preschooler holding a dripping chocolate ice cream cone. The little boy barreled into Alec’s leg. The c
ontact caused the scoop of ice cream to fall off the cone and left a sticky brown smudge on Alec’s pants just above his knee. The pants may have been khaki and casual, but their fit screamed designer. The child’s mom was there in an instant, pulling out a moistened wipe.

  “Sorry about—” Her apology ended on a sharp intake of breath as she recognized Alec. “Oh, my gosh! You’re...you’re...”

  She grabbed her child and started to back away. Under other circumstances, the woman’s reaction might have been comical. But since this was exactly the sort of knee-jerk response Julia had been hired to preempt, her heart sank.

  “It’s all right,” Alec replied, but he didn’t look happy. Whether about the accident or the interruption, she couldn’t be sure.

  Wide-eyed, the woman said, “I really am sorry. He wasn’t watching where he was going.”

  “No harm done.” Alec’s accompanying laughter came out strained, seeming to negate his words.

  It was little wonder the woman didn’t appear convinced. “But your pants—”

  “Can be washed,” he finished.

  He crouched down until he was nearly eye level with the boy and studied the empty cone. “It’s a shame about your son’s ice cream, though.”

  At Alec’s mention of the cone’s sorry state, the little boy sent up a wail so shrill and loud that it rivaled an emergency vehicle’s siren. All of the moms in the immediate vicinity, turned, first to ensure that it wasn’t their child in distress, and then to see what all the fuss was about. Their eyes honed in on the boy before shifting to the man next to him. The man who now held an empty ice cream cone.

  Alec shot to his feet. In addition to looking guilty, his expression revealed mounting panic as the murmurs around them began to crescendo. Julia felt panicked, too. All of the afternoon’s goodwill would be undone if she didn’t do something and quick.

  “Offer to buy him another cone,” she insisted through a manufactured smile. She wasn’t sure Alec heard her. The little boy was still crying, although not quite as loud.

  Any hope that the worst was over was dashed when a woman standing nearby yelled out, “Hey, it’s that guy who hates kids.”

  Alec blinked. “I don’t hate—”

  “What did you do to him?” a heavyset woman pushing a stroller with twins in it demanded.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Alec replied, spreading his hands wide. His claim went over like a lead balloon when the woman spied what was in Alec’s hand.

  “You took his ice cream cone?” she asked incredulously. She didn’t wait for a response. She hollered to the gathering crowd, “Mister Corporate Big Shot here swiped the kid’s ice cream!”

  Alec’s humorous prediction of being pelted with pacifiers no longer seemed quite so outlandish.

  “He didn’t take anyone’s ice cream,” Julia began in a reasonable tone only to have her protestation drowned out by another woman shouting, “If he doesn’t like kids, why did he come here today?”

  “Because he wants us to buy his company’s products,” another one yelled. “I saw him judging the contest earlier. Probably it was rigged.”

  “Best For Baby,” another mom sniffed. “More like Best for Daddy Warbucks here.”

  “I have some coupons,” Alec began, apparently remembering the envelope Julia had given him. He pulled it from his back pocket, a drowning man reaching for a life ring.

  “I wouldn’t use your products if you gave them to me free,” the heavyset woman who’d started everything hollered. Which took the wind out of Alec’s sails since the coupons were for free diapers.

  “Yeah!” another mom said.

  Others were nodding in agreement.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Julia caught sight of a television news crew wending its way through the agitated crowd. Great. Just great. She’d called the media before they’d set out today, giving them the tip that Alec would be in the park. Where were the reporter and her cameraman when Alec was doing a bang-up job of judging the cutest baby contest? Why couldn’t they have caught that on tape?

  As far as Julia could tell, she and Alec had two choices. They could hold their ground and run the risk that the crowd would become even more taciturn. Or they could retreat and at least ensure that an interview with a sputtering and thunderstruck Alec, holding onto a packet of diaper coupons, wasn’t the highlight of the evening news.

  “Let’s go.” She tossed out her soda and pretzel and started in the opposite direction.

  “We need to clear up the misunderstanding,” he said.

  “We’ll do that later. Right now, we need to get out of here before you end up the top story on the evening news for a second night in a row.” She pointed to the news crew.

  Alec muttered a mild oath. Unfortunately, the little boy heard it. He pointed a chubby finger at Alec and shouted, “Mommy, he sweared!”

  “Come on,” Julia cried. Looping her arm through his, she pulled him away, not stopping until they were clear of the crowd.

  Once they were back where they’d parked their cars, she sucked in a deep breath and admitted, “That didn’t go as I hoped.”

  “Talk about an understatement.” Alec no longer looked shell-shocked. He was angry, as his glacial tone proved. “If this is your idea of resuscitating my image, sweetheart, I’m dead on arrival.”

  Julia’s pride bristled at his words, even if she couldn’t dispute them. He was right, and it wasn’t only his image on the line now. Her credibility and reputation were in serious jeopardy if she mucked up a job this substantial.

  That didn’t stop her from saying, “Don’t call me sweetheart.”

  His use of the pet name was belittling, but it rubbed against the grain for a more personal reason. Scott had called her that.

  “Is that all you’ve got to say?” Alec demanded. Hands on his hips, he shook his head and then rolled his eyes skyward. “I might as well hand in my resignation now. The board will be demanding it after this fiasco gets out.”

  “It’s not going to get out.” But her response lacked conviction and they both knew it. She added more damage control to her lengthy list of things to do.

  Alec raked his fingers through his hair. “I’m wasting my time here. I’ve got real work to do—while I still have a job.”

  “Alec—”

  He shook his head. “Forget it.”

  He was in his car, the two-seater’s engine revving to life, before she had a chance to stop him. The man was impossible! It was just Julia’s bad luck that, in this instance, he was right. She climbed into her car on a sigh. She’d blown it.

  Glancing back at the park, an idea formed. What if...?

  * * *

  Even before Alec reached his office, he knew he owed Julia an apology, if for no other reason than leaving in the fashion that he had. He’d stomped away like an angry child. He was mad, all right, and he had good reason to be. But the situation wasn’t her fault. At least not entirely.

  He called her office, only to be told by her secretary that Julia was still out, so he tried her cell. It went directly to voice mail. Over the next couple of hours, he placed several more calls to her with the same results. The crow he needed to eat wasn’t going to be any more palatable with the passage of time, but it was damned hard to apologize when he couldn’t reach her.

  He considered showing up at her daughter’s soccer game that evening. He knew Julia would be there, cheering on her child, despite the day she’d had. Part of him was amazed that she could compartmentalize her life in such a fashion, keeping the various facets separate. His personal and professional lives overlapped so frequently that it was sometimes difficult to determine where one began and the other ended. Married to his job, Julia had said. The quip had annoyed him at the time, but that made it no less true.

  Just before five, fat drops of rain splattered against his office window. Julia said her daughter’s team would play rain or shine. Alec decided to chance it.

  It was coming down harder by the time he reached th
e park where the soccer fields were located. Since there was no sign of lightning, the lot was full of vehicles. He wasn’t sure which field her daughter was playing on, much less what her team’s jerseys looked like. He was drenched to the skin by the time he stumbled across Julia’s canopy. Not surprisingly, it was standing-room-only underneath it. Instead of supplying shade today, the covering offered protection from the rain, and Julia was sharing it with as many other spectators as possible.

  “Julia!” he called.

  She was wearing the same outfit she’d had on earlier, with the addition of a lightweight jacket. Her clothes looked damp, as did her hair, which was now pulled back into a ponytail. Her eyes widened when she saw him and she stepped around the other spectators to the edge of the canopy.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  Neither her expression nor her voice inflection hinted at whether she was happy to see him. Feeling suddenly awkward, he joked, “It seemed like a nice night for a game.”

  On the field behind them Danielle’s team scored. The crowd under the canopy erupted in cheers. Since there was no more room beneath the shelter, Julia pulled up her hood and stepped out into the rain.

  “You’re getting drenched,” she remarked.

  Alec shrugged. “I’ll survive.”

  “I was going to call you after the game.”

  “I’ve been calling you all afternoon.”

  Her brow wrinkled at that. “The battery on my cell died. You have?”

  He nodded. “To apologize. I acted, well, like a big jerk. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, too.”

  He accepted her apology with a nod that caused rainwater to sluice down his cheeks.

  “This is ridiculous.”

  She ducked back under the canopy, squeezed past an older couple. A moment later, she emerged with an umbrella in hand. It was small, it’s handle molded into the shape of a popular superhero. Colin’s, he decided. After opening it, she lifted it over both of their heads, revealing an image of the same caped good guy that the handle sported.

  “That’s better,” she murmured.

  Alec had to agree, not only because he was now shielded from the rain, but also because of their forced proximity. He swore he could feel the heat emanating from her body. To take his mind off that, he said, “I’m almost afraid to watch the news tonight.”