Hush, Little Baby

by Judith Arnold

  “He’s got Fil,” Murphy pointed out, shoving away from the desk once more. “I’m expected downtown in fifteen minutes. I’ll vet the insurance stuff and fax you my notes, okay?”

  “I appreciate it.”

  Murphy sent Corinne another smile which she decided looked friendly rather than threatening. Then he turned back to Levi. “And I’ve got three words for you.”

  “Three words?”

  “The Daddy School.”

  Levi frowned. “What?”

  “Ask Evan. Ask Jamie McCoy. You did his house; he’ll tell you all about the Daddy School. His wife runs it with my sister-in-law. You need it, Levi.”

  “What’s the Daddy School?”

  “If I stick around to answer that question, I’ll have to charge my standard hourly fee—and I know you don’t want to pay me any more than you already do.” Murphy gave Levi a wicked grin, slapped his shoulder and bounded out of the room.

  Levi pivoted to watch him leave. Once his back was to Corinne, D.J. could see her. He let out a yelp. His eyes wide and round, he jerked in Levi’s arms and clawed at his shoulder. He wanted Corinne to hold him.

  She knew this without having to guess: he wanted her the way he’d wanted her last night. But last night had been, if not a mistaken journey, a lengthy detour from her destination. She had to get her business done today. She had to resolve all the questions surrounding Gerald’s house, nail down a new contract, and go home to New York.

  If she took D.J. in her arms, that wouldn’t happen. The strange magic she’d experienced last night would take over. She’d feel unaccountably close to the baby—and to Levi. She’d be haunted by more thoughts of them both.

  She fell back a step. D.J. let out another yelp and swung a hand in her direction.

  Levi apparently was unaware of their non-verbal communication. He closed the office door and turned back to Corinne, tightening his hold on the squirming baby. “Daddy School?” he echoed.

  “Don’t ask me. I have no idea what your lawyer was talking about.” As long as he hadn’t been talking about Gerald’s contract, she didn’t care.

  D.J. was fighting Levi. He bent over and lowered the baby to the floor. It took D.J. a minute of trial and error to arrange himself in a crawling position. Once he was propped on his hands and knees, he progressed a few inches before flopping onto his belly.

  “He’s crawling,” Corinne said, astonished by the feat.

  Levi glanced at D.J., then lifted his gaze to her. “Well, yeah.”

  Perhaps it was perfectly normal for D.J. to be crawling. She wouldn’t have known that because she’d never seen him do it before.

  And at that moment she couldn’t really think about the little boy propelling himself slowly across the carpet. She could think only of Levi, his dark, powerful eyes, his mussed hair, his loosened necktie and his strong, sinewy forearms, exposed where he’d rolled his sleeves up to his elbows. His left hand gripped the cloth diaper that had been draped over his shoulder when he’d been holding D.J. His right hand hung empty at his side, and Corinne found herself distracted by the tapered shape of his fingers—fingers that had touched her cheek last night.

  He gazed back at her and she felt the full, piercing force of his eyes. Could he see through her? Could he see the dreams she’d had last night? Did he have any idea how disconcerted she was by him?

  She wished he would look away, get down to business and start rhapsodizing about the kitchen’s wall of glass so she could feel exasperated by him instead of this…whatever it was, this unruly emotion, this churning combination of fear and desire and—

  He took a step toward her. Another step. She glanced down to make sure D.J. wasn’t in his path, but D.J. was contentedly seated near his stroller, plucking at the carpet nub with his stubby little hands. She would have welcomed a howl of teething pain from him right now, but he seemed uninterested in coming to her rescue.

  “Levi,” she murmured as Levi took yet another step closer to her, so close one more step would have him trampling her feet.

  “We need to get this out of the way,” he said.

  She was stunned to think he was as unsettled by her as she was by him—flattered but surprised. She wondered whether last night he’d had dreams like hers.

  Of course, it was possible that what he wanted to get out of the way was a shouting match at close range. Maybe he thought that if they both cursed at each other for a few minutes, they’d be better able to renegotiate the house.

  No. He wasn’t going to curse at her. He was going to slide his hand around to the back of her neck, bow his head to hers and kiss her.

  His mouth was so warm, so strong. His whole body felt warm and strong. His fingers flexed in her hair and his lips pressed against hers, first lightly and then firmly, then lightly again, tempting, teasing.

  And then he leaned back.

  “Okay,” he whispered.

  Okay? No, not okay. Her heart was thumping, her thighs clenching, her hands itching because she hadn’t had a chance to touch him, to comb her fingers through his hair the way he’d combed his through hers. Her lips tingled the way her cheek had tingled where he’d caressed it last night—and all she could think of was pulling him back to her, kissing him again, deepening the kiss, making it real.

  Either that, or slapping him. Not because she was a prude, but honestly—hadn’t he ever heard of sexual harassment? They were in his office, supposedly working. They were professionals. He had no right to kiss her, no right at all.

  Except that she’d kissed him back, kissed him eagerly. And wanted more.

  No, nothing was okay about any of this.

  He turned from her and strolled casually to his desk, as if it was a morning like any other and this was a meeting like any other. Watching him, she felt flummoxed, and furious that he’d managed to flummox her. She prided herself on her competence and control. She knew how to get things done.

  Being kissed senseless was not a good way to get things done. She would have been better off if his lawyer had remained and Levi had kept his mouth to himself.

  “Levi,” she said, this time sternly, doing her best to conceal the quiver in her voice.

  He lifted a folder—she recognized it as the folder she’d given him yesterday, with all Gerald’s concerns about the house explained in writing—and turned back to her. Damn him for having such hypnotic eyes, she thought. Damn his impossibly sexy mouth, which was quirking into a tentative smile. “Let’s just get this thing figured out,” he said, as if the problems with the design were trivial, “and then we can deal with the other thing.”

  The other thing? Was he referring to their attraction, the implacable pull that made her long to kiss him again, even when she resented everything about him? Maybe he thought that was trivial, too.

  “Get rid of the wall of glass,” she demanded. She didn’t trust herself to say anything more personal than that.

  He laughed. Damn his laugh, too.

  “The wall of glass is staying. Let’s talk about things that you actually have a prayer of convincing me to change. The bathrooms, for instance. You want more bathrooms on the second floor? Done.”

  “Good. I also want to get rid of the wall of glass.”

  He was still smiling, but his gaze was lethally serious. “If the wall of glass goes, I’m tearing up the contract.”

  “This is Gerald Mosley’s country house. It isn’t some sort of psychological exercise where you get to resolve your anger over the house you grew up in.”

  His smile disappeared completely, and his gaze grew, if possible, even more deadly. “I’m not a hack, Corinne. If your pal is looking for a hack, let him look elsewhere. This—” he jabbed his finger at the folder “—isn’t a psychodrama I’m acting out. It’s an organic design, a work of art, an expression of my vision as an architect. If Gerald Mosley doesn’t like it, take your business somewhere else.”

  She was tempted. Really, who needed this hassle? Another architect would come up with a sa
ner design, something livable and sensible, a building Gerald could reside in comfortably, a place he could call home. What he wanted was a house, after all, not an expression of a vision or a work of art.

  She should tell that to Levi. She shouldn’t be swayed by the way his eyes burned with a passion for his design, or by the knowledge that he felt stronger about his concept—a mere series of sketches and drawings held together by a signed contract and a deposit check—than she had ever felt about any house she’d lived in. Those houses had all been sane and practical, but they’d never felt like home.

  Even so, the wall of glass was a foolish indulgence. The fireplace in the master bedroom made the room nearly unusable. All those nooks were just going to be dust magnets. The solarium was going to look like a dump if it had muddy shoes and old coats in it. Far better to make the connector to the garage a regular, unglamorous mudroom. And if Levi didn’t agree—

  No if about it. He didn’t agree, and he’d already told her he wasn’t going to budge on certain issues.

  He’d kissed her, and he was refusing to negotiate in good faith with her. She truly ought to slap him.

  “Ba-ba-baaa!” D.J. abruptly crowed. Corinne spun around to see the baby making his plodding way across the floor to her. His crawling motions were laborious and clumsy, but he kept at it, hand in front of hand, knee sliding past knee—with an occasional push from one or the other foot. “Ba-baaa! Bee-baa!”

  He aimed straight for her. She could step out of his path, but then he’d have to figure out how to adjust his direction, and it would take him an extra few belabored movements to reach her. She had no doubt in her mind that he viewed her as his destination.

  He and she had a special rapport, a connection as dangerous in its own way as Levi’s kiss had been. The only difference was that D.J. was a baby. He didn’t know any better. He lacked the self-discipline to control his behavior. If a bond existed between him and Corinne, he would act on it.

  Levi should know better. He should have self-discipline.

  And damn it, he should listen to her about the house. Surely he must have heard the expression: “The customer is always right.”

  D.J. had reached her foot. He planted one tiny hand on her shoe and screeched in a way that could have signified pain or ecstasy.

  And Corinne discovered she was as much a sucker with him as with Levi. Just as she’d stupidly kissed Levi back, now she stupidly bent over and scooped D.J. into her arms. He wanted her. He needed her.

  And in some unfathomable way, she wanted and needed him, too.

  Chapter Six

  SHE WAS GONE.

  She’d been there a while. He’d settled on the floor near her foot, touching the smooth black surface of her shoe and then her ankle, which didn’t feel like skin. Something stretched over it. Her leg looked just like a leg, but a film coated it.

  He pulled at the film, trying to figure out what it was, and then all of a sudden she bent over and hoisted him off the floor and into her lap. He was used to getting picked up like that, scooped away from wherever he was and lifted through the air. Being moved around that way made him feel powerless. He wished he could get himself where he needed to be.

  But this time he didn’t mind, because of where he ended up. Her lap was one of the best places in the world. He felt safe there.

  She and the man talked. He didn’t understand their words, but he knew they weren’t happy. There was a tightness to their voices.

  He concentrated on the rippling lines in the wood on the desk, and the smooth cloth of her sleeve where her arm was wrapped around him, and the steady rhythm of her breathing. As long as she held him, he could believe she would never go away. But he’d believed that about his mother, and she went away. He still hoped she would come back, but it had been a long, long time, so long he had to close his eyes to picture her now, and sometimes the picture was just a jumble. Her hair—he would remember the way it flicked into his face and he’d grab onto it and tug and she’d howl. And her dark eyes. Her smell, and the warm milk coming out of her breasts.

  What if this woman left, like his mother?

  He would still have the man. D.J. knew the man wouldn’t leave. He just knew it.

  Eventually his mouth started to hurt inside and he cried a little, and the man lifted him off the woman’s lap and put him on his shoulder. After that D.J. must have fallen asleep, because the next thing he remembered was lying in his stroller and knowing she was gone.

  Knowing, deep inside, that she might never come back.

  *

  HER APARTMENT looked the same, but it felt different. A little stuffy, a little stagnant—which made sense, she supposed, since she’d been away for two days and the air conditioner had remained off. A little quiet—which didn’t make sense, because usually she could hear the din of traffic noise rising up from East Sixty-third Street, twenty stories below. She supposed that if she strained her ears, she’d hear the traffic noise that evening, too. But the silence in her apartment had nothing to do with whether or not cars were leaning on their horns in the street beneath her window. It had to do with solitude.

  Maybe she ought to get a cat. A new Muffy to keep her company, to be her family.

  “Oh, God,” she thought with a sour laugh. She wheeled her suitcase down the hall to her bedroom, shaking her head at her own inanity. She was not going to turn into an obsessive spinster, one of those weird, lonely women who lived with thirty cats.

  Forget the cat. If she wanted noise in her apartment, she’d put on a CD. And then she’d call Gerald, and they’d talk shop and tease each other, and she’d feel like her old self again.

  Her apartment seemed dark, too.

  Well, of course it seemed dark, she rationalized as she unzipped her suitcase and spread it open on her bed. It seemed dark because it was six-thirty and the sun was setting. Twilight always fell a little earlier in Manhattan; the tall buildings blocked the sun as it slid westward, and long before it dropped below the horizon, shadows stretched across the city. Her apartment was dark because of the surrounding buildings. It had nothing to do with the size of her windows.

  Levi had refused to budge on that damned wall of glass in the kitchen.

  But she wasn’t going to think about him. She wasn’t going to think about his intransigence on certain items—like the damned wall of glass, and the damned fireplace in the master bedroom—and she wasn’t going to think about his kiss. She wasn’t going to think about how shocked she’d been, not by the kiss itself, since it had actually been rather tame, but by the fact that he’d done it at all. And by the fact that, as tame as it had been, she still hadn’t recovered from the sweet pressure of his lips on hers, the way they’d touched and clung and then withdrawn before she’d had a chance to…

  To what? Kiss him back? Pull him closer, open her mouth, lure his tongue in? Press her body against his, feel the lean strength of him, lose herself in the darkness of his eyes?

  Or slap him?

  A sarcastic snort escaped her. Yeah, sure, Levi had really shattered her prim sense of decorum.

  Corinne wasn’t a prude. She didn’t make a habit of kissing men, particularly those she’d known barely twenty-four hours, but one kiss wasn’t going to send her fleeing to the nearest nunnery.

  Certainly not one kiss from someone like Levi Holt.

  Who’d refused to compromise on the wall of glass and the fireplace, damn it.

  Her phone rang, jolting her. She dropped the nylons she’d just removed from her suitcase and reached across the bed for her phone. Maybe it was Levi. Maybe—

  “Stop it,” she said aloud. The sound of her voice grounded her, and by the time she lifted the receiver she’d shoved Levi into a far corner of her mind. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Corey. So you’re home?”

  “Hi, Gerald.” She nudged the suitcase out of her way and settled on the bed. “Yes, I’m home.”

  “How’d you make out?”

  We didn’t make out, she wanted to s
ay—it was just one kiss. But of course that wasn’t what he was asking, and even if it were, she’d never give him that answer.

  “You’re going to have two more full baths upstairs,” she reported. “The solarium has been simplified into a very functional mudroom, the kitchen, living room, dining room and family room are all going to be on the same level, and those nooks in the entry are going to be redone so they’re dustable.”

  “Dustable?”

  “Capable of being dusted. I did pretty well, Gerald. The wine cellar is going to be a self-contained unit, so you can try it out in the pantry and if you decide you need extra space, the whole unit can be moved without too much difficulty.”

  “Uh-huh.” His tone implied that he knew she wasn’t done.

  “Holt wouldn’t budge on the glass wall in the kitchen.”

  “But you said it would suck all the heat out of the house.”

  “It probably will, but he was really stubborn about it. He said that if you insisted on getting rid of that wall he was going to tear up the blueprint and charge you a kill fee.”

  “A kill fee?”

  She sighed. Gerald was a genius when it came to high-technology, but he was hopeless on the most basic business concepts. “That’s the fee you’d have to pay to back out of the deal. It’s in the contract, and it’s not something you’d want to pay, because after paying it you’d wind up with nothing.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “A torn-up blueprint.”

  “Okay.” He considered that prospect for a moment. “How about the other stuff?”

  “The only other big item was the fireplace in the master bedroom. He was stubborn about that, too.”

  “Stubborn, as in I’d have to pay a kill fee?”

  “Pretty much so.”

  “What am I going to do with my bedroom furniture?”

  “Put it in one of the other bedrooms and order custom-made pieces for this room.”

  “I don’t get it,” Gerald muttered. “The glass wall in the kitchen, okay, it’s this spectacular thing for people to ooh-and-ahh over. But the fireplace—what’s the big deal about that?”