Except, perhaps, some space in his refrigerator for a couple of nights. And a little bit of the magical warmth she felt when she was with him.
“All right,” she said, nodding to the waiter to take her half-full plate and wrap its contents for her. Then she smiled at Levi. “Thank you.”
The smile he returned said that she was more than welcome.
Chapter Nine
D.J. WAS A MESS. His hands were sticky from the banana, and everything he’d touched with them—his cheeks, his T-shirt, his shorts, his left knee, his hair—was sticky, too. But he’d gotten through an entire meal at a restaurant without pitching a fit or soiling his diaper. Levi supposed he couldn’t complain about a bit of smeared fruit.
Maybe Levi was selfish. Maybe he was undeserving of the honor and responsibility of being D.J.’s surrogate father—because he really wished he’d been able to leave the kid home. The meal might have been more pleasant, more sophisticated, more relaxing if D.J. hadn’t accompanied them. Levi would have had time alone with Corinne, time to find out why she’d returned to Arlington. Time to see if the attraction he felt toward her was reciprocated. Time to see if six weeks as a full-time daddy had diminished his ability to think and act like a full-time man.
Last Tuesday, unable to scare up a babysitter, he’d brought D.J. with him to his friend Evan’s house for their regular Tuesday night poker game. It had been the first poker game he’d attended since coming home from California with D.J.—and all his poker buddies had insisted that women loved daddies who included babies in their activities. They’d implied that if he wanted to impress a woman, he ought to do just what he’d done tonight: spend an evening with that woman and let D.J. chaperone them.
He wouldn’t have guessed Corinne was the kind of woman who got turned on by little babies, though. Unlike the women he met in the supermarket when he and D.J. went shopping, she didn’t make goo-goo noises, didn’t turn misty-eyed and pinch D.J.’s chubby little cheek and coo to him about what a good boy he was. Not once had she ever gushed, “He’s so cute!”
In fact, although D.J. had been seated at their table at Moise’s, just inches from her right hand, she’d all but ignored him while she’d somehow gotten Levi to tell her more than he’d ever told any other woman about his childhood, his parents, and sister Ruth.
Carrying D.J. carefully so as to prevent the kid’s banana-smeared parts from touching him, he led Corinne from the garage through the mudroom and into the kitchen. He settled D.J. in his walker, and D.J. scooted off like an Indy-500 contender, ricocheting around the room and screeching gleefully. En route to the sink to scrub the stickiness from his hands, he nodded toward the refrigerator. “Just make some space on a shelf,” he invited her.
She carried her dinner leftovers to the fridge and found a spot for the container inside. As she closed the door, D.J. zoomed past her and she flattened herself against the broom closet to keep from getting run over. “This child will never be allowed to drive, if I have any say in the matter,” Levi vowed.
Corinne laughed. “You’ll hand him the keys to your Porsche the minute he’s old enough.”
“Are you kidding? By the time he’s old enough, my Porsche will be an antique. A classic. I won’t let him get within a hundred yards of it.”
D.J. reinforced Levi’s dim view of his driving skills by hot-rodding across the room. “If he’s pushing the thing too fast, maybe it’s because he’s getting too big for it,” Corinne suggested.
“Too big?” Levi frowned. D.J. fit perfectly in the seat. And despite his recklessness in the walker, Levi didn’t want him to outgrow it too soon. Zipping around in it was one of his favorite activities.
“I mean, too old,” she clarified. “If he wants to go that fast, maybe it’s because he’s ready to go faster.” She watched D.J. career past the table. “What do you think about a tricycle?”
What Levi thought was that Corinne was woefully ignorant when it came to babies. He struggled not to guffaw. She looked so earnest and concerned as she evaluated D.J.’s journey about the room, as wild and directionless as a balloon with a leak. How could he laugh at her? “Babies don’t get tricycles until they can walk,” he explained. “He can’t even stand up yet.”
“Well—but he’s standing in the walker, isn’t he?” She gestured toward his feet, which he stretched and pumped against the floor.
“He’s using his feet to push himself. But no, he can’t stand yet. Most babies don’t start walking until they’re closing in on their first birthday.”
“Really?” She gave him a wide-eyed look, as if awed by his knowledge.
He liked being viewed as an expert, especially since he knew how far he was from actually being one. “I asked the Daddy School teacher after class on Monday,” he confessed. “There are books on the subject, guidelines that spell out what an average baby can be expected do at each age. By six months most babies can sit unassisted. By eight months most of them can crawl. By twelve months most of them can walk. By fifteen months they can say a couple of words. I bought one of the books and it was pretty informative. I even read a little of it to D.J. I thought he ought to have an idea of what to look forward to.”
“I take it you didn’t read him the chapter that says by sixteen years he can drive.”
“He’ll never drive,” Levi declared, and his gaze merged with hers. Her eyes were bright with sparks of laughter. Beautiful eyes, he thought. Mesmerizing eyes. Eyes that danced with life and energy.
Had she come back to his house because of D.J. or because of him? Or because she wanted to store her leftovers in his refrigerator?
Did it matter? She’d come back, just as he’d hoped she would. She was here. With him.
There were things he could do, ways he could make a woman feel welcome in his home. Ways he could let this particular woman know that he was keenly aware of how long her legs looked in the snug-fitting beige jeans she had on, and that he’d noticed the shadows of her collarbones below the curved neckline of her short-sleeved sweater, and that watching her fall in love with the clam chowder at Moise’s had made him imagine the way she’d look in the thrall of other, equally sensuous pleasures. But to give voice to the general theme of his thoughts seemed totally inappropriate with D.J. zigzagging around the kitchen, chortling and hooting.
The kid needed a bath. He needed a clean diaper and a bottle and his crib. Everything else would have to wait until D.J. was taken care of.
“I’ve really got to get him washed up and settled down,” he said apologetically. Regardless of his poker buddies’ claims, he doubted Corinne would want to bide her time and twiddle her thumbs while he dumped D.J. in his boat-shaped baby tub and scrubbed the kid clean. Maybe he could offer her some scintillating reading material to keep her occupied while he fulfilled his paternal duties. The best book he’d read lately was Your Baby’s Many Milestones.
“What can I do to help?” she asked.
He studied her face, trying to discern whether she really wanted to be of assistance or was simply offering out of courtesy. She moved her hands along her arms as if she would have rolled up her sleeves if only her sweater didn’t have short sleeves to begin with.
“You can watch me give him a bath,” he said.
“I’d love that.”
One more glance at her face assured him she meant it. “All right then.” He swooped down on D.J. as the kid was making a kamikaze pass and hauled him out of the walker. D.J. let out an indignant howl and reached for his walker, but Levi proceeded out of the kitchen, holding him tightly so he couldn’t squirm loose.
He trooped up the stairs with D.J., Corinne close behind. In the bathroom, Levi put D.J. on the floor mat, and D.J. pushed himself up on his hands and knees, practicing his crawl position. Ignoring him—Corinne could catch him if he miraculously managed to propel himself through the door—Levi adjusted the bathtub faucets to a warm spray and slid the little rowboat-shaped tub under the spout.
“He can’t go in the big tub
?” Corinne asked, instinctively blocking the doorway even though D.J. didn’t seem likely to crawl off the mat.
Levi shot her a quick look over his shoulder. “Too slippery. He could fall backward and crack his head. Or drown.” He appreciated her asking, and appreciated even more that she hadn’t looked at the baby tub and said, “Isn’t it cute!”
Corinne clearly wasn’t the sort of woman who cared about cute. He’d dated a woman a year ago whose entire apartment was filled with cute things—little rosy-cheeked statuettes, butterfly-shaped magnets on her refrigerator, stuffed animals arranged along several shelves in her guest room. If not for her passion for cute things, Levi might have pursued a serious relationship with her. But cute had never cut it with him, and after a few dates he’d communicated to her that they didn’t share the same taste. Specifically, he’d told her he didn’t think much of her stuffed animal collection, and she’d told him to leave, which had been exactly what he’d wanted to do.
He wondered if Corinne collected anything. Stuffed animals? Baseball cards? Pottery? Boyfriends?
He really, really hoped she didn’t collect boyfriends. Given how attractive she was, he couldn’t believe she didn’t have dozens of ardent men waiting for her back in New York City, praying that she might acknowledge their existence with a smile or a nod. But he hoped she wasn’t doing more than smiling and nodding.
In any case, she wasn’t in New York City now. She had deliberately chosen to spend her weekend in Arlington—and not because of Mosley’s house. She hadn’t said a word about the project over dinner. She hadn’t asked when the foundation would be poured, why the footprint hadn’t changed in spite of the alterations he’d made to the design, or whether by some miracle he’d changed his mind about the wall of glass in the kitchen. She’d stopped at the site and seen Levi, and the house had gone forgotten.
She’d come to Arlington for him. Him and D.J. If she had a truckload of men waiting for her back in New York, they obviously didn’t matter to her, at least not this weekend.
The baby tub was half-full and Levi shut off the water. “Okay, buddy,” he said, rolling D.J. onto his back on the shag-soft mat. “Time for your bath.”
“Lee-lee!” D.J. screeched, his voice echoing off the concave fiberglass of the tub stall. He kicked his feet in circles, as if he were pedaling a bicycle, and for a moment Levi wondered whether Corinne might have been onto something when she’d recommended getting him a tricycle.
No, not yet. Not until D.J. grasped the concepts of safety and moderation, two big ideas that seemed irrelevant to him at the moment.
He peeled off D.J.’s shorts and shirt, trying to ignore the fact that Corinne was watching him from the bathroom doorway. The room was spacious, but it felt almost too small with all three of them inside it. He felt Corinne’s nearness too keenly. The humidity of the bathwater seemed to magnify her scent. Although he wasn’t looking at it, he knew the mirror above the sink held her reflection. So even if he turned away from her, he’d still see her.
He worked off the tapes of D.J.’s diaper, hoping he wouldn’t find anything gross enough to sour Corinne’s mood. Luck was with him; the absorbent layers held about three pounds of piss but nothing more substantial. Levi rolled the diaper into a compact ball—he was proud of his efficiency, able to do this with one hand—and lifted D.J. into the tub. D.J. let out a jubilant squeal. He loved baths. They gave him the opportunity to splash water all over Levi.
He noticed a movement in his peripheral vision and lifted his gaze in time to see Corinne pushing away from the door, approaching him. She reached the mat and knelt next to him, her eyes on D.J. “He won’t slip in this?” she asked, running her hand along the smooth plastic edge.
“No. It’s contoured so he can’t.” Levi spoke calmly and authoritatively, while his body stirred to a new level of alertness. He tried to place her fragrance—honey and mint, cool and warm at the same time. Her hair glittered with coppery highlights beneath the overhead fixture, and the skin of her throat was so smooth and taut it took a surprising amount of willpower not to let go of D.J., pivot on his knees and kiss her there, in the arching hollow of her neck.
Before he could get too distracted, D.J. wrenched his body in an attempt to face her. The motion caused a small tidal wave of water to wash up to Levi’s elbow as he tightened his grip on the kid’s slippery arm.
“Lee-lee-lee!” D.J. squawked, attempting to launch himself at Corinne again.
“I’m causing problems here, aren’t I,” she said apologetically, reaching for the bathtub edge to push herself away.
“No.” If he’d had a free hand he would have grabbed her and held her next to him. He could think of no reason that kneeling next to her on a bath mat in this close, muggy bathroom should fill him with such a stark longing, but he didn’t want her to leave. “I think—cut it out, D.J.,” he scolded sharply as the baby made another attempt to escape, shoving his strong little legs against the sides of the plastic boat. “I think he wants you where he can see you. Maybe if we switch sides…”
She shuffled around to his other side on her knees. He felt her press one hand to his back for balance, and a hot spark of desire shot down his spine. He almost laughed at the realization that he could be thinking about sex while engaged in the least sexy activity he could imagine.
Well, no, giving D.J. a bath wasn’t the least sexy activity he could imagine. Changing D.J.’s diaper would win that prize.
Once she’d settled back on her heels, positioned to Levi’s right, D.J. could see her. A huge grin broke across his face, and he kicked his legs, churning the water. “Ba-ba-baa!” Leaning forward, he extended his hands toward her.
“I think he wants you to give him his bath,” Levi observed, privately amused. He himself wouldn’t mind having Corinne give him a bath, either. The two of them in a shower together…
He squelched that thought. “I don’t know how,” she murmured.
“Take the wash cloth.” He indicated it with a jerk of his chin. “And that bottle of baby soap. Put a little soap on the cloth and go to it.”
She shot Levi a measuring look. She didn’t appear anxious or insecure. If anything, she seemed to be accepting this chore as an interesting challenge. Turning back to D.J., she smiled. “Okay, D.J., let’s give this a try,” she said, her voice soft and soothing. She squirted some soap onto the wet cloth, then shuffled closer to Levi, until her hip was pressed to his and her shoulder bumped his. He gave her a little more room, but not much; he wanted to keep his hands on D.J. so the kid wouldn’t fidget and hurt himself or drench her with splattered water.
Carefully, gently, she rubbed the cloth over D.J.’s round belly. Up under the crease of his neck. Over his shoulders, down his plump arms. She concentrated on each star-shaped hand, getting the palm and the back and then scrubbing between his tiny fingers. The first few times Levi had bathed D.J. he’d forgotten to clean between his fingers, and after pulling D.J. from the tub and drying him off he’d felt the stickiness of the kid’s hands. He had no idea why D.J.’s hands were always so sticky, but he’d learned to pay special attention to them during bath time.
Corinne obviously had a good instinct for this kind of thing. She slid the washcloth through the water to D.J.’s feet and gave his toes the same individual attention. He giggled and kicked but let her wash them.
“There you go, D.J.,” she said, running the cloth up and down his back. “You must be clean. You’re shining!”
“I’ll get his hair,” Levi suggested. Shampooing was trickier than bathing the baby’s body. The label on the shampoo bottle promised that it wouldn’t sting a child’s eyes, but Levi didn’t want to test that guarantee and discover it wasn’t true. “If you’ll just hold his hand, he’ll think you’re still washing him.”
She leaned forward to take D.J.’s hand. Levi felt the curve of her breast against his elbow and inched his arm away. D.J. gripped her fingers and made assorted chirps and sputtering sounds. She stroked her thumb acros
s his knuckles—which, on his pudgy hands, resembled dimples at the bases of his fingers. Levi tore his gaze from the sight of her thumb and concentrated on cleaning the banana residue from D.J.’s hair.
Once Levi had rinsed out the shampoo, he reached behind him and pulled D.J.’s towel from the rack. “Okay, buddy—all done,” he announced, lifting him out and placing him in the towel. “Do you want to dry him?” he asked Corinne.
A silly question as he considered it. What was the big deal about drying a baby? All it entailed was wrapping the towel around him and patting him down. But Corinne eagerly took on the task, dabbing droplets of water from D.J.’s face, swabbing him with the soft green terry cloth, drying his toes as conscientiously as she’d washed them.
“Clean diapers are in the other room,” Levi said as he stood. “Would you like to carry him?”
Apparently she would. Wrapping him more snugly in the towel, she lifted him into her arms and peered up. Levi cupped his hands under her elbows and helped her to her feet. For one moment, as she stood facing him, his hands curved around her arms, the only thing that separated them, that kept him from leaning toward her and touching his lips to hers, was D.J.
Once again, Levi suppressed his desire. Releasing her, he turned and stalked into D.J.’s makeshift nursery, silently chastising himself for resenting the kid. It wasn’t D.J.’s fault that Levi couldn’t kiss Corinne. To be sure, he ought to be grateful to D.J. If not for him, Corinne might not have had dinner with Levi.
He couldn’t prove that, but he sensed it in his gut. D.J. was important to her, not because he was cute but for some other reason, something Levi couldn’t begin to comprehend. He could only sense it from the way she gazed into D.J.’s face, from the arch of her arms around the baby, the tilt of her head, the strange peace that settled over D.J. when she held him.
Would Levi feel that peaceful if Corinne held him, if she arched her beautiful arms around him and gazed into his face? Or would he feel wild and greedy?
Hush, Little Baby Page 14