Chapter Eleven
SOMEONE HAD decorated the YMCA room in the week since Levi was last there. Perky posters featuring illustrations of healthful activities hung on the walls: a colorful depiction of the food pyramid, a photograph of children playing soccer with the word EXERCISE! printed in vivid orange letters above them, a bright rendition of a toothbrush with a generous nurdle of toothpaste adorning the bristles.
D.J.’s bottom two teeth had broken through. His teething pain had obviously abated; he hardly ever fussed and whimpered these days. Levi wondered whether he was supposed to brush D.J.’s teeth. There wasn’t much to brush, only two hard white bumps, like dots of puff paint adorning his gums.
He’d learned about puff paint from Evan’s daughter Gracie at last week’s poker game. She’d just graduated from preschool, and she viewed herself as an art expert, having mastered such techniques as glitter, markers, finger paint and puff paint.
Would D.J. someday reveal an artistic flair? He had a set of non-toxic crayons which he mostly used as drumsticks—but then, he used everything as drumsticks. Banging on things was obviously one of his preferred activities.
But his mother had been artistic, and his uncle…well, architecture was kind of a hybrid, but it required an esthetic sense and a certain amount of creativity. It was the perfect discipline for someone with the mind of an engineer but the soul of an artist. Levi wasn’t sure what kind of mind D.J. had, but he certainly seemed to have a lot of soul.
Levi had left him and Tara in the den twenty minutes ago, Tara watching TV and D.J. propelling himself around the room in his walker—at a modest pace since the den had carpeting which slowed the walker down to an almost reasonable speed. Levi hoped he would tire himself out so he’d be ready for bed by the time Levi got home. A quick bath, a quick bottle and a valiant attempt at a lullaby—D.J. obviously didn’t appreciate Levi’s singing voice as much as he’d appreciated Corinne’s—and into the crib, hopefully for the night.
The folding metal chair Levi sat on was too small for him. He felt as if he could rest his chin on his sharply bent knees. Evan took Daddy School classes, too, but in a different program, one run by the director of Gracie’s preschool. She led classes for fathers of older children. The classes Allison Winslow taught at the YMCA were for fathers of infants and men whose babies hadn’t even been born yet.
One of Levi’s classmates had just changed status. The young man strutted into the room bearing a fistful of pink bubble-gum cigars. Allison, who arrived at the room with him, seemed just as delighted as the new father. “Bobby! You’ve got a daughter?”
“We sure do!” Bobby beamed and passed out the cigars, basking in the congratulations of his fellow students. Bobby didn’t look old enough to be a father. The kid was easily ten years younger than Levi, and Levi didn’t feel old enough to be a father himself.
Maybe he’d feel old enough if he had a woman by his side. A woman to whom D.J. meant as much as he did to Levi. A woman whose heart lay open to D.J., who could put D.J. to bed and tuck him in and then leave the room and open her heart to Levi.
He felt a sharp twinge of arousal and shifted his legs, nearly kicking the chair next to him. It was Monday night, and he wasn’t going to see Corinne again until Friday.
He might not feel old enough to be a father, but he was definitely too old to be a weekend boyfriend. After enjoying a solid forty-eight hours with Corinne, Levi had found her departure Sunday afternoon torturous. The time they’d spent together had been almost mundane: a bit of puttering in the back yard, a drive to the Mosley site to check on the drying footings, a stop at the library to borrow The Buddy Holly Story—he had no idea why they’d chosen that flick, but they’d both enjoyed it. So had D.J., until he’d dropped off to sleep in the middle of “That’ll Be The Day.”
Once the movie had ended, they’d carried D.J. up to his crib and headed down the hall to Levi’s room…
He felt another tug in his groin. It amazed him that he could feel so utterly attuned to her, as if their bodies had been born knowing each other—and yet he still didn’t actually know her. He knew how to make her sigh, how to make her moan. Without having to think about it, he could read her body with his own. He could tell when she was on the verge of coming and hold back, slow down, stretch it out for her until she was gasping and pleading, her legs clasped hard around him and her hands fisted against his back. And then, when neither of them could wait another instant, he could let go, sending them both over the edge.
They were so compatible it was almost uncanny.
But that was in bed. Out of bed, he wasn’t so sure.
It wasn’t as if they didn’t get along. They did, wonderfully. He liked talking to her, listening to her, looking at her. He loved hearing her sing to D.J. But knowing that she could sing a lullaby a hundred times better than he could, knowing that she could embrace his baby in all kinds of ways, wasn’t the same thing as knowing her.
Why had she returned to Arlington last Friday? For Levi or for D.J.? She’d said she’d returned for both of them—but why would a beautiful single professional woman travel all the way to Arlington for a baby? Why would she sing to D.J. in a voice filled with such profound devotion?
Levi didn’t know.
And the damnedest thing was, he didn’t think she knew, either.
“Okay, everyone, let’s settle down,” Allison urged the class as several of the fathers unwrapped their bubblegum cigars and the rest, like Levi, pocketed them. “Bobby, why don’t you tell us what you’ve discovered about being a father, now that you’re actually one.”
The new dad in the spotlight grinned. A small diamond winked from his earlobe and a tattoo—it looked like Chinese ideogram—darkened one forearm. He was obviously a very proud papa at the moment. “We named her Chandra,” he said. “She is so gorgeous you could die. I swear, I’m gonna tear out the eyeballs of any guy who looks at her the wrong way. You’re all my witnesses to that. I swear it.”
Most of the men chuckled. Allison laughed out loud. Levi remembered his brief encounter with her daughter, when he’d driven to Jamie McCoy’s house. Allison was Jamie’s wife, and their daughter, at age three, seemed perfectly capable of tearing out a person’s eyeballs without any assistance from an overprotective father.
“What else? Is she keeping you up all night?”
“Me? No. My wife takes care of that.”
Again a few men chuckled. Allison didn’t smile. “How about at mealtimes? Can you and your wife sit down and have a calm dinner?”
“Calm? Hell, no.” Bobby grinned, but his eyes darkened with frustration. “Nothing’s calm. Calm isn’t in our vocabulary right now, if you know what I mean.”
“I do know what you mean. All the daddies in this room know what you mean. Those of you who are still awaiting your bundles of joy, I hope you’re paying attention. Life isn’t calm when you’ve got a baby in the house. In fact, it often doesn’t calm down again until your baby leaves home, eighteen or twenty years from now.”
A low murmur spread through the room. Levi rearranged his legs to keep them from getting stiff. He’d had a pretty calm dinner with Corinne Friday night at Moise’s Fish House. Give D.J. enough banana, and the kid could stay reasonably mellow. Saturday night Levi had grilled chicken and they’d eaten on the screened porch. D.J. had spent most of the mealtime careening around the porch in his walker, which wasn’t exactly calm, but Levi and Corinne had been able to tune him out enough to have an extended conversation. They’d talked about Corinne’s first experiences with winter, as someone who’d grown up in Phoenix and never built a snowman in her life, and about the Boston office complex Levi and his partner Phyllis were bidding on.
“How about sex?” Allison asked Bobby.
A few of the men squirmed in their chairs, apparently embarrassed. Bobby scowled. “Hey, come on! She only just had a baby. The poor woman has to heal.”
Allison smiled her approval. “Yes, she does. But here’s something some of the
other dads in the room will tell you: your sex life is probably going to change because of the baby. This is something we need to talk about. It causes a lot of fathers problems.”
More murmuring. More squirming. Levi drew in a deep breath and leveled his eyes on Allison. He’d enrolled in the Daddy School hoping for pointers about child care, not for sex education from a slim, curly-haired neonatal nurse.
Yet his sex life had changed with the arrival of D.J. At first sex had become so removed from his consciousness, he hadn’t even had any urges, let alone acted on them. And then Corinne had entered his world.
Should he thank D.J.? Was he the only student in the class who could honestly say his baby had in fact improved his sex life?
Anger pinched his brow and tightened his mouth. He didn’t want to believe D.J. was that essential to his relationship with Corinne. Of course he was glad she liked the baby, of course he appreciated her tolerance of and patience with D.J. But deep in his heart, Levi wanted to believe that he, not his nephew, was the main attraction for her. He wanted to believe that there was more passion in her kisses than in her lullabies.
He told himself not to get all worked up about it. She would be back in Arlington Friday evening, and he would observe her with D.J., and he would have her in his bed. He would reassure himself that he wasn’t in competition with D.J. for her affection. What was going on between her and the kid was a universe apart from what was going on between her and Levi. If she lived closer, he wouldn’t have to wait until the weekend to put his concerns to rest, but the situation was what it was.
She lived in New York, and he was a weekend boyfriend.
*
“YOU’RE GOING BACK to Arlington again?” Gerald asked.
He’d slouched into Corinne’s office ten minutes ago, pretending to be wrung out from their meeting with the people from Bell Tech. The session had gone quite well, but Gerald wasn’t used to sitting around conference tables and discussing business in a civil, sedate manner. He liked to babble jargon and spew ideas, and he grew irritated with people who didn’t understand what he was talking about—which was the vast majority of people he encountered. He didn’t grow irritated with Corinne only because he depended on her to help him navigate through the real world—and because she never grew irritated with him.
He’d come to her office to rehash the meeting. For the past ten minutes, he’d complained about how poorly the meeting had gone, and she’d assured him that the meeting had in fact gone quite well. The Bell Tech people were enthusiastic about working with Gerald and they wanted to meet with him and Corinne again. She’d told them it would have to be early next week. She couldn’t schedule a meeting for Friday.
Now Gerald was questioning her about that. Unwilling to hide the truth from him, she told him. “Yes, I’m going back to Arlington.”
“Why? What’s wrong? Are the builders screwing up my house?”
“No. At least, I assume not. When I was there last weekend, everything seemed fine.”
“So why are you going back?”
He stared at her across her desk, his hair mussed and his eyes keen through the lenses of his glasses. Gerald was so smart, it was a point of pride with him that he should be able to comprehend everything. When he didn’t—like now—it irked him, and he’d continue questioning her until he got an answer he could program into his operating system.
She wished she could give him an answer she could comprehend. “There’s a baby up there.”
“A baby?” He scowled and fell back in his chair. He swung one foot up and balanced it across the other knee. His shoe was untied, and the lace tapped quietly against the treaded rubber soul. “What baby?”
“Levi Holt’s baby.”
“The architect? Is that the baby who caused all the problems when you went to renegotiate the contract?”
“Yes.”
“So, what does his baby have to do with you?”
“The baby… I know this will sound strange, Gerald, but he needs me.”
“The baby needs you?” She nodded, and his scowl intensified. “How does Levi’s wife feel about that?”
“He doesn’t have a wife. All he has is this baby.”
“Does not compute.” Gerald shook his head. “I thought I was the weird one in this outfit, Corey. You can’t be weird, too. One of us has to be sane.”
Her laughter sounded sad. She didn’t believe she was insane, any more than she believed Gerald was. Her connection to D.J. was odd, but she hoped that if she kept returning to Arlington it would eventually start making sense. And in the meantime, she’d be with Levi.
Levi.
She had to stifle a sigh. While her feelings for D.J. mystified her, her feelings for Levi were as clear as distilled water. He enthralled her. He astounded her. He made her feel cherished and desirable. He accepted her as she was. She didn’t have to knock herself out to impress him.
And in bed…oh, God, in bed he was amazing. She’d never thought of herself as a particularly sensual woman, but he made her bold and daring, even aggressive. His touch awakened all sorts of brave impulses inside her, all kinds of erotic longings. Who needed a fireplace in the bedroom with the conflagrations that erupted between her and Levi whenever they entered that room and exchanged a gaze?
Just thinking about him left a trail of heat tingling down her spine.
“Is this one of those biological clock thingies?” Gerald asked.
Corinne chuckled at Gerald’s tactlessness. “Thingies?”
“You know what I mean. You’re closing in on your thirtieth birthday and you want to have a kid.”
“No. I don’t particularly want a kid. It’s just this kid.” Her smile faded as she realized how bizarre she must sound to Gerald, who counted on her not to be weird. “Maybe he and I knew each other in a past life,” she said. “Maybe we’ve got some sort of karmic connection.”
Gerald shook his head again. He appeared gravely troubled. “You’re sure it has nothing to do with my house?”
“Your house is going to be fine—other than that stupid wall of glass in the kitchen and the fireplace in the bedroom. Don’t worry about it, Gerald. It’s going to be everything you dreamed, and then some.”
“I’m worried. When you tell me not to worry, I worry. At least I do when you’ve got that glazed look in your eyes.”
“What glazed look?” She blinked vigorously. “Can we finish reviewing the Bell Tech meeting? Because I’ve got work to do.”
“I know what work you’ve got to do. I’m your boss,” Gerald said, a statement that would have alarmed her if his tone had possessed an ounce of conviction. However, he sounded not bossy but deeply concerned about her, and his concern touched her. In any case, he would never dare to boss her around. He might have been the genius behind their first venture, but without her marketing skills to back him up, he would probably still be traveling from ad agency to media outlet, trying to convince skeptical clients to buy his graphics software and wondering why companies weren’t more interested in it.
He needed her. Corporate hierarchies were irrelevant.
Maybe she shouldn’t have been so honest with him about her plan to return to Arlington. She shouldn’t have mentioned that an adorable baby boy had stolen a piece of her heart. Or maybe she should have been more honest and told him a tall, dark-eyed man had stolen a different piece of her heart. Gerald was her best friend. She ought to tell him.
But she couldn’t—because she didn’t know what to say. The passion burning between her and Levi could be just a brief, brilliant blaze, a flare that would die down the instant its fuel supply was spent. In another month D.J. would be an entirely different person. Babies changed so fast.
And then where would she be? Still by Gerald’s side, imagining herself by his side forever, two compatible loners teaming up and facing the world together. Even if what she felt for Levi was love—and for all she knew, it was—it wouldn’t last. As best she could tell, love never did. It couldn’t be trus
ted.
She’d enjoy the blaze’s heat and dazzling light for as long as it lasted. Once it had extinguished itself, she and Gerald would still be together, friends, in no danger of getting burned.
*
THEY DROVE for a while, and when they stopped moving they were at a place he’d never seen before, a long walkway with a ditch next to it and a little shed hanging over their heads. “The train’s going to come,” Levi said. “You know what a train is, don’t you?”
He knew, because the lady with the big hands read him a book about a train carrying toys over a hill. The train that chugged to the platform where Levi stood holding D.J. was loud and clangy, all hot, sleek metal. It rolled to a halt with a painful screech.
Lots of people poured off the train, but he saw only one: the woman. She was back. She and Levi saw each other almost as soon as D.J. saw her, and they walked toward each other, smiling so much D.J. knew they were as happy as he was. D.J. had believed she would come back, and here she was.
She was carrying a bag, but she set it down on the platform and wrapped them both in her arms, a huge double hug, one arm around Levi and one around them both. She kissed Levi’s cheek and then D.J.’s head and then Levi’s cheek again, and his mouth. D.J. was so excited he squealed and twisted in Levi’s arm, trying to grab her hair.
She caught his hand and he wrapped his fingers around her thumb. Her hands were much smaller than Levi’s, and it was easy for D.J. to get his fingers to circle all the way around. Her hands were smoother, too, no rough, hard places like on Levi’s. She said something to Levi, and he passed D.J. to her so she could hold him. She wasn’t as strong as Levi, or as high off the ground, and her shoulder wasn’t as hard and wide. But she smelled so good, that warm woman smell he loved. He cuddled up to her, feeling the curve of her breast against his belly and pressing his mouth to her chin.
“Hello, D.J.,” she said cheerfully. “Did you miss me?”
Of course he’d missed her. He wished he knew how to tell her.
Hush, Little Baby Page 17