And he hated it when people had no hope. Life without hope that you could have something you dreamed of was living with poverty of the soul. He knew. He’d been there.
Damn it, there was always a way, he told himself, feeling anger at his inadequacy heating within him. He would just have to find it.
Annie had to smile when she returned from her office at eight o’clock and slipped through the rear door of West’s home. Not only had West left the door unlocked for her, he’d left the front, the garage, and the kitchen lights on, as well. So much for worrying about whether he really wanted her to return or not.
Although she could hear West talking to Teddy in the living room, and she was dying to see the baby again, she went directly to West’s bedroom instead, mainly to shower, but also to avoid having to talk to West for as long as possible. After discussing his seminar and the baby’s new things last night, and Teddy’s future and West’s childhood that morning, she was awfully afraid that eventually, if he couldn’t produce his “plan,” they would have nothing left to talk about except the kiss. And that she didn’t want to discuss with him.
Nor did she even want to think about how good the kiss had felt, or how much she wanted him to kiss her again. There was no future for them, no compromising on the way they wanted their lives.
Ready to face the inevitable, Annie padded barefoot out of the bedroom, and headed downstairs. She was glad she’d gone to the office today. The work had taken her mind off West, and renewed her determination not to leave without Teddy in her arms tomorrow evening, the end of the bet. After she’d discovered two other pro bono cases that had been buried in her avalanche of paperwork and forgotten, her conscience was throbbing painfully.
Pushing her honey-gold hair behind her ears, she reached the bottom of the stairs. West was walking with Teddy against his shoulder toward the playpen when the three of them met in the hallway. Seeing the look in her eyes, he handed the baby to her.
“Where have you been?” he asked. “I thought you’d be home a couple hours ago.”
“Careful, West,” she said softly, walking into the living room and easing down onto the softness of the sofa with a drowsy Teddy in her arms. “Or I’ll think you missed me.”
“What I missed doesn’t matter. It’s what you missed.” West sat on the couch, too, reclining with a groan of contentment and leaving her to wonder what had happened while she was gone. His shirt was stained. Had Teddy had a solitary food fight, with West as the target? With his mussed hair and the growl on his face, Annie found she had to smile at him.
And then he angled his thigh so that it brushed against her knee, and all her amusement at the rough afternoon he must have had playing daddy ceased. Every time he shifted, hot tremors ran up her leg and curled around her insides. She swallowed.
“If taking care of Teddy and worrying about me is getting to you, West, I’ll be happy to call the bet off and take him home with me.” Soon. Please. End this agony.
He put an end to that idea with a shake of his head. “We’re in this together, until the end of the bet.”
“Then what did I miss?” She sounded cranky, even to herself.
“About an hour ago, Marcia called. But I was giving Teddy a bath after his dinner—he got kind of dirty—”
“I see,” she said, pointing to West’s shirt.
“—and I couldn’t leave him. The machine picked it up.”
Annie felt like cursing. She should have been here. Since about six she’d been doing nothing but thinking about West and how, no matter what he came up with, there just weren’t enough hours in her day or money in her bank account to do the job she wanted to do for people and have a child, too. There just wasn’t. And there was no sense in hoping that while she’d been gone West had worked up any kind of plan that would change a thing in her life.
“Oh, West, I’m so sorry. What did she say?”
“She hopes Teddy isn’t being a problem and she’s definitely going to be back by next Saturday.”
“But that’s a whole week!”
West’s eyebrows arched. “Tell me something I don’t already know. Your aunt called, too. She said something about passing her audition.”
“What audition?”
“At the Café Lauree in the French Quarter. She’s having rehearsals every day and performing free on Tuesday evening. If she’s a hit, she’ll be hired on there for two nights a week. So quote, ‘Don’t expect me to drop by anytime soon.’“ He closed his eyes and yawned. “And we’re both invited. She’s even lined up a sitter for us. It’d be nice if we went.”
If she wasn’t so darned aware of West as a man, Annie doubted his saying they should go would have affected her at all. But the kiss the day before and his closeness now made her cautious. What was he up to? It was crystal clear that both of them knew where they stood with each other, so why was he trying to get closer to her?
“This sounds suspiciously like a rigged-up date, West, and I don’t like the sounds of it at all.”
“Rigged-up date?” Opening his eyes, West shifted his entire body away from her as he sat up straight. “In case you haven’t noticed, dating isn’t one of my priorities and getting you married off isn’t one of your aunt’s.”
That was true.
“It’s her dream, Annie. Don’t you want to be there to share it with her?”
“I was there,” she replied, “when no one would buy her paintings.” She wasn’t upset at his question because he really didn’t know Gigi’s background. “I was also there each time when she came home disappointed because she got only bit parts in the local plays. I think maybe Aunt Gigi would understand if I’m a little too busy to show up for this latest dream debut. She knows how I feel.”
“That dreams are a waste of time,” he said.
Annie nodded. Especially, she added silently, staring at West, when you embellished upon them like she was right now. She was thinking for the first time that hers would really be a dream if he were the one to fulfill it.
For a second she wondered if he could read her thoughts, because his dark eyes suddenly lost his weary-old-man look. Now he was staring at her with an intensity that made her wonder if he wanted to kiss her as much as she wanted him to. They gazed at each other for seconds that ticked into eternity, and with all her heart, Annie wished she could give up her dream, or West could give up his pain and his fear of love, and that he would kiss her again—and again, and again. But that would be ridiculous….out of the question….
Idiocy, West thought, breaking the connection between them by pushing himself up off the sofa to get his notebook in the dining room. He wanted badly to kiss Annie again, but that would be lunacy on his part when nothing could ever come of it.
He came back with his notes and sat on the chair on the other side of the coffee table. “It took a while,” he told her, “but I finally outlined a plan that will help you achieve what you want.”
Two distinct emotions passed over Annie’s face—first fear, and then excitement. Her breath caught and her eyes brightened. But then, as though she thought that she were showing him too much of her inner thoughts, she bowed to kiss the sleeping Teddy on the top of his downy-soft head. Rising, she laid him gently down in his playpen. When she finally sat down and faced him again, she was her usual composed self.
“Go ahead, Gallagher,” she said too brightly. “I’d love to hear what you’ve come up with.”
“Annie, it’s okay. You can let yourself believe.” West made a decision right then and there for better or worse—probably for worse—and he told her just so he couldn’t take it back. “I’m not going to give up on you until you’ve got your baby.” There, now he’d gone and committed himself to helping her find some man to take her to bed. He must be nuts.
Annie didn’t say a word, and he couldn’t tell what she was thinking, so there was only one thing left to do—begin. “I’ve broken your dream down into three major steps.”
“I didn’t know making a baby was so complicated,
” she said with a gentle smirk.
“Do you want this or not?” he asked sternly over the top of his notebook.
“Sorry,” she said.
“First, you write down your exact dream, focusing on the parts you need to make it come true.”
Her smile widened. “Do you mean anatomical parts?”
“No.” He scowled, wondering if she were teasing him or making fun of him. There was a difference. “Am I going to have to walk you totally through this?”
“‘Fraid so,” she said with a nod.
He sighed. “What I mean is, you want first to figure out if you want a real person or a donation.”
“Both. I want a real man to donate his side of it.”
“Then you want a sperm bank.”
“No.” She looked flustered, making West wonder how much actual thought she’d given to her plan. But then she continued. “I don’t want an anonymous donor. I want to know the father and make sure he’s a good man at heart.”
She was serious. “That’s going to make this that much harder,” he told her.
“If it were easy, West, I would have had my baby by now.” The thought hung in the air between them for a long moment, and then she rose. “I need a drink of something before we continue,” she said. “Want anything?”
He shook his head. As she padded into the next room, West followed with his eyes, watching the swing of her hips in the faded shorts she wore. She’d caught her hair in a long braid down her back, and suddenly he ached to take the golden rope apart and run his fingers through her loose hair.
Her hair, hell. He wanted to run his fingers all over her, touch her everywhere.
Frowning at the direction his thoughts were taking, West moved into the next room and sat down at the dining room table where he’d left the rest of his paper and his pen. Babies and relationships. Never before had they ever been this important—so why now? How in the hell had he ended up with both a baby and a relationship—of sorts—in his own house, rousing him out of his calm solitude? Until the two of them had shown up two days ago, he’d been happy. Now he was….
Involved.
He stared through the hallway into the kitchen, where he could see Annie clinking ice into a glass, and then around to the living room and the sleeping baby in the playpen. The house seemed vibrant now that Annie was back. Warm, full of life.
Maybe he should get a dog.
Annie walked in with a glass of ice tea, grabbed a coaster, and took a seat near him, shooting a skeptical look at his notepad. “Is there a test?”
“The paper is for the parts of your dream,” he reminded her. “It’s best to write everything down. That way you don’t get overwhelmed by thinking the details are insurmountable.”
They were insurmountable, Annie thought as West began writing, but she didn’t voice that opinion. Instead, she leaned forward until she could see what he had written.
West finished and looked up, right at the view of her cleavage. He gulped. “Maybe I do need a drink.”
“‘Live donor’?” she asked as he walked to the kitchen. “Does that mean I have to go to bed with him?”
“Him, who?” West asked before he thought, and then he quickly covered his tracks. “Never mind. ‘Live donor’ is whatever you decide it means.” His throat went even drier at the thought she might already have a man in mind for the job. “I’m staying out of that part,” he called to her.
“That might be wise,” she agreed. “They say three’s a crowd.”
This was torture. Popping a soda can tab, West got his drink and joined her again. Clearing his throat, he continued. “Okay, we were writing down your dream, focusing on its parts. You want to have the baby and keep your pro bono clients. So that means you need financial and networking support.”
Feeling Annie’s eyes on him, he talked about looking into having either a partner or hiring secretarial help to handle some of the paperwork so she could handle both her pro bono and her paying cases.
“I had a secretary when I had a partner,” she told him.
“You had a partner?” he asked.
“Joel Malcoby,” she said, her lips pursing for a second as she remembered. “Malcoby and Robicheaux. He lasted one year until he won three highprofile cases and got wooed away by a downtown legal monopoly. He took my secretary and two of my best clients with him, and along with it, my trust in outsiders. No more partners.”
West looked so startled at what she’d told him that Annie almost added, “So there,” but instead, she closed her mouth to see what he would say next. She was fascinated that he’d given her dream this much thought. However, he’d merely come up with every solution she had so far, which meant he wasn’t going to fish her answers out of the sky.
His eyes were troubled. “If you really want this dream, Annie, you’re going to have to learn to trust again.”
“Trusting isn’t my problem.”
“Isn’t it?”
Now he was getting on her nerves. “Time is my problem. The ticking of the clock. If I had enough time, I would handle all the cases of everyone who needs me, and the cases of the people I need to stay in business—the ones with the thick wallets. But there is never enough time.”
West, as though he wasn’t listening, jotted down a few words. “I’ve got more thinking to do on the financial end, but rest assured, Annie, I will come up with something.” He grinned up at her. “Trust me.”
Trust him. She had to smile back. “You are the most optimistic so-and-so I have ever met in my whole life, did you know that?”
He grinned wider and rose. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m ready to hit the sofa. This daddy bit does take its toll.” Ripping off the top two pages of the notes he’d taken, he handed them to her. “Embellish on what I’ve written down for Part One tonight. Come up with some names of prospective fathers. If you don’t, I’ll be happy to come up with a couple possibilities for you.”
“Do you know anyone who isn’t a dreamer?”
“I might surprise you.”
“I believe I’ll take care of that part on my own, thank you.” Annie thought the less West knew about any potential fathers, the less interfering he could do in the future, should he be so inclined. “But what about Parts Two and Three?”
“Got you interested, huh?”
“You’ve got me wanting to wring your neck in your sleep,” she said sweetly from between gritted teeth as she folded the notes and stuck them in her pocket “Parts Two and Three, West?”
“You do Part One for me tonight,” he said, grinning at her scowl, “and I promise I’ll give you Part Two tomorrow.”
If he seriously believed she was going to hand over to him the names of men she wanted to father her baby, Annie thought, picking up Teddy and heading toward the stairs, tomorrow was going to be one interesting tug-of-war-with her heart right in the middle.
7
Annie’s bedtime forecast of Monday with West turned out to be right on target. He had believed she was going to come downstairs with a list, and the more he hinted, probed and just plain asked her to produce it, the more she dug in her heels against doing so. And because she wouldn’t give him any names, he’d refused to tell her Parts Two and Three of his plan. By late that afternoon, she and West were at a stalemate.
Worse, the three-day bet over who was the better parent to Teddy—and with it her time with West—was about to draw to a close. By mutual agreement, they had decided to have one last meal together outside on the patio before going inside to settle the question of who would keep the baby.
“I’ve just figured out why you’ve been so closemouthed all day,” West said.
Having finished the last of her sandwich, Annie glanced over to check on Teddy, who was happily rolling over in his playpen to the side of them, before she looked back at West.
“Okay, know-it-all,” she said, “tell me why.”
“Because you haven’t come up with any possible fathers yet.”
“I didn’
t say that.” Flustered, Annie tried not to show it by smiling sweetly at him. How did he read people so well? He was one thin line of notepaper from the truth. “I do have a name—or two, but I think the actual father might be better left on a need-toknow basis.”
West considered this for a moment, staring at the window behind Annie’s head. They’d left it partially open while they were outside so they could hear the phone ring—or even better, the doorbell. Both of them had been praying Marcia would get an attack of conscience on the holiday and return. At least West was, because pretty soon Annie would be leaving him and he’d be alone with Teddy and real fatherhood.
“A need-to-know basis, huh?” he said. “I hope that includes the father being told.”
“Of course.” How could West think her without at least that much integrity? “The way I see it, as long as the deed is done, you don’t really need to know the particulars of how I have this baby, do you?” Annie paused to take a quick sip of her soda. “You already said you have no personal interest in my having a child. If you’re helping me just to prove you aren’t a fake, why should you care who the father is?”
“I just want to make sure you have one.” West wondered if Annie realized she could talk circles around him. “If you don’t, I’ve made a few friends in the city you might be interested in.” West felt total irrational jealousy every time he thought about Annie with another man, but she was right. He had no claim to her, so he shouldn’t care whom she had a relationship with.
He shouldn’t—but he did. She was so vulnerable. He sensed it in every sweep of her eyelashes, in the way her mouth tilted when she thought about his questions. He didn’t want anyone taking advantage of her during her quest to have her child.
Annie didn’t bother to reply to West’s offer, choosing instead to turn and watch Teddy play as she thought about whose name she had written down on the small sheet of paper—West’s. The more she’d considered men last night, the better she’d liked the idea of West doing the deed, for various reasons. He had a heart. He was the only man she’d spent any real time with in the past two years. And since he didn’t want children, he’d never ask for custody rights, she was sure. And on top of all that, there was the way she felt inside when she looked into those dark eyes of his. Warm, sexy, heated up. Going to bed with West would definitely not be a chore. Every time he looked at her or their skin brushed together, she felt like a woman again, and it had been so long since she’d let herself remember how that felt.
The One-Week Baby (Yours Truly) Page 8