Dinner First, Me Later?

by Candy Halliday

  Just like the trip to the hospital.

  The truth was, he hadn’t been going to the hospital. Going to the hospital had never even crossed his mind. And why would it? He wasn’t yet accustomed to hanging out in suburbia with his mind completely centered in family mode.

  However, common sense told Jake that he was going to have to start thinking like the family man he was trying to become. The new Jake would go to the hospital to lend support to his new neighborhood friends. Unlike his automatic old-Jake response, which had been heading off to his favorite sports bar next to Wrigley Field.

  The Infield Tavern was a place where die-hard Cubs fans gathered for serious talk about the greatest sport on earth. It was also a place where women rarely entered, so you didn’t have to worry about a female butting into the conversation with a giggle saying, “That Mark Prior is a real hottie.”

  And—as the old Cheers theme song said—it was a place where everybody knew your name.

  Jake even had his own stool at the bar. The owner had reserved the stool in his honor after he played the best baseball of his life in the 2003 National League Division Series, leading the Cubs to their first post-season series win in ninety-five years.

  Sadly, the play-off run had ended in game seven of the National League Championship Series when the Florida Marlins beat the Cubs, and then went on to win the 2003 World Series. Ironically, game seven had also put an end to his baseball career—although Jake had no one to blame but himself.

  He’d known his right shoulder was injured halfway through the play-offs. But when the coach and the team doctor had suspected the same thing, he’d lied. Some would say he deserved permanently injuring his right shoulder in the last inning of the final game.

  Maybe he did deserve it.

  Still, Jake would rather have played the best baseball of his life while the Cubs were winning than sit on the bench and risk the Cubs waiting another ninety-five years for a post-season win.

  And that’s the kind of guy he really was, whether Alicia questioned his character or not. He was a team player. Things important to him he took seriously. And he was nothing like the freewheeling, self-centered playboy he was made out to be in the tabloids.

  Besides, his old-Jake image was a thing of the past. He was all about new Jake now. New Jake wasn’t going to pay any attention to the way Alicia’s dress had slid up to expose even more of her fabulous legs. Nor was he going to dwell on the intoxicating smell of her perfume. And he damn sure wasn’t going to let her lure him into any flirty bantering back and forth that would lower his guard and make him slip up and say something old-Jake stupid.

  New Jake meant remaining indifferent to Alicia.

  That was his new-Jake goal.

  That was his new-Jake plan.

  Alrighty then, Alicia thought as they rode along in silence. For what now? At least three or four minutes?

  She chanced a glance to her right.

  Jake was sitting with his eyes straight ahead. He also had the same blank expression on his face that he’d worn since he’d first gotten into her car.

  I see the wheel spinning, but the hamster looks dead.

  No. She was obviously dead to him. That was the problem. And the confirmation that she might as well be dead as far as Jake Sims was concerned ticked Alicia off all over again.

  Damn him!

  She was going to make him talk to her whether he liked it or not. And what better way to get any man’s attention than to ask questions that were all about him? Except her questions were going to be loaded. And they were going to be purposely designed to get a rise out of him—in more ways than one.

  Alicia said, “May I ask you a question?”

  He finally looked over at her.

  Alicia didn’t wait for his permission. “Why the Cubs?” She hiked her bare (and hopefully alluring) shoulder up in a what’s-up-with-that-choice? shrug. “I mean,” Alicia said, “I hate to sound disloyal to the hometown team and all that, but people do call the Cubs the ‘lovable losers’ for a reason. Why did a talented first baseman like you want to play for such an underdog team?”

  She saw a muscle in his jaw twitch.

  Yippee! Nerve exposed. Tap dance successful, Alicia thought with glee. She even braced herself for Jake to come out swinging in full defense of his team. But he didn’t.

  All he said was, “I guess you could say I’m an underdog kind of guy.”

  Referring to what? His childhood maybe? No! She wasn’t going to go in the sympathy direction.

  Alicia tried again. She even sent him a flirty little smile this time. “You could also say you’re an underwear kind of guy. But that wasn’t my question.”

  He looked over at her again, but he didn’t smile back.

  “Oh, come on, Jake,” Alicia scoffed. “Don’t tell me you’re still pouting over what I said the other morning at coffee. It was Zada I was really angry with for trying to play matchmaker. Besides, I thought you and I had started over. You even said yourself I wasn’t the first woman to question your character.”

  He looked straight at her and said, “Are you always this annoying, Alicia? Or are you just making a special effort with me?”

  “A little of both,” Alicia admitted and sent him another let’s-flirt-a-little smile.

  This would have been the perfect opportunity for him to lighten up with a witty comeback. Again, he didn’t. Eyes straight ahead. Blank expression back on his face.

  Just because you have one doesn’t mean you have to BE one! Alicia thought. She felt like smacking him. Dammit, she was getting nowhere fast. And New Hope Women’s Hospital was less than ten minutes away from Woodberry Park—the reason Zada had chosen the smaller hospital rather than risk the forty-five-minute drive into downtown Chicago.

  Okay, Alicia decided, so she’d struck out with baseball. Maybe it was time to hit a home run in the opposite direction. She glanced over at him and said, “Even if you only halfway answered my question, Jake, turnabout is still fair play. So it’s your turn. You can ask me anything you like.”

  “I’ll pass,” he said.

  Alicia raised an eyebrow. “Not even a question about the Housewives Fantasy Club?”

  “The what?”

  Jake had asked the question before he could stop himself. But he knew the second he asked, Alicia had trapped him into a conversation he didn’t want to have.

  She laughed and said, “You mean the girls didn’t bother to tell you that you’ve been hanging out with the naughty housewives in Woodberry Park?”

  Naughty housewives?

  Definitely not a conversation I want to have!

  She said, “When the guys get together on Saturday night to play poker, the Housewives Fantasy Club gets together to share our most secret desires.”

  Secret desires?

  Shit!

  “What I’m trying to figure out,” she said with a smirk, “is exactly where you’re going to fit into our happy little cul-de-sac on Saturday nights, Jake.”

  Jake went ahead and asked, “Meaning?”

  She chuckled. “Well, I think it’s pretty obvious, Jake. You’re a guy, of course, which means you’re eligible for the poker game. But for all practical purposes, you’re also one of the housewives now.”

  “Yeah, I guess I am,” Jake said, refusing to argue. He was in a hurry to put an end to this conversation. He should have just answered her damn baseball question. That was a lot safer than fantasy clubs and secret desires!

  She smiled at him again. “Soooo?” she said in a singsong voice. “Which do you think you will choose, Jake? Poker? Or shall I make arrangements to induct you into the Housewives Fantasy Club at our next meeting?”

  Jake couldn’t stifle a not-in-this-lifetime laugh.

  She acted surprised. “You think my suggestion that you should join our Fantasy Club is funny?”

  “More like hilarious,” Jake told her.

  “Really?” she asked, looking over at him again.

  “Really,” Jake c
onfirmed. And, dammit! You know it’s a hilarious suggestion.

  She shrugged again, bringing his attention back to her bare, tanned, and ever-so-tempting shoulder. “Oh, well,” she said. “I’m sure a man-about-town like you thinks he knows what a woman wants.” She had the nerve to wink. “But you might be surprised.”

  Why you little minx!

  Jake kept groping for a comeback. He never got the chance. Alicia whipped into a hospital parking space, turned off the ignition, and turned sideways in her seat to face him.

  Her skirt went up a little farther.

  So did Jake’s blood pressure.

  She reached over and patted him on the knee.

  More than Jake’s blood pressure elevated this time.

  “Take your time making your decision, Jake,” she said like a spider to a fly. “You have time to think it over. We probably won’t be meeting again for a few weeks. At least not until Zada and the baby get settled in.”

  Jake was past speechless.

  He wasn’t sure what kind of game Alicia was playing, only that she was winning this one. And the smug smile on her pretty face said that winning was the only option for any game Alicia Greene played.

  She reached behind her seat for an overnight case, then slid out of the driver’s seat as easily as the sarcasm about him being one of the housewives had rolled off her tongue. “Coming, Jake?” she called back over her bare, tanned, and still ever-so-tempting shoulder.

  “Coming, Jake?” Jake mimicked under his breath.

  He opened the car door, got out of the car, and followed along behind her. Watching the swing of her shapely behind, however, took his thoughts right back to secret desires.

  He had her secret desire!

  And he was just the man to give it to her. Just not now. Not with the battle he’d be facing with Danielle. He thought he’d made himself clear that his daughter had to be his only concern. Just as he thought Alicia had made herself clear that she wanted nothing to do with him.

  So why was she coming on to him now?

  Jesus! It just didn’t make any sense. But do women ever make any sense? Hell, no! Jake decided as Alicia walked through the automatic doors at the entrance to the hospital.

  Jake walked through the doors behind her, and it was all he could do to keep from running over and hugging Joe and Charlie who were sitting in the waiting area just inside the front door. Other guys meant safety. Safety from weird-ass conversations he couldn’t figure out. Safety from wandering thoughts about secret desires. Safety from trying to calculate how long it would take to bare more than her shoulders and get Alicia out of that black dress.

  But most of all, safety from his old-Jake ways.

  Jake didn’t even look at Alicia again. He turned his back to her the second she walked across the room toward Jen and Tish. And if he had anything to do with it, he would not be riding back to Woodberry Park in her black-widow spider Mercedes sedan!

  “No baby yet?” Jake managed to ask, but Alicia had him rattled far more than he wanted to admit.

  “No baby yet,” Joe confirmed, but he looked past Jake at Alicia. When he looked back at Jake, he grinned. “Did you two arrive at the same time? Or did you ride to the hospital together?”

  “I’ll take the fifth on that question,” Jake grumbled.

  Joe punched Charlie with his elbow. “Pay up, sucker.”

  Jake frowned. “Care to explain that comment?”

  Joe grinned again. “You. Alicia. Both single. Living right across the street from each other? I told Charlie it would only be a matter of time.”

  “You’re forgetting I’m going to have a teenage daughter living on my side of the street,” Jake reminded him.

  Charlie said, “That’s what I tried to tell him, Jake.”

  “Bullshit,” Joe said. “Being a father doesn’t mean you have to stop being a man. Those are two separate roles in life, Jake. And don’t you forget it.”

  “I think I’d better stick with one role at a time,” Jake said.

  Joe looked past Jake at Alicia again. “Where there’s a will, there’s always a way,” Joe said. “And if I were a single dad living across the street from a babe like Alicia, you can be assured I’d find a way.”

  “Not with the court looking over your shoulder for the next six months, you wouldn’t,” Jake said.

  “Six months?” Joe looked at him and shook his head. “Are you serious, Jake? Damn, buddy. No women for six months is going to be torture for a guy like you.”

  “Don’t believe everything you read in the tabloids, Joe,” Jake told him.

  “That’s what I tried to tell him, Jake,” Charlie said again.

  Chapter 6

  Alicia sat down beside Tish and placed the overnight case she’d packed for Zada on the floor beside her waiting-room chair. When she looked to her left, both Tish and Jen were staring at her. “What?” Alicia demanded.

  “You already know what,” Tish said, nodding toward Jake. “Did you come with Jake?”

  “No,” Alicia said. “Jake came with me. I offered him a ride. It was silly for both of us to drive to the hospital.”

  Tish grinned a sly grin. “Hot damn! Zada was right. Your bad-boy speech was nothing but pure crap, Alicia Greene. You’ll have that bad boy out of the underwear he models in no time flat.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” Alicia insisted.

  Jen frowned at Tish, then leaned across Tish to give Alicia a supportive pat on the hand. “Forget Tish and Zada, Alicia. I’m proud of you. And now you won’t have to go through with the dinner bet you made with Zada. You’ve already made amends with Jake in your own way.”

  “I’m sure that’s not all she was trying to make,” Tish teased. She looked across the room at Jake, then back at Alicia. “Go ahead and admit it, Alicia,” Tish whispered behind her hand, “the only way you’d kick Jake Sims out of bed would be to finish him off on the floor.”

  “Tish!” Jen gasped. “Do you always have to be so crude?”

  Alicia only rolled her eyes.

  “See?” Tish said, laughing. “Alicia can’t even bring herself to deny it.”

  “No,” Alicia said, “what I can’t bring myself to do is dignify that statement with a response.”

  Tish laughed again. “You big liar.”

  “Whatever,” Alicia said. “Think what you want.” She put an end to the conversation by grabbing a magazine from the waiting-room table by her chair and pretending to leaf through it. She was also pretending not to notice that Jake had kept his back to her from the moment they’d entered the hospital waiting room.

  The arrogant ass!

  She just couldn’t figure him out. He’d barely said two words to her on the way to the hospital. Never even flinched when she tried to bait him by insulting the Cubs—and she knew he loved the Cubs. Nor did he seem affected when she came up with the nonsense about making him a member of the Housewives Fantasy Club—something she definitely wasn’t going to share with Jen and Tish. And especially not Zada.

  As crazy as they all were about Jake, they’d make him the freaking president of the Housewives Fantasy Club!

  Alicia kept her head down, but she looked through her lowered lashes at Jake again. He was still standing with his back to her. His broad shoulders were squared, his confident stance saying that men respected what he had to say as much as women admired his well-toned body.

  At least, Alicia reminded herself, she didn’t have to worry about Jake repeating anything she’d said to him in the car. He was definitely a man’s man with no time for idle gossip. Nor did it appear that he had any interest in listening in on a bunch of women sharing their secret desires.

  As if he needs any help in the desire department, Alicia thought with a frown. One look told you Jake’s caress was one a woman would feel long after he left her bed.

  Her thoughts switched to Jake finishing her off on the floor.

  That was enough to make Alicia squirm uncomfortably in her seat for a second. And, da
mmit, she had to stop this! She knew she was only having these erotic thoughts about him because Jake was ignoring her. One come-on look her way, and she’d forget all about him—on the floor or otherwise!

  Alicia looked up from her magazine at the same time Jake turned around. But it was Rick’s excited, “We have a baby!” yell that had Jake’s attention.

  Alicia jumped up from her chair like everyone else.

  “No way!” Tish exclaimed. “That’s just not fair. We’ve barely been waiting an hour. I suffered through twenty-four hours of labor with the twins.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful, Rick,” Jen said, beaming. “Are Zada and Lizzie okay? Can we see them?”

  Rick motioned for everyone to follow. “Sorry, Tish,” the proud papa called over his shoulder. “I guess Lizzie is going to be as impatient as her mother. The doctor said if we’d waited any longer getting Zada to the hospital, we would have been delivering Lizzie in the car.”

  As they walked to the elevator, Rick said, “The delivery was so quick there wasn’t even time to give Zada the epidural. The doctor also made the mistake of telling Zada she was a woman who was made to have babies.” Rick grinned at all of them. “I won’t repeat the foul name Zada called the doctor.”

  Everyone laughed as they all piled into the elevator. Although Jake, Alicia noticed, made it a point to position himself as far away from her as possible.

  Fine! Alicia decided. Let him play hide-and-seek. He couldn’t very well hide from her on the ride back to Woodberry Park. If she took him directly back to Woodberry Park. She might just kidnap his irritating ass and drive him around for a couple of hours until he lost his snotty attitude!

  Alicia leaned back slightly, peering around Charlie.

  Jake was staring at the elevator floor looking extremely uncomfortable. And that’s when it crossed Alicia’s mind that she’d already kidnapped Jake.

  Oh, no! Alicia thought. Jake had never intended to come to the hospital at all! And why would he? He hadn’t known any of them long enough to consider them much more than new acquaintances. Who would run off to the hospital to be present when someone they barely knew gave birth to her first child? Especially a guy? What guy would ever do that?