The Diaper Diaries

by Abby Gaines

  “And you were the miracle in the middle.” The words slipped out. Tyler wasn’t even sure what he meant by them, but he knew they sounded…serious. He hurried on. “Your folks are pretty tough on you about your work.”

  She smiled distractedly, and he guessed she was trying to unravel that crap he’d blurted about miracles. “I made the mistake of saying right after Melanie died that when I grew up I’d become a doctor and make sure other kids didn’t die, too. It gave them something to hold on to, and they started saving for me to go to medical school.”

  “A mistake?” He latched on to the word. “You think you made a mistake in your choice of career?”

  “I—” She looked confused. “Of course not. I love my work. The mistake was letting Mom and Dad get so hung up on it.” She shrugged. “I can understand they don’t want other parents to go through what they did with Melanie. They have high expectations of me.”

  He handed her a pair of chopsticks and sat down on a stool at the island. “Whereas my family would be amazed if I achieved anything.”

  Bethany smiled, happy to move the conversation away from herself. Tyler’s comment had been made without rancor, and she knew he was mindful of what she’d told him at the restaurant the other day about his mother and Max.

  She lunged at a mouthful of chop suey that was about to slide off her chopsticks, slurped it into her mouth.

  “Nothing like a well-mannered woman to turn a guy on,” he said.

  She slurped louder with the next bite, just to make it clear she wasn’t trying to turn him on. And she wasn’t. After that moment of illumination earlier, she’d pushed the realization that she loved Tyler out of her mind. There was a danger she might inadvertently give her feelings away before she decided what to do about loving him.

  Were her feelings something to bury, to forget about? Or something to pin her hopes on?

  She couldn’t explain why she loved him—apart from the fact that he was great with Ben even when he didn’t want to be…that no one could make her angrier or make her laugh more…that in little more than a month he knew her better than anyone else did…Okay, maybe there were a few reasons to love him. But he didn’t love her, she knew that, and she couldn’t think of a single reason why he would.

  AFTER DINNER Bethany sat on the couch with her knitting. She seemed to have lost half a row, because this section was definitely wonky. Or maybe it was a tension problem. The tension in the wool, not in her. Tyler sprawled next to her with a book, which meant she had to divide her concentration between her stitches and trying not to notice the solid length of him, the hard line of his jaw, the dark wave of his hair.

  Clearly, she wasn’t succeeding.“What are you knitting?”

  “A sweater.” A fleeting glance satisfied her craving for the sight of him. For now.

  “Are you sure you have the size right? It looks too small.”

  “This is a sleeve.” Already, she wanted to look at him again. She focused on her work.

  “You look good in those jeans.”

  “Thanks.” Sabrina had helped Bethany with a couple of other purchases, made at an outlet center. The jeans sat low on her hips and hugged her derriere.

  Tyler tweaked her knitting, which made her look at him. “Are you going to wear this sweater with those jeans?” he asked.

  “Not after what you said today,” she admitted reluctantly.

  He smirked. “Good. Because that thing you’re knitting now is the worst yet.”

  He was right. She jammed the knitting down between the sofa cushions, out of his sight and hers. “I don’t know why so many women like you.”

  “Don’t you?” he said softly.

  The air between them thrummed with awareness—Bethany couldn’t think how she’d ever had the gall to deny it existed.

  “You’re too quiet tonight,” he said. “I’m used to you jabbering at me until I can’t take it anymore.” An odd tenderness belied the blunt words.

  “I’m surprised you’re here then, rather than out on a date,” she said, breathless.

  “Me too. But since I am…” Tyler leaned toward her. Then: “Ouch.” He’d put a hand down on the exposed tip of a knitting needle. He tugged the whole mess out and tossed it to the floor.

  “Hey,” Bethany protested as she saw a bunch of stitches unravel.

  He grasped the hem of her body-hugging cerise skinny rib. “I’ll buy you a new sweater, better than anything you could knit in a dozen lifetimes, if I get to take this one off.”

  “What?” Instinctively, she put her hands over his to prevent any upward movement.

  His eyes gleamed with laughter, but also with unmistakable heat. He might not love her, but he wanted her. Bethany’s heart beat faster under her sweater.

  She dropped her hands and said slowly, “Okay.”

  Her agreement obviously surprised him, and for a moment he didn’t move. Bethany swallowed, threw him the most challenging look she could muster, then raised her arms above her head.

  Her boldness elicited a hum of appreciation from Tyler. His eyes held hers, intense, glittering, as he lifted her sweater. It wasn’t until he pulled it over her face that the eye contact was broken.

  “Damn.”

  Inside her cerise cocoon, Bethany heard the curse. She giggled. Tyler tugged the sweater over her head in one sharp movement. “Very funny,” he said.

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Innocently, she folded her arms beneath her breasts—over her turquoise stretch cotton tank.

  “I could have sworn you didn’t have anything on under this thing.” He waved the cerise sweater in her face. “I would have bet money on it.”

  “You did bet money,” she pointed out. “You owe me a new sweater.”

  Tyler lost interest in the bet, his gaze arrested by the way that figure-hugging tank molded to Bethany’s generous curves.

  All the way to Madison and back, the whole time he’d been in her parents’ house, he’d wanted her. It made no sense, he couldn’t remember ever feeling so hot for such an extended period.

  “Now, if you’ve had your fun…” She took the sweater from him, and he realized she was about to put it back on.

  Not going to happen. In one seamless movement reminiscent of his glory days in college football, he tossed the sweater to the floor, hauled Bethany into his arms and kissed her.

  First, a quick kiss that did an effective job of silencing her automatic protest. When that reminded him of the ambrosia he’d found on her lips before, he went back for more.

  Their last kiss had been incendiary. This one was hotter, needier, a conflagration.

  Bethany’s passion kindled under Tyler’s instant heat, and she responded with something embarrassingly close to desperation. Her hands found his shoulders, clutched, then moved up and around, burrowing into his dark hair.

  The pressure of her fingers against Tyler’s scalp drew a groan from him, and he plunged into her mouth, his tongue seeking her warmth.

  Bethany explored his mouth with the same searching thoroughness, with a hunger so great she couldn’t imagine it ever being satisfied.

  When he broke away, a cry of protest sprang to her lips. But he trailed a path with his mouth, with his tongue, until he found her earlobe.

  He nibbled, sending darts of pleasure through her so she quaked with longing.

  Tyler moved down to her neck, nuzzled the frantic pulse. Against her skin, he murmured, “I’ve been wanting to do this for a long, long time.”

  “How—how long?” That couldn’t be her voice, all throaty and raw.

  He lifted his head, and his eyes blazed into hers. “If I said since the day you first pitched to the foundation, would that sound tacky and unprofessional?”

  “Totally,” she breathed, more turned on than she’d have thought possible.

  Turned on not just by the mouth that kissed her and by the hands that lifted her derriere to pull her closer against him, but by his sense of humor, by the laughter they’d shared in g
etting to this point.

  This is love, she thought, and the knowledge that he didn’t love her back—yet—didn’t hurt the way it had earlier.

  Because she’d felt and seen the tenderness that warred with the outright desire in his kiss, in his eyes. She knew this was about more than sex for him. Just as she knew he loved Ben, even though he hadn’t figured it out yet.

  “Tyler.” She tugged his head back down to her, kissed him again. Restless, she pressed herself into him.

  Tyler wanted to make love with Bethany more than he could remember wanting anything else. Ever. That she wanted the same thing made this moment perfect.

  His hands slipped beneath the stretchy fabric of her tank, found the warm skin of her waist. She shivered at the contact, her whole body brushing against him until he thought he might explode.

  Easy, he warned himself. If this perfect moment was to be as incredible for Bethany, he couldn’t rush it.

  And he did want it to be incredible for her. She was the most giving person he knew, she deserved his best.

  He took her mouth again, and was stunned to find that his sensual pleasure was increased by the strength of his desire to give to her.

  He wanted to put his mouth to the softness of her waist, her stomach, to make her shiver again.

  He slid down her, grazing her curves with his hands, pushed her tank up.

  “You’re so beautiful.” He pressed a kiss to her navel, and her hips jerked in instinctive demand. He unsnapped those sexy jeans, tugged them down a little, then pulled away so he could see more of her. Oh, yes, he could take his time right here.

  His tongue traced the bottom of her rib cage, then moved lower to the soft roundness of her stomach. Bethany writhed, then giggled, as he found a ticklish spot. He kissed her there until she yelped, a sexy, frustrated sound. Tyler moved on, discovered two tiny scars, one just to the right of her navel, the other way over to the left. He kissed one, then the other.

  “What happened here?” The tip of his tongue probed one of the scars. “A knitting accident?”

  She half gasped, half laughed, soft and breathy. “Keyhole surgery.”

  “Poor baby.” He used the excuse to kiss both scars again. “Anything major?”

  She stilled. “I, uh, had a nephrectomy.”

  He chuckled. Even in the throes of lovemaking, she was an egghead doctor. “Are you going to tell me what that is, or do we have to play Twenty Questions?”

  “It’s…a kidney removal.”

  “What?” The haze of desire had Tyler befuddled, but it was dissipating fast. He lifted his head to stare at her. “You had kidney disease, as well as your sister?”

  “I donated a kidney to Melanie.” Bethany’s fingers kneaded his shoulders, and she squirmed against him. “Tyler, can we get back to where we were?”

  “How old were you?” he demanded.

  She sighed. “Thirteen, does it matter?”

  Does it matter? You bet it does. Tyler sat up, raked a hand through his hair. “That’s got to be illegal, for a child to give away a kidney.”

  With an exasperated huff, she scrambled into a sitting position. “Okay, we can have this conversation, but then I want to get back to what we were doing.” She’d left her jeans unsnapped, and Tyler fought to keep his eyes on her face.

  “In the USA you have to be eighteen to donate an organ, but in England they’ll use a younger donor in exceptional circumstances,” she said. “Melanie’s rare blood type meant she was highly unlikely to find a match from the general donor pool, and she had no chance of survival without a transplant. I was a perfect match. Our doctor here in the States put us in touch with a private surgeon in London—he considered our situation exceptional enough to allow me to donate.”

  Fury rose within Tyler. “Your parents made you do it.”

  “Of course they didn’t,” she said, shocked. “I wanted to. We all wanted Mel to get better.”

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “The surgery was initially successful. But T cell–mediated responses were generated to the transplanted organ and Melanie suffered acute rejection a week later.” Bethany spoke as if reading from a medical report. Then her calm fractured, leaving still-raw pain exposed. “It shouldn’t have happened, but it did. And she died.”

  “So it was all for nothing,” Tyler said flatly.

  Bethany nodded. She couldn’t begin to express the despair she’d felt when Melanie’s body had rejected the transplant.

  “You think it was your fault,” he said.

  She stuck her nose in the air. “I know perfectly well it was not my fault.”

  “You know it wasn’t, but you think it was,” he said.

  Bethany scowled at him, but Tyler barely noticed. He was shaken to the core.

  Two minutes ago he’d been congratulating himself on his generosity in wanting to show her a good time in bed. Bethany had trumped that feeble gesture by revealing she’d given away a kidney, a part of herself, when she was just a kid. At an age when Tyler had been so self-absorbed he’d barely known anyone else existed.

  Bethany would say he was still that way.

  For the first time, it occurred to him she was right. Because he couldn’t imagine making the decision she’d made, then or now. And even if he admitted to himself that he could be—should be—a more giving person, he knew he didn’t want to give that much.

  Her selflessness terrified him.

  He eased away from her. Saw understanding, then hurt, flash in her eyes.

  “We’re not going to pick up where we left off?” Her flippancy sounded forced.

  Tyler shook his head. Without looking down, he refastened her jeans. His fingers brushed her abdomen—near those scars—and she quivered.

  “I don’t get to be your first one-kidney lover?” She might have made that a quip, but he read the pleading in her eyes, and it scared him even more.

  “You and I are very different people, Bethany.” He didn’t need to tell her that—she’d never believed he was one of the good guys. “This—” he waved a hand to encompass her tousled hair, her swollen lips, the skewed straps of her tank “—would mean nothing to me.”

  And everything to her. He could see that now, could only be thankful he’d seen it in time.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  OLIVIA HAD TAKEN a taxi to Silas’s house, and from there they would go to the ball.

  “You look gorgeous,” he told her. She smiled. It was by his standards a flowery compliment, one he would have been incapable of a few weeks ago.She leaned forward slightly in her red silk dress so that it showed off her breasts. Which had Silas pulling her into his arms for one of those exquisitely thorough kisses, while his hands checked out exactly how well that dress fit her.

  But they were due at the Biedermeyers’ at eight, so Olivia broke off the kiss. She picked up the suit carrier that had fallen to the floor when he’d taken her in his arms. “I brought your clothes.”

  She’d spent a lot of money on him, but he didn’t need to know that, and going by how little he knew about fashion, he’d never guess. “Let me show you.” She started to unzip the bag.

  His hand closed over hers on the zipper. “Why don’t I just go put these on.”

  That took some of the fun out of it, but she didn’t argue.

  She wandered into the living room. And found it transformed. The frog paraphernalia was gone, leaving the deep cream walls bare, except for five striking modern-art canvases that Silas must have stowed while he worked on the frog project. The coffee table and the sideboard bore nothing but the gleam of polish, and the scent of wax hung in the air.

  What did this mean? Confusion churned into hope. Olivia told herself to stay calm, but her fingers shook as she repaired her lipstick in the gilt-edged mirror above the mantelpiece.

  Silas rejoined her just fifteen minutes later.

  “You look wonderful,” Olivia exclaimed, knowing her excitement wasn’t attributable solely to the perfect fit of the tuxed
o, the delicious contrast the white shirt provided against his healthy skin tone. His bow tie sat exactly as it should, tied from scratch by Silas. She’d expected to have to help him.

  He wore the cuff links she’d tucked into the pocket of the tuxedo jacket. Gold with a very discreet diamond stud. Freshly shaved, he was every inch the debonair kind of man any woman would be proud to be seen with.

  She put her hands on his arms, went up on tiptoe to kiss him. His kiss felt reserved.

  “Is something wrong?” She hadn’t left the price tag on the tuxedo, had she?

  “I don’t want to ruin your lipstick.”

  My, he was turning into quite the gentleman. Olivia couldn’t contain her curiosity another moment. “Silas, what happened to everything?” She waved at the bare walls.

  He looked around the room as if, like her, he was seeing it for the first time. “I packed it all up after the pitch to the foundation.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s time,” he said slowly, “to move forward.”

  It was what she’d been waiting for, but Olivia hadn’t expected the flood of joy that left her feeling as if she was floating.

  Silas grabbed her hand, as if to anchor her. “Let’s go.”

  IT TURNED OUT Silas knew around half the people at the Spring Fling, which was held at the Biedermeyers’ country estate just out of town.

  Olivia loved having him on her arm, loved the widening of her friends’ eyes as they took in her handsome escort. Silas was the best-looking man there—and the best dressed.He got quieter as she chatted gaily to as many people as she could. She suspected he was overwhelmed—hardly surprising, given there must have been five hundred people at the ball. Early on, they met up with Charlie Gooding, who was apparently an old friend of Silas’s.

  The two men shook hands, clapped each other on the back. Charlie kissed Olivia’s cheek. “I couldn’t believe it when Silas told me you and he are an item,” he said. “Never thought you’d go for a dull dog like him.”