Chapter Twelve
Chap-ter Twelve
“C ome to din-ner with me tonight?” Adam asked Dina, dur-ing what she was be-gin-ning to think of as her daily phone call.
It be-ing Sat-ur-day, he’d called in the morn-ing. Eleven to be pre-cise. Af-ter spend-ing time to-gether last night at tem-ple. What was left to talk about? Ap-par-ently eat-ing.
“I’m not sure I can.”
“Some-one else tak-ing you out?”
His tone was light, but she could hear an un-der-ly-ing edge to it, be-tray-ing nerves that he cov-ered with a laugh. It could have been in-ter-preted as mean, but she didn’t in-ter-pret it that way. Adam was many things, in-clud-ing Mr. Flashy-pants, but “mean” wasn’t one of them.
“No. I told Tracy I’d watch the baby for part of the af-ter-noon so she and Joe could get some er-rands done. I’m not sure how late they’ll be.” She also wasn’t sure she could han-dle see-ing him two days in a row.
“I think you need some adult com-pany.”
Adult com-pany sounded slightly ob-scene when ut-tered by Adam. “Um, you want to hang out with a baby? Don’t you have other things you’d rather do?”
“I’m not do-ing it for the baby, I’m do-ing it to see you.”
She pressed her hand against her stom-ach and tried to stop the smile that threat-ened. Some-how, she didn’t think say-ing no was go-ing to be so easy. And come to think of it, she’d never watched a baby be-fore and she’d been try-ing to calm her nerves all morn-ing. “Have you spent time with any ba-bies be-fore?”
“I’m a baby ex-pert.”
Once again, he was com-ing to her res-cue. “That’s great. Be-cause I’ve never done this be-fore. Why don’t you come to Tracy’s at two?”
“I’ll pick you up in-stead and we can drive over to-gether.”
She gob-bled down a tuna and tomato sand-wich, and thought and rethought her babysit-ting out-fit—hav-ing Adam see her meant her “re-lax with a baby” out-fit needed se-ri-ous re-think-ing—sev-eral times be-fore Adam buzzed her apart-ment in-ter-com.
When she climbed into his car, she did a dou-ble take. “You do know we’re watch-ing a baby, right?”
“I didn’t for-get,” he said, as he pulled away from the curb. “Hello, by the way.”
“You ob-vi-ously weren’t pay-ing at-ten-tion, since you’re wear-ing a white shirt.” She pulled her brown turtle-neck to-ward him. “Brown hides stains best. And hi.”
He shook his head. “Bleach, my friend. There won’t be any prob-lem bleach can’t han-dle.” His gaze pierced hers. “You look pretty,” he said.
“No I don’t. I look like an over-grown choco-late bar.”
“There is never any-thing wrong with choco-late,” he said.
She hated when he was right. Dina bit her lip and looked out the win-dow. He ap-par-ently was good at laun-dry. If she were in-ter-ested in him as a po-ten-tial boyfriend, that would be a huge plus.
“Dina!” Tracy said as she opened the door, look-ing like a pris-oner about to be sprung from jail. “You brought re-in-force-ments.”
Re-in-force-ments? How much trou-ble could one minia-ture per-son be? “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” she said, pulling her in-side and kiss-ing Adam’s cheek. “Thank you both so much for this. Here’s where we’ll be.” She handed Dina a piece of pa-per with the name and ad-dress of three stores and a restau-rant. “And here’s her sched-ule.”
That list was longer. So long, in fact, Dina’s eyes widened as she turned the eight-and-a-half-by-eleven pa-per over.
“Macken-zie is sleep-ing, but I’ll show you where ev-ery-thing is.”
Silently, they got a tour of the apart-ment and af-ter an-other ten min-utes, Tracy and Joe left. Dina looked at Adam, who smiled.
Flus-tered, she looked at the list. “It says feed her at one-thirty.” She turned and headed to-ward the baby’s room.
“Wait,” Adam grabbed her arm. “She’s sleep-ing.”
“But the in-struc-tions say to feed her now.”
“Haven’t you ever heard the ad-vice to not wake a sleep-ing baby?”
“Yes, but I know Tracy. And she wouldn’t give us in-struc-tions if she didn’t want us to fol-low them.”
Adam leaned against the kitchen counter and folded his arms across his chest. “Do you al-ways fol-low the rules?”
Hav-ing shucked his jacket, all that stood be-tween her and his skin—aside from a few feet of air, of course—was a white cot-ton long-sleeved polo. His stance em-pha-sized his chest and arm mus-cles, and her throat went dry. She shook her head to clear her mind.
“You don’t?” he asked. “Some-how I didn’t pic-ture you as a rule breaker.”
He was talk-ing to her. “Wait, what?”
“Earth to Dina. I asked if you al-ways fol-low the rules.”
“Oh, um, yeah, usu-ally.”
“Then why did you shake your head no?”
Crap. “I don’t know.”
He took a step to-ward her, put his arm around her shoul-der, and ush-ered her into the liv-ing room. “Okay, it’s ob-vi-ous you’re get-ting a lit-tle over-whelmed by the baby. Let’s just sit down and wait a lit-tle. We can al-ways wake her if we need to, but it’s damn hard to un-wake her.”
She let him pull her to-ward the sofa and she sank into it, run-ning her hand ab-sently over the cloth up-hol-stery. “Maybe I should just call Tracy and ask,” Dina said.
“And make her think we have no idea what we’re do-ing?”
Some-thing in his face made her think he might not be jok-ing. “Don’t you know what you’re do-ing?”
“Not a clue,” he said. “But how hard can this be?”
“Wait a minute,” she said, ris-ing and putting her hands on her hips. “I thought you said you were a baby ex-pert!”
“I might have ex-ag-ger-ated a lit-tle.”
The baby’s cries pre-vented her from re-spond-ing, which was prob-a-bly good for Adam.
He’d lied to her.
She rushed into the laven-der-painted nurs-ery and reached for Macken-zie, whose face was scrunched up like a with-ered ap-ple.
“Shh, it’s okay,” she crooned as she pulled her against her chest.
“What can I do?” Adam asked, stand-ing in the door-way.
He could stop mak-ing things up, for one.
She nod-ded her head to-ward the sup-plies. “Can you get out a fresh di-a-per and wipes?”
Adam rushed to get what she’d asked for and hov-ered by the ta-ble, hold-ing the items in the air like they’d fly away if he let go—or bite him.
“Wait,” he said. “Are you sure we should change her? It doesn’t say that on the list.”
She laughed at the sud-den re-ver-sal of roles. “Well, I’m pretty sure that if they were able to pre-dict ex-actly when she’d need a di-a-per change, she’d be potty trained al-ready, so for this one thing, I’m not so wor-ried about the list.”
He looked prop-erly chas-tised and she changed her mind about his in-ten-tions. Maybe he hadn’t lied per se. Maybe he’d just ex-ag-ger-ated. A lot. The ques-tion was why, which she’d ex-am-ine af-ter she changed Macken-zie’s di-a-per.
Dina fig-ured out the snaps on the one-sie, cleaned her up, and put on a fresh di-a-per. And still she cried.
“Here, can you hold her? The list said to give her a bot-tle.”
Adam’s mouth opened and shut. “How about I make the bot-tle and you hold her?”
“It’s frozen breast milk.”
“Come here, Macken-zie. Let Un-cle Adam hold you.”
With a laugh, Dina went in search of the milk. Three min-utes later, she ap-proached the nurs-ery and stopped in the door-way. There was singing and coo-ing and nose-to-nose touch-ing and all of it was com-ing from Adam. She dou-ble and triple checked, just to make sure there wasn’t some TV or ra-dio play-ing she hadn’t no-ticed be-fore.
There wasn’t.
His lips were mov-ing and sound was emerg-ing from them. And while Macken-zie was still fussy, she wasn’t scream-ing her head off.
Adam had calmed her.
Maybe he was an ex-pert. Or if not an ex-pert, a nat-u-ral.
You know what he also was? Bone-melt-ingly sexy. Who-ever said men with ba-bies were sexy knew what they were talk-ing about.
“You go-ing to give me that bot-tle?” Adam asked in a singsong voice.
She jolted out of her reverie and handed him the bot-tle, watch-ing as Macken-zie lunged for it and gulped it down. Adam couldn’t have looked more pleased if he’d been able to nurse her him-self.
When the bot-tle was empty, Dina reached for her. “Here, I’ll burp her.”
“No, let me.” He tilted the baby onto his shoul-der.
“Wait!”
Too late. Macken-zie spit up all over his shirt. Dina tried to hold back a laugh.
“Maybe you should take her af-ter all,” he said.
She grabbed the di-a-per cloth she’d tried to hand Adam be-fore the spit-up in-ci-dent, flung it over her shoul-der and took Macken-zie from him. “Do you want help clean-ing up?”
“No, I got it. And hey, at least I’m wear-ing a white shirt.” He winked at her and her stom-ach flut-tered.
Maybe she was hun-gry.
She pat-ted and rubbed Macken-zie’s back un-til she burped, then looked at the in-struc-tions Tracy had left. There was a half hour be-fore she was sup-posed to check her di-a-per. Now what?
“Hey, I found this, think she’ll use it?” Adam walked in car-ry-ing a bouncy thing.
Well, it prob-a-bly had a name, but Dina had no idea what it was called. There was a seat for the baby and things to play with. And it bounced. Yeah, that would do.
“We can try.”
She placed Macken-zie in the seat and Adam spun some of the toys. Macken-zie laughed and bounced as she kicked her legs. Ex-cel-lent. Prob-lem solved.
They sat on the floor watch-ing her. Adam made funny faces, which also caused Macken-zie to laugh.
“You’re quiet,” he said to Dina, as he played with Macken-zie’s toy.
“Did you know a baby can’t taste salt un-til they’re about four months old? It’s thought that the de-lay is re-lated to—”
He grabbed her hand and rubbed his thumb across her palm and she for-got the rest of her sen-tence.
“What’s wrong, Dina?”
She swal-lowed. “Wrong?”
“You’re ner-vous.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Be-cause you’re quot-ing ran-dom facts. You only do that when you’re ner-vous.”
He was not sup-posed to know that. “I don’t do that when I’m ner-vous.”
Adam arched one eye-brow, mak-ing Macken-zie gig-gle again. “Even she agrees with me.”
“No, she’s just laugh-ing at your face.”
“My…you…!” He tried to frown but couldn’t pull it off and Dina laughed. Jok-ing around, she could han-dle. See-ing Adam with a baby, that was more dif-fi-cult to deal with.
“Se-ri-ously, why are you ner-vous?” he asked. His green eyes dark-ened with con-cern and fo-cused on her, send-ing mid-night-col-ored lasers di-rect to her heart, which started thump-ing.
“I’m not sure what to do with her,” she said. Or you.
“She’s easy.”
Had she imag-ined a stres-sor on “she?” “She’s a baby who doesn’t talk,” she said.
“With a mother who pro-vides in-struc-tions that ri-val IKEA’s.”
True.
He pulled the in-struc-tion list to-ward him while rat-tling one of the toys on the bouncy thing. It re-ally needed a name.
“We change her di-a-per in twenty min-utes. Af-ter that, we have time un-til she needs to eat again. Want to go for a walk?”
“Does it say we should?”
He smiled. “It doesn’t say we shouldn’t. And Tracy left us the stroller all set up by the door. In fact, we could prob-a-bly change her now and leave early.”
“No! She said a half hour af-ter eat-ing. We should wait.”
“Boy, you re-ally are a rule fol-lower.”
“Well, nei-ther of us seems to know any-thing about ba-bies,” said Dina. “We prob-a-bly shouldn’t de-vi-ate from the sched-ule too much.”
He squeezed her hand and she tried to join in play-ing with Macken-zie. When her phone alarm buzzed, she took the baby and went to change her di-a-per.
“Want help?” Adam asked.
“No, I think I’ve got this.”
She laid her on the chang-ing ta-ble. “We can do this, right?” she whis-pered.
Open-ing the di-a-per, she cringed. Macken-zie was filthy and it was ev-ery-where. She thought about call-ing Adam for re-in-force-ments, but doubted he’d be much help. Screw-ing up her face, which caused the baby to gig-gle again, and breath-ing through her mouth, she cleaned her as best she could be-fore di-a-per-ing and re-dress-ing her.
“Oh, that was nasty,” she said, as she re-turned to Adam. “You should be very glad you didn’t do this one.”
She handed Macken-zie over to Adam who took her and pointed at Dina’s shirt. “Um…”
“What?”
Look-ing down, she frowned, pulled her shirt to her nose and sniffed. “Oh no!” she said as her face heated.
Adam did a worse job at re-strain-ing his laugh-ter than she had done when Macken-zie spit up. “Guess it’s a good thing you wore brown.”
“I have to go clean this.”
Dina ran into the bath-room, thank-ful there was a door she could shut. It was a good thing she and Adam were only friends, be-cause she’d be mor-ti-fied if this hap-pened oth-er-wise. And that flush on her cheeks? Must be from the heat. It was go-ing to be scorch-ing hot sum-mer—even if it was only March.
“All fixed?” Adam asked, as she emerged from the bath-room.
Nod-ding, she fo-cused on Macken-zie, who was seated in the stroller. “Don’t you think she needs a jacket?” Her cheeks might still be burn-ing, but she didn’t think it was con-ta-gious.
Adam dropped his head to his chest. “Oh, yeah.”
To-gether, they un-strapped her, zipped her into her fuch-sia jacket, and strapped her back into the stroller.
“Hat?” Adam asked.
“Prob-a-bly.” She looked around and found one on the half wall by the front door. “Okay, I think we’re set.”
“Yeah, ex-cept for our jack-ets.”
Right.
As Macken-zie started to fuss, they hur-ried into their jack-ets and fi-nally ma-neu-vered the stroller out-side, locked the door and be-gan walk-ing down the side-walk. They set-tled into a rhythm, the fuss-ing stopped, and Dina breathed a sigh of re-lief.
“Made it,” she said.
“Did you doubt it?”
She glanced at Adam askance. “Hon-estly? Yes.”
“Ye of lit-tle faith.” He el-bowed her gen-tly in the ribs, and she huffed.
Dina pushed the stroller down the side-walk and Adam rested his hand on the bar next to hers. Their si-lence was com-pan-ion-able, and for the first time in at least an hour, Dina took in a deep breath.
“Feel bet-ter?” he asked.
“I don’t know what you’re talk-ing about.”
He el-bowed her again with-out re-mov-ing his hand from the stroller. They ap-proached an older woman walk-ing to-ward them who glanced from the baby to them.
“Your daugh-ter is adorable,” the woman said as she ap-proached.
Dina knew she should protest. Adam was just her friend. They weren’t even a cou-ple, much less the par-ents of a baby. She re-ally should say some-thing. But in-stead, she smiled at the woman and con-tin-ued walk-ing.
He would have bet money Dina would have cor-rected the woman. Dina was the one hung up on their just be-ing friends.
Friends.
The more he thought of that word, the more lu-di-crous it be-came.
A friend didn’t look at a woman with lust in his eyes. A friend didn’t ache to touch the other’s skin. A friend didn’t hunger for the sound of the other’s voice.
He had no idea how she felt, be-cause she’d stuck him squarely in the “friend zone,” a for-eign land with its own lan-guage, man-ners, and rules. He should ob-ject to it—he’d heard enough scorn about it from other guys, even if he’d never been rel-e-gated there him-self. But there was some-thing re-fresh-ing about get-ting to know a woman, re-ally know her, with-out hav-ing to deal with the sex-ual side of things. Still, he was do-ing his best to break out of it. Inch by in-fu-ri-at-ingly sexy inch. Be-cause the more he got to know her, the more con-nected he felt to her.
The old woman had drawn at-ten-tion to their un-friend-like sta-tus. He’d ex-pected Dina to draw back in hor-ror be-fore bab-bling on about some ob-scure fact about friends, ba-bies or friends with ba-bies.
In-stead, she’d smiled.
His heart was still melt-ing.
He wanted to go kiss that old woman, ex-cept that prob-a-bly wouldn’t win him any points with Dina. It might draw at-ten-tion to the idea that they looked like a fam-ily, rather than friends. She didn’t need any help keep-ing that in mind. So he forced his feet to con-tinue walk-ing on the cold, hard pave-ment.
And walked right into a fire hy-drant.
“Ow!” He hopped on one foot, grip-ping his knee with the other, mut-ter-ing curses un-der his breath.
“Are you al-right?” Dina placed a hand on his arm. Even though he couldn’t ac-tu-ally feel her skin through his coat, he imag-ined he could. He started to speak, cleared his throat, and tried again.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” He limped along next to her.
“Maybe we should head back.”
“No, let’s keep go-ing.”
She looked at him like she didn’t be-lieve him. “They’re prob-a-bly go-ing to be home soon.”
With-out wait-ing for his re-sponse, she swung the stroller around and headed in the op-po-site di-rec-tion. At home, by the time they’d taken off their coats, un-wrapped Macken-zie from the lay-ers of clothes they’d bun-dled her in, and stored the stroller, Tracy and Joe walked in.
“Did you guys sur-vive?” Tracy asked, as she un-wound her scarf and put her bags down.
Dina walked to-ward her, car-ry-ing Macken-zie, while Adam limped be-hind. He watched Tracy’s gaze flicker from one to the other. Tracy’s mouth twitched. She turned to her hus-band. As one, they laughed.
“Oh my, you two look like you’ve been through the ringer.”
Adam limped over and put his arm around Dina. She stiff-ened. He stroked her shoul-der with his thumb. “Nah, we’re good. A lit-tle spit up, a lit-tle poop, a lit-tle bruise. No big deal.”
She didn’t re-lax into his em-brace, as he’d hoped, but she didn’t move away ei-ther. “He’s right. It was fun.”
Later, af-ter they’d left, Adam turned to her in the car. “Want to go out tonight?”
She looked down at her shirt. “I’m pretty sure I smell.”
Her brown shirt was stained. Her hair was wild. Her lip was caught be-tween her teeth. She’d never looked more beau-ti-ful.
He sniffed the air. “I don’t smell any-thing.” Then he turned and sniffed his shoul-der. “Well, maybe some spit up.”
Her smile made her eyes sparkle. Had he never no-ticed that?
“If you don’t mind, I think I’m go-ing to pass tonight. I’m ex-hausted. An-other time?” She grabbed her coat and opened the door as he pulled up in front of her apart-ment. “But thanks for the of-fer. And for com-ing with me to-day. You were a huge help.”
He nod-ded, won-der-ing what she’d do if he kissed her. Be-fore he could test it out, she climbed out of the car. As he watched her go into her build-ing, he won-dered how much longer it would take to per-suade her into the idea of a re-la-tion-ship with him.
Be-cause he wasn’t sure he could wait.