6. Back To Reality
BACK TO REALITY
Three days later, Baker hauled grocery bags out of his trunk.
God, he hated food shopping. He put it off for weeks at a time, then bought enough crap to last him until he ran out of coffee again.
Pretty pathetic that coffee was his survival gauge.
“Micah, no!”
The voice snapped his attention sideways. A woman up the street had stopped her stroller and bent to retrieve something from the road, handing it back to the toddler inside.
As she pushed closer, the recognition hit him square in the chest.
Tasha.
He shouldn’t have been surprised as there were over six hundred townhouses sprawled across God-knows-how-many winding streets, but still. He’d never seen her here. Then again, he didn’t exactly take evening strolls or mingle with the neighbors.
He barely talked to the people in his own unit, and that was on a generous month.
He didn’t linger at the pool or pretend he’d ever use the gym in the main building.
He liked people well enough…but not enough to do that.
He shifted another bag onto his hand, suddenly aware of how stupid he probably looked standing in his driveway holding three sacks of groceries and a loaf of bread about to slide out because he balanced it on top. Or the eggs tipping and ready to fall onto the ground and crack everywhere.
Of all the moments for her to show up.
He turned and walked up the stairs to his place, dropped them on the table, then went back for the last of his load. Maybe she’d be gone.
But she wasn’t.
She slowed when she got close enough to recognize him. Her eyes widened, not startled, but curious, and that big, effortless smile he’d noticed at work curved across her lips.
Damn. It looked even better out in the sunlight.
The same with her legs in much shorter shorts, the muscles flexing as she walked.
She had some serious tone on her in motion. Might be from chasing all those kids she talked about a few days ago.
Had it really been a few days?
Yeah, it had, because she’d been popping into his dreams when that hadn’t happened in years.
“Well, hey,” she said, tightening her grip on the stroller handle. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Same,” he said, pulling the last four bags out of his trunk and putting them on the ground. No reason to stand there with them in his hands and the trunk open. “I didn’t know you lived in this development.”
“I’ve been here about a year,” she said. She tapped the stroller lightly. “I figured it’d be a good place for Micah. Lots of sidewalks. Not as many cars. And the neighbors are pretty quiet. I needed a space with no stairs. And here I am rattling on like I do.”
He didn’t have a problem with her talking. Her soft voice that carried over his skin like the light breeze on this hot July day.
“Yeah,” he said. “Quiet’s one word for it.”
She laughed, warm and easy and the chills that raced down his spine had no business doing it while she was standing there with her kid. “Do you live here?” She nodded toward his townhouse.
“I have for about three years now. Upstairs.”
“Guess it’s a small world.”
He wanted to say something clever, but his brain went blank. Because suddenly he wasn’t thinking about groceries or accidental meetings. He was thinking about her hair pulled up in a messy bun, her cheeks flushed from the walk, and how natural she looked pushing that stroller.
Not something he should be noticing.
Not something he should want to notice.
“Micah,” she said, smoothing a hand over the toddler’s light brown curls, “this is Baker. He works with Mommy.”
Micah stared at him with big round eyes the same light blue as his mother’s, then immediately dropped a plastic dinosaur at Baker’s feet.
She groaned. “Sorry. He throws everything when he doesn’t want to do something.”
He crouched and picked up the dinosaur and then handed it back. “It’s all good. I do the same thing.”
“You still throw things when you’re frustrated?” she teased.
He felt his mouth twitch. “Only on Wednesdays.”
She laughed again, more tingling in his body, and this time he only wished it was down his spine and not in his fucking shorts.
“Well, we’ve got a few more laps before nap time. Or maybe I’ll get lucky and he’ll be sleeping before I get home. Which is the plan. But… I’ll see you around?”
“Yeah,” he said, nodding like an idiot. “See you.”
Tasha started down the sidewalk, pushing the stroller with that confident, easy stride, and he stood there holding his groceries, watching her go, wondering why his chest felt too damn constricted.
He exhaled, shook himself back to reality, and muttered, “Great. Just what I need.”
And carried the groceries inside like they suddenly weighed twice as much.
Once he got inside, he kicked the door shut with his heel and dropped the grocery bags on the counter. Everything inside them shifted, clattered, or bruised, and he didn’t give a single damn.
He braced both hands on the counter and stared at the granite like it was responsible for all his problems. For all his confusion and even his dreams in the past week.
Tasha. In his development.
Perfect. Just fucking perfect.
And it made him wonder if Jolene Fierce knew that. Could she have?
Was it really possible the woman would go to those lengths?
For days he wondered if Tasha knew what Jolene was up to. Then he said of course she did. Everyone did.
But did she know it was him?
He still wasn’t sure. And that was where some of his problems lay.
He dragged a hand down his face. He shouldn’t be thinking about the way her smile hit him dead center. Or the fact that she’d looked even better out here. Real, relaxed, not behind a counter or in the chaos of work.
And her son. Micah.
That was a whole separate complication he didn’t have the right to think about.
He was the guy who stayed separate, kept his head down, and didn’t get involved in shit that didn’t belong to him.
Not anymore.
But that little fist dropping a dinosaur at his feet?
Yeah. That hit somewhere it shouldn’t have right along with the small feminine hand of Tasha’s brushing the curls away from her son’s face and smiling down as if she had all the patience in the world.
Something he’d had once in his life when it came to women.
He moved to his liquor stand, pulled out a bottle at random, one of his works, then poured a shot and threw it back.
He needed to get his head straight.
He’d been through enough to know better than to let a pretty face, a friendly laugh, and funny conversations scramble his brain. He’d made that mistake once. Fuck. More than once. More than twice. Guess it depended on how generous he wanted to be with his own self-delusion when it came to his ex.
She was the one and only that he’d ever let it happen to.
He wasn’t doing this again.
Tasha Robinson was off-limits, regardless of what Jolene thought.
Not because of anything she’d done.
Because he wasn’t built for whatever came attached to a woman who pushed a stroller with one hand and smiled like she hadn’t been hurt before. Like today was just another sunny day in the neighborhood and nothing was wrong in the world.
She was nothing like him.
He wasn’t the settling type. Not now.
Wasn’t the dependable type. Not anymore.
Wasn’t the father type. At least he was never given the chance to be.
But the worst part was that some tiny, dangerous part of him wished he was all those things he’d thought he could be years ago.
He threw another shot back, straightened, his jaw and chest so tight he thought he was going to crack something internally.
Nope. Not going there.
Not again. He hadn’t felt this way in years and the thought of it again was crushing every part of him he’d said he’d lock up and away.
He’d just stay out of her way and keep his distance. Keep his damn head on straight and avoid Jolene like he’d been doing for years.
It was only temporary. Less than two months and Tasha would be done working there and back with her students.
There. That was his plan.
Then he looked out the window and glimpsed her turning the corner, the stroller bumping gently over the curb, Micah holding his toy in his limp hand over the side, as if knowing his mother had him and always would.
His heart did that stupid, traitorous stutter regardless of the lecture he’d just given himself.