Chapter 11
MILES
“So, we’ll convert the guestroom adjacent to your room into a nursery,” Miles said.
The two of them were sitting in the den at Miles’s house.
Two days had passed since the night Chelsea had gone to dinner with Miles’s father.
She’d returned seeming quieter than usual, and he wondered whether there had been some kind of unpleasantness — and whether she was mad at him for not joining her there that night.
Today was supposed to make up for it. He had taken the whole day off work so he would be able to talk to her about what they would do when the baby came.
So far, it didn’t seem to be working very well.
She was distant, disconnected, almost as if she wasn’t really hearing what he was saying.
“Chelsea?” he prompted. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”
She looked up at him. “Does that mean I’ll still be living here when the baby comes?”
“I guess that’s up to you,” he told her.
“I wasn’t going to tell you to go or anything.
As far as I’m concerned, you can stay here as long as you want to.
” She bit her lip and looked down. “I mean, either way, the kid is going to need to have a bedroom here,” he said.
“Because they will be staying with me some of the time.”
“Are you sure that’s what you want?” Chelsea asked.
“What are you talking about?” He was confused. “We agreed when we got into this that we were going to co-parent.”
“We never really spelled out what that was going to look like, though,” she said. “And you’ve been saying from the beginning that you only wanted this to be a business arrangement, right? You want our child to come and work for you when they’re old enough.”
He frowned. “Where is this coming from? I never indicated that I didn’t want to be part of their upbringing. Of course I want that.”
“Well, okay,” Chelsea said. “I just thought, you know, that it seemed like you were more interested in a professional relationship than a personal one. Isn’t that why you wanted to have a baby in the first place? So that you could make sure you’d have someone to inherit your company?”
Miles frowned. “What did my father say to you?”
She turned to face him. “Why do you assume he said something?” she asked, her jaw tight. “Why does this have to be about him?”
“I don’t know.” Miles was completely taken aback.
“It just seems to be coming out of nowhere, that’s all.
It seems like you’re really upset all of a sudden, and I don’t know what’s changed.
To be honest, you’ve been acting a little weird ever since the night you had dinner with Dad, so I’m just figuring he probably said something to get under your skin, and you should tell me what it is. ”
“If you want to know what he and I talked about, maybe you should have actually been there at dinner that night,” he heard the tension in Chelsea’s tone.
He sighed. “Is that what this is about? I didn’t realize you were still angry about that. I’m sorry. I’ll make sure I don’t miss the next one, okay?”
“You’re just apologizing to me? Just like that?”
“Isn’t that what you want?”
She ran a hand through her unruly hair. “I don’t know,” she murmured. “I don’t know what I want.”
Hormones. He had anticipated this, of course. Not that he had spent time around pregnant women before, but he did know this was part of it. She was just emotional because of her pregnancy. That was what was behind all of this. It was trying, but he could accommodate it.
“I’m sorry if I made you feel like the only thing I wanted was a business partner,” he said, injecting as much patience as he could into his voice.
“And I’m sorry if you thought you were going to be on your own raising our child.
Of course I want to be involved. And even if you decide to move out of the house once the baby comes, I’ll always want them to have a room here.
“But the truth is, Chelsea, I want you to stay here as long as possible. I don’t see how it benefits either one of us for you to leave.
And wouldn’t it be better for you if you could spend the baby days here, where you’ll be taken care of and won’t have to worry about chores or paying bills or anything like that? ”
“I still have to pay bills,” Chelsea pointed out. “I haven’t stopped paying for my house just because I’m not currently living in it.”
“You know what I mean,” he pressed. “Things are taken care of while you’re here in a way they aren’t while you’re at home. Am I wrong?”
“I suppose not,” she conceded. “And you’re right. I’m not in a huge hurry to get out of here. I don’t mind sticking around. It would be good to have some extra support in the first weeks after the baby is born.”
“That’s the spirit,” he encouraged. “I’ll get an ad out for a nanny right away.”
She frowned. “A nanny?”
“Well, sure. You were just saying you wanted extra support.”
“Yeah, I meant your support,” she said. “You were just saying you wanted to take an active role in raising your kid! That’s why you wanted me to stay here, I thought — because you wanted to be involved. Not because you wanted to farm the task out to the lowest bidder.”
“Why are you being dramatic about this?” Miles asked. “It’s a very normal thing for a child to have a nanny.”
“Maybe for you it is. That was never a part of my plan. I want to raise my baby myself, not hand the job off to someone else. And I thought I was moving in with you because you wanted that too. Was I wrong?”
“You moved in here so that we could sell the story that we were in a relationship,” Miles reminded her. “You know that’s what it was about. We talked about it from the beginning.”
Chelsea let out a long sigh. “I’m beginning to think we should have talked about it more from the start,” she murmured. “How could I have gotten this far into things without even checking to see whether you and I had the same ideas about what it was going to look like?”
A cold shiver ran down his spine. “Are you saying you regret our arrangement?”
“No, of course not,” Chelsea rubbed her eyes.
Miles couldn’t quite explain the relief that swept through him at those words.
If she had been feeling regret, it would have been far too late to do anything about it, so why was he worried about the possibility?
It was hard to say. All he knew was that it mattered to him that she wanted to carry this baby.
His baby. The idea of her having second thoughts shattered something within him.
“I don’t regret it,” Chelsea continued. “But I’m starting to wonder whether you do.
If you think the best way forward is just to hire a nanny to handle everything once the baby comes…
I don’t know what to do with that, Miles.
You insist you want to be involved in our kid’s life, but when you say things like this, it doesn’t make me feel like you have any real interest at all. ”
“I mean, that’s just ridiculous, though,” Miles said. “I work a full-time job. A job that keeps me extremely busy. If you were raising the baby on your own, wouldn’t you have some kind of child care so that you could go to work?”
“Yes, of course I would,” Chelsea said. “But I’d also do everything I could to be around as much as I was able, and I can’t help feeling like that isn’t going to be a priority for you.
I think you’re going to hire a nanny and let them take care of everything so you can spend all your time at work.
Just look at what happened the other night: you chose work over spending time with me and your father.
Is that what it’s going to be like when the baby is born? ”
“You’re borrowing trouble,” he told her.
“And you’re not answering the question,” she shot back. “After the baby is born, are you going to keep working these long hours and prioritizing the office over your family? Is that the real reason you want a nanny — so you won’t have to worry about that balance?”
“Of course not,” Miles snapped. “I want a nanny because it’s a resource that will help us. It’s a resource I can afford. I don’t see why we shouldn’t take advantage of that fact.”
“You can’t just throw money at your problems all the time,” Chelsea glared at him.
That hurt. It wasn’t something Miles had been directly accused of before, but he did know people tended to think of him that way — as someone who thought he could buy his way out of any problem that arose.
It wasn’t the truth; he didn’t see himself that way.
He didn’t look at life that way. But at the same time, didn’t it make sense to invest in the best solutions to your problems, if you had the option?
Spending money was a great way to get the solution you wanted.
Did she really expect him to send their child to a cheap day-care, knowing that hiring help was an option?
“Don’t you want the best for your kid?” he challenged her.
Her face flushed pink. “Of course I do,” she bit back, “but I think the best thing for our baby is having involved parents. It’s one thing to strand me at your father’s house alone all night.
I’m an adult. I can handle it. What’s your child going to think when you promise to spend time with them and then don’t? ”
“You really think that’s the way things are going to go, just because I’m hiring a nanny?” He shook his head. “You’re making a lot of assumptions here, Chelsea.”
The hormones. That’s what it is. It’s got to be. I should take it easy on her. I know that.
But it was hard to take it easy on her. The things she was saying were infuriating. Did she really think she knew better than he did about all this stuff? He’d had a nanny growing up, and he had turned out just fine.
Right?
Suddenly, without warning, a memory sprang to life in his mind.
It had been Christmas Eve. Miles was ten years old, waiting for his father to come home so that the two of them could decorate the tree together.
He’d been hoping for weeks that his father would make time for the two of them to do this together, but this was the night it would finally have to happen, because tomorrow was Christmas. There was no more time.
And his father had let him down.
As the day had turned to night, Miles had found himself putting ornaments on the tree with help from his nanny. She’d meant the world to him, and he was right when he said that having her had been a good thing. He’d have liked for his own child to have a similar experience.
But Chelsea was right, too. Miles knew that his father had felt freer to leave him alone on that occasion, and so many others, because he had known there was someone else at home taking care of things.
I won’t be like that, he told himself firmly. A nanny is a good thing to have. I’m not just doing this to get out of spending time with my kid. It won’t be that way for us.
But for a moment, doubt took root in his mind, and he wondered. Would it be that way for his child? Would there be nights when his son or daughter sat there longing for him to get home? Was he going to let his kid down, the way his father had let him down so many times?
He didn’t want to think so. He wanted to believe he was better than that. But the truth was, he couldn’t be sure… and the thought of it had him spiraling.