soon as tomorrow to start moving the heavy furniture around.”
Once back in the kitchen, he tried to put Angel in her baby carrier. She let out a prompt, furious squeal. He picked her up again.
He talked about safety gates and baby monitors. He talked about turning in his Porsche for a “grown-up car” that would more easily accommodate a baby car seat and groceries. When the telephone suddenly rang, he again tried to put down Angel. Again she squealed. Again he picked her back up again, and answered the phone call while carrying her around.
He found the bread, scooped the lettuce from the refrigerator, knifed on fancy mustard and made corned beef sandwiches on rye, holding Angel the whole time. He looked at the baby once, as if debating whether it was worth even trying to eat without her on his shoulder, and then just ate one-handed.
Before dinner was over, Winona was in love with him.
All right, all right, she’d realized that she’d fallen before this. But some of those earlier feelings were surely lust. And as extraordinarily powerful-and desired-as that lust was, this was a different kind of love. This was watching Royal’s most eligible and supposedly most self-indulged and spoiled bachelor working heart and soul to charm a baby. This was watching a doc who’d put in a ten-hour day-after making love to her all night-never lose patience with a fractious little one. This was watching Justin be a father. This was seeing his patience and gentleness and giving nature without him having a clue how much he was revealing.
“Justin?”
“What?”
“You’re making all those marriage and life plans so fast that you’re scaring the life out of me. You’ve thought so many things through already, as if you were really that sure-”
“I am sure, Win. We’re going to love being married. I just know it. The faster the better. If we don’t get all the details resolved ahead, so what? We’ll just do things as we go.”
The baby blew a bubble in his face. That was it for Winona. “If you don’t mind my changing the subject from marriage for just a minute. I just wanted to mention…if it’s all right with you-the very minute Angel goes to sleep- I’m going to jump your bones.”
Smooth as silk, Justin chucked the baby’s chin. “Well, that’s it. What do I have to bribe you with to get you to bed?”
Winona chuckled, but there was no hurrying Angel into doing anything. The baby had had a super day, but something just seemed to hit her wrong around the dinner hour, and she was nonstop fretful-unless Justin was holding or walking her.
“I have an idea,” he announced finally.
“Ideas aren’t helping us. We need a miracle,” she said wryly.
But it seemed that Justin was capable of coming up with one of those, too. In the cobalt-and-marble bathroom downstairs, he started filling the whirlpool tub. While Winona stripped the baby down in the warm, moist air, he fetched candles from around the house, lit them and chose a CD to play a muted, low bluesy sax-achy, yearny love songs, one after the other.
“See how fast I managed to get your mom naked? And you thought I wasn’t very bright, didn’t you, Angel?”
It was a romantic setting for lovers, not for a baby’s bath. The warm jetted water. The candle scents and quivering lights. The yearning love songs. The darkness and nakedness and Justin’s dark, soft eyes looking at her from the far corner of the tub, his bare toes caressing her bare toes.
The baby chortled and giggled, either from the safety of Justin’s arms, or hers. Angel seemed to think this party had been arranged just for her-which it had-and the little ham managed to keep both the adults chuckling…yet Winona kept looking at Justin. And yeah, she could feel the desire seeping and building between them. But she also could see him relaxing, just as Angel was. Letting down his hair. Letting go.
Possibly because she’d always had such a hard time letting go herself, she had always recognized how closely Justin held his emotions. In his work, he gave freely. It wasn’t as if he were a stingy man with his heart. But what he personally wanted and needed in his own life, he rarely showed the world, including her…especially since he’d come back from Bosnia.
Watching the baby try to grab his nose, hearing Justin’s gentle laughter, seeing his natural easiness with the darling, Winona fell in love all over again. Deeply. Painfully. Irrevocably.
She rose from the tub abruptly.
“Did you see that view, Angel?” Justin teased. “Your mom is trying to drive me crazy. And doing an outstanding job of it.”
“We can’t stay here all night.”
“
“Because she’ll turn into a prune, you goose. But keep her in here for a couple more minutes, okay? While I go heat up a bottle and fix a place for her to sleep?”
Naturally she’d brought a diaper bag and a change of clothes for the baby, but several hours before, it really hadn’t occurred to her that they might be spending the night. Now, wrapped in a towel, she prowled the downstairs, spotting a half-dozen places where she could set up a secure sleeping arrangement for Angel, just trying to pick the best. She decided on the couch in Justin’s office, where she could push two chairs against the open couch edge to create a secure barrier. Then there was the business of finding the equivalent of a rubber sheet, and a real sheet, and blankets, and then getting the bottle warmed.
By the time she slipped back in the bathroom, Ms. Prune seemed to be out of the water and was on a thick, fat towel next to the tub, chortling her head off while Justin tickled her.
“Sheesh. We were
“She doesn’t want to settle down. She likes being naked. You know who I think she takes after?”
“You. All day,” Winona murmured.
“I was thinking about you. To think that you’ve been walking around my house that way all this time and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it…it boggles the mind.”
“Well, I admit, I’d been thinking about boggling something of yours, too, Doc. But it wasn’t your mind.”
She was up for flirting with Justin indefinitely…but for a second, words failed her. She caught it. The baby’s first yawn. Faster than lightning, she whipped a fresh diaper and sleeper on Angel. And then there was another rosebud yawn when she settled the darling in her arms, those soft velvety eyelashes already drooping as Angel latched on to the nipple of the bottle.
She kept thinking sex and babies shouldn’t go together.
She kept thinking that maybe she was nuts, because the candlelight and music hadn’t turned her on nearly as much as watching Justin discover being a dad.
She kept thinking that they were teasing and flirting like an old married couple who were already comfortable with each other naked, who already knew the things to say to trigger desire.
And she fell quiet as she fed the baby. So quiet that Justin noticed. She felt his gaze on her face as she coaxed the last drops into Angel, who was all set to snuggle down and sleep deeply now-but Winona didn’t want her trying to sleep for the night short on food. Finally, she lifted the little one to her shoulder-all dead weight and baby breath and smelling of powder-patting, rubbing, trying to get up that last nasty burp before putting her down…and still she felt Justin’s gaze on her face.
“She’s out. Really out this time,” she whispered finally. “I made a bed for her in the den. I’ll be right back.”
Once Winona laid the baby down, though, she suddenly realized how long she’d been parading semi-naked in front of Justin. What had seemed natural before now seemed…different. It wasn’t the same situation without the baby as a barrier. That had been like playing poker without ever having to ante…playing at being lovers without ever being alone.
Reality, though, was that they’d only been lovers one night…and Winona suddenly felt an attack of nerves. Technically, this was what they’d both wanted, to have the night to themselves, the baby finally asleep. Only she seemed to be suddenly standing in the hall outside the bathroom, clutched up like a ninny. Surely Justin was tired of the water by now? But would it be presumptuous to go into his bedroom? Should she be getting dressed? And then suddenly she heard his voice, as if he sensed her sudden uneasiness.
“Win? C’mere, you.”
