A Camden's Baby Secret (10 page)

“Right.”

“And let me guess—Greta wants you there?” Callan said.

“But you need to be there, too,” Livi warned.

He laughed, standing along with her and picking up the bakery box with the remainder of the doughnuts. “You don't trust me to know that without prompting?” he challenged, as they headed back inside.

“After your disappearing act the last couple of days?”

“Okay, good point. Yes, I will be there, too.”

Livi bypassed the elevator to the underground parking, explaining as she headed to the front entrance of the building, “Someone here was having a big party tonight and the visitor parking was reserved, so I'm out at the curb.”

Callan set the doughnut box on the counter in the lobby and said to the uniformed security guard, “Help yourself,” as he followed Livi.

“What time is Greta supposed to be there tomorrow?” he asked as they headed for the street.

Livi told him, thinking more about that kiss they'd just shared and wondering if she was in store for another when they reached her car.

But once they got there and she'd unlocked it, he opened the door wide and held it for her to get in. Which she did, to avoid a second kiss that she told herself shouldn't happen, anyway.

Even if she was wishing it would...

“I'll have to go into my office tomorrow before the school thing,” Callan said as she started her engine. “So if I'm a little late getting back here, just wait for me, okay?”

Livi nodded. Then he closed her door, tapped the roof over her head as if to signal her to go and stepped back.

Something compelled her to look at him one more time, waving as if that was the purpose of the glance.

But in truth she just wanted one last glimpse of him, to cement in her mind that while he was not Patrick, it seemed possible that Callan could be starting to take up a small place in her thoughts.

A small place that was all his own...

Chapter Seven

“P
regnant?”

“Livi...”

“How did that happen?”

“The usual way,” Livi answered Lindie's last question, suffering the embarrassment of having to admit it.

Lindie and Jani had dropped in on Saturday morning. It was unusual for any of them not to see or hear from each other for a week at a time. But because Livi had taken the week off to travel to Northbridge, and since then had been so enmeshed in her own problems, on top of what she was doing with Greta Teller, she hadn't done more than text everyone that she was back. So Lindie and Jani had taken it upon themselves to check in with her.

Right in the middle of her daily bout of morning sickness.

And because they were alarmed to find her so nauseous again—or still—they'd wanted to take her to the nearest urgent care. Of course, Livi couldn't let that happen. And she'd felt too bad to keep up the facade any longer. Besides, she was well aware that she was going to have to tell her family eventually—sooner rather than later. It might as well be now.

So she'd told her sister and her cousin. Since they were also her best friends, it was where she would have started, anyway.

Their first response, after outright shock, was to hug her, tell her how happy they were with the prospect of a baby, then make her comfortable on her large, overstuffed white sofa with pillows and a blanket. They also made her weak, decaffeinated tea and brought her soda crackers.

Once all that was done, Jani and Lindie sat in front of her on the large oak coffee table and settled in to talk.

“Have you been seeing someone and keeping it quiet?” her sister asked.

“No.”

“Then who? How? When?” Lindie demanded gently.

“It's complicated...” Livi said, before she explained the whole thing, including that the man in Hawaii had turned out to be Callan Tierney—Greta's guardian.

“Fantastic!” her sister exclaimed, when she was finished.

“It is?” a confused Livi muttered.

“It is,” Jani confirmed, apparently on the same wavelength with Lindie. “It's such a relief!”

“Did you guys hear me right? I don't have Patrick, I'm pregnant, the father is someone I had a one-night stand with in Hawaii and—”

“It's been four years since we lost Patrick,” Lindie said, cutting her off. “We all loved Patrick, Livi. We all miss him and will never forget him. But we've been so afraid that you were just going to let your life be over, too.”

“We couldn't stand it,” Jani added bluntly. “Worrying that you would go on all by yourself forever, without anyone but us. This is fate telling you no, and thank God for that!”

“Or thank GiGi,” Lindie proposed. “Sometimes I think she's psychic or has magic powers or something. We all keep ending up with someone we come into contact with through these little projects of hers.”

“I'm not
ending up
with Callan Tierney,” Livi insisted. “I'm not even sure I'm going to tell him that the baby is his.”

“Why would you not tell him?” her sister asked.

“We aren't involved with each other...like that,” she said, pushing the memory of the kiss in the courtyard the night before out of her mind.

Which was not an easy thing to do when she'd been awake half the night thinking about it.

Okay, and reliving it, too.

And craving more of it. More of a lot of things she had no business craving. Or even thinking about.

“We've put Hawaii behind us,” she insisted, dodging her own train of thought. “I'm writing it off to tropical fever or something. Something that caused an insane, irrational act that we've agreed to forget.”

“How are you going to forget how you got this baby?” Jani reasoned. “Especially when the daddy is the guardian of this little girl you've taken under your wing? Your paths will keep crossing—what do you think he'll say when he sees you getting bigger and bigger?”

“I can always say that I had artificial insemination. Right after Hawaii. I know enough about that from when you were considering it, Jani, before you met Gideon.”

“This Callan guy is king of the software business. You think he isn't bright enough to put two and two together and come up with four?” her sister said facetiously.

Livi rolled her eyes. “Of course he's
bright
,
but I don't think he'll
want
to put two and two together and come up with four
.
I think he might be relieved with a lie that gets him off the hook on this.”

Or would he? He
had
told her last night that he'd liked the idea of having a family when his wife had turned up pregnant.

But that was before he'd lost his friends, before he'd had to take over raising Greta and caring for the Tellers. Now he
did
have a family—maybe not in the traditional way, but he did—and he wasn't doing all that well with any of them. He also wasn't particularly thrilled with the situation and the demands it made on him. He was clearly uncomfortable in the role of dad, of family man. And none of it spoke in favor of adding more to his roster.

“You think he'd rather
not
know he's going to be a father?” Lindie reiterated. “If so, then he's a jerk—because I think any man who wouldn't want to know he'd fathered a baby, who would be happy to be
let off the hook
rather than have a relationship with his own child, is a jerk. At the very least.”

Livi shook her head. “He's not,” she said firmly. “But he
is
obsessed with his work. And he grew up hard and doesn't really relate well to a lot of people because of it. He has no concept of what it is to have a family. And he's uncomfortable with it and already juggling more than he may be able to handle. He's trying, and I think he genuinely wants to meet the obligations, but I'm not sure he can. And I'm really not sure I should pile on more. Or that I want to.”

“You aren't going to try to think of this baby as Patrick's, are you?” Jani said fearfully.

Actually, it was slightly unnerving how much Patrick seemed to be fading from her thoughts, Livi realized. Not that she was forgetting him. It was just that he was somehow receding into a compartment that was separate from the present. She hadn't realized how much she'd been living in the past until the pregnancy had forced her to focus on the here and now.

But regardless of what was causing her to begin to slide Patrick off center stage, she knew it was probably for the best.

So she could honestly answer her cousin's question by saying, “No, I'm not. That would be crazy. I'm trying to think of it as
mine
and maybe mine alone.”

“Don't you like this guy?” Lindie asked. “Is he just really, really gorgeous, with an irresistible body, so you let go for once, but it was only physical?”

Even her sister's general description brought the image of Callan to mind in all his glory. Yes, he was definitely gorgeous. But it wasn't only the way he looked. There was more to it. Like there had been in Hawaii, when she'd felt comfortable with him. He'd been funny, charming. Easy to talk to. And there had been a palpable chemistry between them that she'd never felt with another man. Not even Patrick.

But Livi couldn't find the words to explain any of that, so she said, “I had a
lot
to drink, don't forget. But he is attractive.”

“You're just not attracted to
him when you're sober?”

“It isn't that, either.”

“So you
are
attracted to him, drunk or sober,” Lindie concluded.

She and Jani exchanged a knowing smile. Apparently both were satisfied with that information because they went back to their earlier position.

“Don't you think that it's the responsible thing to do—tell him he's going to be a father?” Lindie said.

“Isn't my biggest responsibility now to the baby?” Livi countered. “This guy is already on overload. He's a self-proclaimed neglector of relationships. Is it really what's best for him or me or the baby to push him into another relationship he's not equipped to handle? Wouldn't I just be setting up the baby for hurt when Callan neglects him or her, too?”

She was thinking out loud, not making any kind of decision yet, but she could tell that she'd made some valid points, because neither her sister nor her cousin said anything for a moment.

Then Lindie said, “I vote that you tell him.”

“Me, too,” Jani added.

But Livi thought that they were both picturing some kind of fairy tale—her telling Callan, Callan immediately dropping to one knee to propose and everyone living happily-ever-after. And Livi couldn't picture that herself. She didn't even want to.

“Callan isn't Patrick,” she warned them. “Patrick was all about our marriage and the family we wanted to build. Whenever I needed him, he was there for me, one hundred percent. He wouldn't have ever done what Callan did with his ex-wife—pushing off anything to do with her onto some paid assistant. Callan had the guy stand in as a proxy for him so often, his wife ended up leaving him for the assistant.”

“He delegated being a husband?” Jani asked.

“He did. And now he's delegating taking care of the older couple to the wife's nurse, and I was just on my own with Greta for the last two days because he was nowhere around.”

“Yeah, that's not good...” Lindie admitted.

“But he's new to all this,” Jani reminded them, though clearly some of her enthusiasm had waned.

“Sure,” Livi agreed. “But he didn't figure out how to be present as a husband, even though he was married for eight years. And even if he gets the hang of looking after Greta and the Tellers, how good will he be at it? And how far can I expect him to be stretched?”

Neither woman had any answers to those questions and their expressions conceded the possibility that she might be right.

“Well, whatever way you handle this, we're behind you,” Lindie said.

“All the way,” Jani confirmed. Then, with a beaming smile, she said, “And we'll have another
baby
!”

“And if you end up doing it on your own, we'll be there for you every step of the way—you know that.”

Livi
had
known that. But it was still a huge relief to hear for herself that they weren't judging what she'd done, that they would rally round her and that the consequences—her baby—would be as welcome as if it
was
hers and Patrick's.

But relieved or not on that count, she found it didn't change the situation she was in.

And she had no idea what to do about Callan.

* * *

The visit from her sister and cousin slowed Livi down and she ended up texting Callan to tell him that she would meet him and Greta at the private school later that day. When they arrived, kids and parents were bustling around, decorating and setting up for what they learned was to be a school sleepover that night.

During the principal's tour and basic orientation for Greta, he introduced her to several little girls who would be her classmates.

Livi was glad to see that the other nine-year-olds greeted Greta warmly. They loved her long blond hair, telling her that she looked just like an animated character they all adored.

Greta was not at all shy and responded without reservation, making what appeared to be fast friends with two of the girls. She even begged to be allowed to attend the sleepover that night when they asked her to.

Callan, appearing awkward and uncomfortable, seemed perplexed by the request and looked to Livi.

She laughed and said, “I think if she wants to go, you can probably let her. They said the school would be locked up tight, and parents will be here to supervise, so it seems safe. And someone can always call you to come and pick her up in the middle of the night if it doesn't work out.”

“Can I? Can I?
Please
...” Greta begged, with beseeching doe eyes thrown in for good measure.

“Well, yeah, I guess...” Callan said uncertainly.

One of the other little girls ran to a woman helping set up and then ran back with a sheet of paper. “This is what she'll need,” the other girl announced helpfully.

Callan took the paper, staring at it and frowning.

Livi peered at the list from beside him and asked Greta if she had a sleeping bag. When she said no, Livi suggested they finish the tour, do some shopping and then stop at home for her to pack, making it back for the six o'clock lockdown.

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” Greta exclaimed, and Callan, still seeming out of his element, agreed.

* * *

“Is there really a chance that she'll call me to pick her up in the middle of the night?” Callan asked Livi after they'd walked Greta into the school again—this time for her to spend the night there.

Livi laughed. “Anything is possible. With the ten of us there were plenty of middle-of-the-night trips to pick up one or the other of us from sleepovers because we got sick or scared or couldn't sleep or whatever. That's part of being a parent.”

“But for now I have the night off...” he said, as if he'd just realized that on the way to Livi's car.

Because she'd met Callan and Greta at the school, Livi had driven, too. They'd left her sedan in the school parking lot to shop and get Greta's things, but now Livi headed for it.

“You do still have the Tellers at your place,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, but they already thought that Greta and I wouldn't be there for dinner. I was going to see if I could take the two of you to eat and then find an arcade, or maybe go to that fright-night thing that's running all month at the amusement park.”

“Really? You planned a kid thing?”

“I did,” he said, as if he was proud of himself for it. “And since I told the Tellers not to expect us tonight, they decided to have a marathon of some crime show they like. So how about I treat you to dinner—to say thanks for all you did for Greta this last week, and for coming today?”