Baby Benefits (6 page)

She might have felt sorry for him if she hadn’t still been smarting from the twist their conversation had taken. Here she’d been thinking he was about to finally open up, to share his feelings with her. Instead, he was just using her as a courier.

Why, for goodness sake, had she ever allowed herself to get so emotionally involved with a man who saw her as little more than a fancy PDA?

If she’d said it once, she’d said it a thousand times. Enough was enough.

This was proof it was time to put her hands in the air and step slowly away from the job.

“Well, then,” she said grimly. “If this Kitty Biedermann is such a catch, I can’t see why you need me. She should be the one here helping you with Isabella.”

A long pregnant silence stretched between them while she waited for him to respond.

“You haven’t told her yet, have you?” she finally asked as a sense of dull resignation settled over her.

This time, at least, he had the good sense to look sheepish. Or as close to sheepish as a man as arrogant as he was could look. His lack of response was answer enough.

“I should have known.”

“I will tell her,” he stated with enough conviction she had to wonder exactly who he was trying to convince.

“Oh, I’m sure you will. Otherwise she’ll wonder who the kid growing up in her house is.”

Derek stared blankly at her. That’s what she got for trying sarcasm on someone who took everything so seriously.

Despite her frustration with him at the moment, years of working with him, of being his first line of defense took over and she found herself saying, “You have to tell her. Soon. When I spoke with her yesterday evening, she said you hadn’t been answering your cell phone. Which means you’re dodging her calls.”

“I’m not dodging her calls. I’m waiting for the opportune moment to tell her the truth.”

Raina fisted her hands. “She’s your fiancée. The woman you’re presumably planning on spending the rest of your life with. The opportune moment to tell her you have a child would have been about five seconds after you found out.”

Raina looked as if she were barely controlling the urge to hit him with something and the expression on her face screamed, You’re an idiot!

Yeah, tell me something I don’t know, he considered saying. And he certainly wasn’t used to needing anyone else’s help to sort out his problems.

Perhaps he should just be thankful this new, out-spoken Raina had shown up in his life just in time to sort through the mess he seemed to have found himself in.

“Let me ask you this. Why haven’t you told her yet?”

“It may take a little while for Kitty to get used to the idea of being a stepmother.”

“All the more reason to tell her now,” she pointed out gently. “Waiting isn’t going to make this any easier.”

For the first time in days, Raina seemed like the Raina he was used to. Calm, levelheaded. Looking out for his best interests.

If he told Raina everything, she could help. This wouldn’t be the first seemingly insurmountable problem she’d helped him solve.

But the last thing he wanted to do was admit the truth. It had taken years to coax a yes out of Kitty. Marrying her would seal the success of Messina Diamonds for decades to come. After all the years of work he’d put into it, he couldn’t blow this deal.

“You have to tell her, Derek. And you have to do it the next time she calls. Or better yet, call her. You can explain not returning her phone calls before now, but if you wait even another day, she’s going to just get more and more suspicious. She already thinks something is up. If you don’t tell her soon, she’ll dump you just for ignoring her.”

“I know what I’m doing,” he insisted.

“Not about this, you don’t. Look, I’m sure you have a certain prowess with women…”

The tone of her voice, which implied she didn’t believe that for a minute, set his teeth on edge.

“But this is different. Telling your fiancée you have an infant would tax the skills of Don Juan. Take the advice of a woman on this. She would rather know now.”

Every instinct he had screamed that telling Kitty the truth would only make things worse. But what if he was wrong?

Relying on his gut had gotten him through innumerable business decisions. But relying on Raina was also second nature. In the nine years she’d worked for him, she’d never given him bad advice. Maybe her female intuition trumped his gut.

“Okay. I’ll call her.”

A tentative smile spread across Raina’s face. “Thank God. Because she was driving me crazy calling me.”

For an instant, she looked both young and unbelievably appealing. This new Raina drew him in a way the cool professional Raina never had. But which was the real woman?

Something tightened deep in his gut. With all his concern about Kitty, he couldn’t help wondering if he was worried about the wrong woman.

As much as she didn’t want to be alone with Derek at his house this morning, she wanted even less to be alone with Isabella. The tiny infant reminded her all too much of Derek.

She had the same intense blue-gray eyes, which slanted down at the outside corner in exactly the same way, giving her expression a sort of thoughtful intensity. Her hair was thick and curly, just like his, though her curls were a coppery-gold where his were dark brown and close-cropped into submission.

Only their mouths differed. Isabella’s tiny rosebud lips often parted in big toothless grins. Derek, on the other hand, almost never smiled, and when he did, never bared his teeth. It was an oddity she’d grown accustomed to. By now she was quite fond of his rare, close-mouthed smiles. Which somehow made it all the harder to see Isabella’s generous, trusting grin.

Looking at the baby, Raina felt her heart constrict. Watching Isabella was like glimpsing another version of Derek himself. One who was less closed off. Less protective of himself.

Over the years they’d worked together, they’d spent countless hours together. He trusted her opinions. He’d discussed business goals and work strategies, but he’d never opened up to her. Not about anything personal. He’d never let her in.

But Isabella was different. Infants were born ready to love. They could bond with anyone who responded to their needs and paid them enough attention. How easy would it be to spend the next two weeks lavishing all her repressed love for Derek onto this tiny infant? How easy would it be to fall just as deeply in love with Isabella as she was with Derek?

All too easy. But for the health of her heart, it would be a mistake of catastrophic proportions.

No, the smart thing would be to keep her distance.

However, Isabella’s gaze followed Derek as he left the room to call Kitty. She stared at the closed door to his home office through which he’d disappeared.

After a few seconds, she turned her head back and shot Raina a decidedly suspicious look.

Suddenly feeling defensive, Raina asked, “What?”

Isabella frowned, waving her arms about. Not the cute batting at her toys she’d done when Derek was in the room, but in an annoyed, get-me-outta-here kind of way.

“It’s no use getting mad at me. I’m not picking you up,” Raina explained, squatting so she was at Isabella’s eye level. “I’m just not doing it. You’re cute enough as it is.”

Isabella cocked her head to one side, listening intently. She held her arms up to Raina, her expression flashing from annoyed to pleading. When Raina didn’t move, Isabella’s lower lip began to tremble. Her wide blue-gray eyes filled with watery tears. A whimper of unspeakable sorrow escaped her lips.

Any second now, this kid was going to blow. She’d scream her head off. Derek would rush in, spot Raina’s vulnerability and the deal would be off.

Faster than Raina could mutter, “Not on my watch,” she’d leaned forward and extracted the ticking time bomb.

“Okay, kiddo, you win this round. Just don’t give me away.”

When Raina pulled Isabella into her arms, her tiny body shuddered with relief. She buried her face against Raina’s neck, dampening her skin.

At the feel of that precious weight in her arms, something inside of Raina swelled, choking off her air supply and clogging her throat. An image flashed through her mind of the Grinch’s heart expanding until it popped through the wire cage. She wanted to squeeze Isabella closer to her chest, to nuzzle the soft spot on the back of her neck, to relish the sensation of those tiny moist lips drooling on her.

And how sick was that?

She wanted baby drool? Had she completely lost her mind? This wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted a life of her own. She wanted to go to culinary school. She wanted wire whisks and spring form pans. She wanted crème brûlée torches and chafing dishes.

She did not want to spend her days feeding mashed bananas to a drooly kid. She didn’t care how cute she was.

Thrusting Isabella away from her, Raina held her at arm’s length and met the girl’s gaze. “Hold on there, Cindy-Lou Who. I’m not falling for this act. I’ve got younger siblings. I know for a fact you little ones can be sneaky as hell.”

Isabella’s tiny brow knitted in confusion. What’s not to love? What could I possibly do to be cuter? she seemed to be asking.

“All I need from you is a little cooperation. I’m not the one you need to be charming. You need to send some of that cute Derek’s way. Make him go all mushy inside.”

If she didn’t know better, she’d have sworn Isabella shrugged as if to say What the hell. Then she once again reached her arms out to Raina, her tiny fists opening and closing in a gimme-gimme motion.

Instinctively Raina pulled her close to her chest, this time bracing herself first for the rush of hormones that holding Isabella stirred up inside of her.

Pushing all the warm gooeyness aside, she tried to focus on the task at hand, considering what she could possibly teach Derek about being a father. Everything she knew about babies was pure gut instinct. It was nothing she’d learned from a book or an expert.

Isabella met her gaze, her blue-gray eyes wide and trusting.

“Kendrick used to look at me just like that,” Raina murmured. Unbidden, an image of Kendrick as a baby drifted into her mind. “You remind me of him, you know. I was about eleven when he was your age. I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world. I didn’t have to play with dolls, because I had a baby brother. All I ever wanted to do was play with him, feed him and cuddle with him. I couldn’t wait to grow up and have a baby of my own.”

Sadness washed over her as she felt a pang of loss deep within her soul. She’d wanted a family of her own so badly as a child. Then her father had left and suddenly helping with her brothers and sisters wasn’t something she got to do, it was something she had to do. From the age of fourteen on, she’d picked up Lego blocks, wiped snotty noses and shuffled kids from one spot to another. When she’d left for culinary school at eighteen, she’d sworn off kids for life.

Then a scant year later, her mother had had a stroke, forcing Raina to walk away from her scholarship to help out at home. Which meant more snotty noses and mac ’n’ cheese and checking homework. This time on top of a demanding job. She felt like she’d raised an army of kids, rather than just four.

Somewhere along the way her own dreams of motherhood had been buried under the dump truck full of responsibilities she’d been too young for. She felt much older than her twenty-eight years. Now, as she stood swaying back and forth with Isabella in her arms, sentimentality flooded her.

She remembered all her siblings at this age, even Lavender, who was only three years younger than she. Suddenly, it seemed as if the years had passed too quickly. How could she have known that one day she’d miss the hours she’d spent playing dolls with Cassidy? Or the slumber parties she’d planned for Jasmine and Lavender? Or the times when Kendrick couldn’t sleep and she’d crawled into bed with him, cuddling his teddy bear between them as she told him stories until he’d fallen asleep?

How had she forgotten how wonderful those experiences were?

How had she forgotten how much she’d wanted children of her own, once upon a time?

And here was Isabella. This beautiful, perfect baby girl. The child of the man Raina loved. Innocent, vulnerable, and completely ready to love her in return. Ready to be lavished with attention and adored.

As Isabella cuddled closer to her chest, Raina felt tears prickle the backs of her eyes. She braced herself against a wave of yearning so profound it nearly brought her to her knees.

“But you’re not mine,” she murmured.

Falling in love with Derek’s daughter would do her no more good than falling in love with him had done her. That had only led her to—as her mother would say—a heart-load of misery and a bucket of bad decisions.

Resolve hardened in her chest. Quitting her job at Messina Diamonds was the first step to a whole new life for her. If she won this bet with Derek and got the extra money from the severance package, plus the unemployment, she’d be free to go back to culinary school. To live the life she wanted.

As she felt Isabella squirm against her chest, guilt stirred in her heart. Which was ridiculous. She wasn’t abandoning the child. Isabella wasn’t hers to love. That was Derek’s job. Raina just had to teach him to do it.