A Baby in the Bargain (6 page)

“Seven-thirty?” She was more inclined toward dinner at eight, which would make it easier to run home after work and change clothes. But somehow an eight-o’clock dinner seemed more datelike, while a seven-thirty dinner had a bit more of a business feel, and the fact that it was already taking place on a Friday seemed to call for at least that much reserve.

“Seven-thirty is fine. I’ll meet you there.”

“Great.”

And why it suddenly seemed like they’d just been on a date, Jani didn’t know. But standing in the parking lot in the early darkness, looking up at Gideon, the question of kissing flashed through her mind as if that’s exactly what they’d been doing.

Kissing?

Of course not. It was out of the question.

But still her gaze went to his mouth. To his full lips.

And she wondered...

She just couldn’t help it.

She wondered what kind of kisser he might be. Good? Bad? Mediocre? Dry? Wet and sloppy? Just right...

She’d never know.

Of course she’d never know.

But somehow, deep, deep down, a little part of her regretted that.

Which was ridiculous, she told herself.

“Okay then...” she said, realizing only in that moment that Gideon had been staring at her, too. Much the way she’d been staring at him...

But probably not with thoughts of kissing.

He doesn’t like me.

Although he wasn’t looking at her as if he didn’t like her...

Still, this was going nowhere because it had nowhere to go, so she said, “Friday night. Seven-thirty.”

“Preliminary paperwork in hand,” he added, his voice slightly deeper, slightly quieter than she’d ever heard it, as if he were reminding himself of their business together.

Then he said, “See you then,” and went around to the driver’s side of his sports car, getting in only after he glanced across the top to make sure Jani had gotten into her sedan.

She waved, knowing she had no reason to have continued to watch him, and turned to look out her windshield while she started her engine.

Another glance in his direction found him looking straight ahead while he did the same, and Jani took that as her cue to put her car into gear and leave.

And yet as she drove through rush-hour traffic to get back to Denver, her mind wasn’t really on the slow-moving, bumper-to-bumper crawl that got her onto the highway.

It was still on Gideon Thatcher.

And her curiosity about what kind of a kisser he might be...

Chapter Five

“I
t’s a dinner
meeting,
not a dinner date. I’ll be paying and putting it on my expense account,” Jani insisted to her cousins.

Livi and Lindie had dropped by her house on their way to a movie Friday evening to ask what she’d learned at her doctor’s appointment that afternoon.

But they’d come in on Jani getting ready for her seven-thirty dinner with Gideon and accused her of prepping for a date.

“The soup cans say you’re lying,” Livi said, pointing to the empty metal containers that Jani had her hair wrapped around as it dried from the quick shampoo she’d done in the shower when she’d rushed home.

“Homecoming junior year of high school. Prom that same year. The Sweetheart Dance when we were seniors,” Lindie added. “Those are the times you went to the trouble of using soup cans to make the waves of your hair bigger, so they’re softer and sleeker and—”

“Sexier—that’s what you said,” Livi finished her sister’s sentence. “Why do you want to be soft and sleek and sexy for a dinner
meeting?
”

“I just wanted a little different look, okay? Without the damage of the heating tools. I remembered the soup cans and thought I’d try them again, that’s all. I told you guys the same thing I told GiGi and the boys—Gideon Thatcher is one of those people in the hate-the-Camdens camp. Top it off with the fact that I’ve taken myself out of the dating pool and put myself on the mommy track, and all you have here is a dinner
meeting.
”

One she was looking forward to, but still nothing
more
than a meeting—that’s what Jani had been telling herself since she’d set it up.

“GiGi says he has green eyes,” Livi prodded. “Reggie had green eyes. You’re a sucker for green eyes....”

“I’m a sucker for babies. Reggie cured me of being a sucker for anything else.”

“I have a friend who spotted Reggie on a plane to Las Vegas last weekend,” Lindie said as if she’d been debating about whether or not to tell Jani. “Just in case you have any doubts that you did the right thing...”

“Believe me, after four years of frustration and then being scared to death thanks to Reggie, I don’t have any doubt that I was right to finally call it off with him. And the last thing I’m interested in is starting all over again with another guy and putting off what I really want. Again. So I’m telling you, tonight is a dinner meeting and that’s it!”

“So
is
there going to be a baby?” Livi asked, conceding the point and getting to the subject that made Jani happier. What her cousins had come tonight to ask about in the first place.

“With any luck, yes, there will be a baby,” Jani confirmed. “My tests and blood work were all good, so I have the go-ahead. The next step is to pick a donor, then I’ll start the hormones and—”

“We could have a baby by this time next year!” Lindie finished for her.

“Fingers crossed...” Jani said, thankful that her cousins were supportive.

Lindie, Livi and their brother, Lang, were the Camden triplets. The triplets had been born the same year as Jani—they were the youngest of the Camden grandchildren. They’d lived together with GiGi from the time they were six. And while all ten of the cousins were as close as siblings, since Jani, Livi and Lindie were the only girls, they were particularly close. Her female cousins felt like sisters to Jani, and what they thought of her plan to have a baby on her own was important to her. Vital to her, actually.

And they were in favor of it.

“How do you pick a donor?” Lindie asked. “Do you go to a sperm bank or something?”

“The doctor has an affiliation with one he trusts—not only because of the donors they use and their screening process, but also because of the way the sperm is handled. He says
viability
can depend on things like that. So yes, the sperm comes from a sperm bank, but I do it through the doctor. I’ll go into the office to read profiles next Wednesday and choose.”

“Pick a dad, any dad...” Lindie joked, sounding like a carnival hustler. Then her eyes widened and she said, “Oh, that probably sounded
bad!
I’m sorry!”

Jani didn’t take offense. She knew that what she was planning to do was uncharted territory—it was for her, and it certainly was for her family. They were all just feeling their way, so she didn’t hold it against anyone if they said something awkward.

Instead she held up two different outfit options to give her cousins something else to talk about. “The blue dress or the sweater and slacks?”

“The blue dress if it’s a date. The sweater and slacks if it’s just a casual dinner
meeting,
” Lindie said.

“So the sweater and slacks,” Jani decreed, regretting that she hadn’t just put on the blue dress without asking for their opinion.

“GiGi said this guy is giving you a hard time?” Livi commented as Jani pulled on the white cowl-necked angora sweater and the gray pinstripe pants.

“It was a little better when I saw him on Wednesday, but like I said, he’s definitely in the hate-the-Camdens camp.”

She’d put on blush and mascara already, and now took the soup cans out of her hair. After brushing it, it did fall in softer waves around her shoulders, so the technique had worked the way she remembered it.

“Hey, the soup cans really do work!” Livi marveled.

All of the Camden grandchildren bore a striking resemblance to one another but that was particularly true of the girls—something that had made it difficult for their classmates in elementary school to believe that Lang was the other triplet and not Jani.

“Can I borrow them?” Lindie asked. “I have a blind date tomorrow night and no time to run to the store for soup.”

“Sure,” Jani said, thinking that if there was a chance she might be seeing Gideon again soon she might not want to part with them. But she could hardly say
that!

“We should take off or we’ll be late for the movie,” Livi said.

“Let me get a bag to carry the soup cans,” Jani offered, and they all left her bedroom.

“You look great, by the way,” Lindie said as they went to the kitchen. “Wear those new black heels you bought when we were shopping last Saturday... Oh, or is this guy short? You don’t want to tower above him, that’ll only make him more intimidated.”

“He’s not short
or
intimidated, believe me,” Jani said of Gideon.

“He’s not short
and has green eyes...” Livi said as if she’d heard something in Jani’s tone to provoke a return to the initial suspicion that tonight’s dinner was a date. “Is it possible that even though this guy is in the hate-the-Camdens camp, you aren’t so much in the hate-the-guy camp?”

“I don’t hate him. Why would I hate him?” Jani said, hearing the overcompensation in her own tone.

“Do you
like
him?” Lindie asked, suspicious again, too.

“I don’t have any personal opinion about him one way or another. This is just my turn up to bat on one of these missions and I’m trying to get it over and done with so I can just concentrate on the baby. I’m not letting anything keep me from having a baby anymore—tall with green eyes or not,” she said firmly.

“And you shouldn’t,” Livi agreed.

“I can’t wait to be able to start buying baby clothes!” Lindie added, obviously trying to compensate for her earlier insensitivity.

“And to decorate the nursery,” Livi put in.

“What do we need men for?” Lindie again.

“Yeah, they’re nice, but they’re like jewelry—accessories, not necessities,” Livi said.

Jani put the soup cans in a sack and kept quiet, knowing that neither of her cousins actually believed what they were saying about men and that they were both just trying to put a good face on things for Jani’s sake.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want a man in her life or that she thought they were nothing more than accessories. But she’d done everything she could with Reggie to stick it out, to make it work, so she could arrive at the point of having a baby with him. With a husband.

But that had failed. And this was what she was left needing to do. Or risk never having a baby of her own.

So no, no man.

Sure, she preferred to have a family the old-fashioned way. The traditional way.

And if Gideon Thatcher came to mind at that very moment?

It wasn’t as if there was a connection.

Regardless of what her traitorous brain might be throwing out at her, she was done fostering any kind of illusions.

And that’s exactly what it would be to so much as entertain the idea that—even if she had the time to wait for something to develop between them—Gideon Thatcher would ever be inclined to father a Camden baby.

* * *

“Uh... Are they giving those away in there?”

After eating their meal of luscious lasagna and going over paperwork, Jani had left Gideon to go to the ladies’ room. She’d gone in with only her purse, but now she emerged carrying a tiny, sleeping baby boy in her arms.

Just then the baby’s mother came out of the ladies’ room holding a crying three-year-old, and Jani nodded in her direction. “I’m just helping out,” she said to Gideon, waiting for the woman to catch up to her so she could follow her to her table and hand the baby over to the father.

When Jani was done, she sat back down, replaced her napkin in her lap and explained. “While Mom was changing the baby’s diaper the three-year-old tried to climb onto the sink to wash her hands and fell. The three-year-old insisted she was too hurt to walk and Mom couldn’t carry the baby and the three-year-old out at once. I was just helping, so no, unfortunately, they weren’t handing out babies in there. If they had been, I would have taken one. Or two or three...”

“Wow, you really do want kids,” he muttered as their waiter arrived with the leather folder containing the bill and, it turned out, Gideon’s credit card.

“This was supposed to be my treat,” Jani protested when it became obvious that he’d paid the bill.

“You can treat me to the community center,” he said as he signed and took his copy of the credit card slip. “I feel like a walk—are you up for it?”

That surprised Jani. As always, he’d been cool and aloof at the start of this evening, then all-business during the meal they’d eaten while going over the proposal and the cost estimates for the community center. It truly had been nothing more than the business dinner she’d claimed it was to her cousins.

But an after-dinner walk? That seemed to go beyond business.

“It’s not too cold but there’s that light snow that just started falling.” Gideon pointed at the window beside their table. “Seems like a perfect night for a short winter stroll, but if that doesn’t appeal to you...”

It definitely appealed to her...

“No, that does sound good,” she insisted, glad now that she’d opted for the slacks and sweater. And shoes that she could easily walk in.

Jani slid the file folder with the paperwork into her large purse. While she did, Gideon put on his coat—a dressy leather jacket that he wore over a fisherman’s turtleneck sweater and cocoa-colored slacks.

Then he took Jani’s knee-length, red wool coat before she could reach it and held it open for her to slip into.

As she did, a sense of the power of this big man standing so close came over her. She had the image of resting her back against his chest and having his arms envelop her the way the red wool did.

Where did
that
come from?

She yanked herself out of that bit of involuntary and unwanted reverie, muttered a simple “Thanks” and stepped away from him to button the coat from top to bottom as she commanded her fickle mind to behave.

She wrapped an angora scarf that went with her sweater twice around her neck—nearly strangling herself as punishment—then took matching gloves from her coat pockets and put them on.

When they got outside, Gideon seemed to have something in mind because he guided her across First Avenue down Milwaukee, and then turned right.

They passed by small boutique shops that were all closed at that hour, and a few restaurants and bars. But then they wandered away from the upscale section into a quieter, less affluent area.

When Colorado Boulevard came into sight a few blocks ahead of them Gideon stopped and pointed to the end where traffic was racing by.

“See that place down on the corner?”

“The dive that just seems to be named Bar?” Jani asked of the old, run-down white building with nothing more than a neon sign flashing the word.

“Uh-huh. That’s where my great-grandfather ended up after Lakeview chased him out as their mayor.”

Uh-oh. Apparently this wasn’t merely an after-dinner stroll....

Jani could tell even from a distance that the bar wasn’t anywhere she’d want to spend time.

“You mentioned that Lakeview ran your great-grandfather out of town but you didn’t say how...”

“He became a pariah in Lakeview when it was clear that the promises he’d made on H.J.’s behalf weren’t coming through. The way Lakeview’s government was set up at the time, the city council had the power. The mayor was the head of the city council but had only one vote—”

“Like it is on the Camden board.”

“Right. The mayor presided over the council, had some other minor responsibilities, and of course he was the ceremonial head of the community, but it didn’t take much to shut him out—”

“Which was what happened?”

“Which was what happened. No one on the council would speak to him, or listen to anything he had to say. They made sure his vote was always overridden. He was told not to attend the ceremonial things that were the mayor’s usual duties. And for all intents and purposes, he became the invisible mayor until he was finally forced to resign—basically in shame.”

“That’s not good...” Jani said quietly, unsure what else to say. “Is that when he ‘ended up’
at the bar? And did he buy it or work there or...” She feared the worst, that maybe his great-grandfather had ended up a drunken fixture there.

“While he was struggling as the invisible mayor and trying to convince people that he was
not
in H. J. Camden’s pocket, his business in the private sector also went under—”