Baby Benefits (8 page)

Frankly, she was a little jealous herself. Not of Dex, but of Lucy, who had managed to win his heart. Of course, it wasn’t Dex’s heart Raina wanted. The Messina hearts were as complicated as they were well-guarded. Yet somehow Lucy had figured out a way in. Raina doubted she was even close to the right door.

Which was the kind of thinking that had made her so miserable during her tenure at Messina Diamonds. And she couldn’t help wondering, if in nine years working for him, she hadn’t been able to get Derek to open up to her, how in the world was she supposed to get him to open up to Isabella in just two weeks?

Watching the emotions play across Raina’s face, he could all but see her frustration mounting. So it didn’t surprise him when she marched across the room and thrust Isabella back into his arms.

“Look, you want to bond with your daughter? Just talk to her.”

As always, Isabella stiffened, holding her tiny body as straight as a rod of steal, her sturdy arms pressed against his chest with all her might. “Talk to her? About what?”

“Anything. Just let her hear your voice.”

Staring into the face of his daughter, he finally admitted to Raina, “I don’t know what to call her.”

“Huh?” Raina asked, clearly baffled.

“I don’t…” Normally he didn’t have trouble explaining himself. But today, with Isabella and Raina, he felt crippling incompetence. “I don’t have a name for her.”

“Just call her by her name, Isabella. Or call her Izzie.”

“Dex calls her Izzie.”

Raina rolled her eyes. “But sure, you’re not jealous of Dex. No, not at all.” Raina glanced down at her watch. “Call her whatever you want to call her. Punkin’, sweet pea, honeybun. Hell, call her rutabaga for all I care. Or, God forbid, follow in your brother’s footsteps and call her Izzie. She does seem to like it. But I don’t have time for this nonsense. I’ve got to go.”

“But you just got here.”

“Yes, and you asked me to clear your schedule for the next two weeks. Which means I’ve still got about fifty phone calls to make.” She spun on her heel and marched toward his home office, leaving him staring from her to Isabella, unsure which female baffled him more.

Almost as if she sensed what he was about to say, Raina stopped at the office door and added, “And don’t talk to her about work. Anything but business.”

“As you’ve pointed out, work is my whole life. That doesn’t leave much to talk about.”

Raina shrugged nonchalantly. “Tell her something you’ve never told anyone. Something about your childhood.”

When he continued to stare at her, waiting for inspiration to strike, she offered, “Childhood pranks? Amusing anecdotes? Misadventures? Anything? No?”

“That kind of crap was more Dex’s style. I was too busy keeping the family together.”

She sighed in a way that managed to sound both beleaguered and sympathetic. “I mean before your mom died. Before your father found those first diamonds. When your dad was still prospecting, you lived in ten different countries before the age of thirteen. You visited places most people have never even heard of. You had ample opportunity to stir up trouble. You had to have been a kid at some point. I refuse to believe that you were some serious-minded little version of yourself even then.”

But he had been. Even then he’d known it was his job to make sure he and Dex were getting their education, no matter what country they lived in. When their mother died of cancer when he was thirteen, even more responsibilities had fallen on his shoulders. Keeping the family together was never something he resented. It was just what he did.

When he didn’t answer, Raina propped her hands on her hips and glared at him. “Fine. You don’t want to talk about your childhood? Tell her about your parents. Tell her about Dex. If all else fails, make something up. Just talk to her.”

As Raina left, Derek could only shake his head in confusion. What was it she wanted from him?

Apparently when Raina had said he needed to “open up” to Isabella, she’d expected an outpouring of sentimentality. Or perhaps unresolved childhood angst. The truth was, he had no angst about his childhood.

Naturally, he’d been hard hit by his mother’s death. They all had been. But they’d stuck together. He’d never resented the sacrifices he’d made for the family. He’d just done what needed to be done.

There was nothing to regret. At seventeen, not long after his father first discovered diamonds in Canada, Derek had taken over the business side of things for his father. He’d been cutting deals with men three times his age. He’d relished the challenge. And the truth was, he hadn’t resented the sacrifice, because frankly, it had been a relief. Taking over the business from his father had finally given him a place in his freewheeling, fun-loving family.

In fact, right now, the only regret he could think of was that his assistant seemed to have morphed into someone else. Had she always been this passionate about things and he’d just never noticed? Or had she been completely suppressing her personality for the past nine years? Was he such a tyrant that she’d believed that necessary?

The phone rang halfway through dinner. Kendrick, ever the seventeen-year-old, jumped to answer it before Raina could remind him that at their last “family summit” they’d voted not to take phone calls during dinner.

A minute later he returned with the cordless handset in hand and a scowl on his face. “It’s for you.”

Cassidy slouched back in her chair, not bothering to shove aside her bleached blond bangs when they dangled in her eyes. “I thought Raina wasn’t supposed to take calls from Darth Vader during dinner.”

“No one is supposed to take calls,” their mother pointed out diplomatically.

Raina shot her mother a grateful look as she accepted the handset. “Kendrick already answered it. I can’t just hang up on him.”

Cassidy glared at Kendrick, who merely poked at his stir-fry in response.

As she scooted her chair away from the table and left the room, Raina had no doubts about who was on the other end of the line. Four times in the past hour, her cell phone had rung, “The Imperial March” Darth Vader ring tone Kendrick had installed on her phone echoing through the kitchen before she’d finally switched her phone to vibrate. Her ambivalence about their conversation this afternoon made ignoring his calls all the easier.

When she’d left this afternoon, he’d seemed to be making progress. He’d mastered changing diapers and though Isabella didn’t seem too happy about it, she’d even drunk the bottle Derek had heated up for her. Since he’d seemed stubbornly determined not to call the nanny for the night, she’d left believing Derek and Isabella would at least make it through the night. However the numerous phone calls had strained her optimism.

Two months ago, when her younger siblings had finally joined forces against “the Empire,” she’d explained the new policy to Derek. Every evening between seven and eight, she’d be unreachable. Either he’d forgotten or was—once again—ignoring her attempts to set boundaries.

Once out of earshot of her family, she put the phone to her ear. “I thought you understood—”

“I know,” he interrupted. “No phone calls during dinner.”

“If you leave a message on my voicemail, I promise I’ll—”

“But this is an emergency. I think Isabella has a fever.”

She resisted the urge to scoff. “Look, Derek, kids get fevers all the time. Just take her temperature, if it’s over—”

“How?”

“How, what?”

“How—” he spoke slowly with clipped words “—do I take her temperature?”

Ah. She’d forgotten she was dealing with a man who was both a control freak and knew zip about kids.

“First you’ve got to find the thermometer. Lucy is very thorough, so I’m sure she packed one in Isabella’s bag. Then you’ll need to take her temperature either rectally or under her arm.”

“Rectally?” Derek’s voice sounded choked.

“Yes. It’s more accurate. And—” A chorus of complaints called out from the kitchen to protest her time on the phone. “Why don’t you just look it up on the Internet like a normal person would. I’m sure there’s a site somewhere that tells you how to take a kid’s temperature.”

Then, for the first time in nine years of working for Derek, she hung up on him.

Six

Frankly, it felt good. Though that single act of rebellion did little to mitigate her bruised emotions.

For all these years, she’d done everything he’d asked. She’d worked the long hours; she’d sacrificed her personal time. She’d defended him when others called him a tyrant and an unfeeling bastard. And she’d done it all because she’d believed she saw things in him no one else did. Because she believed they shared something he had with no one else. Even if he didn’t love her—and she’d never had any illusions he did—she believed that he at least trusted and confided in her.

But it turned out, he was just clueless. He’d unwittingly broken her heart and she was just not ready to forgive him for that. Frankly, she wasn’t even willing to let her stir-fry get cold.

“I should have done that years ago,” she muttered as she pushed open the kitchen door, working hard to bury a twinge of guilt.

An hour later, as she was finishing up the dishes, she still wasn’t entirely successful. She leaned toward Lavender, who was drying while she washed, and opened her mouth to speak.

“Stop obsessing.”

Raina snapped her mouth closed. Then said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re still worried that something is really wrong with Isabella. Just remember Derek is a competent adult. He’ll figure it out. He’s got to—”

Before Lavender could even finish her thought, the doorbell rang. A sinking feeling settled into her stomach. Lavender shot her an exasperated look.

“That better not—”

“Raina,” Cassidy called from the living room. “It’s for you.”

Kendrick, without looking up from his homework, mimicked the heavy breathing of Darth Vader before giving in to a chuckle at his own joke.

Raina dried her hands and shot looks at both Lavender and Kendrick. “You two stay here.”

Stifling her growing annoyance, she pushed through to the living room to find—just as she expected—Derek standing just inside the front door, a crying Isabella in his arms.

It was so disconcerting to see him standing there in her living room, for a moment she couldn’t even speak. He was dressed much as he’d been earlier—the same dress pants and shirt, but he’d lost the jacket. The sleeves of his shirt had been rolled up. She’d seen him dressed just so many times, but always at the office, after hours. And he’d never before looked quite so…disheveled.

His hair was mussed as if he’d repeatedly run his fingers through it and something mysterious and beige stained his shirt.

Kendrick and Lavender hovered in the door behind her. Cassidy sat on the sofa beside their mother’s wheelchair, watching a sitcom on TV. Acid poured into her stomach at the sight of their curious, appraising gazes. Given their playful—but genuine—animosity toward him, this had the potential to go very badly.

“You shouldn’t have come,” she told him.

He held Isabella out toward her. “I couldn’t find the thermometer,” he said accusingly, as if it were somehow her fault. “Then when I put her in the car to drive to the pharmacy to buy one, she started crying.” He pulled an ear thermometer out of his pants pocket. “I bought this at the pharmacy, but every time I use it, I get a different reading. And she just keeps crying.”

Lavender stepped around Raina and crossed the room. “That kind of thermometer is notoriously unreliable on infants,” she said reassuringly as she held out her hands. “Here, let me take her.”

Derek eyed her suspiciously.

“Derek, this is my sister, Lavender. She works part-time at a pediatrician’s office.”

“And I’m quite the expert temperature taker. We’ll get this sorted out.”

Reluctantly he released the crying Isabella into her arms. She quieted down almost instantly in Lavender’s gentle touch. The two of them disappeared down the hall. The concern lining Derek’s face didn’t disappear so quickly.

She’d never seen him like this. He wasn’t a man easily worried. If a problem arose, he fixed it. Simple as that.

But Raina knew all too well that the health of a loved one wasn’t something you could fix. There were problems no amount of money or resolve could solve.

Raina’s gaze automatically drifted in the direction of her mother. Though weak and confined to her wheelchair, her expression was as curiously eager as Cassidy’s was.

“Derek, this is my mother, Rose Huffman.” She hesitated before adding, “You may remember meeting her.”

Derek jerked his gaze from the doorway through which Lavender and Isabella disappeared. “Yes. Of course. I remember.”

Raina felt a blush creep into her cheeks. Of course he did. He had an excellent memory. Especially when it came to money.

He’d met her mother the first time she’d quit, eight years ago. At the time, her mother’s health was still declining. She’d only just been confined to a wheelchair and their home was not yet handicap accessible. Raina had seen no option other than quitting her profitable job at Messina Diamonds to take another job that would allow her to work from home, where she could help care for her mother during the day.