My Best Friend's Baby (18 page)

He blinked at her and straightened his
glasses. "What's the matter? All protested out? You look like I do
when I've been working on an invention all day and it won't quite
come together. Like that damned growth accelerator ..."

Or maybe that yes-kids thing was only
wishful thinking
. Nick went on talking, telling her something
about his invention and the meeting he'd set up for Wednesday with
an interested investor in California, but Chloe could only listen
with half an ear.
His inventions will always come first
, she
thought. She watched his eyes light up as he described the
prototype he'd come up with for the licensing meeting with the
investor's board of directors, and her heart sank.
Always
.

"Come in and check it out," Nick was saying.
His fingers touched hers, warm in the twilight. Smiling that
devastating, you'll-like-it smile of his, he tugged her gently up
the walk to his front porch.

Her feet hit the porch floorboards at the
same time her conscience made up its mind once and for all. "Nick,
wait!" Chloe blurted out.

He stopped and squeezed her hand. "For what?
If you're worried about Larry, Moe and Curly—"

"It's not that."

"—and Shep, I'm sure they're okay."

"I, I, ummm ..." Oh, God. When had telling
the truth become so difficult?

When you started lying for a living,
Carmichal.

Chloe twisted her handbag's short straps and
stared up at him, trying to dredge up some courage. Surely she had
some, even beneath the layers of well-meant lies she'd told. She
was the same woman who'd just staged a showdown at the bank, wasn't
she?

Except looking at Nick's tender expression
and lopsided, familiar grin made everything twice as hard. Biting
her lip, Chloe pulled her gaze from his face and looked at the
soft-lit windows behind him instead.
Just say it!
She told
herself.
Nick, this is your baby. Sorry I've lied to you about
it for the past nine months. Ha, ha!

Right. That would go over like Curly's
exercise ball sinking into the fish tank.

"Chloe?"

She tried again. "Re-remember how you said
you'd go to the hospital when the baby's born, if I needed you?"
she asked.

"Yes."

Something in the way he said it drew her
gaze back to him. He'd put on that analytical scientist's
expression of his, the one she'd dreaded all these months. Was she
giving off lie-detector signals, or what?

"I meant it, and I will," Nick went on. He
bent to speak to her navel. "Wouldn't miss your debut for anything,
big guy."

Tenderness washed over her. He loved the
baby already, and he didn't even know the truth.

The truth
.
Get back on track
,
she ordered herself.

"What if it's a girl?" she asked instead.
Where had that come from
?

"A girl?"

"You said, 'big guy.' What if it's a
girl?"

He straightened and gave her a quizzical
look. "Then I'll teach her to play football anyway."

Behind him, something bumped inside his
house. Chloe thought she glimpsed something dart past his
half-opened blinds.

"What was that?"

"Nothing." He took her hand again. "Look,
let's talk about this inside."

"No. I've got to tell you this now." Sheesh,
she sounded like a spoiled brat. Next she'd be stomping her foot.
"It's

..." Her breath caught in her throat, making
her gulp for air. "... about Bruno."

Another noise inside made her jerk. And
breathe harder. Suddenly, Chloe couldn't get enough air. Beside
her, Nick's image wavered like the Day-Glo castle inside her
aquarium.

His voice yanked her back into the land of
the listening, but that didn't help her breathing any. Probably a
panic attack, she figured, brought on by the stress of actually
telling Nick the truth.

And risking the loss of the man she loved.
Forever. Dear God, he'd never forgive her for this.

"Huh, huh," she gasped, grabbing his arm for
support.
Help. I've become physically incapable of
honesty
.

He mistook her grappling for something else.
Insistence that he listen to another Bruno story, probably.

"We can't do this now," Nick said
abruptly—and hauled her inside his front door.

"Wait, I'm—I'm—"

Lights burst on in a blinding flash. No
wait, those were flashbulbs popping all around her. Noisemakers
screamed, and what looked like a hundred people surged up from
their hiding places in the tropical rainforest that Nick's living
room had become. "Surprise!" they yelled.

"... hyperventilating," Chloe finished
weakly.

And then the world turned black.

Chapter Eleven

Surprise parties were underrated, Chloe
decided once she'd come to and been ensconced in the chair of
honor—in this case, Nick's weathered leather BarcoLounger,
specially decorated with pink and blue balloons and pastel stick-on
bows. Because this party, this surprise, had saved her from making
a potentially disastrous mistake.

Telling Nick the truth.

Maybe she wouldn't have to, some cowardly
part of her thought. To look at him now, surrounded by all their
friends and most of his family, it was easy to believe they could
go on the way they had been ... partners in parenthood, just like
they'd been partners in pregnancy. Even without the white picket
fence and the ring and the happily-ever-after. Any guy who'd stage
a surprise baby shower couldn't be all work and no baby, could
he?

From across the room, Nick's voice drifted
toward her. "That's right," he was telling Red's husband, Jerry. "A
growth accelerator. I've been working on it night and day."

Then again, she might be wrong.

Beside her, Nick's mother patted Chloe's
hand. "Poor dear," she said. "You still look a little pale. But I
guess a day like you had would make anyone feel a bit peaked,
wouldn't it?" Heads nodded all around their little BarcoLounger
ladies' group. "Are you feeling better now?"

Chloe gazed fondly at Mama Steadman.
Except for wanting to leap into your warm, hugging arms and
never let go? Sure
! She'd never envied Nick his close-knit
family as much as she did at this moment, when they were all around
her.

Just as though she were part of a real
family.

"I'm fine," she managed to say.
And your
son is going to be a daddy
. No, she couldn't say that.

"Nick told us about your showdown with
Griggs," Red said, speaking around her
faux
-cigarette carrot
stick. It was her latest concession to a smoke-free, baby-ready
environment. "Congratulations, hon. I was starting to wonder how
many of those developers I'd have to trot in front of you before
you got the hint."

"You knew?"

"'Course. But I also knew you wouldn't
accept my help if I offered it, so I decided to give you a nudge in
the right direction instead."

The five Steadman "N" women murmured to each
other, heads together. Nancy leaned over the coffee table to cut
the Italian Cream Cake she'd made, and Naomi handed out thick slabs
of it.

"Nicky says Chloe's stubborn as a mule," she
told Red as she handed over a tottering, white-iced slice. "That's
why we had to surprise her with the party. He said she'd never
agree to it otherwise."

"As if Nick doesn't have a monopoly on
stubbornness himself," Nora said with a snort. She ducked beneath a
towering rubber tree plant and sat on the sofa opposite Chloe, then
waved her arm toward the rest of the plants cluttering the living
room. "Just look at this place! All these plants around—it's like a
greenhouse in here."

"This latest invention is the worst," agreed
Nancy. The Steadman women nodded, looking concerned. "He acts as
though he'll actually make money from this one!"

"With that investor appointment of his in
California," Nadine put in. She forked up some cake and gave her
brother a pitying glance. "Can you imagine, embarrassing yourself
in front of an entire board of directors? This hobby of his has
gone too far."

"He's going to get hurt," Naomi murmured.
"Danny says he blows things up pretty regularly."

Nancy put down the beribboned silver cake
server and shook her head toward Nick. "Someone really ought to
speak to him."

Nadine nodded. "I don't see why he can't
just find a nice girl, settle down, and—" She paused to wipe her
toddler son Nigel's nose with a tissue. "—have kids, like the rest
of us. What's so wrong with that? That's what I want to know!"

"He's got a perfectly good job at BrylCorp,
too," Mrs. Steadman said with a sigh. "Exactly the type of thing to
support a growing family, like his father and grandfather did. I do
wish he'd stick with that and stop all this inventing
nonsense."

Chloe couldn't stand it any longer. "It's
his dream!" she cried. "How can he give that up? He's worked so
hard, for so long, and—"

"—and maybe that ought to tell him
something," Nadine interrupted gently. "Like maybe he's not cut out
to be an inventor. Like maybe life's passing him by while he chases
some impossible dream."

Chloe stared at her.
No wonder Nick works
so hard
, she thought.
He's trying to make them all believe
in him
. And suddenly she was glad she hadn't added one more
expectation, one more obligation, to the ones he already
shouldered. Suddenly she was glad she hadn't confessed out on the
porch, and given him another reason to give up.

"How can you say that?" she asked. "Don't
any of you have dreams?"

"Shhh." Nancy cast a furtive glance toward
Nick. "He'll hear you!"

"Maybe he should hear me!" Chloe cried.
"Nick's brilliant. And creative. And if working night and day will
let him share all that with the world, I think he ought to do
it."

The room had gone silent, she realized. Even
the CD player had stopped between discs. Nick's head turned toward
the ladies, and the troubled expression on his face was one Chloe
had never hoped to see. Had he heard what they'd said?

"What's all the fuss about?" he asked.

"Now look what you've done," Nadine moaned
beneath her breath. "We never meant to hurt him, and now he's on to
us."

"He was already on to you," Chloe told
her.

She waved cheerily at Nick, just in case he
didn't
know what they'd been talking about. It was possible,
between the music and the crowd—and the sound-muffling qualities of
his Amazonian plants—that he hadn't heard all of it. Then she
plastered on a big, bright smile.

"We're just fighting over the last piece of
cake," she called. "You know us women. Calorie depraved."

"Uh, deprived," Nora corrected,
tittering.

"Right," Chloe agreed.

Thank God, he bought it. United in their
common, be-nice-to-Nick cause, the women clustered together and, in
mutual, unspoken solidarity, started discussing something else.

"Oh, look!" Nadine cried. "Nick's brought
out the baby shower gifts we dropped off earlier."

He had. Nick emerged from the hallway with
an armload of them, then, with Jerry's help, piled them into a
ratty bachelor chair beside the TV and started going through
them.

"Uh-oh," Naomi murmured.

"What?"

"That. Watch."

Chloe watched in amazement as Nick picked up
one of the oddly-shaped, gaily-wrapped gifts and bashed himself in
the forehead with it. Grinning, he nodded and put it in a separate
pile.

"Didn't have time to check all these
earlier," he told Jerry.

"He's been doing that with every one of
them," Nora whispered. "He said nobody got into the party with a
... a

... shoot, what did he call it, Nadine?"

"A baby basher."

Nora snapped her fingers. "Yup, that was
it."

"He wouldn't let us put anything in boxes
before wrapping it, either," added Nadine.

Chloe flashed on the monogrammed silver
rattle from her father, and had to smile. This time, Steady
Steadman was taking no chances.

"No boxes, huh? I guess that might have
interfered with his bash-detection device," she said, trying hard
not to giggle as Nick picked up anther gift and, looking intensely
serious, bonked himself on the side of the head with it.

"My husband Rikk got kind of crazy like
that, too, right before our youngest was born," confided Nadine. "I
thought it was kind of cute."

All four sisters smiled fondly.

Behind them, Nick frowned at a
purple-wrapped package and walloped it over his head for a second
time.
Must be a tough case
, Chloe thought.

Nancy, the eldest sister, plunked her chin
in her hand and rolled her eyes. "He's so protective of you and the
baby," she said. "You'd almost think Nick was the father, wouldn't
you?"

For the second time, silence descended.
Dammit, did the CD player have a Social Mortification detector, or
what?

"A—almost. Ha, ha," Chloe choked out,
strangling on a bite of Nancy's Italian cream cake. She managed to
get her napkin to her mouth seconds before causing a
marscarpone
cheese disaster.

"So!" cried Naomi, slapping Chloe's knee
cheerfully. "Why don't you tell us all about your guy?"

"My guy?" she wheezed.

"Yes, tell us!" urged Nora. "We'd love to
know all about your mystery marine, uhh ... B-something ... shoot,
what was it again, Nadine?"

Chloe devoutly hoped memory loss wasn't an
inescapable consequence of motherhood. Poor Nora only had three
children, but she couldn't remember her way out of a paper bag.

"Bruno," supplied Nadine. She smiled at
Chloe. "Yes, do tell us all about him."

"Arrgh!" In the kitchen, Nick slammed his
forehead into the refrigerator, gripping both sides hard enough to
wobble the appliance. "I can't take it anymore, Red. It's 'Bruno
this,' and 'Bruno that.' 'Bruno's sooo wonderful.'"