Surprised by Family: a Contemporary Romance Duet (5 page)

Whatever strange tension had been filling the air dissipated immediately.  Baron thanked her for her time, and she thanked him for lunch, and they went their separate ways.

As she left, Leila told herself that all of her wise reflections were moot, since Baron would never be seriously interested in her anyway.

***

On Friday, Leila got in the elevator in James Hall with Jane and Charlotte—and with Miss Martin, who had brought them up to wait in her office, since it was drizzly outside.

Leila leaned against the wall. She was exhausted. Really glad the week was over.

“Please can’t we play by the church, Mommy,” Charlotte begged, folding her hands in an exaggerated gesture of supplication.

“It’s too wet today, and we’ve got to get home so we have time to make our pizza and watch a movie.”

“I guess.” Charlotte stuck her chin out a little, but Leila was relieved to see there were no signs of a temper-fit.

“It’s my turn to put the pepperoni on,” Jane informed one and all. “Last time, Charlotte did it, so this time it’s my turn.”

“That’s right. It’s your turn.” Leila slanted a look over at her other daughter, who had taken a deep breath in preparation for
something
. “Right, Charlotte?”

The girl let the breath out in a loud gust. “Right. Next time is my turn.”

Fortunately, it wasn’t raining when they got outside, and Leila started toward the lot where they were parked.

Then Jane tugged on her jacket and pointed in the direction of the church. “Mommy, there’s the movie-star man.”

“The movie-star man!” Charlotte exclaimed, taking a few excited steps toward where Baron stood with a portfolio, talking to another man, whom Leila recognized as the Vice President of Finance for the college.

“Why do you call him the movie-star man?” Leila asked in genuine curiosity, trying to ignore the way her heartbeat had sped up at the sight of Baron.

“He looks like a movie-star. Doesn’t he?”

He did. Kind of.

The girls both started toward Baron.

“Jane, Charlotte,” Leila said, loudly enough to make both girls pause and look back at her. “Remember what we talked about?”

Jane hurried back over and took Leila’s hand. “Can we go say hi to Mr. James, Mommy?”

Leila wanted more than anything to say “no,” since she felt uncomfortable about the odd way their lunch a couple of days ago had ended. But she’d had a long talk with Charlotte last week, and this was as good a time as any to follow through with it. “Charlotte? Are you ready?”

Her daughter’s little face contorted slightly, as if she were trying to swallow down her bubbling excitement. “Okay.” She let Leila take her hand too, and they all trooped down toward the church.

Baron was facing away from them, so he didn’t know they were approaching until Charlotte started to call out, “Hi—”

“We don’t interrupt when other people are talking,” Leila chided, with a familiar sense of trying to herd milling sheep into proper order.

Baron had turned around at Charlotte’s first syllable. The initial flash of expression on his face was surprise and something less clear, but his expression settled itself into his characteristic charm.

Leila gave Charlotte a significant look and a very slight nudge forward.

The girl squared her shoulders, her ponytails falling messily down her back, and took a few steps toward Baron. “Hello, Mr. James. Thank you for helping me down from the tree and it was very nice of you to help me and I’m sorry if you got hurt or messed up when I landed on you.”

The college VP who had been talking to Baron did a double-take.

Baron’s face was very still as he stared down at Charlotte.

Leila was unaccountably pleased with the way his focus was only on the girl, even if it meant he was basically ignoring Leila herself. A lot of adults acted as if they liked her girls but wouldn’t even meet their eyes when they talked to them.

Leila was pretty sure that Baron wasn’t a kid-person, but at least he treated them as human.

“You’re welcome,” he said at last. “And your apology is accepted.”

Charlotte clapped her hands and did a little jig of joy.

Baron looked from Charlotte to Leila, and she shrugged in response to his slightly dazed expression, trying to smother a little giggle.

Jane cleared her throat, and they all turned to the other girl, who was trying to smooth the wrinkles out of her khaki skirt. When she was satisfied with her attempts, she walked over to Baron as well.

“Thank you, Mr. James, for helping my sister. She was silly to climb up in the tree that high.” Ignoring Charlotte’s outraged protest, Jane went on, “You were pretty good as Will Scarlet, but next time you should wear something red.”

After another blink, Baron said seriously, “You’re welcome too. I’ll keep that in mind.”

They weren’t exactly the kind of apologies and offers of thanks that Leila had in mind when she’d talked to the girls about how they should act if they saw Mr. James again, but they’d done their duty as best they could.

So, when they both looked back at her expectedly, she smiled and nodded. Then couldn’t help but laugh when they squealed and ran off toward the two Thermopylae mounds of earth.

“I am sorry,” she told Baron ruefully. “I know I thanked you before, but I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your going up after her last week.”

Baron shrugged off her thanks, the way he hadn’t done with the girls.  He also didn’t meet her eyes when he told her it wasn’t a big deal.

Then, looking more like himself, he gave her his charming smile—the one she was growing less and less fond of. “Thank you for lunch on Wednesday. We’ll have to do it again.”

She tried to think of an appropriate reply that would make clear she wasn’t swooning over him but at the same time wouldn’t sound rude.

Her attempt to think of something to say distracted her from what she should have noticed. She didn’t notice, though. Not until one of her daughters had snuck up and stuck her little hand in Baron’s pocket.

It wasn’t even Charlotte. The thief was Jane.

Baron stared down as the girl dug through his jacket pocket, as if he couldn’t quite figure out what was happening.

Purloining Baron’s phone, the girl sprinted away, just as Leila yelled, “Jane!”

Charlotte had been waiting—evidently to gloat over her sister’s ill-gotten gains—so both of the girls turned toward their mother with looks of indignation.

“It’s a game,” Jane explained, with an air of tested patience. “He taught it to us last time. We’re Robin Hood, and we rob from the rich to give to the poor.” She stared up at Baron, hiding the phone behind her back. “Tell her!”

“I did indeed teach them the game,” he admitted, with the tiniest glimmer of a smile. It was so subtle, so unexpected, Leila thought she must have mistaken it. “However, I didn’t expect it to backfire on me in this outrageous way.”

Leila darted a look over at her girls, momentarily afraid they’d be cowed or upset by his words and his sober tone.

They were both giggling hysterically.

Baron held out his hand, and Jane reluctantly returned the phone.

“It’s okay if you don’t have time to play with us today, Mr. James,” Jane said charitably. “We can play later.”

“We can?” Baron’s eyebrows shot up.

“Yes,” Charlotte exclaimed. “We can play later!”

Jane’s face appeared to be infinitely satisfied with her good day’s work. Smiling up at Baron, she said, “We should shake-n-it.”

Leila’s felt her cheeks flushing, hoping Baron and the college VP wouldn’t think her girls didn’t know how to behave properly.

“Why should we shake on it?” he asked, for the first time looking slightly uncomfortable.

“‘Cause we sorted it all out.” Jane glanced back at Leila for affirmation of her sound reasoning, and then the girl reached her hand up toward Baron.

Baron just stared at the little hand for a moment. For the slightest breath of time, Leila thought she saw uncertainty in his eyes.

Then, without smiling, he reached out and shook Jane’s hand.

Leila felt that shudder start inside her—the one she’d felt a few times before. This time it was almost overwhelming, as she watched Baron shake her daughter’s hand.

Whatever brief uncertainty Baron had felt the moment ago was nothing compared to what she felt now.

This softness she was feeling, this ache at the sight of her girls so obviously won over by this man—for no reason she could possibly understand—was incredibly dangerous.

She was happy with her life now, after the mess of her marriage and divorce. The girls were happy too. And she couldn’t put at risk the stable life she’d worked to build for her and the girls by allowing herself to be swept away by a man whose lifestyle and priorities would always make him unattainable.

It didn’t matter that she was more attracted to him every time she saw him, and it didn’t matter that her babies had decided he was their new best friend.

She was the grown-up. She was their mother.

She’d be careful enough for all of them.

Baron jarred awake, completely disoriented and conscious of only a sharp pain in his neck.

He straightened up, slowly stretching his neck, trying to work out the painful catch.

He sat at his father’s desk, in his father’s office. It was dark outside. His computer screen had gone black. He realized he must have fallen asleep at the desk.

It was after midnight now. He’d stayed late to try to catch up after leaving the office for an hour that afternoon to meet with Benton College administrators about purchasing the property.

“Mr. James,” a voice came from his doorway.

He glanced up and realized belatedly that he’d been woken up by a knock at the door. “Sorry. What is it?” He felt blurry and completely out of it, and he didn’t like feeling that way.

A young woman walked in—slim, attractive, dark-haired, with a subtly flirtatious smile.  She was an intern here for the fall, and she’d been trying to indicate her availability to him for several weeks. “MaryAnn went home a couple of hours ago. Do you have a moment to sign this?”

“Sure.” He reached for the page, reading it over quickly and then scrawling out his signature.

He suddenly wondered if she’d pulled the document out of a pile on MaryAnn’s desk, just as an excuse to come into his office.

“What are you doing here so late?” he asked.

“MaryAnn had me working on a filing project, and I wanted to get it finished today.”

“Well, you should go home.”

He sure hoped someone else was still on the floor, and he wasn’t here alone with this intern at midnight.

“Is everything all right, Mr. James?” The girl leaned over the desk, flashing a glimpse of her cleavage.

He looked automatically. She was very pretty, but he couldn’t rouse enough interest to pursue her obvious invitation, despite how long it had been since he’d had sex.

Having a fling with an intern was a bad idea, anyway.

“Yes. Of course. Go home now. There’s plenty of time tomorrow to finish the filing.”

She looked slightly disappointed as she left his office.

Baron brought his computer back to life with a tap and shook his head at all the emails that had come in during the half-hour he’d dozed off.

One night, when he was six, just after his parents had gotten divorced, he’d snuck into his father’s study after he was supposed to be in bed. His dad worked all the time—at home or in the office—and Baron had missed his mom so much he’d almost been in tears. When his father spotted him, he’d let him sit in the big leather chair near the desk.

When Baron had found the courage to admit that he wished his mom hadn’t had to leave, his father had told him something he’d always remembered.

“Listen to me, Baron,” his father had said. “This is important. You’ll need to know it. You’re a James, and that means you have a lot. But it comes with responsibilities and burdens. Not everyone will understand that, but you need to remember it. Focus on what is most important and let the rest fall away if it must. We have a lot, but we can’t have everything.”

At six years old, Baron had felt special, like his father had told him an important secret.

Now, looking back, Baron understood what his father had told him.

He couldn’t have his old life and also do this job. If he wanted to be a James, to live out his role in his family, then he had to let his old life slip away.

It would have been nice if he’d had a brother to help deal with the aftermath of his father’s death. It would have been nice to have any family left at all.

Maybe Steven would come around. A brother he wasn’t close to was better than nothing at all.

He had a lot. He couldn’t have everything.

For some reason, the idea of family made him think about Leila.

He hadn’t seen her in more than a week. He’d decided he didn’t have the time or energy to deal with her, especially since she was clearly the kind of women who’d be looking for a serious relationship, when all he could offer was a one-night-stand. He was still thinking about her, though.

He’d been with beautiful women before. He’d been with smart women and witty women and sweet women before. He’d been with so many women he couldn’t even remember all of their names.

He had no idea why he couldn’t stop thinking about Leila.

But he wished he could.

***

That Saturday, Baron worked all morning, but at lunchtime, when he started feeling like he might suffocate from the weight of responsibility and busywork, he drove back to campus.

There was nothing else he needed at the church, but it made him feel better. Made him feel like he was doing something constructive for his dad instead of futilely trying to fill shoes that just wouldn’t fit.

He looked around the building again, thinking through the plans he’d made, until he finally realized he needed to get back to work, so he headed for his car.

A soccer ball hit him square on the side of the head before he’d gotten to the parking lot.

The sudden impact stunned him. Jarred him. He jerked to a stop and stared blankly, having trouble wrapping his mind around where the ball had come from.

A familiar giggle clued him in fairly quickly. With a sinking feeling in his chest, he turned to see the loud little girl—Charlotte—running up to him in pursuit of the ball she must have kicked.

“Oh, oh, oh! It’s the movie— I mean, Mr. James! Did I hit you?” She grabbed her ball and walked up to Baron with a silly little sashay in her step. He couldn’t decide if she had too much energy to contain or if she was trying to be sophisticated.

“You did,” he replied, wondering what cruel fate was at work, constantly throwing him in the path of these girls.  “So you didn’t aim the ball at me on purpose?”

“No!” she squealed, covering her mouth with her hand in a futile attempt to hide more giggles.

The other one came running up. “Mr. James, Mr. James! It’s been
ages
since we saw you!”

Eleven days was more accurate, but who was keeping count?

Baron turned to look in the direction the girls had come from, knowing who would be approaching now. His heart had accelerated slightly, either from dread or anticipation.

He blinked in surprise when he saw the person walking up after the girls. Not Leila.

“Baron,” Leila’s father, Joe, said as he extended a hand. “I hadn’t thought to see you around here.”

Baron shook the older man’s hand without thinking. “I hadn’t thought to be here. Business.” It wasn’t really business, but he wasn’t about to explain the prompting of emotional desperation that had driven him here today.

Joe nodded and glanced down at his granddaughters, who were clinging to his hands and grinning like little maniacs. “Charlotte and Jane have told me all about your adventures with them.”

“Where have you
been
?” Charlotte demanded, leaning away from Joe and hanging onto his hand to keep her balance. “We look and look for you!”

Baron cleared his throat, unused to explaining himself to six-year-olds and struggling for words because of it. “I’ve been busy. I hadn’t realized you would be expecting me.”

“Mommy said that you were a very important man with lots of big work to do, and so you probably wouldn’t have time to play with us,” Jane explained, her big eyes wide and earnest. “She said we shouldn’t wait for you.”

Baron could imagine Leila’s face as she explained to her daughters that Baron James wasn’t the kind of man they could bond with. That he wasn’t the kind of man who would make a point of spending time with children. That he wasn’t the kind of man they should trust.

Not that she would use those words, of course—but he could very vividly imagine the nature of the talk.

Trying to redirect the course of the conversation, Baron asked the girls, “So do you still act out the Siege of Thermopylae?”

“Yes!” Charlotte exclaimed, “And Robin Hood too. But we were hoping you can help us think of other games too. We need more. Lots more!”

“I’ll see if I can come up with anything,” he said, glancing from the girls up to Joe. “What are you all doing here today?”

“We’re going to have a picnic,” Jane explained, dropping Joe’s hand and coming over to Baron.

For one awkward moment, Baron thought she was going to try to take his hand. She didn’t, though. She just stood near him and looked up at him with those eyes so much like Leila’s.

“A picnic!” Charlotte repeated exuberantly, still swinging from her grandfather’s arm. Then, evidently getting a brainstorm, she added, “Can I ride piggy-back, Grandpa?”

Without hesitating, Joe swung the girl up onto his back. Then, before Jane could do more than make the first syllable of her complaint, he looked back at Baron, “Grab Jane, would you?”

Baron’s mouth fell open.

Without waiting for a response from Baron, Joe bounced Charlotte a little and started walking her over to the blanket they had spread out under a large tree.

Jane clapped her hands and then reached up to Baron, her little face glowing the way her mother’s always did when she was happy.

Baron was trapped.

Why Joe would think Baron's was a suitable back on which to carry his little granddaughter, Baron had no idea. There was no way he could say “no” to Jane, though—not when Charlotte was already halfway to the blanket.

With a clench of his jaw, Baron reached down and swung Jane up, piggy-back style. The little girl giggled in glee and wrapped her arms around his neck.

She didn’t weigh much, and she didn’t clutch at his shirt or scratch at his neck or arms.

But carrying little girls on his back was simply not something he did.

He walked quickly, trying to catch up to Joe and hoping he could make a swift escape.

“Mr. James,” Jane said in his ear.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you come back to the church before now?”

“I didn’t have any work to do there.”

“Oh. Do you only work?”

After a pause, Baron replied, “I do other things.”

There was a time when that was true, but it wasn’t anymore.

“Do you have picnics?”

“Not usually.”

“You should have picnics. Do you want to have a picnic with us?”

“I don’t think I’ll have time.”

“Oh. Okay.”

She sounded disappointed, but there was nothing he could do about it. This simply wasn’t something he did. He would never get through everything his father had left for him to do if he indulged in the ridiculous desire to see Leila again and the even more ridiculous desire to make these two girls happy.

Jane patted him on the shoulder. Baron had no idea what had prompted it.

He had almost reached the blanket where Joe had set down Charlotte, and he was starting to breathe a sigh of relief that he could finally make an escape.

Then he heard the word he’d been hoping not to hear.

“Mommy!” Charlotte cried, jumping up and down and waving. “Mommy!”

“Mommy,” Jane echoed, still clinging to Baron’s neck. “Look! It’s the movie-st—It’s Mr. James!”

Baron didn’t have time to put Jane down and recover his composure and dignity before Mommy made her appearance.

She was definitely surprised. Her lips parted slightly as her eyes focused on Baron, and she kept staring as he helped Jane slide off his back.

Leila looked young and pretty with her hair pulled back in a long ponytail and her face rosy and free of makeup. She wasn’t wearing her glasses today.

“Baron,” she said, reaching down automatically to respond to Charlotte’s enthusiastic greeting. “What are you doing here?”

“Mommy!” Charlotte said, pulling on the pocket of her mother's jeans to get her attention, “Mommy, I kicked my ball and hit his head!”

She was grinning with what Baron thought was unnecessary excitement over this declaration.

“You did?” Leila’s eyes widened and shot from Baron to Joe.

“An unfortunate accident,” Joe explained, trying unsuccessfully to hide a smile.

Baron cleared his throat. He couldn’t remember feeling so unsure of what he should say in years. He tried to summon his typical reserves of charm and composure. “I had some work to do at the church.”

She was watching him with a kind of distanced scrutiny, as if she were trying to figure him out but didn’t much care about the answers.

“Mommy,” Jane chimed in, “Mr. James wants to have a picnic with us, even though he’s really busy.”

Baron stared down at this blatant misrepresentation of their earlier conversation. When the girl smiled at him with innocent elation, he concluded that she genuinely believed he’d expressed that implausible sentiment.

He cleared his throat again. “I, uh, certainly couldn’t impose on a family picnic,” he said politely, convinced by Leila’s cool expression that she would take him up on the out he’d provided.

He could tell that she’d distanced herself from him over the last week or so. Not that they’d been really close, but things were definitely different now. She didn’t have the same smile and the same authentic glow when she looked at him today.