Something was wrong, Piper thought, instantly morphing from lover to mother. She narrowed her eyes. Ty had his head on Ceri’s shoulder and he looked a little pale, almost listless. Ignoring Jaeger, Piper hurried toward them. Ty saw her and held his arms out, leaning forward, a silent plea for her to take him. Piper gathered him into her and held his head against her shoulder. “Hey, baby boy. What’s the matter, huh?”
Ceri bit her bottom lip. “I think he might have an earache. He’s bumping his hand against his ear. He doesn’t have a fever, but he’s not himself.” Ceri looked at her watch and grimaced. “I need to go, but call me if I can help or if he gets worse.”
“Thanks, Ceri.”
Ceri closed the front door behind her as Piper held the back of her hand to Ty’s forehead, to his cheek. Ceri was right, he didn’t have a fever, but his eyes seemed dull. She cuddled him close and rocked on her feet, inhaling his little boy smell, feeling his breath against her neck.
“Love you to the moon and back,” she murmured, her hand rubbing circles on his back. “My beautiful, beautiful, boy.”
“Everything okay?”
The deep voice drifted over, and Piper spun around. Jaeger pressed his shoulder into the door frame of the den, his face inscrutable. Her boy got all his beauty from his father, she thought again. Piper rested her cheek on Ty’s head. “Ty isn’t feeling too well.”
“So he’s yours and doesn’t belong to the kids downstairs?”
“Yep.” Being Ty’s mommy wasn’t something she could keep secret, even if she wanted to. Being a mother, Ty’s mother, was her biggest achievement. Everything—her master’s degree in art history, her pre-Ty career, traveling the world looking at great art—paled to insignificance beside the importance of raising her son.
“So, who was the young guy?”
“Ceri and Rainn are twins. Ceri is my nanny, but Rainn also helps out. They live in the apartment downstairs,” Piper replied, pulling a curl from Ty’s fist. “In between being a nanny, she works as an illustrator for children’s books. Rainn is studying medicine. I give them a kick-ass subsidy on their rent and they look after Ty when I need to work. They have six brothers and sisters, all a lot younger than them, and their parents also take in foster kids. They’ve taught me more about babies than I’ve learned from books.”
Piper looked at her watch. She needed to feed and bathe Ty. She and Ty had a schedule, and Jaeger’s presence messed with her routine and with—well—her head.
She’d just kissed the hell out of her baby’s daddy in her den. What was wrong with her?
Uh, sexy guy, good kisser, been a long drought?
She needed to give Ty her full attention. He was, thank God, the easiest child on the planet, but he was rarely sick. She felt a surge of panic hit the back of her throat. He was just a little off-color right now and if he became sicker, she could handle it. That was why God made drugs and doctor’s offices. She was in Brooklyn, dammit, not in a shack in outer Mongolia.
Piper picked up a soft toy from out of Ty’s playpen, handed it to Ty and closed her eyes.
Needing some space and distance between her and Jaeger, she patted Ty’s bottom. “I need to change him.” She darted a look at Jaeger and silently cursed when she saw he was as cool and composed as he always was, like he hadn’t had a wild woman sucking the life out of him just a few moments before. “Can you let yourself out?”
Jaeger’s eyes bounced between her and Ty, and he eventually nodded his head. “Yeah.” He gestured to Ty. “I hope he’ll be okay.”
“He’ll be fine,” Piper said. Piper looked at her feet before forcing her eyes back to Jaeger’s. She glanced at his mouth, sighed and wished he’d kiss her again.
No kissing Jaeger, she told herself. This was a complicated situation as it was. She didn’t need to add a truckload of sexual tension to the growing pile of craziness.
“Look,” she said, “I think we need to forget that kiss, pretend it never happened.”
Jaeger slowly shook his head. “Not an option. There are too many things I’ve already forgotten. I’m not adding kissing you to that list.”