He almost fell off the portable metal rafter.
Gerald, who was doing an inspection with him, reached a hand out. “You okay, man? Bad news? Is it Elaina?”
“No,” he said. “Not Elaina, and not bad news.” His son was healthy! Or at least optimistically considered so. That was not his news to share.
There wasn’t really anything stopping him. Cassie was planning to tell Alan that Wood was his father. He was going to have an official role in the boy’s life.
He’d told Elaina. She’d been openly pleased for him.
What he didn’t share with Elaina was the incredible moments he’d experienced in the ultrasound room that morning. Not even the fact that he’d been in the room. The moments were precious—and they were his. Not open to speculation or judgment. Not to be turned into concern on his behalf.
The hug he and Cassie had shared, the feel of her protruding belly pressing tightly up against him—that he put firmly in its place of a time out of time. She hadn’t been hugging him. She’d just needed a hug. Anybody would have done.
It had been...heady, though. He wanted more. Badly.
And he skipped right on past that thought every time it surfaced.
He wasn’t going to let Alan down. Or Cassie or himself, either.
He almost told Cassie so when they texted later that night. Because they were telling each other more and more of their everyday thoughts. But he opted not to make a big deal out of what had to remain nothing.
He’d made it to thirty-six years without a major screwup. He was not going to start playing with fire.
Which was what he did tell Cassie the following Monday when they were discussing where to meet for dinner. They’d already settled on a small diner outside town, not because they had anything to hide, but because neither of them wanted the complications of answering to anyone they knew that they might run into. Her parents knew about him. Elaina knew about her. Beyond that, they just wanted to get through the pregnancy before bringing any more complications into their lives.
Before other people and their opinions unwittingly created obstacles they didn’t yet have to face. One step at a time, they’d decided somewhere along the way. A mixture of what Wood knew and Cassie had learned from her father.
He’d just been home to shower, change and feed Retro and was on his way back out to his truck when Cassie called. She told him she’d had a rough day with a client and didn’t want to have to sit in a busy restaurant waiting on others to serve her.
She wanted to go home. Heat up the cabbage rolls she’d made the day before and relax out on the beach—with him. He felt the same—strongly.
The strength of his desire was what had him telling her he couldn’t play with fire. He couldn’t sit with her on her private beach. If they were going to have dinner, it had to be at the restaurant. She hadn’t said another word, other than telling him that she’d see him at the restaurant in a few.
He told himself not to make trouble. To trust himself. But as he pulled into the parking lot and saw her at the door of the restaurant, reaching to open it, her loose black shirt only partially hiding the shape of the belly growing larger with his son, he wasn’t sure how much of himself he could trust.
Cassie’s blond ponytail was tight to her head, as though it didn’t dare let a piece slip loose. Her white pants looked crisp and clean, in spite of the fact that he knew she’d just come from work. And those unique, angular features...he knew them. Intimately. As though they were a part of him. Partly his.
He made it inside just as she was being seated and followed her to a quiet booth in a back corner. No restroom or service station nearby. Just quiet.
“Wow, this was lucky,” he said, sliding in across from her. Assessing as she settled across from him. “As close to being at home as we can get.” She looked tired.
And radiant.
“I asked for this booth,” she said, giving him a smirk. And reigniting intimate ideas of dinner on a blanket on the beach. From a bag in his truck. Her car.
Anyplace they could be alone together without entering each other’s homes.
A hotel room. Or anywhere but there.
* * *
Cassie told Wood what she could about her case. She’d spent the day trying to convince the Safe! board of directors that they could keep on its executive director.
They talked about the furniture he was building. He’d taken to sending her pictures every night, showing her his progress.
“What?” he asked her as she sat with her glass of iced purified water with lemon and listened to him talk about a design he wanted to engrave in the crib and cradle panels and then follow with matching design in each drawer face.
“I just can’t believe how lucky I am that out of all the files I looked at, I chose you,” she said, too tired to keep her mouth completely shut. “Seriously, this baby is going to be so much more loved than I ever imagined, and I was conjuring up enough to keep him satiated for a lifetime.”