She walked through the downstairs, which was all hardwood. Showed him sample colors. Didn’t give an opinion. And he chose the clear gloss—her own first pick.
Then it was time for him to go. Except that he asked what she was doing with the upstairs.
“Nothing. It’s all carpet and I don’t know if I’ll have enough to do the whole place this year.” Which wasn’t really the case. With what he was paying her, she’d have plenty to do both. But she’d been thinking about new tubs and showers. And she wanted to put some of the money away. Maybe invest it.
A girl could never be too sure of her future.
When he asked to take a look, she took him upstairs. Waited in the hall at each door as he peeked inside.
“This place is a castle,” he said, as he glanced into the master suite she’d moved into after opening The Parent Portal. Her grandparents had moved back into it after her father moved out. And they’d been gone, within months of each other, since her sophomore year of college.
There were five bedrooms in all. “You can just hear all the kids making noise up here,” he said.
And she started downstairs. “There’s never been more than just one,” she told him, shutting down the picture he’d painted before it could take on color. “My grands bought it from a couple who’d been in the movie business in LA and had it built to have a place to entertain quietly, outside the city.” She turned around and grinned at him, holding on to the handrail as she traversed the steps with her bigger belly. “In other words, so they could entertain without everyone who was someone knowing who they were with.” They’d reached the first floor and she moved toward the front door. “And then Gram and Gramps only had Mom, and she only had me,” she finished, efficiently obliterating any idea of those upstairs rooms filled with noisy kids.
“Don’t you get lonely here all alone?”
“Nope.” It was home. Filled with all the love she’d ever known.
The baby moved as she reached for the door handle, and pulling back, she said, “He’s kicking,” and turned her stomach toward him. The baby was his purpose for being there.
Jamie’s hand connected with her stomach immediately, no hesitation, and while she braced herself to remain immune, to take herself out of the picture, she also relaxed into his touch. This was them.
She was good.
“I’ve decided on a name for him,” he said.
She nodded. None of her business.
“I figure, if he can hear us talking, he might as well start learning it.”
Made sense. Good sense. She looked up at him.
“I’m going to call him Will, after my father.” She smiled. “And Ryder, after your son. To honor what you’re doing for us.”
William Ryder Howe.
Her smile faltered. She teared up. Put some kind of “you don’t have to” sentence together. Suggested naming the baby for Emily’s father, or to at least think about it.
And when he hugged her goodbye, holding his baby close to his stomach through her skin, she hugged him back.
Then made herself let go.
* * *
Jamie couldn’t push her to admit it—if he did, he’d push her away. But after that Sunday visit, the couple that followed that week, a quick stop
in her office and a toned-down game of racquetball, he was fairly certain that Christine had feelings for him.
The truth came not so much in the things she said, but in the sometimes stilted, almost rehearsed, way she said them. The careful way she guided their times together—not at all the naturally compassionate professional he’d once known. In the memory of the hunger in her kiss. New to passion as he was, there was no doubting that she’d been as hot for him as he’d been for her. The truth came to him through her eyes when she’d meet his gaze and say nothing at all.
The truth was more than just an awareness of her attraction to him. Her caring about him. Unless something changed for her, she wasn’t going to be able to open her heart enough to love anyone intimately. She’d given all she had.
Unless he found a way to show her that she didn’t have to go through life, or bear life’s challenges, alone.
And the only way he could figure out to show her that, to prove it to her, because telling certainly wasn’t going to do it, was to do for her the one thing that mattered most. And that she deemed impossible.
He had to find her son, Ryder. Or at least do all he could to try. To see if there was any way he could at least give her some peace of mind about the child’s welfare.