If, if, if.
The phone rang; without checking the display, he punched the line button.
“Turner Realty—”
“Mr. Turner? It’s Melanie from Foothills Lab. We have the results of your DNA test….”
This, there was no keeping from her mother. Not that she hadn’t been tempted.
“But why, Dana? Why do you have to go live with the man?”
As she was saying.
“Because, Mama,” Dana said, mindlessly tossing enough clothes into a suitcase to get her through the week, “now that there’s no question that C.J.’s the father, his custodial rights far outrank mine. No matter what Trish wants,” she added, cutting her mother off. “And, you know, considering his initial aversion to fatherhood, maybe everybody should see his willingness to do right by his kid as, you know, a good thing?”
“What’s this?”
Dana turned to find her mother fingering through one of the many spiral notebooks Dana kept around the house, confusion etched in her features when she glanced up. “You’re still writing?”
“Yes, Mama, I’m still writing,” Dana muttered, practically grabbing the book from her mother and tossing it on top of the clothes. She’d started scribbling down ideas for a story as a way to dodge the depression that had threatened to take her under a year ago, only to find the outlet far more fulfilling than she would have ever expected. And increasingly habit-forming, despite all the other demands on her time. She’d only mentioned it to her mother once, however.
“Oh. I thought you’d given up on that. I mean, isn’t it kind of pointless?”
“Ma? Hello?” She zipped up the bag. “Bigger fish to fry right now?”
Her mother huffed and seamlessly shifted gears again. “So why can’t you share custody? Ethan could go to his father’s house one night, yours the next—”
“Because C.J. knows less about taking care of a baby than I do? Because it’s going to be hard enough for him to bond with his son without shunting him back and forth between our houses? Because my place is too small? Because Trish left him with me.”
Dana headed to the living room, her mother’s, “You could move back in with us, you know,” following in her wake. Grabbing the birdcage cover, she tossed her mother a brief, but pointed, not-in-this-lifetime glare in response. “It’s an option, honey,” her mother said, wilting slightly.
“One which I entertained for about two seconds and immediately rejected.” Dana tossed the cover over the cage, earning her a squawk from Ethan, who’d been holding a lengthy conversation with the finches from his playpen. When she caught the just-kill-me-now set to her mother’s mouth, however, she let out a long breath, then put her hands on the older woman’s arms. “Look, I know this isn’t ideal. But what can I tell you, crazy circumstances call for inventive solutions. And this is the only way I can figure out how to do what’s right by everybody. Including not violating Trish’s wishes.”
Worry still crowding her mother’s eyes, she reached across to lay her hand on top of Dana’s. “But you don’t even know what she’s gonna do, honey. And I hate the idea of you gettin’ in over your head. It’s happened before, you know, more than once. Now, don’t be put out with me,” she added when Dana pulled away to gather up the rest of her writing journals and laptop from her desk, tucking them into a canvas totebag. “The way you always see the good in people is a wonderful thing, it truly is. But while I’m sure C.J. intends to do his best by his child, that doesn’t mean—”
“—that he’s even remotely interested in taking us as a package,” Dana finished over the sting of her mother’s words.
“Well. It’s just that you’re so tender-hearted, you know—”
“That doesn’t mean I’m blind,” Dana said, reeling on her mother, her arms clamped over her midsection. “Or stupid.” Faye’s eyebrows lifted. “Okay, fine. To put an end to your pussyfooting around the subject, I don’t suppose there’s any point in pretending I’m not attracted to the man.”
“See, that’s what worries me—”
“Well, stop it. Right now. Because I am also very well aware that C. J. Turner isn’t interested in me that way. Besides, even if he was looking to settle down, which he’s made plain he isn’t, I can’t see that we have anything in common other than Ethan. So see, Mama, I have thought this through. Long and hard. So you’re going to have to trust that I’m made of sterner stuff than you’re apparently giving me credit for.”
“And if your heart gets broken? Again?”
“Not gonna happen.” Dana looked steadily at her mother, knowing full well it wasn’t only Dana’s potential attachment to C.J. she was worried about. She tapped down the twinge of apprehension that echoed through her and said, “Now if you want to be helpful, you could pack up Ethan’s diaper bag for me.”
A request that, amazingly enough, derailed the conversation.
Two hours later, however, standing in the stone-floored entryway to C.J.’s more than spacious house, holding a babbling Ethan and gawking through the living room’s bank of floor-to-ceiling windows at the mountain vista scraping the periwinkle sky, her only thought was, I am so screwed.
And only partly because of the excruciating awkwardness of the situation, the way C.J. and she were suddenly acting with each other like a couple on a forced blind date. Nor was it—she told herself—because she was in any danger of falling for the guy. His house, however …
Slowly, she pivoted, taking in the twelve-foot ceilings, the stone floors, the archways leading in a half-dozen directions. Not that her parents’ three-bedroom, brick-and-stucco ranch house was exactly a shack. But compared with this …
This, she could get used to. Unfortunately.
“You hate it,” she heard behind her.
She turned to see C.J., in jeans and a faded Grateful Dead T-shirt, carefully setting the birdcage into a small niche right inside the living room. “Not at all. Why would you think that?”
“There’s not exactly a lot of furniture.”
True, other than the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed to the gills, the decor was a bit on the spartan side. But the oversized taupe leather sofa and chairs, the boldly patterned geometric rug in reds and blacks and neutrals underneath, got the job done. “It’s okay, I like it like this.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
His eyes swung to hers. Tonight, an odd whiff of vulnerability overlaid the cool confidence, that aura of success he normally exuded. In fact, if she weren’t mistaken, there was the slightest shimmer of a need for approval in his expression. Although she imagined he’d chop off a limb rather than admit it.
“I’m here so seldom, I never got around to …” He made a rolling motion with his hand. “You know. The stuff.”
She smiled, his obvious discomfiture settling her own nerves a hair or two. “Accessories, you mean?”
“Yeah. All those little touches that make a house a real home. Like your apartment.”
What a funny guy, she mused, then said gently, “It’s not the stuff that make a house a home, C. J. It’s the people who live there.”
He nodded, then apparently noticed she was about to drop the baby. “Urn … well, I suppose I should show you where you and Ethan are going to sleep.”
“Good idea. Although …” She hefted the baby toward him. “Here,