He lifted one eyebrow. “So it’s a comfort food, then?”
“Well, the whipped cream is the comfort food, actually. But squirting whipped cream directly into your mouth is really pathetic.”
“Or efficient,” he said with a grin. “Go away, cat,” he said to Steve, who kept trying to bat at the whipped cream. C.J. held the dish up out of the cat’s reach. “Mine. Mine, mine, mine.” Ethan’s eyes followed the dish, followed by a squawk. C.J. gave her a helpless look, and she giggled.
“Oh, go on, let him have some.”
C.J. blew out a sigh, but lowered the dish anyway. Only the poor cat couldn’t figure out how to attack something that wouldn’t stay still, his head bobbing along with the quivering whipped cream. C.J. laughed, and Ethan chortled, and the cat finally stalked off, thoroughly put out.
“So how’s the writing coming?” C.J. asked. Then frowned. “What?”
“Oh, nothing. It’s just that I hate that question.”
“Oh. Sorry. Why?”
“Because I never know how to answer it. I know you mean well, but—”
“It’s okay, I understand. Well, actually, I don’t, but if you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t want to talk about it.” He fed another bite of Jell-O to the baby, then said, “One question, though—does anyone else know you’re writing?”
“Not really. Well, my parents do,” she said on an exhaled breath. “My mother thinks it’s silly.”
His forehead creased. “Has she read any of it?”
“I doubt that would make a difference. It’s all a little too pie in the sky for her. Offends her practical sensibilities.”
“Because it’s a risk, you mean?”
“I suppose. She had enough trouble dealing with me going into business with Mercy and Cass, instead of getting a nice, secure accounting job with some well-established firm.” A smile flickered over her lips. “She worries.”
His dessert finished, C.J. set the dish up on the coffee table, then turned Ethan around to face him. Laughing, the baby dug his feet into the carpet and pushed up, clutching the front of C.J.’s shirt.
“Hey, look at you, hot stuff!” he said, clearly delighted, only to immediately suck in a breath. “Oh, God—when do they start walking?”
“Whenever they’re ready. Around a year, maybe later. He has to crawl first, though. At least, so I gather.”
And will I even be in the picture when that happens?
The thought pricked the haze of contentment she’d let herself be lulled into, propelling her to her feet to gather dessert dishes, which she carted back into the kitchen. C.J. followed, the baby in his arms.
“Hey. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Really,” she said with a forced smile when he frowned at her. “Just one of my moods again.” Then, because melancholy always led to masochism, she said, “So how exactly did you end up with my cousin, anyway?”
Clearly startled, C.J. pushed out a short laugh. “Where on earth did that come from?”
“I’m a chronic scab-picker, what can I tell you?”
He held her gaze in his for several seconds, then sighed.
“Trish had quit, maybe a week before, I don’t really remember. I was the only one in the office when she came in to pick up her last paycheck, except I had a little trouble finding it since Val had put it someplace ‘safe.’ Anyway, by the time I did, your cousin seemed very distraught. So … I asked her if she wanted to go get a drink.” His mouth pulled flat. “And things … took their course.”
She opened the dishwasher, started loading their dinner plates. “I see.”
“I’m not proud of it, Dana,” he finished softly. “It shouldn’t have happened. But I didn’t take advantage of her, if that’s what you’re thinking. Even if I did take advantage of … the situation. Just so you know, however,” he said, shifting the baby in his arms, “I don’t do that anymore. Start something I have no intention of finishing, I mean.” He smiled tiredly. “It gets old.”
“Yes,” Dana said carefully, once again all too aware of the warning in his words, no matter how mildly they’d been delivered. “I can see how it would. Well. Thanks. For being honest with me.”
“It’s the least I can do,” he said, and she thought, Geez, story of my life or what?
“Like hell you can wear that,” Mercy said, her face a study in horror.
Dana looked down at the black charmeuse tunic and ankle-length skirt, still in its transparent shroud from the cleaners, she was holding up to her front. They’d just locked up for the night, leaving only a couple of spotlights on in the front of the store, and Dana had—in a clearly misdirected moment—decided to show her partners what she was wearing. “What’s wrong with it?”
“You’ll look like a leech?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s even got sparklies. See?” She wiggled the bag in front of Mercy, who recoiled.
“Okay, a leech with a Cher fixation.”
Dana looked to Cass, who was also going to the shindig. Under duress, apparently. Blake had insisted it would “do her good” to get out and mingle, although, according to Cass, all she really wanted to do was stay home and sleep.
“What are you wearing?” Dana now asked the blonde.
“Some red jersey number I’ve had forever.”
Mercy blinked. “As in, the slinky little thing you wore to my sister’s wedding? The one with no back? And not a whole lot of front, either, as I recall?”
“That would be the one.”
Mercy gave Dana a pointed look.
“These hips don’t do slinky, Merce,” she said. “They do … softly draped.”
“Yeah, well, your hips need to break out of their rut. Hold on.” Mercy vanished into the back to return a second later with something … not softly draped. Or black. But not, at least, slinky, either. “Which is why I brought this. The color will go great with your hair, don’t you think?”
“Where did you get that?” Dana asked. “And why is it here?”
“From Anita, and because I consider it both an honor and my duty to save you from yourself. Anyway, ‘Nita’s more or less your size. But instead of hiding her body, she celebrates it.” She thrust the dress at Dana hard enough to make her lose her balance. “If that doesn’t work, there are others. And ditch the bra, there’s one built right into the dress.”
“You might as well humor her,” Cass said at Dana’s glare. “You know she’ll only make your life miserable otherwise.”
On a sigh, Dana snatched the dress out of Mercy’s hand and tromped to the bathroom to change. Five minutes later, upon glimpsing herself in the narrow, full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door, she let out a shriek.
“Let us see, let us see!” she heard from the other side of the door.
“No way! For God’s sake, I’d put somebody’s eye out in this thing! No! Don’t open the door!”
Too late. There stood her partners, one grinning like a loon, the other gasping.
“Get your butt out here,” Mercy said, grabbing Dana’s wrist and yanking her through the door, “so we can get the full effect.”
“Yeah, full