“What exactly is it you want from me?”
His voice shattered her thoughts and she met his gaze. “I should think that would be obvious.”
He dropped the sheaf of papers to his desktop. “Well, you would be wrong.”
“Okay, how about this? Why don’t you come out to my place in Crystal Bay? Meet your son. Then we can talk and figure out our next move together.”
He scrubbed one hand across the back of his neck. She’d dumped a lot of information on him all at once, Tula told herself. Of course he was going to need a little time to acclimate.
“Fine,” he said at last. “What’s your address?”
She told him, then watched as he stood up behind his desk in a clear signal of dismissal. Well, that was all right with her. She had things to do anyway and what more was there to say at the moment? Tula stood up, too, and held her right hand out toward him.
A moment’s pause, then his hand engulfed hers. Again, just as it had happened earlier, the instant their palms met a bolt of heat shot up her arm and ricocheted around her chest like a manic Ping-Pong ball. He must have felt the same thing because he dropped her hand and shoved his own into his pocket.
She took a breath, blew it out and forced a smile that felt wobbly. “I’ll see you tonight then.”
As she left, Tula felt his gaze on her and the heat engendered by his stare stayed with her on the long ride home.
“How’d it go?”
Tula smiled at the sound of her best friend’s voice. Anna Cameron Hale was the one human being on the face of the planet that Tula could count on being on her side. So, naturally, the moment she’d returned from San Francisco and facing down Simon Bradley, she dialed Anna’s number.
“About as you’d expect.”
“Ouch,” Anna said. “So he had no idea about the baby?”
“Nope.” Tula turned to look at Nathan, sitting in his bouncy seat. The babysitter, Mrs. Klein, had said that the baby was “good as gold” the whole time she was gone. Now, as he bounced and pushed off with his toes, the springs squeaked into motion, jolting him up and down in the small kitchen.
Tula’s heart gave a little Nathan-caused twinge that she was starting to get used to. How was it possible to love someone so much in the span of a couple of short weeks?
“In his defense, it must have been a shock for him to be faced with this out of the blue,” Anna said.
“True. I mean I knew about Nathan and it was still a stunner when Sherry died and suddenly I’m responsible for him.” Although, she thought, it hadn’t taken more than five minutes for her to adjust. “But when I told Simon, he looked like he’d been hit with a two-by-four.”
“God, honey, I’m sorry it didn’t go well. So what do you do now?”
“He’s coming here tonight to meet Nathan and then we’re going to talk.” Tula thought briefly about the little buzz of sensation she’d received when he shook her hand and then pushed that thought right out of her mind. There was already plenty going on at the moment. She so didn’t need anything else to think about.
But her mind couldn’t quite keep from remembering him as he stood over her, all fierce and furious.
“He’s going to your house?” Anna asked.
Tula shook her head and paid attention. “Yeah, why?”
“Nothing. But maybe I could come over and help you get ready.”
She knew exactly what Anna was thinking and Tula couldn’t help laughing. “You are not coming over to clean my house. He’s not visiting royalty or something.”
Anna laughed, too. “Fine. Just warn him when he walks in to watch where he steps.”
Tula stepped away from the kitchen counter and shot a look into her tiny living room. Toys littered the floor, her laptop was sitting open on the coffee table and her latest manuscript was beside it. She was doing revisions for her editor and when she was working, other things—like picking up clutter—tended to go by the wayside.
Shrugging, she silently admitted that though her house was clean, it did tend to get a little messy. Especially now that she had Nathan living with her. She hadn’t had any idea just how much stuff came along with a baby.
“Why did I call you again?” Tula asked.
“Because I’m your best friend and you know you need me.”
“Right, that was it.” Tula smiled and reached out one hand to smooth the wispy hairs on the top of Nathan’s head as he scooted past, babbling happily. “It was weird, Anna. Simon was crabby and rude and dismissive and yet…”
“Yet what?” Anna prompted.
There was a buzz of interest, Tula thought but didn’t say. She hadn’t expected it, hadn’t wanted it, but hadn’t been able to ignore it, either. The suit-and-tie kind of guy was so not what she was interested in. And for heaven’s sake, the last thing she needed was to be attracted to Nathan’s father. This situation was hard enough. Yet she couldn’t deny the flash of heat that had flooded her system the moment her hand had met his.
Didn’t mean she had to do anything about it though, she assured herself firmly.
“Hello?” Anna said. “Finish what you were saying! What comes after the ‘yet’?”
“Nothing,” Tula said with sudden determination. One thing she didn’t need was to indulge in an attraction for a man she had nothing in common with but a baby they were both responsible for. “Absolutely nothing.”
“And you expect me to just accept that?”
“As my friend, I’m asking you to, yeah.”
Anna sighed dramatically. “Fine. I will. For now.”
“Thanks.” She’d accept the reprieve, even though she knew that Anna wouldn’t let it go forever.
“So what’re you going to do tonight?”
“Simon comes here and we talk about Nathan. Set something up so that he can get to know the baby and I can watch them together. I can handle Simon,” she said a moment later and wasn’t sure whether she was trying to convince Anna or herself. “I grew up around men like him, remember?”
“Tula, not every man who wears a suit is like your dad.”
“Not all,” she allowed, “but most.”
She was in the position to know. Her entire family had practically been born wearing business suits. They lived stuffy, insular lives built around making and keeping money. Tula was half convinced that they didn’t even know a world existed beyond their own narrow portion of it.
For example, she knew what Simon Bradley would think of her tiny, cluttered, bayside home because she knew exactly what her father would have thought of it—if he’d ever deigned to visit. He would have thought it too old, too small. He would have hated the bright blue walls and yellow trim in the living room. He’d have loathed the mural of the circus that decorated her bathroom wall. Mostly though, he would have seen her living there as a disgrace.
She had the distinct impression that Simon wouldn’t be any different.
“Look, the reality is it doesn’t matter what Nathan’s father thinks of me or my house. Our only connection is the baby.” As she spoke, she told her hormones to listen up. “So I’m not going to put on a show and change my life in any way to try to convince a man I don’t even know that I am who I’m not.”