“No, I’m not,” she assured him, though her voice was as shaky as the rest of her. Pushing one hand through the short, choppy layers of her hair, she blew out a breath and admitted, “But I should.”
“Why?” He winced when the baby’s cries continued, but didn’t let go of her.
Tula shook her head and pulled free of his grasp. “Because this is just one more complication, Simon. One neither one of us should want.”
“Yeah,” he said, gaze meeting hers. “But we do.”
“You can’t always have what you want,” she countered, taking a step back, closer to the open doorway. “Now I really have to go to the baby.”
“Okay. But Tula,” he said, stopping her as she started to leave. “You should know that I always get what I want.”
* * *
When Tula carried Nathan into her office half an hour later, she found a stack of colored file folders lying on top of her desk. There was a brief note. “Chaos can be controlled. S.”
“As if I didn’t know who put them there,” she told the baby. “He had to put his initial on the note?”
She set the baby down on a blanket surrounded by toys, then took a seat at her desk. Her fingertips tapped against the file folders until she finally shrugged and opened one.
“I suppose it couldn’t hurt to try a little filing, right?”
Nathan didn’t have an opinion. He was far too fascinated by the foam truck with bright red headlights he had gripped in his tiny fists.
Tula smiled at him, then set to work straightening up her desk. It went faster than she would have thought and though she hated to admit it, there was something satisfying about filing papers neatly and tucking them away in a cabinet. By the time she was finished, her desktop was cleared off for the first time in…ever.
Her phone rang just as she was getting up to take the baby downstairs for his dinner. “Hello?”
“Tula, hi, this is Tracy.”
Her editor’s voice was, as always, friendly and businesslike. “Hi, what’s up?”
“I just need you to give me the front matter for the next book. Production needs it by tomorrow.”
“Right.” For one awful moment, Tula couldn’t remember where she’d put the letter to her readers that always went in the front of her new books. She liked adding that extra personal touch to the children who read her stories.
The scattered feeling was a familiar one. Despite what she had bragged to Simon about knowing where everything was, she usually experienced a moment of sheer panic when her editor called needing something. Because she knew that she would have to stall her while she located whatever was needed.
“It’s okay, Tula,” Tracy said as if knowing exactly what she was thinking. “I don’t need it this minute and I know it’ll take you some time to find it. If you just email the letter to me first thing in the morning, I’ll hand it in.”
“No, it’s okay,” Tula said suddenly as she realized that she had just spent hours filing things away neatly. “I actually know right where it is.”
“You’re kidding.”
Laughing, she reached out, opened the once-empty file cabinet and pulled out the blue folder. Blue for Bunny Letters, she thought with an inner smile. She even had a system now. Sure, she wasn’t certain how long it would last, but the fun of surprising her editor had been worth the extra work.
“Poor Tracy,” Tula said with sympathy. “You’ve been putting up with my disorganization for too long, haven’t you?”
“You’re organized,” Tracy defended her. “Just in your own way.”
She appreciated the support, but Tula knew very well that Tracy would have preferred just a touch more organizational effort on her writer’s part. “Well, I’m trying something new. I am holding in my hand an actual file folder!”
“Amazing,” Tracy said with a chuckle. “An organized writer. I didn’t know that was possible. Can you fax the letter to me?”
“I can. You’ll have it in a few minutes.”
“Well, I don’t know what inspired the new outlook, but thanks!”
Once she hung up, Tula faxed in the letter, then filed it again and slipped the folder back into the cabinet with a rush of pride. Wouldn’t Simon love to know that he’d been right? As for her, she’d managed to straighten up a mess without losing her identity.
Grinning down at the baby, she asked, “What do you think, Nathan? Can a person have chaos and control?”
She was still wondering about that when she carried the baby downstairs to the kitchen.
* * *
A few hours later, Tula said sharply, “You have to make sure he doesn’t slip.”
“Well,” Simon assured her, “I actually knew that much on my own.”
He was bent over the tub, one hand on Nathan’s narrow back while he used his free hand to move a soapy washcloth over the baby’s skin. “How is it you’re supposed to hold him and wash him at the same time?”
Tula grinned and Simon felt a hard punch to his chest. When she really smiled it was enough to make him want to toss her onto the nearest flat surface and bury himself inside her heat.
The kiss they’d shared only a couple of hours before was still burning through him.
He still had the taste of her in his mouth. Had the feel of her soft, sleek skin on his fingers.
Now, as she leaned over beside him to slide a wet washcloth over Nathan’s head, he inhaled and drew her light, floral scent into his lungs. He must have let a groan slip from his throat because she stopped, leaned back and looked up at him.
“Are you okay?”
“Not really,” he said tightly, focusing now on the baby who was slapping the water with both hands and chortling over the splashes he made.
“Simon—”
“Forget it, Tula. Let’s just concentrate on surviving bath time, okay?”
She sat back on her heels and looked up at him. “Now who’s pretending it didn’t happen?”
He laughed—a short, sharp sound. “Trust me when I say that’s not what I’m doing.”
“Then why—”
Giving her a hard look, he said, “Unless you’re willing to finish what we started, drop it, Tula.”
She snapped her mouth closed and nodded. “Right. Then I’ll just go get Nathan’s jammies ready while you finish. Are you good on your own?”
Good question.
He always had been.
Before.
Now he wasn’t so sure.
“We’ll be fine. Just go.”
She scooted out of the bathroom a moment later and Nathan drew his first easy breath since bath time had started. He looked down into the baby’s eyes and said, “Remember this, Nathan. Women are nothing but trouble.”
The tiny boy laughed and slapped the water hard enough to send a small wave into his father’s face.
“Traitor,” Simon whispered.
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