Wasn’t he?
“What is all this stuff?” Vivian peered inside the bag. With just her and the sleeping baby in the house, the inn had never felt so intimate before. “It’s just a baby, right? Aren’t they supposed to be easy?”
Nick chuckled. “I may not know anything about kids, but one thing I’m sure of, is that babies are complicated. Not as complicated as women but close.”
Vivian parked a fist on her hip. “Women are complicated?”
He liked seeing this spark in her. This, Nick suspected, was the Vivian with her hair down. Unrestricted. Spontaneous. Intriguing. “Not all women.”
“Then what kind of women are you talking about?” Vivian arched a brow. A half smile played at the edge of her lips.
Damn, she was beautiful. Interesting. He moved closer to her. She was wearing a perfume that lured him in—dark, deep, sexy. Like a garden after the sunset. Ellie went on sleeping, and the house went on being quiet and a world of just the two of them. “Women like you. With your practical heels and your suit and your bun.”
“That’s how I dress for work. What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s very…businesslike. Why are you working so hard to hide that you’re beautiful?”
“You…” She swallowed. Her eyes widened, and the tough bravado dropped away. “You think I’m beautiful?”
“Oh come on, I can’t be the first man to say that to you.” Surely a woman like her had dozens of men lined up and eager for a chance to spend time with her. She was smart, confident and gorgeous. A trifecta.
“I… I don’t date much.” For the first time since he’d met her, Vivian looked embarrassed, unsure. “Nor do the men I work with ever say anything like that. Probably because I’m winning more cases than them, but still.”
He laughed. “I bet you’re a barracuda in court. I saw the battle strategy you had on the legal pad back there. Clearly, that’s your comfort zone.”
“It’s that obvious?” Her cheeks flushed.
“Yep. When Ellie was crying earlier, you looked like you’d rather have a stroke than pick her up.”
Vivian laughed. Damn, she had a nice laugh, too. Too bad she worked in the one field he gave a wide berth to. In his experience, lawyers had a tendency to argue and control, two things that never really worked well with Nick.
“I really don’t know what I’m doing when it comes to babies,” she said.
The soft admission made him forget all his reservations for a moment. She looked so beautiful right now, with her hair once again escaping the restraints of the pins, and the questions in her face. He knew what it was like to doubt yourself, to wonder if you were doing the right thing. And maybe it was just the kindred spirit he saw in her, or maybe it was something more, but Nick shifted closer to Vivian. “There,” he said. “Was that so hard?”
“Was what so hard?”
“Opening up. Letting that hyperconfident facade drop.” He smiled at her. “You really should do that more often.”
“Maybe…” Her gaze met his and held. “Maybe I will.”
Nick leaned closer, almost close enough to touch…and then Viv leaned in the rest of the way, bringing their lips together. Slow, easy, sweet, his lips meeting hers with a gentle pressure that begged her to let him in, let him know her. His hand reached up to cup the back of her head, to capture the stray brown locks that had escaped the bun. He kissed her, tenderly, leisurely—
And Viv started to cry.
Vivian never betrayed weakness. Doing that meant certain death in the courtroom. She prided herself on keeping her emotions on a tight leash. It was part of what made her a formidable opponent. But the second she and Nick kissed it was like a dam had burst, and the tears that rarely showed in her eyes began falling.
This man—a total stranger—had seen a part of her that no one ever saw. The unsure, hesitant, out of her element Vivian, who had to ask for help. And despite that, he’d called her beautiful and been drawn to her enough for them to kiss.
She broke away from Nick and took several steps back. He was still six feet of tall, dark, handsome and tempting as hell. She swiped at her eyes, and tried to still her hammering heart with a deep breath. What is wrong with me?
There was nothing wrong with the kiss—that had been phenomenal. Tender, slow and easy, as if she was a dessert he wanted to savor. The scent of the food he’d been cooking—buttery and as warm and comforting as an early-fall day—lingered in the space between them. She had the most insane urge to put her head on his chest.
“I’m sorry,” she said, the words giving her a moment to center herself, bring her heart and mind back to the world of common sense. A world where she didn’t feel completely overwhelmed by a three-month-old and a dark-haired man with espresso eyes who called her beautiful. “I don’t normally cry.”
“I’m the one who should be apologizing. I thought…” He shook his head and managed to look both embarrassed and contrite at the same time. “Argh. I’m sorry.”
“No, no, it’s not that. I didn’t cry because we kissed. I cried because…” Because you saw a side of me I never let anyone see. Because you reminded me of what I’ve put to the side time and time again in my life. Because for a brief second, I was caught in a different world. She didn’t say any of that out loud. Instead, she resorted to a half-truth. “I’m stressed. I just…for the first time in my life, I don’t know what to do.”
She sighed and dropped onto the sofa. Easier to do that than to look at Nick and wish he would kiss her again. Maybe she’d been working too much or maybe it had been the you’re beautiful, or the fact that she was so far out of her comfort zone with Ellie it might as well be another planet, but right now, Vivian felt as vulnerable as a fawn in an open meadow. That was not a place she liked to be. The walls she had erected decades ago crumbled a little, and everything inside her was trying to shore them up again, but it was like bracing against a tidal wave with a piece of cardboard.
Ellie had woken and was staring up at Vivian with that “do something, Aunt Viv” look. What could Vivian do? She was in such deep water that she was sure she’d drown and screw this up. Ellie needed a mother, not an aunt who was more comfortable with a deposition than a diaper. “I have a new client who is depending on me to go after this shoddy equipment manufacturer. I need to prepare for a potential trial, which means hours and hours and late nights and weekends of work. My apartment is in the middle of a total renovation. I don’t have room or time for a baby. But I don’t want to hire a stranger to watch Ellie, because…” She shook her head. Where were all these tears coming from? What was wrong with her?
Nick sat beside her. “Because what?” he asked, his voice soft, gentle. And another chink in those walls opened.
“Because Sammie and I spent our lives with strangers and we swore that when we grew up, we would never do that to our kids.” The words came out in a whisper, words that edged along the secrets Vivian had kept close to her heart all her life. The vulnerabilities she hid behind the suits and the heels and the attitude.
Her childhood had been spent moving from one house to another, as her mother got sober, fell off the wagon, got sober again, a hamster wheel of changes. Some foster homes had been great, others had bordered on nightmarish. There’d been people who had refused to feed her unless she finished an endless list of chores. Foster parents who believed a belt was the best means of communication. Families she loved and said goodbye to before she could spend more than a handful of weeks there, the happiness she’d had with them just a fleeting mirage. Living her life