Keeping You (10 page)

Aria hadn’t been kidding about her daughter’s cry. It was blood-curdling, and back-rubbing did nothing to calm her down. In fact, it only seemed to enrage her all the more. For the past five nights, he and Aria had spent the better part of every night wincing and cringing as they stood at the edge of Felicity’s bed, taking turns rubbing the baby’s back as she wailed and moaned and cussed them in a unique baby-language all her own.

Raleigh—who was both thrilled and outraged that Nash had not only eloped, but also refused to bring his new wife over to meet the family until they had her daughter sleeping through the night—said to give it seven full nights before throwing in the towel, but Nash was on the verge of giving up.

Listening to Felicity cry until her tiny face turned purple with rage night after night was hard on his head, but the effect her misery had on Aria was hard on his heart.

The poor woman was a wreck. Her pale skin looked bruised beneath her eyes, she’d lost at least four pounds she couldn’t afford to lose, and her hands shook as she bustled around the kitchen making coffee every morning.

Thankfully, she only had to bake muffins and cookies for her sister’s catering business this week, but she had confessed she worried what was going to happen on Sunday when she had a five-tier cake to cover in iced cherry blossoms for a fancy bridal shower. If her hands weren’t steady by then, her work was going to be affected.

If she had been his wife in more than name, Nash would have checked Aria into a hotel and told her to get a good night’s sleep and let him handle sleep training solo for a night. But she wasn’t really his wife, and Skeeter wasn’t really his daughter, and he felt helpless to do anything to protect Aria from the obviously soul-mangling experience of trying to get her baby to sleep through the night.

He couldn’t spare her. He couldn’t even comfort her with the freedom he would have liked. He couldn’t draw her into his arms and hold her, he couldn’t promise they would get through this together, and he certainly couldn’t pull her into their bedroom and give her a little pleasure to make up for the pain.

The entire experience had him frustrated—in more ways than one—and feeling lonelier than he had in a long time. Aria was so close, but she might as well be a thousand miles away as far as he was concerned. She wasn’t his to help or comfort.

He knew that, the only thing he didn’t know was—why did a part of him want things to be different? Why was a part of him starting to wish that this were more than an arrangement, and Aria more than a friend?

“
Probably just need to get some damned sleep,” Nash muttered to himself, chalking up the crazy thoughts to sleep deprivation.

By the time he fell onto the couch in an exhausted heap Thursday night, he had decided to abandon the Mamaw method. When Skeeter started crying tonight, he’d get up and make the bottle himself, anything to get her back to sleep without another epic battle of wills. The baby could nap off her exhaustion during the day, but he and Aria were going to be too beaten down to function if this went on for much longer.

Despite his keen awareness of Aria sleeping down the hall and his confused feelings about his fake wife, Nash was too tired to dwell on anything for long. Within seconds of his head hitting the pillow, unconsciousness sucked him under and he slept.

Deeply. Dreamlessly. A sleep so hard that, when a gentle shake on his arm woke him the next morning, for a second he had no idea where he was.

It took a moment to remember why Aria March was in his house, and another moment to guess why she was smiling like she’d just won the lottery.

It was the sun. The sun was shining in through the window behind her, turning her hair into a halo of red fire. It was morning, and he couldn’t remember hearing Felicity cry a single time during the night.

“
She did it?” Nash asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with a fist.

“
She did it!” Aria confirmed in an excited whisper. “She slept through the night.
I
slept through the night. Oh my god, Nash, I slept through the night!” she finished with a giddy squeal that made Nash laugh out loud.

She threw her arms around his neck, and he pulled her into a celebratory bear hug, crushing her against his bare chest. She squeezed him back, her breath hot against his neck as she continued to laugh a hysterical giggle that was completely contagious.

Within a few moments, they were both laughing so hard that they slid off the couch, Aria first and Nash tumbling after, landing on top of her with a grunt.

“
Shit, are you okay?” he asked, as her laughter faded away, replaced by deep breaths that made her chest rise and fall.

Aria was wearing nothing but a thin red camisole top and red-and-white sleep shorts. He’d seen her in her pajamas before, but it had always been dark and they’d both been too miserable tending to a screaming baby for him to pay much attention to the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra.

Now, he couldn’t stop paying attention. Attention to the way her small, perfect, tea-cupped sized breasts tipped up toward him, her nipples pulled into points he could barely make out beneath the thin fabric.

An old memory rose inside him, a memory of Aria naked in the moonlight, of him kissing up her ribs, letting his lips trail along the soft underside of her breasts before taking each nipple in his mouth. He could still remember the way she moaned low in her throat and tangled her fingers in his hair, calling his name like a prayer.

His body responded to the memory without his conscious permission, his erection straining the front of his pajama pants, making him grateful he and Aria had fallen in such a way that it was pressing against the carpet, instead of her thigh. If she could feel him now, there would be no way for him to conceal the way she affected him.

“
Nash?” Aria asked in a husky voice that drew his attention back to her mouth.

“
Yeah?”

“
I said I was fine,” Aria said, watching him with a guarded look in her eyes.

“
Oh. Good,” he said, fighting to regain control before he stood up, a part of him wishing he didn’t have to move an inch.

He liked having Aria beneath him, his arms braced on either side of her chest, his lips only a few inches from hers. If he weren’t afraid of having morning breath, he might be tempted to kiss her the way he had in the beer tent, to claim her mouth with his and see if she responded the same way. The thought of her moving beneath him, back arched and those beautiful tits pressed against his chest quickly proved more than he could take.

He was leaning closer—morning breath and their bargain be damned—when Felicity called out from her room and Aria jumped like she’d been caught stealing.

“
I should go,” she said, scooting out from beneath him. “I want to make a big deal about what a good girl she is for staying in her bed all night.”

“
Sure. Good idea.” Nash shifted, setting Aria free, waiting until she’d disappeared into Felicity’s room before bolting for the closet in his room to grab some running clothes and talk himself down from the ridiculous state he was in.

He had barely avoided making a fool of himself and endangering his and Aria’s bargain before either of them had gotten what they wanted. The hearing with her ex was still three weeks away and he had yet to have his own revenge with Rachael. He couldn’t risk messing things up. They had agreed to be friends in private. The lovey-dovey stuff was only for the benefit of others, when they were out in public.

Then you’d better find an excuse to get her out in public.

The inner voice was right. He wasn’t going to be able to honor their bargain if he didn’t get a little relief from the constant frustration of wanting to touch her, kiss her, lean close and inhale the intoxicating scent of her right down into his soul.

A night out on the town to celebrate Skeeter’s first full night of sleep and a chance to get close to Aria, sounded like a little piece of heaven. He had promised to bring Aria and Felicity over to Raleigh’s house tomorrow night to meet part of the family—easing Aria into the Geary experience a few sisters at a time—but there was nothing on the agenda for tonight.

Plan in place, he headed out of his bedroom, finding Aria and Felicity in the kitchen, Skeeter balanced on her mama’s hip as Aria warmed up the baby’s bottle in the microwave.

As soon as Felicity saw Nash she let out a happy squeal, grinning her gap-toothed grin.

“
You did it, Skeeter!” Nash reached for the baby, who came to him with outstretched arms. He lifted her high into the air and spun her around the kitchen, making her giggle. “You did it! You slept in your bed all night!”

“
She did,” Aria said, laughter in her voice. “I told her Mama was so proud.”

“
Me, too.” Nash blew on Felicity’s belly, while she laughed and kicked her legs. “So proud that I think we should celebrate,” he said, holding Skeeter against his chest as he turned back to Aria.

“
Celebrate how?” she asked, smiling as she twisted the top on the bottle and gave it a good shake.

In her PJs, with her hair wild around her shoulders and not a drop of makeup on, she looked so young, almost exactly the way she had when they’d first met, when Nash had looked across the camp and seen a girl with red hair and sharp green eyes and something had clicked. He’d had to go introduce himself. That very second.

He hadn’t been surprised when Aria turned out to be someone he could really talk to, or the best first kiss he’d ever had. It was almost as if something inside of him had known she was special from the moment he laid eyes on her.

“
Dinner out tonight,” Nash said, handing Skeeter back to Aria when the baby started reaching for her milk. “On me. At
David’s
downtown.”

Aria’s eyebrows lifted, and her smile grew wider. “
David’s
, huh? Fancy.”

“
Fancy food for fancy ladies,” Nash said.

“
Did you hear that, Felicity? Think we can get all prettied up for supper tonight?” Aria asked, kissing the baby’s head as Skeeter tipped her bottle back and began to drink.

“
You’ll be the prettiest girls there, even in you went in your PJs.”

Aria glanced up, pleasure and uncertainty mixing in her expression. “Thanks,” she said softly. “You’re pretty nice for a boy who used to drive me crazy.”

“
I’m not nice, just telling the truth,” Nash said, fighting the urge to draw Aria and Felicity both in for a hug. This might feel like a warm, family moment, but it wasn’t, not really, and it could be bad for all of them if they let the line between real and pretend blur too much.

But that didn’t mean they couldn’t celebrate together tonight, that he couldn’t take his girls out for a fancy dinner and sit a little too close to Aria. That he couldn’t put his arm around her at dinner, and lean over to steal a kiss or two.

Just the thought of it was enough to make his running shorts feel snug all over again.

“
I’m headed out to run,” Nash said, moving toward the door before his thoughts could wander any further down that particular road.

“
Are you going to lift after?” Aria asked, having lived with him long enough now to get a feel for his schedule.

“
Yeah, but only for thirty minutes or so,” he said, glancing at the clock above the stove. “I won’t have time for a full circuit today. I’ve got to grab a shower and get out of here by seven forty-five.”

“
Then I’ll have an egg and cheese bagel sandwich ready for you to take with you at fifteen ‘til eight,” Aria said as she crossed to the kitchen table, settling Felicity in her high chair. “Do you want your eggs scrambled or fried?”

Nash paused in the archway leading into the living room. “I thought you couldn’t cook.”

Aria shot him an amused look over her shoulder as she adjusted the baby’s tray. “I said I
don’t
cook, not that I couldn’t. Besides, eggs don’t count,” she said. “So, fried or scrambled?”

“
Scrambled,” he said, strangely touched.

He told himself it was just breakfast, but when he breezed through the kitchen an hour later on his way out the door and Aria handed him a paper bag and a to-go cup of coffee, he couldn’t deny that it felt like more. He couldn’t deny how good it felt for Aria’s smile to be the last thing he saw before he left the house, or how much he wished he could kiss her goodbye before heading out the door.

“
Have a good day,” he said instead as he started down the front porch steps. “I’ll call you as soon as I get a reservation so you’ll know what time to be ready.”

Aria stopped in the doorway, crossing her arms as she leaned against the doorframe, one bare foot propped on top of the other, looking so comfortable that it was hard to believe they’d only been living together for a week.

“
Okay, but call me on my cell,” she said. “Mom’s coming to get Felicity in about an hour. I’ve got to help Lark and Melody prep food for the wedding tomorrow and the bridal shower on Sunday, so I won’t be home.”

Home. She called his place home, and it didn’t seem weird or scary or strange at all. It felt…right.

“
All right, catch you later,” Nash said with a wave, trying not to think about what his life would be like in a few months, with no baby toys littered across the living room carpet, no Aria standing in the doorway waving goodbye, no redheaded girls grinning at him in a kitchen that seemed sunnier just for having them in it.

He refused to think about that today.

Today, he would concentrate on the evening ahead, an evening where it would be okay for him to pretend to be in love with Aria March.

Or, maybe, more accurately, okay to
stop pretending that he wasn’t falling for his first love all over again, even harder than he had fallen the first time.

Chapter Eight