Once Upon a Christmas (51 page)

I mean, get a hold of yourself
, his conscience replied.
So what if Chloe had on a miniskirt that left her legs almost completely bare?
So what if he could just glimpse a peachy scrap of undoubtedly lacy underwear
underneath it? So what if she was also wearing an oversize yellow and blue
necktie-print silk shirt that was almost an exact duplicate of the one she’d
worn…the one he’d unbuttoned…
that night
. So what?

He could handle it.

They were maternity clothes, he reminded himself as she put
down the water and crossed the room. How sexy could they possibly be?

Except they were. Chloe picked up Moe and cuddled the mangy
orange fur ball to her chest, and suddenly Nick felt almost…jealous.

Of a cat.

Ridiculous.

He had to get out of here before he lost it completely.

She frowned and nuzzled Moe’s ears. “That’s putting it
a little too simply, don’t you think so, Nick? I mean, what if poor Bruno reads
it and drops dead with shock? What then, huh? I’m not trying to kill the guy,
just inform him.”

“You’ve got a point,” Nick conceded. If someone
was about to tell him
he
was going to be a father, he’d probably want it
softened up a little, too. “All right, then. How about this—dear Bruno. I
hope you remember me, because—”

“Nick!”

“What?”

“‘I hope you remember me’?” she mimicked, raising
her eyebrows. “I’ll have you know, mister melodrama, that I am not
that
forgettable. Sheesh, what kind of girl do you take me for?”

The kind of girl I could love.

What the hell? There was something seriously wrong with him
today. Nick wasn’t sure what it was, but he was pretty sure Chloe was causing
it somehow. Scowling, he removed Moe from her arms, dumped the hissing armful
of cat on the cushy chair beside the sofa, then grabbed Chloe’s arms.

“Look.” He frog-marched her backward to the sofa
again. “This is important. You’ve got to tell Bruno. Send him a letter. A
fax, a postcard, a telegram, an e-mail. Rent a billboard or hire a blimp to
broadcast it. I don’t care how you do it.” He sat her down and put the
pencil in her hand and the paper on her lap. “Just do it!”

“You forgot skywriting.”

“Arrgh!”

Chloe sighed. “You’re right. It is important. Important
to you! Why is that, Nick? You wanna tell me that?”

“Children should have two parents.”

“Two loving parents,” she specified, hugging her
paper and pencil to her chest. “Not just two people brought together by
…by…by biology!” She flung her arm sideways, and the pencil went
flying again.

Nick ducked. “Is this your white picket fence thing
again? Get over it, Chloe. Maybe this isn’t happening in a picture perfect way,
but you’re having a baby. Bruno has a responsibility to you. A responsibility
he can’t fulfill if he doesn’t know about it.”

He retrieved the pencil from the leaves of a potted
philodendron near the window and handed it to her.

She tossed it aside along with her paper. “What about
my
responsibility?” She got up and stalked toward him. “What about my
duty to provide a good home for this baby?”

“That’s my whole point!”

With a muttered exclamation, Chloe shoved her fingers
through her hair. She turned away from him. “No. Your whole point is doing
the right thing, no matter what the cost.”

“What cost?”

She wasn’t making any sense, and he wasn’t any closer to
getting the damned letter written, either. He wasn’t going to, not if she kept
pacing around the living room instead of writing. Crossing his arms, Nick gave
serious consideration to super-gluing Chloe’s adorable mini-skirted butt to the
chair and the pencil to her hand until she got the job done.

Again, he asked, “What cost?”

She paused in front of the battered antique cupboard she
used for a TV stand and ran her fingertips over the framed photographs arranged
on its hundred-year-old wood. It was the only area in Chloe’s house that got
dusted regularly, which was saying something for a woman who considered
vacuuming hand-to-dust bunny combat.

“Nothing Nick ‘Steady’ Steadman would understand, I
guess,” she said without looking at him.

“Try me.”

He saw her shoulders rise with the deep breath she took,
then her fingers fluttered over the photograph frames again. “Duty at the
cost of love. Partnership.” She picked up an old photo of her father, a
young man in John F. Kennedy clothes beside a Buick. Carefully, she rubbed away
a spot on the glass. “A sense of being wanted.”

He frowned. Before he could reply, though, she put down the picture
down and whirled into motion.

“Never mind, Nick.” She breezed past him on her
way to the kitchen. “I can’t explain it, and you can’t understand it, so
let’s just drop it, okay?”

Understand it? What the hell was he supposed to understand?
That Chloe needed a stable family life for her child—soon—and all she could do
was throw around pie-in-the-sky concepts like love and partnership and living
happily ever-after?

I want the whole fairytale ending,
she’d said.
White
picket fence, a ring on my finger…and a man who loves me.

Maybe she was in denial. Maybe she was hormonally impaired.
Or maybe she really
wasn’t
crazy in love with Bruno, and that was what
was behind her reluctance to contact him again. The idea perked Nick up.
Fortunately, his conscience was there to keep him on the straight and narrow.

He followed Chloe to the kitchen and stood next to her
beside the open refrigerator door. She rummaged inside—probably looking for her
secret stash of diet cola, Nick figured. The one he kept taking out and hiding
behind Chloe’s unused ironing board. He leaned beside her, too, meaning to say
something that might put them back on track to finding a solution.

Instead, what emerged from his mouth was, “I’ve known
you, what…three years now? And I never, in all that time we spent together,
knew you were this naïve.”

“It’s just orange juice!”

He took the carton from her hand and slammed it on the
countertop. “Not the juice. You. This fairytale attitude you have about
the way things should be.”

Her mouth dropped open. But only for a nanosecond.

“Not ‘things,’ Nick.” She shut the refrigerator
and leaned on it with her arms crossed. “My life. My baby’s life. But I
guess you wouldn’t understand that, with your Father Knows Best upbringing and
all your big plans for inventing fame and fortune.”

“It’s not about me!”

Chloe’s lips twisted, quivered faintly in the moment before
she turned her face to the refrigerator and rested her forehead on its shiny
surface. A muffled little sniff came from within the halo her arms made around
her head.

“Awww, hell.” Scrambling sideways, Nick opened a
cupboard and took out a plastic Snoopy cup. He filled it with orange juice,
racking his brain to figure out what he’d said to make her cry. Chloe never
cried. Never.

Except when he was around lately, it seemed.

He took hold of her wrist, eased her arm downward, and
shoved the juice in her hand. “How about if you just call up Bruno
instead?” he suggested, straightening his glasses. “Maybe the letter
isn’t such a good idea.”

It sure wasn’t doing them any favors today.

She sniffed. “You’re avoiding the issue.”

Nick’s head started to throb.

“No,” he said with an excess of patience, “you’re
avoiding the—”

“Being pregnant,” Chloe interrupted, turning
toward him at last, “is not just some fairytale attitude of mine.”

Though her cheeks looked blotchy and her eyes looked a
little red-rimmed, her gaze met his steadily. She put down her juice and
touched his clenched fist. She lifted it toward her, easing her fingers inside
to open his hand.

“Neither is this baby.” She smoothed his palm over
her rounded belly. “This baby’s real, Nick.”

He felt her shirt’s cool silk beneath his fingers, sensed
the warmth of her skin penetrating the fabric. Chloe pressed his hand closer
and closed her eyes. Her belly suddenly…
bumped
at him.

He jerked in surprise. She held his hand in place, smiling
faintly.

“Real enough to kick.” He felt ridiculously like
laughing as he realized what that funny little bulge in her belly had been. A
tiny head or foot. Hell, for all he knew, it was a miniature fist waving at the
big bully who’d been pestering his mama. Nick grinned.

“Real enough to love,” Chloe murmured.

By the time the next kick came, he knew she was right. All
of a sudden, her baby was real to him, real enough to love, and there’d be no
going back now.

Nick was a goner.

Chapter Nine

Power walking, Chloe discovered on Thanksgiving when her
eighth month of pregnancy rolled around, was pretty near impossible when your
belly preceded the rest of you by a good step or two.

Still, she and Larry kept it up—minus poor Curly, whose
overexuberance kept rolling him into mud puddles, various cacti, and the
occasional “doggie surprise.” With Shemp perched on her shoulder and
Moe slinking along beside her, she and Larry walked, rain or shine, every day
that passed between the writing of the Bruno-gram and her eighth-month
obstetrician appointment. If nothing else, it helped burn off her frustration
from that nitwit Griggs’ continued refusals to grant her the pet shop loan she
needed.

Now, rounding the corner that led to her and Nick’s
side-by-side houses, Chloe thought of the Bruno letter they’d collaborated on.
She sighed. She’d never mailed it, of course. There was no one to mail it to.
Even if there had been…well, she wanted Nick and that was all there was to
it. No other man would do.

She’d tried to give him space, to let him work on the
inventions that were so important to him. But no matter what she did, there he
was. At her doorstep with four “extra” cartons of milk that had somehow
hopped in his shopping cart when he wasn’t looking. In the baby’s room
assembling the new, brightly painted crib and hanging a fairytale wallpaper
border to match. On her sofa with peppermint foot massage lotion at the ready
and an open book of baby names to read while he massaged her poor pregnant feet
at the end of the day.

You’d think he was the father or something.

Ha.

The way she longed for all that affection and extra
closeness to continue was scary. Especially considering that she’d done all she
could to make sure it wouldn’t continue. Why, oh why, had she ever invented
Bruno?

“Hey!” Nick called from his front porch. “Hiya,
Blondie.” Grinning, he came down the steps with a handful of mail and
stopped in front of her, then leaned down to pat Larry’s head.

“Are you feeling all right?” Chloe asked, watching
him murmur something in Larry’s floppy beagle ears.

“Sure. Why?”

“You’re actually being affectionate with one of my
pets.”

He smiled wider and went on patting, looking good enough to
eat in a pair of perfectly fitted jeans and a knit sweater the color of the
autumn Arizona sky. In defiance of the cooler weather, he’d pushed up his
sleeves. His forearms flexed as he put his hands on his thighs and pushed
upright again.

“They can’t be all bad.
You
love ‘em, right?”

At the teasing warmth in Nick’s voice, Larry thumped his
tail, then nosed his way beneath Nick’s palm. His big brown eyes closed in
doggie ecstasy as he was rewarded with more petting. By the time Moe crept up
and started winding himself between Nick’s legs and Shemp began to moonwalk on
her shoulder, seeking an opening so he could join the fun, Chloe was feeling
wildly left out.

Jealous of her pets, of all things. Geez, she was pathetic
with a capital “P.”

“Sure.” She tugged at Larry’s leash. “I’d
love to get them home and get myself into a shower about now, too.”

Nick examined her red extra-extra large Arizona Wildcats
sweatshirt, blue yoga pants, and sneakers. “Nah. You look good sweaty.
Must be that ‘glow’ thing you pregnant women are always going on about.”

“Gee, thanks. Maybe I should skip showers altogether
and really rack up the dates.”

“Speaking of dates, have you heard from Bruno yet?”

Ugh. She should have seen that one coming.

“No.” Chloe tried to dredge up an expression of
disappointment. “I, ummm, guess I should have heard something by now.”

“Especially with the videotape message we made.”
Nick ducked to peel Moe away from his legs, but the cat dug his claws in the
denim and hung on. “And the—ouch! Let go, you big fur ball!—photos we put
in the last letter.”

He pulled a little harder. Moe didn’t budge, only arched
outward like a bow.

“Chloe, call off your cat, will ya’?”

Gladly
. Anything to avoid discussing their various
Bruno contact methods. None of which she’d actually followed through with.

All of which had only buried her deeper in the lie.

Much to her regret.

Stupid,
stupid
Kahlúa and coffee and sympathy.

“Come on, Moe.” She slipped her hands under Moe’s
silky belly and caught hold. The cat yowled and reluctantly came free. At the
same moment, Larry abandoned the ecstasy of being petted in favor of trying to
lick the indigo dye out of Nick’s jeans.

“Hey!” Nick squirmed out of the way. Larry,
licking his chops with a sort of “giant Milk-Bone” gleam in his eyes,
pursued him.

Shemp, apparently spotting the perfect moment to strike,
flapped toward Nick’s head.

“Shemp! Come back!” Chloe yelled.

Nick backed up, holding his mail on top of his head. It
formed sort of an envelope runway just as Shemp swooped in for a landing. Moe
jumped gracefully from her arms and slipped between the tangled length of Larry’s
new leash to rub against Nick’s legs again. The cat-hair coating he’d begun
laying down earlier glommed on extra well, Chloe noticed, now that Larry had
been at work on the jeans, too.