The Complete Series Boxed Set (18 page)

She jumped and laughed. “Shit. My phone.” The look on her face as she read the screen made Dylan’s stomach fall, and his erection soften just a bit. Uh-oh.

“Josie?” This was a call, not a text. “
What’s wrong?” Laura’s voice was guarded but resigned, and as he heard the tinny sound of Laura’s friend saying words like “puked,” all their shoulders began to slump.
 

Mike drank the rest of his wine in one long gulp. Parenthood had changed him that much.

“She puked up a what? An insect?” Laura’s voice went up half an octave and she spun around to give Dylan a death glare. “A giant wing from a what?” Josie continued as Laura pulled the phone away from her ear and hissed at him. “Did you see the baby around any insects?”

Just as he was about to craft the smoothest, best PR-spun answer ever, he heard a baby wail in the background of Laura’s phone. Laura listened for a second. “And she’s warm, too? Insects don’t give babies fevers, do they? Could she have picked up some
G
od-awful disease from eating”—GLARE—“something as disgusting as a bug? How big was the bug? Oh my God, what if she ate a cockroach!”

Laura descended into hysterics as Mike calmly pried her fingers off the phone and said to Josie, “She’ll be there in five minutes.”
He ended the call and slowly, deliberately pressed the Jeep’s keys into Laura’s hand.
 

“Go,” he ordered. Dylan had to admire his chillness. Not cold. Just in control and considerate.

“But…” Laura’s eyes were wild and a bit crazy. She looked at the wine, the swing, which now looked like a limp dick in Dylan’s eyes (joining his own), and the bed, made neatly and begging for action.

“But nothing. You won’t enjoy a single moment if you aren’t with our sick baby. Dylan and I just need to unload the fridge so the food won’t spoil. We have backpacks. It’ll do us good to hike home. It’s not even two miles.”

Internally, Dylan groaned, but
he
said nothing. He was already in the doghouse for letting the baby eat an insect (or…maybe she only ate that wing…).

“I—” he blurted, guilty conscience kicking in. Apparently, he had one. “She found an old teething biscuit this morning and there was this insect wing…”

Mike rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, now joining Laura’s glare. “And you didn’t say anything?” You would think that years of living with Mi
k
e would give him some indication of what the guy thought, but no. He was either roy
a
lly pissed and ready to rip him apart, or barely keeping it together to not laugh.

Dy
l
an could have flipped a coin.

“
I don’t even know what to say!” Laura screeched as she zipped out the door and slammed it behind her. He’d never seen her run as fast as she did to the Jeep, spewing snow-covered gravel as the tires spun over ice patches until they caught and she drove off.
 

Mike winced at the grinding sound his poor engine made.

“Smooth. Really smooth,” he said, pouring another glass of wine. Dylan watched with growing amusement as Mike downed another half a glass.

“
You working on your frat-boy skills? Is beer pong next?” he asked.
 

Mike smiled wistfully over the top of his wine glass, then downed the rest, carefully swirling the stem between his thumb and index finger.

“No. Just…relaxing.”

“
L
et our baby eat a bug and you’re sucking down wine like it’s coffee. What the fuck has happened to us?” Dylan plopped down on the bed and stared at the ceiling, the swing in his peripheral vision, taunting him.

“We’re parents.”

“We’re boring.”

“You tried. Thank you. This was a great idea.” Mike handed Dylan his glass of wine, and Dylan figured when in Rome, do what Thor does.

And drink the fucking wine.

“
Cockblocked by an insect.” Dylan sighed.
 

“That’s a first,” Mike said, nodding. “And your lo
b
ster tails are in the fridge now.”

Fuck! He’d forgotten about that. “You seriously want to stuff them in a backpack and hike home?”

“No. Let’s just boil them up and eat them. We can get more some other time. Laura’s not coming back.” Mike’s words stung.

His plan was a failure.

Chugging the rest of his glass, he eye
d
the final third of the bottle. “We could steam the lobsters in water and wine and have the meat with some butter. Bring the steaks home.”

“Deal.”

And while the rest of the afternoon did not involve sex whatsoever, it turned out to meet one of Dylan’s needs.

Time to just
be
.

The day after the Great Insect Ingestion Disaster of 2014, as it would forever be known, Jillian’s fever was long gone, and Laura had let go of her annoyance with Dylan. You couldn’t catch that baby before she did anything—she was so fast! And cunning.

Just like her parents.

Washing dishes with Mike while the baby played with a set of plastic rings, Laura heard something. I
n the distance.
Her
ringtone. Josie’s ringtone, actually.

Mike shook his head. “‘Superfreak’? Got that right.” But his tone
w
as playful. A quick shrug and she was running down the hall on tiptoes, trying to anticipate whether Jillian
would have a fearful reaction to the ring (a new development in the baby)
, where the phone was, and how to locate it quickly and quietly.

The mother’s phone dance.

By the time she found it, it was too late. Josie left no voicemail, but the texts told the story.

Problem at the office.

We have a PR issue.

Meet me at Jeddy’s.

Not a fake meeting, either.

“What does she mean, ‘fake meeting’?”

Laura hadn’t noticed Dylan behind her as she read through the quick messages.
There were just too
many men in this house!
The affect in his voice was accusatory, yet joking. But not really.

“Nothing.” Laura pocketed the phone and frowned.
Could Josie be a bit more obvious? WTF?
“What could be so important? A PR issue? As if
I
need more shit with the company. This
i
s getting out of hand,”
she complained.
Had to be convincing.
 

“
You guys create pretend meetings so you can just hang out?”
 

“Of course not!”

“That’s what it seems like.”
Damn it, Josie.
 

“And I suppose that folder on your computer marked ‘Tax Documents 2001’ is really tax forms,” she shot back.

“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath,
stretching out the word
. She’d accidentally stumbled across his porn collection a long time ago. Didn’t care, but she knew the knowledge would come in handy some time. Like now.

“We don’t really do a lot of fake meetings,” she
said
. “And most of the time I bring the baby. It’s just…sometimes I need to sit and have a cup of coffee with a friend without making a big deal out of it.”

“
Of course—”

She cut him off as two more texts came in. “But this sounds really bad. Can we talk later?”

“We’re talking?” He smiled, dimples and all, and cupped her chin.

“Ha ha.”

“Mike okay?”

That made her pause, even in her rush. “I don’t know. He’s real
l
y grappling with some deep issues. Questions about how we operate, what our relationship means, how I relate to him alone and to both of you…that kind of stuff.”

“I just block that shit out
when the worry bubbles up
,” Dylan muttered.

“What a great strategy. I’m sure that’s working so well,” she deadpanned. “You’re just deferring all your emotions and in ten years Mike and I will pick up the pieces.”

“That’s the plan. Thanks in advance.”
The smile in his eyes made her grateful she’d paused, the joke sinking in on many levels. That they would be together in tens years was a given.
 

And what a wonderful, loving given it was.

These moment
s
were what made life the chaotic, messy, loveable, astounding shambles she’d always wanted it to be. The days of being lonely and licking her wounds from guys like Ryan (Ryan who?), working in a windowless office, living life as if it were meant to be a series of transactions to get through rather than a buff
e
t of experiences to taste and devour, were long gone.

And then—Dylan’s ringtone.

Echoing down the hall.

“What’s that?” The sound of something country made a tinny reverberation, as if Blake Shelton were stuck inside a tailpipe. The two followed it, and Mike appeared in the hall, wat
ch
ing them as they perked their ears and followed the sound.
His still-shirtless chest made her mouth start to water.
 

“What is that?” he asked.

“Shh!” they said in unison as they got closer, the sound increasingly louder in the living room.

“W
e
ird,” Mike said. “It’s like your phone is trapped somewhere.”

The ringtone ended. Then—
Bzzzzz
.

“Call it for me, would you?” he asked Laura, who pulled her phone out. Three more messages from Josie.
Hold on
, she thought, and then called Dylan.

More country music stuck in a tin can.

Mike found it. Pulling a pop-up toy off one of the heating vents, he pointed down through the slotted metal. “Look.”

A
s
she and Dylan clustered around the beige-painted metal vent, they both groaned when the reflection of the glass screen glittered up at them.

“Jillian!” all three exclaimed.

“How did she get my phone down t
h
at tiny little slot?”
Dylan huffed, his face twisted with incredulity.
 

“
P
ure evil,” Laura answered.

“
Y
our daughter!” Mike and Dylan said to each other.

Laura took this as her moment to exit, leaving the two grousing and making plans involving duct tape and rope to retrieve it.

What a waste of perfectly good duct tape and rope.

* * *

“
Do you have the key lime pie today?” Laura asked the cute guy who seemed to have taken over the place. Madge wasn’t always at Jeddy’s these days, and if Mr. Hottie Hot Chef Dude was her
replacement, then he was a fine upgrade on the eyes over the crotchety old institution.
 

“We do, and I have a new blackberry glaze to go with it, on the side if you don’t like the drizzle,” he added, grabbing a coffee pot and two mugs. “
Y
our friend joining you? The brunette?”

A flush of something prickly and unfami
l
iar crawled over Laura’s cheeks and chest. Oh, yeah. She remembered this. It was called attraction. Had he noticed her and Josie? Was he interested? How was she supposed to act? She was taken. Twice
over
!

“Um, you mean Josie?” she stammered.

“Is that her name? The one my grandma told me liked to defile the warlock waitress?”
When he smiled there was a dimple on one side.
 

Ah. Not attraction. Notor
ie
ty.
Stupid stupid stupid,
she chided herself, mumbling, “Uh, yeah, she’s coming, too.”

“Two mugs, then,” he said cheerfully, slamming them down with the coffee and a creamer pitcher, then moving with a muscled grace that made her eyes linger a little too long over his denim-covered ass.
If Josie was going to be late, at least she had a fine view while she wasted a few minutes.
Wow. She’d been out of the market just long enough to forget what it felt like to find someone other than Mike or Dylan attractive.

What did that mean?

Ruminating on it wasn’t in the cards, for Josie careened into the booth, a blur of sinew, her
single-digit-sized
body making Laura feel big and bumbling. Not that Josie was responsible for that—it was simple comparison and all on Laura.
This was
her own insecurity she was slowly shaking.

One coconut shrimp at a time.

“
Key lime pie?” Josie huffed, reading her mind. As if on cue, her friend poured a cup of coffee, fixed it just so, took a sip, made a frantic burned-tongue gesture, and sat with wide, expectant eyes, fanning her open mouth. She looked like an Affenpinscher with a caffeine habit.
 

The waiter dude happened to walk by at that moment and stopped on a dime. His sneakers actually squeaked. “Two pieces?” he asked, nodding toward the door. “We’re about
to
have a huge crow
d
come in, so if you want to order now, you can get ahead of the crush.
”
 

“Two coconut shrimps, two pieces of the pie, and…” Laura looked at Josie, who shrugged.

“And?” the waiter asked.

“And that’s enough,”
L
aura added definitively, touching the rim of her mug. “The coffee’s fine.”

“Sounds good.” He ran off, and Josie gave her a look of appr
a
isal.

“That’s it?”

Laura patted her stomach. “Not eating for two any longer.” She actually wasn’t nearly as ravenous now that Jillian had started solid foods, and her appetite was diminishing back to normal. “What about you?”

“Alex and I had lunch an hour ago.”

“You don’t have to eat with me.”

“Give up coconut shrimp and key lime? You crazy?” They shared a good-natu
r
ed laugh and settled into a very weird, awkward silence that stretched on. And on. And interminably on, until finally Laura broke.

“Why are we being quiet?”

“You’re being quiet. I’m waiting.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“For you
to
te
l
l tell me why you
needed
to be rescued from Mike and Dylan.”

“By the way, Dylan read my texts. Thanks for the fake meeting comment, you dork.”