My Best Friend's Baby (14 page)

"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 onto the cushy
chair beside the sofa, and then grabbed Chloe's arms.

"Look," he said, frog-marching her backwards
toward 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.
Take out 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," she said. "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 some picture perfect way, but you're having a baby and 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.

"What about
my
responsibility?" she
asked, tossing it aside along with her paper. 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 and 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, and asked the
question again.

"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 over the 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-dustbunny 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," Chloe said.
"Partnership."

She picked up an old photo of her father, a
young man in John F. Kennedy clothes beside a Buick, and rubbed
away a spot on the glass. "A sense of being wanted," she
whispered.

Then she put the picture down and whirled
into motion. "Never mind, Nick," she said, breezing past him toward
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 fairy-tale 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. Luckily, 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 opened refrigerator door. She leaned
forward, rummaging 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 forward, 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 onto the countertop. "Not the juice. You. This fairy-tale
attitude you have about the way things should be."

Her mouth dropped open. But only for a
nanosecond.

"Not 'things,' Nick," she said, shutting the
refrigerator and leaning 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 into 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 fairy-tale 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, then he felt her hand touch his clenched fist. She
lifted it toward her, easing her fingers inside to open his
hand.

"And neither is this baby," she said,
smoothing his open palm over her rounded belly. "This baby's real,
Nick."

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

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

"Real enough to kick," he said, feeling
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.

And 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 when her
eighth month of pregnancy rolled around, was pretty near impossible
when your belly preceded the rest of you around the block by a good
step or two.

Still, she and Larry kept it up—minus poor
Curly, whose over-exuberance kept rolling him into mud puddles,
various cacti, and the occasional 'doggie surprise.' With Shep
perched on her shoulder and Moe slinking along beside, 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 and 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 into his shopping cart when
he wasn't looking. In the baby's room assembling the new,
brightly-painted crib and hanging a fairy-tale wallpaper border to
match. On her sofa with peppermint foot massage lotion at the ready
and an opened 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 into 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 well-worn blue jeans and a thick
knitted sweater the color of the autumn Arizona sky. In defiance of
the cooler weather, he'd pushed up his sleeves. His forearms flexed
as Nick put his hands on his thighs and pushed upright again.

"They can't be all bad," he said. "You love
'em, right?"

Larry thumped his tail at the teasing warmth
in his voice, 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 Shep 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 said, tugging a little at
Larry's leash. "And I'd love to get them home and get myself into a
shower about now, too."

His gaze took in her red extra-extra large
Arizona Wildcats sweatshirt, blue plaid leggings, and sneakers.
"Nah, you look good sweaty," Nick said. "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," he said, smiling into
her eyes, "have you heard from Bruno yet?"

Ugh. She should've seen that one coming.

"No," Chloe said, trying to dredge up an
expression of disappointment. "I, ummm, guess I should've 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 into the denim and hung on. "—and the ... ouch, let go,
you big furball! ... 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 said, slipping her hands
under Moe's silky belly and catching 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 milkbone' gleam in his
eyes, pursued him.

Shep, apparently spotting the perfect moment
to strike, flapped toward Nick's head.

"Shep! Come back!" Chloe yelled.

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

"Larry, come
on
!" Grunting with
effort, she managed to drag her dog away from the love-in. She
reeled in the leash and locked it in place. "What's the matter with
you?"

"I think I know," Nick said, lifting his
mail—and Shep—from his head. "They probably smell the ingredients
I've been using for my latest invention."

"
Eau de
pet chow?"

"Something like that," he said. "It's a
sports drink. Beef and tuna-flavored—"

"Pet Gatorade!" Chloe interrupted. "You
really made it!" She couldn't believe he'd remembered. And taken
time away from his growth accelerator work to do it. "Can I put
some in Red's shop? It'll be a mega-seller, you'll see."