Dwight’s mouth worked. He would turn sixty-one soon after the birth of their baby. Far from ideal as a father. He was an old man. In his attitude, anyway.
She realized he was eyeing her stomach, where she’d touched it, almost hungrily. “Dwight?”
“It’s my child,” he said.
“Of course it is.” In that moment she realized why he was there. Not because he’d suddenly discovered he couldn’t live without her. He wanted to check up on her and his baby. His responsibilities.
The blare of a taxi horn almost drowned out her words. “If you really want to come to the next doctor’s appointment, I’ll let you know when it is.”
“Don’t you dare just schedule me into your life,” he ordered.
“You’re the one who likes to draw a line, to say this far and no further.”
To her shock, he grabbed her arm and tugged her. Into the toy store.
“Dwight, what are you doing?” she asked. But the heat faded from her voice as she gazed around the store.
Dollhouses, tricycles, stuffed animals… She took them all in. Her rapturous smile was in anticipation of sharing such delights with their baby, Dwight guessed.
He felt much better now that he had her inside, off that crowded sidewalk…no matter that he’d derived an idiotic amount of pleasure from watching her cross the street. He loved the way she waited, bouncing gently on the balls of her feet until the walk sign lit up. He found her caution, mingled with her obvious desire to keep moving, deeply sexy.
She’d looked happier, out there in the street. As she had on the other days he’d trailed her around, usually at lunchtime, some days when he had a spare hour or two between appointments. She possessed a quiet, confident enjoyment that worried him. An independent enjoyment that didn’t involve him. Not that he wanted a clinging wife, not at all. But he wanted their life together to be the source of her strength, her happiness.
As it was for him, he realized with a shock. He loved the navy, but that inner peace that created a sense of rightness…that came from knowing Stephanie was at home, his wife.
He suspected that wasn’t the line to win her back. Which he accepted that maybe he did want to do.
“I’d like to buy something,” he said. “For the baby.”
“We already chose the crib,” she said. “And the changing table. And you built that toy chest.”
All of those things were at home in New London, and the flicker of chagrin across her face acknowledged her uncertainty as to where they would end up.
Not in Garrett’s apartment, that was for sure.
“Not that sort of thing,” Dwight said. “A toy. The child will need to play. Won’t it?” Among the many accusations she’d leveled at him was that he was too rigid. That he needed to lighten up.
Her forehead creased. “Of course. When he or she is a little older.”
He bit back his annoyance that she hadn’t agreed to find out the baby’s sex. It was so much more practical. But there were plenty of—what were they called?—
gender-neutral
toys.
He led her toward a display of teddy bears. They had all kinds, from the old-fashioned Edward Bear he remembered from his own childhood to bright pink and yellow specimens that appeared to be made from bath towels. Stephanie liked bright pink, he knew, but obviously he couldn’t buy that one when the baby might be a boy.
“Do you have a teddy bear yet?” he asked, the sweep of his hand indicating she could take her pick.
“No…” Her brown eyes were troubled. “Dwight, of all the things we need to talk about, this isn’t the most important.”
“What would you like to talk about?” He realized his scowl had scared off the approaching clerk. He didn’t want to do the same to Stephanie, so he softened his expression. “I want you to come home, Stephanie. You belong with me, you and our child.”
“I don’t belong to you,” she said.
“I said
with
me.” His hands curled at his sides in frustration. “Just like I belong with you. We’re married. That’s a forever commitment for me, and I know it is for you, too.”
“There’s more to marriage than a piece of paper,” she said. “There’s love.”
“I do love you,” he said. “I know I can be a little set in my ways—” he didn’t know why that was so bad, but evidently it was “—but I’ll change. Be more…accepting.”
“So, you wouldn’t mind if our child took after Garrett?”
He winced.
“Garrett is a wonderful boy,” she said, apparently ignoring the fact Garrett wasn’t that much younger than she was.
“He deliberately sets out to antagonize me,” Dwight objected.
“He has a senior job in an excellent firm, he owns his own home, he doesn’t do drugs or run wild.” She checked off points on her fingers. “But he’s a disappointment to you.”
“That’s not true.” But it sounded feeble. Garrett
was
a disappointment. He had so much potential and he wasted it on car advertisements. For fifteen years, he’d refused to consider any suggestion Dwight had made. Let alone obey an instruction.
But talking about his oldest son wasn’t going to help him win this battle. Dwight scanned the ranks of teddy bears and found just what he wanted, right at the back. A four-foot teddy bear in an inoffensive pale yellow. He waded in, and wrestled it out from its position between a polar bear and a grizzly.
“This one,” he said.
Stephanie stared. “What?”
“I want to buy this for our baby.” He held it aloft. She would recognize that buying such a monstrosity wasn’t his normal style. He was thinking about the baby, thinking about the things that other fathers—more indulgent fathers—might do.
“But…it’s tasteless.”
He beamed. Exactly the point he was trying to make. “He’ll love it. Or
she
will.” That blasted don’t-know-the-sex thing again. “Wait right here.” With difficulty, he tucked the bear under his arm and headed to the cash register.
When he returned, with a Sold sticker taped across the bear’s left ear—it was too big to go into a bag—he presented it to Stephanie with a flourish.
“Dwight, I told you I don’t like it.” She sounded annoyed.
“It’s not about what you or I like,” he said. “You said I need to be prepared to accept and love our child no matter what, even if it doesn’t agree with my opinions. This is to show you that I don’t need to have it all my way.”
She stared at the bear for a very long time. It really was tacky, he thought, with a qualm of misgiving.
“Okay,” she said at last. “I believe you’re making an effort.”
“Good,” he said, trying not to sound surprised. “Good.” He wanted to say,
Now will you come home?
“But this is just a token, and you’re doing it for the wrong reasons,” she said. “You’re aiming to please me, but that’s not why I want you to change.”
He had no idea what she meant. “Isn’t it a good place to start?”
“Dwight, if you don’t believe, deep down, that you need to change in a big way, it’s never going to work,” she said.
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. He didn’t believe he was so horrible a father that he needed a sea change in his personality. Hell, the United States Navy trusted him to represent it in the United Nations. He was one of the good guys!
Stephanie put a hand on his arm, and every particle of him wanted her in his bed, in his embrace, in his heart. In their home.
“I love you, Dwight,” she said, and his heart leaped. “But I can’t live with a man who doesn’t love me, and our children, unconditionally.”
This was crazy. She loved him, he loved her, she was having his baby…but they couldn’t live together?
“Don’t do this,” he told her, hating the note of pleading in his voice. “Don’t destroy our marriage.”
She shook her head. Then she picked up that monstrous yellow teddy bear and walked out.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
R
ACHEL
LOVED
FOCUS
GROUPS
. They were low-cost, low-tech and, as Garrett had said, not exactly the cutting edge of market research. But she loved putting a bunch of people in a room and subtly guiding the discussion so they gave her all kinds of insights they didn’t know they had in them. Insights that would improve her ad campaign, and from there, improve the client’s bottom line.
While some creative directors got more out of mind mapping or brainstorming, for her this was the most real part of advertising. The most solid.
The tamest?
Not necessarily. She’d once had a focus group dissolve into a fistfight over ice-cream flavors. They had the potential to be as emotional and instinctive—and creative—as anything else.
She checked the recording equipment in the KBC focus group room one last time. Her “groupies” would arrive any moment. A couple of today’s attendees were selected from her focus group regulars, people who matched the demographic of Brightwater Group’s target market. But most of them were newbies, sent by a firm that specialized in education research. A couple of them were her parents.
She hoped.
She’d called Mom a couple of days ago to remind her, and her mother had sounded…cool. Maybe because Rachel had criticized her parents’ decision process on the phone last week. But maybe because LeeAnne had told them about Rachel’s highly conditional college-fund offer.
She was afraid they might not turn up today. Which would ruin her plan to have coffee with them after the focus group. Over coffee, in a nice, neutral environment, she would ask them to consider staying put. The Dayton move wasn’t definite…they could reconsider in the light of their granddaughters’ needs. How could they refuse?
“All set?” Garrett spoke behind her, startling her so that she knocked the sound equipment cart out of alignment.
Rachel straightened the cart before she turned. “Yep. Catch you later.”
He raised one eyebrow at her tone. But the fact was, things were awkward between them. After he’d bolted from her office after telling her about his father and Stephanie, she’d expected he would go right back to ignoring her. Pretending he’d never opened up, or that it was somehow her fault for pestering him.
But he hadn’t. He spoke to her most days, about work or the weather or whatever. Trivial topics, the kind he usually disdained to talk about. As if the best way to deal with this attraction between them was to smother it in blandness.
She missed their banter. Their arguments. Even his hostile dismissal was better than this neutrality.
“I thought you might want to hear what Stephanie had to say about tailing Clive,” Garrett said. “He’s been visiting an internet café on 64th.”
“What’s he up to that he can’t do in the office?” Rachel asked. “Or on his iPhone?” Of course, office computer and iPhone use were all able to be monitored by the IT department.
“Good question.”
“Did he see Stephanie?” Rachel asked. “She’s not exactly inconspicuous.”
“She’s damn enormous,” Garrett agreed. “But she doesn’t think he noticed her.”
“Maybe Clive is getting tips from an inside contact at Brightwater,” Rachel suggest. “Or maybe he’s…bribing Mark Van de Kamp.”
“Seems more like the kind of thing you or I would do,” Garrett observed.
She had to agree.
“I do know he wants this partnership more than I guessed,” Garrett said. “He’s desperate to start a family, but Wifey—” they shared a grin at the atrocious endearment “—says they need to buy a house first. She won’t have kids living in an apartment.”
“I don’t believe Stephanie got that close to him, and there’s no way you made enough small talk to get that out of him,” Rachel said skeptically.
“I was in the bathroom when he took a call from Wifey,” Garrett admitted. “That’s my interpretation of a one-sided conversation.”
“Ugh.” Rachel knew people used cell phones in the bathroom, but she found it vaguely unhygienic.
Garrett picked up the sound system remote and jabbed the on button. The console lit up. “So, you haven’t heard anything from any of his team?”
“No one around him is as open as usual, but this competitive pitch is an odd situation.” She glanced at her watch. “Can we talk about this later?”
“I thought I’d stick around and meet your parents,” he said. “They’re coming today, right?”
“No!” She schooled panic out of her voice. “I mean, yes, they’re coming, but why would you want to meet them? It’s not like you’re into the whole family thing.” Though now that she knew more about his own family, she didn’t hold that against him.
“Maybe I’m interested to meet the people who turned you into the amazing woman you are.”
She humphed. “I don’t believe you.”
His grin was disturbingly angelic.
Before she could say more the door opened and her mom catapulted into the room, as people tended to do after that mind-numbingly long elevator ride.
“Rachel, sweetie,” Nora said.
No sign of coolness, Rachel noted, with a rush of relief.
“How’s my girl?” her father boomed.
One side of Garrett’s mouth lifted.
Her dad swung her off her feet as he hugged her.
“Dad,” she protested, muffled against his coat.
Garrett said, “Aw, shucks.”
When she turned around, he was shaking hands with her mom.
“You must be Mrs. Frye,” Garrett said as Rachel took her mother’s coat and hung it on the rack behind the door. “I’m Garrett Calder.”
“Nora Frye. It’s so nice to meet one of Rachel’s friends,” Nora said.
“He’s not a friend,” Rachel said. Hadn’t Garrett told her that himself?
“Are you folks local?” Garrett asked.
“New Jersey,” her dad said. “Though we’re thinking about a move to Ohio. There’s a new stadium being built in Dayton. We’ll be in on the ground floor with one of the concessions—going in with a pal of mine.”
Rachel couldn’t hold back a little groan of frustration.
“Family disagreement,” Nora explained, unaware that Garrett knew the background. “We get a few of those with a daughter as feisty as Rachel. She takes after me,” she added with a pride that made Rachel smile despite her aggravation.
“I can certainly see where she gets her great legs,” Garrett said.
“Ew!” Rachel stuck her fingers in her ears. “Did you just tell my mom she has good legs?”
“Is that against focus-group ethics?” he asked.
“No, it’s just gross. No offence, Mom,” she added.
Her mom’s gaze was darting between her and Garrett like an inquisitive bird. “None taken, sweetie. Do you work for Rachel, Garrett?”
“Not yet,” Garrett said meekly.
“It’s more, he works
against
me,” Rachel said.
He chuckled. “I’m an executive creative director, like Rachel.”
“Would we have seen anything you’ve done?” her father, the ad connoisseur, asked.
Don’t tell him,
she thought in sudden alarm.
“There’s a Lexus campaign…” Garrett said.
“Not the bridge one?” Her father actually whooped. “I love that ad.”
She expected Garrett, Mr. I’m the World’s Best Creative Director, to say something bored and obnoxious, like “Most people do.” Instead, he said, “Thanks, that one seemed to come out of nowhere. I lucked out.”
“The only thing more objectionable than arrogance is false humility,” Rachel told him.
He laughed. “Thanks for the tip.” He turned to her parents. “Rachel gives me lots of advice.”
“She’s good at that.” Her mom’s tone was heartfelt, but not altogether positive. Rachel felt her cheeks warm. “She’s very smart,” her mom added, as if she was trying to make it better.
Which was one very short step from
she’s a know-it-all.
“Mom, Dad—” Rachel didn’t feel this conversation was going anywhere constructive “—we have coffee and snacks set up over there.” She pointed to the sideboard against the wall. Her parents were sufficiently aware of their financial limitations never to turn down free eats.
Sure enough, her dad’s face brightened. “Lead the way, Nora. We might as well build up our stamina.”
Before he followed his wife, he shook Garrett’s hand again. “That Lexus campaign,” he said. “Sheer genius.”
To her annoyance, Garrett meandered over to the food with them, chatting to her dad. Since when was Garrett a chatterer?
Rachel took the opportunity to pull a folded twenty-dollar bill from her jacket pocket and slip it into the pocket of her mom’s coat. A furtive glance over her shoulder collided with Garrett’s narrowed gaze.
She stepped away from the coatrack, just as four more guests arrived. While Rachel greeted them, Garrett poured coffee for her mom—since when was Garrett a coffee-pourer?
Rachel steered her newest guests over to the refreshments. She arrived in time to hear Garrett say, “You must be very proud of her.”
“Oh, we are,” Nora said. “She’s done amazingly well, through sheer hard work. No privilege, no fancy connections, just determination.”
“Mom,” Rachel said. “You’re making me sound like a saint.”
“She’s not a saint,” Nora told Garrett.
“I noticed.” He gave Rachel a look of exasperation. “Rach, could I have a word?” He didn’t give her a choice; he grabbed her elbow and led her over by the coatrack.
“I don’t have time for this,” she said, suddenly nervous. Because his dark eyes were a little too knowing for her comfort. “I need to get this group under way.”
“Why did you put money in your mother’s coat pocket?” he asked, his voice silky smooth.
“None of your damn business,” she said.
“Sorry, Rach, that doesn’t work on me.” He hooked his fingers over the pocket in question. “Will you tell me, or should I show this to your mother?”
“No!” She batted his hand away. “My parents don’t have much cash, but they don’t like to accept money from me. I slip the occasional twenty their way, just to help out. I do the same for LeeAnne.”
“And you don’t think they notice?”
“I’m sure they don’t.”
“Rachel…” He rubbed his chin. “People who don’t have much money know exactly how much they don’t have. There’s no way your mom and dad haven’t figured it out.”
“They would have said something,” she insisted.
“What, like
thank you?
”
She colored. “I don’t expect that. I can afford it, and it helps them out.”
“Rachel, Rachel, Rachel.” He shook his head sadly.
“What?” she demanded.
“You’re talking to someone who knows manipulation in all its forms. Admit it, the money’s for your benefit, not theirs.”
“That’s not true!”
“It’s like that college fund you offered your sister. You’re paying your parents to stay put.”
“That ridiculous,” she said. “As if a twenty-dollar bill would do that.”
“Enough twenty-dollar bills might take the edge off their hunger for a new opportunity.”
Something must have shown in her face, because he added roughly, “You need to stop. Or you’ll end up with no relationship at all with your parents. For me, that’s not a problem. But for you…”
“I have an excellent relationship with my family,” she said. Not counting LeeAnne, who still hadn’t returned her calls.
“Great,” he said. “If you love something, set it free, yada, yada, yada.”
“That’s a stupid sentiment.” Her core froze at the very thought. “My parents are not free. They have responsibilities.” She craned to see around him. Her guests were still enjoying their coffees. “That’s a foreign concept to you, of course. I’m comfortable that giving Mom and Dad twenty dollars won’t be the end of our family.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but, if I know you—”
“You don’t,” she said. It was spooky how she found herself giving him the same objections he’d thrown at her over the past few weeks.
“Yeah, I do.” He didn’t look happy at the realization. “There’s more to your plan than this. What else are you offering your parents?”
“Exactly the same focus group fee as everyone else.”
“There must be more,” he said suspiciously.
Rachel pushed past him before he read the guilt in her face. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re ready to get started. If you need another coffee, grab it now, then please take your seats.”
She ignored Garrett while she waited for everyone to settle.
One of her regulars stopped in front of Rachel. “What time do we finish this afternoon? I have a doctor’s appointment at five.”
“We’ll be done by three-thirty,” Rachel assured her.
Her mother heard. “I thought you said we should plan on taking the six o’clock train home.”
Blast. “That’s because—” she turned away from Garrett “—I wanted to have some time with you and Dad, afterward. I thought we might get a drink or a bite to eat.”