To be perfectly truthful, she liked the burgeoning belly brought on by night after night of take-out dinners. The fact that he was expanding made her feel better about her own rapidly
blobifying
figure. Whatever shape she once had seemed to melt like marshmallow over hot flame. The waist was the first to go but the rest followed too damn quickly for her liking. The only taut part on her entire body was her belly, and what was once a soft, sexy curve now had the tensile consistency of an over-inflated volleyball.
So, yeah…The fact that Tom was sprouting a sympathy belly made her happy. So happy she felt compelled to poke him in the stomach to see if he’d giggle like
Poppin
Fresh.
He didn’t.
Not only did he fail to chortle, he decided to start making use of the gym at his condo. The jerk-off dropped ten pounds in the blink of an eye. Okay, maybe it was more like six weeks, but in those same six weeks Maggie had outgrown even the fattest of her fat pants. What was worse, the bastard looked to be working his way toward a six pack. She narrowed her eyes, glaring intently at his flat stomach. The muscles bunched and released and the faint shadows of regained definition winked at her.
“I hate you,” she said in a loud, firm voice.
He flicked a glance over the tops of his readers. “You don’t hate me. The dress you bought looks incredible on you, and I think we should look at this duplex.” He folded the section of newspaper into fourths and tapped a picture as he handed it to her.
A puzzled frown tugged at her lips. “Why do you want to look at duplexes?”
He shrugged. “Need a bigger place.”
“Your condo is huge,” she murmured. “Ugly, but huge.”
Okay, that wasn’t the truth either. She’d only seen his place once—on a quick stop to pick up clothes and collect mail—and it wasn’t ugly. Or huge. Actually, the place was pretty nice. Definitely less cluttered than her place, so that made it look bigger. She just couldn’t imagine spending much time there. The apartment was too impersonal, and the Tom she knew was nothing if not up-close and personal. She had a hard time imagining him there. Not that she had to imagine him there. He seemed to be permanently camped out on her couch.
Tom smirked. “If it’ll make you feel better, we can run by Pier One so you can pick out some useless crap to hang in the apartment I haven’t slept at in nearly three months.”
She snatched the newspaper from his hand. “I don’t do Pier One. I’m a Bed, Bath & Beyond girl,” she grumbled. She scanned the page. “You want to move to Evanston?”
“Well, we’ll need more room when the baby comes.…”
Her head jerked up. “You want me to live with you?”
He laughed. The jerk actually laughed. And when he laughed those now-tight abs of his rippled. Rippled! The man was sliding headfirst into fifty, and he dared to sit on her sofa and ripple. In his underwear. Eating her cereal. Laughing at the big, fat hippopotamus and staring at her as if she were…the only girl in the world.
The man was a total shit.
If she didn’t love him so damn much, she’d hate him. She’d hate him for moving into her life and taking over her cereal cabinet. She wanted to resent him for sitting there looking so beautiful when she felt so utterly disgusting. Every day, she did her damnedest to work toward despising his twinkling blue eyes and rippling abs. She prayed for the power to resist that boyish cowlick. And each time a starburst of hope rose in her throat, she swallowed it whole, leaving her feeling raw but safe.
“Things are fine the way they are.”
“For now.” He tugged her hand, and she dropped to the cushion next to him. “I’d like…It would be nice if we had something a little more…” Tom searched her eyes as he grappled for the right word.
Permanent.
She squeezed his hand, trying to will the word into his brain. It only took a moment to click, then his face lit. “Spacious,” he said with a brisk nod.
Her heart dropped to her toes. She bit the inside of her cheek, desperate to swallow the hot lump of emotion balling in her throat. “This is all I need.”
The odd thing was, the moment she said the words out loud, she knew they were the absolute truth. She didn’t need the band of gold and a matching mortgage. A piece of paper binding him to her until death—or divorce—they do part meant nothing. Maggie stared at him in puzzled wonder, trying to remember why she would ever think ‘I do’ could add up to more than ‘I love you’.
Resolve renewed, she leaned in to kiss him. “This is all I need,” she whispered.
He angled his head, capturing her mouth in a kiss so soul-achingly sweet she stopped breathing. “I want you to have what you want, too.”
“I want you.” She offered her mouth again and he took it, willing, hungry, and possessive. “I love you,” she whispered as he pressed her into the cushions.
He wouldn’t say it back. He hadn’t repeated those words since the day his mother died. But she felt them. Oh, she felt them. They rang soft in his voice when he said her name. They tasted tangy on his tongue and reverberated in the beat of his heart against hers. He trailed hot, wet kisses down her throat and she sighed.
“I love you, Tom.” Blinking at the speckled ceiling she smoothed his stubborn cowlick and arched against his body. “This is all I need.”
****
She was lying, of course. He knew it was a lie. This crazy half-relationship/half-agreement they were living left too much gray area for both of them.
Tom jabbed the speaker button on his office phone and speed-dialed his brother. When Sean answered, he sat up, braced his elbows on the polished surface of his desk, and blurted, “I’m going to ask Maggie to marry me.”
Sean barked a laugh. “How was the blow job?”
“What?”
“I have to live vicariously through you these days.”
Scowling, Tom tried to make sense of his brother’s bizarre segue into his sex life, but detoured around it in the end. “I said I’m going to propose to Maggie.”
“I heard you. You told me once that a guy only gets the urge to propose when a girl has his dick in her mouth. Is your dick in Maggie’s mouth?”
Tom cast a sheepish glance at his partially open door and snatched the receiver from the cradle, tucking it under his chin. “No, my dick is not in Maggie’s mouth,” he hissed.
“So, you’re not being coerced?”
Spinning in his chair, he stared out the window. “We’re having a baby.”
“Which is
gonna
happen whether you give her a ring or not.”
“I love her.”
Sean blew out a long breath. “God help you.”
“I know.” Tom let his head fall back and ran a hand over his face. He blinked at the ceiling. “How are things going with Tracy?”
“Things are going.”
Looking past the hesitation in Sean’s answer, he latched onto the faint note of hope he heard lingering in the undertone. The hope that had been absent for too many months was now back with a vengeance. Tom felt compelled to push. “You said things were better. You guys are talking, right?”
“We are…co-existing,” Sean conceded.
“And that’s better?”
“Better than the months Tracy was sleeping on the rec room couch and we weren’t speaking at all.” Sean paused for a second. “So, uh, proposing to Maggie?”
The sigh leaked out of him and a note of panic crept into his voice. “Christ. What am I doing?”
“Sounds like you’re signing for a lifetime vacation in Purgatory.”
Tom snorted. “Purgatory?”
“Somewhere between Heaven and Hell.”
He blew out a breath. “I remember the term. Can’t you just lie to me and tell me it’ll be okay, Sean?”
The silence stretched between them. “I think it will,” his baby brother said at last, his voice deep and gruff. “I think everything’s going to be okay for both of us.”
“God, I hope so.”
Sean chuckled. “Have you got a ring?”
“Not yet.” Tom stood, and stared down at the teaming sidewalk below. “I was waiting for the lunch rush to pass before I hit a couple of jewelers. Maybe I’ll find something that looks like Maggie.”
“Big.”
“You
sayin
’ my girlfriend is fat?”
“No! Just make sure you get a big one. A baby is enough work. She’ll need extra incentive to take you on full-time.”
“You suck at this, by the way.”
“I’m just giving you the same advice you gave me when I wanted to propose to Tracy.” Sean chuckled again. “Don’t forget, you have to do the romantic, grand gesture crap. Rent the Goodyear blimp or the scoreboard at Wrigley….”
Tom cringed, remembering the boatload of helpful hints he’d doled out so freely nearly seventeen years before. “Yeah, like I knew what the hell I was talking about. Why would you ever listen to me?”
“Because you’re my big brother. When I was five, you told me I had to do what you say or you’d beat the crap out of me,” Sean reminded him. Tom heard the rumble of voices in the background, then Sean said, “Look, I’ve
gotta
go. Good luck.”
“Thanks.” Tom stared at the phone for a moment before hanging up. “Huh. Who knew you actually listened?”
****
The heebie-jeebies started the moment he stepped foot in the jewelry store. Fear tickled the back of his throat when a woman with a gunmetal gray bouffant and rhinestone studded—he assumed they were rhinestones—half-glasses approached. Terror squeezed a tremor from his voice when he asked to see the latest and greatest in engagement rings. The woman’s amused smile turned terror into trepidation. She fixed him with a challenging gaze, almost double dog daring him to bolt for the door. Being a man—and not entirely confident in the support of his knees—he stood his ground.
The woman, Eunice, seemed impressed with his display of intestinal fortitude. For his part, Tom was just glad he didn’t yak in front of her. That would have been embarrassing.
Instead, he focused on the glimmering hunks of compressed carbon submitted for his approval. One by one, Eunice pulled each offering from its cushioned slot and extolled the virtues of each ring as she slid them onto her slender fingers. Tom tried to imagine Maggie’s delicate but extremely capable hands weighted down with miniature headlights flanked by ruby trillions or encircled by pave sapphires and the fear-terror-trepidation cocktail that fueled him morphed into downright panic. Not one of the bevy of brilliant beauties looked like Maggie to him.
Shaking his head, he took a staggering step away from the case. “No, I’m sorry.”
“Too big? Too small?” Eunice asked. He could do nothing but shake his head harder. “Sweetheart, you have to give me something to go on here,” she persisted. “Tell me about your girl.”
“We’re having a baby,” he blurted, and his mind began to reel.
A smirk twitched the woman’s lips. “Mazel Tov.”
He stared at Eunice in shock, waiting for her expression to match the stunning knot of reality settling in the pit of his stomach. Failure was not an option. He had to pick out a ring. Maggie was having his baby. Without benefit of clergy. Without that flimsy piece of paper binding her to him. Yes, he had the custody agreement they’d signed, but that was about the baby, not Maggie. The ticking muscle in his jaw told him maybe he’d left getting all old-fashioned a little late.
Eunice snatched the trays from the top of the case and quickly locked them in the case again. The bubble of panic in his gut popped him like a punch to the solar plexus. “Wait!”
She circled the end of the counter, reaching for his arm. “Sweetheart, I think you need to sit down.”
He allowed himself to be led to an ancient armchair perched in the corner and fell into it like a sack of bricks. Looking up, he blinked at Eunice’s concerned frown. “It’s okay,” he croaked. He cleared the frog from his throat and forced a wan smile. “I’m okay.”
The older woman gave him a brisk nod. “You stay put while I get you a drink of water.” Bustling toward the back of the store, she tossed another sardonic smirk over her shoulder. “See if you can think of something else about her, other than the baby thing, and we’ll try again.”
Eunice stood quietly and patiently, watching him sip tepid water as he stumbled over the first few words. Red hair seemed an entirely inadequate way to describe Maggie’s crazy curls. Green eyes…He leapt from the chair and rushed back to the case, jabbing his finger at the glass. The emerald he pointed to wasn’t an exact match, but it was pretty damn close.