My Best Friend's Baby (13 page)

"Haven't I seen that before?" he asked,
gesturing vaguely toward her chest. His gaze flashed to her face,
then back to her ... bra, she realized. Her sheer, orange push-up
bra.

The same one she'd worn the morning after
the night he thought they'd never spent together.

"Now, where would I have seen your bra?" he
asked, still looking puzzled—for the moment.

Knowing Nick, it wouldn't last. He'd
remember their night together ... and realize her lie. Damn, damn,
double damn! Given away by her weakness for fancy date lingerie.
Chloe tugged her shirt out of his hand and wrapped it around her
torso, hugging it over her belly. Maybe a joke would distract him?
She decided to try sounding flippant—as though they weren't still
halfway stuck together in a heated clinch.

"I dunno, Nick," Chloe said, still hugging
her clothes close as she slid down from his lap. "In your dreams,
maybe?"

He didn't look convinced. In fact, he looked
sort of ... deflated, exactly the way she felt. But thankfully,
Nick didn't look that much closer to a solution, either, now that
she'd safely hidden away the incriminating evidence.

The minute she got home, she was burning
that damned bra.

Chapter Eight

"Oh, darling," Nick said, pacing across
Chloe's living room almost a month later, "I just can't go on
without you. Since you left, I've thought of nothing but you. Night
and day, day and night—"

"Eastern time, pacific time, standard time!"
Chloe added dramatically. Sighing, she bounced her pencil off of
the notepad in her lap and crossed her arms over her chest.

"This letter is killing me," she said,
watching her freshly-sharpened number two ricochet off her paper on
its eraser and spin end over end toward the opposite arm of her red
plaid sofa.

Nick ducked. Her deadeye aim wasn't doing
him any favors, either. How had she gotten so much loft on that
thing? The pencil thumped into the wall behind him, then dropped
harmlessly to her wildly-colored, flower-splashed rug.

"I'm not writing something stupid and sappy,
Nick," she said. "I'm not. It's just not me."

"You're right. You're very intelligent."

"Har, har."

"Too intelligent to let the father of your
child get away. Now concentrate," he ordered, handing her the
pencil.

She took it, smirked, and saluted him with
it. Damn, he hated it when Chloe turned flippant. Probably because
it reminded him of the pat answer she'd handed him on his patio
that night.

I dunno, Nick. In your dreams?

Ha. That filmy orange bra of hers—along with
the curvy, Chloe-worthy rest of her—had haunted his stupid dreams
ever since then, sure as if she'd predicted it. Never mind that he
didn't want them to. Never mind that he had other things to
concentrate on—mainly, his growth accelerator, which still hadn't
come together properly. Never mind that becoming lovers would
probably ruin their friendship and her chances with Bruno alike.
All he'd been able to think about was her.

Somehow, Chloe had gotten under his skin
that night and stayed there. Memories tortured him ... of her soft,
warm body curved against him, of her breathless whispers, her
dangerous roving hands. Memories of the cute way she'd wiggled when
he'd kissed her and the husky way she'd moaned in the back of her
throat when he'd slipped his hands inside her eye-popping, silky
shirt. Memories of the shy surprise in her face when he'd told her
she looked beautiful.

Yeah—beautiful. Another fella's beautiful
girl.

Specifically, Bruno's.

Damn him.

And damn the last month Nick had spent being
platonic with a capital "P." It was making him cranky.

He swiveled past a stack of cardboard boxes
bearing the pictures and pastel-printed names of more baby
paraphernalia than even he—a four time uncle—had known existed, and
looked straight at Chloe.

"Look," he said, "you've put off writing
this letter long enough."

"Hey, I—"

"Uh, uh, uh." Nick held up his hands and
shook his head. "No more excuses. I've heard them all."

She pouted her perfectly lipsticked mouth.
It was just his bad luck the motion made him want to kiss off all
that glossy, shimmering pink. It was just his bad luck he had an
overactive, out-of-practice libido aimed in her direction. It was
just his bad, miserable, luck that just when Chloe had finally
found someone she cared about enough to make babies with—he wasn't
fooled for a minute by her, "we talked, we laughed, we're over
story'—he'd started falling for her, too.

Whoa
. Falling for her? The hormonal
soup surrounding Chloe must be getting to him, too. No way was he
falling for her. Not with his invention's production dependent on
this summer's work, and not with her Bruno-the-marine waiting in
the wings. Not with her future happiness—and her baby's—riding on
patching together her temporarily off-track relationship.

Was he her friend, or wasn't he? Friends
wanted each other to be happy. They did not necessarily want to
drag each other off to the big comfy carved-wood sleigh bed that
just happened to be right in the next room. They did not typically
imagine ripping off each other's clothes, sinking onto the
pillow-piled mattress and ... . Hell. It was past time to end this
and get down to business.

"No more excuses," Nick repeated, trying to
look stern.

She gazed up at him with one hand on her
rounded pregnant belly, innocent as a new-minted angel. "But Shep
really did need some fresh air the other day. That wasn't an
ex—"

"Right. And I suppose Curly needed
home-baked hamster treats last week."

"I—"

"And Larry was just dying to have his
toenails—dog nails—claws!—painted purple yesterday?"

"It wasn't purple."

He raised his eyebrows, feeling his blood
pressure approach the redline. "Oh, no?"

"No," she said, all earnestness and
precision. A saint, doodling on a notepad. "It was fuchsia. And
anyway—"

"Arrgh! Write—the—letter!"

Flinching, Chloe flipped her notepad to a
new page. "You don't have to yell," she grumbled, eyeballing the
huge burbling aquarium separating her living room from the dining
area.

"And quit looking for another excuse. Your
fish don't need fresh air or a manicure, and don't even try to tell
me they do. I won't believe it."

She mumbled something under her breath about
stick-in-the-mud scientists who needed proof to find their own
pants, then gave him a brilliant smile. "Okay, dictate."

"You didn't like
my
letter."

Unimpressed by his resistance, she ignored
him and doodled hearts along the top of her paper. For some reason
Chloe's patience—her surety that he'd come through for her with a
stupid Dear Bruno letter—annoyed the hell out of him, but Nick
would've shaved his head before admitting it.

Tapping her eraser against the paper, she
looked up at him. "I'm waiting, oh professor of love."

He glared at her. She snickered.

He crossed his arms. "The professor of love
has left the building."

"Aww, come on," she said. "I'm only kidding!
Sheesh, what happened to your sense of humor?"

It got smothered beneath a month of wanting
you.

"What happened to
your
sense of
practicality?" he shot back, feeling out of control. And hating it.
"You're what, four, five, six months—"

"Five and a half months."

"—pregnant now, and you still haven't told
Bruno. You're more than halfway there, Chloe! Do you want to patch
things up with the father of your baby or not?"

Her eyes widened. For an instant, she looked
twice as vulnerable, twice as alone, and twice as tempting snuggled
against the outrageously bright pillows littering her sofa. Then
the old Chloe returned.

"I dunno, mister mind-meld. Do I? Do I
really want to set things straight with junior's daddy?"

Beneath her notepad, she rubbed her palm
over her belly, probably without even knowing she was doing it. It
had become a habit as her pregnancy progressed, he'd noticed. And
now, at the worst possible damned moment, Nick found himself
wondering exactly what it would feel like to put his own hand
there. To feel the baby growing and kicking and—

Something dangerous flashed in her eyes,
burying his tender thoughts along with it. "Why don't you tell me?"
she asked. "Do you think getting in touch with ... with Bruno is
the right thing to do?"

"Yes, dammit!"

She paused, staring at him, then flipped
back to the page she'd been writing on. "Fine.
Oh, darling
,"
she started reading. "I just can't go on with—"

"Hold it."

Something niggled at the back of his mind.
Some ... hint, some clue, some ...
thing
hovering just on
the edge of his memory. Damn, what was it?

"Read that again."

"Oh, come on, Nick. A line-by-line critique?
This isn't meant to be read aloud, you know."

"Humor me."

Chloe put the pencil in her mouth, gazing up
at him thoughtfully while she ran the eraser back and forth over
her bottom lip. Her eyebrows dipped, as though she were trying to
remember something.

"The professor of love always gets his way,"
Nick said. "It's one of the perks of the position."

She shrugged. "Okay, okay." Clearing her
throat, she raised the notepad like a Shakespearean preparing for a
soliloquy.

"Oh, darling!" Chloe intoned, flinging one
arm wide. "I just can't go on without—"

Moe yowled and fled from beneath the coffee
table. The drama of the moment vanished along with Nick's
tip-of-the-tongue sensation. Whatever he'd almost remembered, it
was gone now.

"Never mind. Let's start over."

"Good idea," Chloe said, ripping the letter
they'd drafted out of her notepad. She crumpled up the paper with a
flash of her yellow-painted fingernails and added it to the
wadded-up pyramid on the coffee table. "I never call anyone
darling, anyway. Except maybe you,
darling
," she added with
a wink.

There it was again
. That niggling
sense there was something he ought to have remembered, something
... awww, the hell with it, Nick decided, setting his glasses
straighter. It was probably just the strain of six months' worth of
celibacy, finally getting to him. Ever since his heartbreak over
what'shername—
dammit, what was her name, anyway
?—he'd been
spending too much time taking care of Chloe to date.

And not enough time working on his
inventions. He had to get Chloe's love life squared away, so he
could quit worrying about her and get down to business.

"Okay," he said in his most dog-determined
voice. "Here goes. Dear Bruno—"

"Original opening."

He made a face at her. "As you so succinctly
put it—har, har."

She laughed in earnest and threw a
pink-fringed pillow at him. Nick ducked. In Chloe's house, they
weren't called 'throw pillows' for nothing.

"Pick up your pencil," he commanded, "and
get busy."

Dutifully, she picked up her pencil again.
And balanced it on the bridge of her nose. If he didn't know
better, he'd swear she was trying to distract him from finishing
the Bruno letter.

"Very nice," he deadpanned. "For a trained
seal. Come on, Chloe. It's just a simple letter."

The pencil rolled off, and she caught it.
"Yeah. With a not-so-simple message."

So that was it. "Well, we'll make it simple
then."

Nick paced to the window, thinking. Outside,
Danny and Larry the Wonder Beagle played in the yard, tugging a
battered blue Frisbee between them. For the past few Saturdays,
Chloe had invited Danny to her place for half the day—ostensibly so
his Uncle Nick could get some inventing done. Nick suspected their
time together was more of a 'life with kids' preview than anything
else. Which was actually kind of endearing, when it came right down
to it.

Danny looked up and waved. Nick waved back,
then turned his attention to the problem at hand. "A simple letter.
Simple. Okay." Tapping his finger against his bottom lip, he said,
"Dear Bruno. I'm writing to tell you that you're going to be a
father. The baby is due in December, and—"

"Maybe I ought to tell him to sit down
first? That might come as kind of a shock."

Her voice came from the wrong direction. He
looked for Chloe and found her, not on the sofa writing, but at the
other end of the room, bent over Curly's hamster cage as she
refilled his water container. She leaned a little closer, and her
short stretchy sky blue skirt rode up her thighs. Her toned,
shapely-enough-to-drive-a-guy-crazy, half-naked thighs.
Thank
God for power walking
, Nick thought.

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? And so
what if she was also wearing an oversized 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
was ... 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?" she
asked. "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."