Summer Kisses (6 page)

Jill straightened her shoulders and headed for the door just as a knock sounded on the other side.

“Don’t answer it,” Sandy said.

“I have to.” Jill reached for the door handle. Derrick Baylor, she realized, might be just what the doctor ordered. If her parents thought, even for a minute, that she was interested in a football player of all things, they would turn around and head back for home in a New York minute. According to her father, football players were arrogant and overpaid, all ego and no substance, a disgrace to humanity.

Wonderful
.

Jill could not have planned this scenario any better had she tried. Derrick Baylor would be the perfect man to get her parents off her back once and for all.

“We don’t even know the guy,” Sandy said. “He could be dangerous.”

“He’s not dangerous,” Jill said as she opened the door.

“Who’s not dangerous?” Derrick asked.

“You,” she said matter-of-factly before she waved at her ninety-year-old neighbor, Mrs. Bixby, when the woman peeked out through her apartment door.

Jill gave Derrick a once over. The first day she’d met Derrick Baylor he’d been wearing a nice pair of slacks and a button-down shirt. Today he had on a white T-shirt that showed off well-worked biceps; pre-washed jeans; a pair of sporty-style slip-on shoes; dark sunglasses; and three days’ worth of stubble. One hand was tucked in his front pants pocket. His hair was thick, dark, and wavy. Unruly strands hit his handsome forehead from all directions.

If only her parents could see him now.

Her mother would faint.

Derrick was everything her father wasn’t: tall, sexy, and from what little she’d heard on the news the other day, Hollywood was a bad boy. A womanizer who had tall, big-busted women lined up outside his door, no doubt.

Looking past him, over the railing, Jill saw his BMW parked at the curb across the street, which explained the flyaway hair. His BMW was a convertible. The same car she’d been in when her water broke. She couldn’t help but wonder if he’d had time to take it to a car wash.

Jill stepped outside and shut the door behind her.

Derrick slid his Ray-Bans to the top of his head. His left eye was shaded in pinks and purples.

“What happened to you?”

“Just a little misunderstanding.”

“You ruffled somebody’s feathers, didn’t you?”

“Ruffled feathers?”

Jill rolled her eyes. “I don’t have to be Hermann Oberth to see that you have a knack for pushing one’s buttons.”

“Hermann Oberth?”

“A rocket scientist,” she explained. “One of three founding fathers of rocketry and modern astronautics.”

Derrick frowned. “You could have just said you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that I have a knack for pushing people’s buttons.”

“So, I was right.”

“About what?”

“About you having a knack for pushing people’s buttons.”

He sighed. “You look different,” he said, obviously in an attempt to change the subject.

“I just had a baby.”

He cocked his head for a better look. “No, really. Your hair…everything…you don’t look like the same woman.”

She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Are you saying I looked fat before?”

“No, of course not, I-I thought you looked great then…you just look different, that’s all.”

She rolled her eyes because she’d been kidding. “Why are you here?” she asked, giving up on humor since she couldn’t even get the man to smile.

“I was hoping we could talk,” he said. “I met with a judge and I thought you might want to hear what she had to say.”

Jill gave him the twice over as she tried to imagine what her parents would think when she told them she and Derrick Baylor were dating. For some reason, the idea of such a ridiculous notion sent a chill right through her. It had been over a year since she’d been with a man. She’d made love to a total of three different men in her life. Well, that is, if she counted Roy Lester. No, she quickly decided, she didn’t want to count Roy. Two men, she amended. She’d made love to two different men in her entire life. Derrick Baylor didn’t look like the sort of man who made love. He probably had hot passionate sex every night on the hood of his car. She blushed at the thought.

Sex was dirty.

That’s what her mother used to tell Jill and her sister. Thomas had always been a perfect gentleman in bed. Thomas was the cleanest, neatest person she’d ever met, always making sure not to mess her hair or ruin the bed sheets if and when she could manage to get him in the mood.

“Are you all right?” Derrick asked when she failed to respond to whatever he’d said about meeting with a judge.

“I’m fine. I have a lot on my mind and I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“Is Ryan okay?”

“He’s great. How did you know his name?”

“A reporter told me when I showed up at the hospital as planned.”

“Oh.” She felt a stab of guilt. “So what did the judge tell you?”

“The judge assigned a court appointed mediator to help us figure out how to deal with our situation.”

“Sandy thinks you want to take my baby from me. Is that true?”

“No. Never.”

Jill caught a whiff of his aftershave. He had to be wearing Gucci or Chanel. God, he smelled good. She didn’t have any shoes on, but either way, Derrick Baylor was tall…very tall. Her neck was beginning to hurt from the strain of looking up.

“Why did you leave the hospital without talking to me?” he asked.

“It’s complicated.”

“I have time.”

The little angel, if you could call it that, sitting on Jill’s left shoulder told her to tell him the truth: that she’d been confused and had done what she always did…followed orders. Sandy had told her she needed to get away from Derrick Baylor, and so that’s what Jill had done. She’d run.

The devil with the red spiked heels sitting on her right shoulder also told Jill to tell him the truth. But while she was at it, kill him with kindness and make him believe she wanted to be friends. At least until her parents showed up. Then she’d really have to turn on the charm. After her parents flew back to New York, all bets were off. Although Jill knew it wasn’t fair to judge a book by its cover, so to speak, she was too tired to care. Her ideal mate could never be an athlete. She preferred intelligent males who kept their hair combed appropriately and wore suits to work.

“All my life,” Jill began to explain, “since I was in my teens, I wanted to have a baby.”

Derrick raked a hand through thick, unmanageable hair. “Seriously?”

She nodded. “Most girls dream about their wedding day, but not me. I dreamt of having a baby of my own. My sister would ask Santa for a princess dress. I always asked for a baby.”

He appeared to be listening intently, which made her wonder about him. Men didn’t listen to women rattle on about their wants and desires. Derrick Baylor obviously had a plan of his own. Fine with her. Two could play at this game.

“Fast forward to Thomas,” she went on. “We dated for years, but he couldn’t—” Jill pulled her gaze from his. “This is too personal. I shouldn’t be talking about this with you.”

“No, please go on,” he said. “Thomas was infertile?”

Jill looked at him skeptically, warily, and then nodded. “We had a long engagement. During that time, I looked for help. I finally found CryoCorp. When things didn’t work out between Thomas and me, I knew right away that I would keep my appointment with CryoCorp and raise my baby on my own. No father, no ties, no one telling me how to raise my child. No one judging me. Women all over the world raise their children alone.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I didn’t see anything wrong with what I was doing.”

“I’m not judging you, Jill.”

God, he was good at this, she thought. No yawn; no bored, wandering eyes. “You’re not?”

He shook his head.

“It was all supposed to be confidential,” she said. “And then you showed up out of the blue. What were the odds?”

“One in a million.”

She nodded. “One in a million.” She looked into his eyes again, deeper this time, searching. “I never should have left the hospital without talking to you first. But what about you?” she asked. “You never mentioned having a lawyer, or that you were going to court. You weren’t exactly upfront with me, were you?” She lifted her chin a notch.

“You’re right. I should have told you my plans.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I’m hoping the two of us can work something out.”

“Like what?”

He pulled a piece of paper from his back pocket and handed it to her. “Here’s the date and time we’re scheduled to meet next month for mediation. The soonest date I could get is thirty days from now.” He cleared his throat. “I was hoping before that time, you would allow me to spend time with you and Ryan, you know, so we could get to know one another better.”

She took the paper and looked it over.

“He’s not coming in here,” Sandy said from inside the apartment.

Jill sighed. “Do you want to see Ryan?”

He looked surprised. “I would love to.”

A loud moan sounded from inside the apartment. “Shouldn’t you be practicing your drops? I thought good mechanics were needed on the field?” Sandy asked from the other side of the door.

He smiled—a flash of white teeth and a charming sparkle in his eyes. The man definitely had to have a string of beautiful women falling at his feet on a daily basis.

“Training camp doesn’t start for another six weeks,” he told Sandy through the door.

“Before we go inside,” Jill said, “I do have a question.”

“Shoot.”

“What happens if we go through with mediation but then fail to come to any mutual conclusion with regard to Ryan?”

“I guess we’d have to take the matter to court.”

She liked his honesty, but that didn’t mean she liked his answer.

Derrick sat in the middle of Jill’s lime-green couch and watched her feed Ryan the last of his bottle. Four-year-old Lexi wriggled around on his left side while Jill sat on his right.

Ryan was a tiny thing, much smaller than his niece, Bailey. “He looks awful small,” Derrick said.

“Babies tend to be small,” Sandy muttered from the kitchen.

Derrick ignored her. Satan was not happy to have him inside the apartment. Even now he could feel her angry eyes boring a hole through the side of his head.

“Are you sure you don’t want to feed him the rest of his bottle?” Jill asked.

“No, thanks. I’m perfectly happy just watching you.”

Satan snorted.

“He’s afwade of rine,” Lexi announced.

“No, I’m not,” Derrick answered too quickly.

“Burp him then,” Lexi said.

Lexi stood on the couch, her pink sock-covered feet sinking into the cushions as she held onto Derrick’s shoulder for support.

“No, no, that’s okay. I’ll just watch. How do you know so much about babies?” he asked Lexi, hoping to get the little girl’s attention focused on something other than him.

“I used to be one,” she said.

Sandy laughed.

“Here.” Lexi laid a dry cloth diaper on his shoulder and patted it with her hand. “Put Rine’s head right here,” she told Jill.

The bottle was empty so Jill adjusted herself on the couch so she could do as Lexi said.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said nervously as Jill placed Ryan exactly as Lexi had instructed.

The second the baby’s head touched his shoulder, Derrick froze—he didn’t move one inch.

Lexi giggled and moved his hand so that the palm of his hand was flat against Ryan’s back. “Now pat him…softwy,” she told Derrick. “You a big guy,” she said with a smile. “Don’t hurt the wittle baby.”

He gently patted Derrick’s back. “Like that?”

Lexi’s head bobbed. “Yep. Do it ’til he burps.”

Within seconds a loud gurgly sound came out of Ryan. Derrick’s eyes widened. “It worked!”

Lexi clapped her hands together and squealed.

He smiled at Jill, and then looked at Sandy, which was a big mistake since she was frowning and ruining the moment.

“Mommy, Rine burped!” Lexi shouted in Derrick’s ear.

“What did Ryan do?” Sandy asked with a smile, knowing her daughter would shout in his ear again, which she did. Satan was on a roll.

“Rine wikes you,” Lexi said as Jill pushed herself from the couch.

Derrick laughed. Despite being the spawn of the devil, Lexi was an adorable kid.

“He don’t wike his mommy though,” Lexi added.

Jill blushed.

“Of course he likes his mommy,” Derrick told Lexi.

“Nope. He don’t wike her boobies.”

“Okay,” Sandy said as she swooped in and ushered Lexi away. “Time for your bath, Lexi.”

“Not now. Howiewood said he’d draw pictures with me.”

“Maybe some other time,” Sandy told her.

“Sweet girl,” Derrick said after Lexi and Sandy exited the room.

“She’s a hoot,” Jill agreed, crossing her arms tightly over her chest.

Derrick didn’t know what to do. Ryan was falling asleep on his shoulder. He didn’t want to wake him, but his leg was cramping and his arm wasn’t faring much better.

It was quiet for a moment while they both stared at Ryan’s perfect little head as he rested on his shoulder. “I’ve never held a baby before today,” he told her. “I mean, not in a very long time. It’s not so difficult, after all.”

“You’re a natural.”

Derrick tucked his chin into his chest and examined Ryan further. “He’s got your mouth,” he said.

Jill sat on the armrest of the couch and took a good long look at Ryan too. “Hmm. You think so?”

As he examined her mouth for comparison, she felt ridiculously self-conscious and found herself wishing she hadn’t asked the question.

“Definitely,” he said.

She looked at Derrick’s mouth. “I hadn’t noticed that before. You might be right.” The thought cheered her immeasurably. “He has your nose, though, that’s for sure,” she added. “And your big brown eyes.”

“The better to see you with, my dear.” He wriggled his brows.

She laughed and then stopped when she saw him giving her a strange look. “What?”

“Nothing,” he said, looking away.

She thought about coaxing him into telling her what was on his mind, but decided against it. Until things had been sorted out between them with regards to Ryan, it was safest for her to keep her guard up. If she was to convince her parents they were dating she needed to be friendly, but there was no reason to overdo it.