eyes and found Candy studying him. When she realized his eyes were open, she smiled broadly, revealing gums and two, maybe three, teeth.
He decided she looked like an eight-month-old, almost bald flapper from the Roaring Twenties.
Her grin widened.
“I was thinking we could just tell your grandmother Candy’s the result of another relationship, and leave it at that,” Kassandra said from the bathroom, intruding into Gabe’s thoughts.
“My parents might buy that,” Gabe admitted honestly, “but I’m not sure my grandmother will.”
“You’re not suggesting that you’re going to claim her as your own?” Kassandra asked, stretching out of the bathroom to look at him again. The baby gave him a hopeful look and said, “Da-da.”
Feeling strangely hypnotized by the little nymph in the playpen, Gabe rose to pace and broke the spell. “No, I don’t want to make the story go that far. We were only supposed to have been dating for four months or so….”
“So you don’t have anything to worry about, and we can just keep this simple,” Kassandra said, then slid into the bathroom again. “If your grandmother asks about Candy’s father, I’ll just tell her the truth.”
For a good thirty seconds, Gabe stared at the bathroom door, wondering why Kassandra didn’t tell him the truth. He wasn’t really curious in a prying sort of way. Just curious. After all, they had to spend the next three weeks together. It was only fair that he know.
He glanced into the playpen again and Candy grinned at him.
On a whim he reached inside for her. “Come on,” Gabe said, pulling her out of the playpen. “I’ll just hold you here for a few minutes so you get adjusted to me.”
But this baby didn’t have any adjusting to do. She willingly went to him, even patted his fact as if delighted with the texture of his whiskery stubble. With his hands beneath her arms, resting on her rib cage, Gabe held her in a loose standing position. “Anybody ever tell you you’re too friendly?” he asked the happy little girl who gazed up at him dreamily.
“She doesn’t know fear yet,” Kassandra said from the bathroom. “Give her another month or so, though. From what I’ve read, she’s about to tumble into a shyness phase and I won’t be able to leave her with my own parents.”
Still staring at Gabe, Candy stuck her hand in her mouth. Gabe couldn’t quite figure out what to do with her legs, so he just let her dangle in front of him. Candy didn’t seem to mind. The closeness gave her the opportunity to study his face.
“Your parents keep her a lot?” he asked, unable to hide his curiosity any longer, and deciding this was as good a way as any to probe discreetly.
“Always,” Kassandra replied from the bathroom. “I couldn’t make it without them.”
“Actually, I’m surprised you got this far,” Gabe said, then realizing she might have taken that the wrong way, Gabe hastened to amend it. “I’m not surprised in a bad way,” Gabe quickly assured her. Candy said something that was a cross between a “boo” and a “goo,” and when she did a little stream of slobber slipped from her mouth to his jacket sleeve. Knowing he would probably be used to this kind of stuff if he really was dating Kassandra, Gabe didn’t react, except to swallow a yelp just dying to leap from his lips.
“I’m surprised in a good way. My God, Kassandra, husband and wife teams sometimes have trouble raising a child. And you’re doing it all alone. That’s quite an accomplishment.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Kassandra said, stepping out of the bathroom. Kassandra’s red jumpsuit matched her daughter’s red-and-white-striped ensemble. Her thick blond hair was down, curving into a loose wave that sat casually on her shoulders. She wore enough makeup to accent her features, but not so much as to look overdone.
Gabe’s immediate thought was to tell her she looked beautiful, but he stopped it. In the first place, she wasn’t the type of woman he dated. He dated uncomplicated women who wouldn’t mind marrying him for his money and then doing exactly what he told them to do for the rest of their lives. And Kassandra was nothing like that. She was a strange combination of sophisticated, smart and conservative. If they dated for real, she’d want to be an equal partner. But they weren’t dating for real. They were the kind of people who antagonized each other from across a hall, and that’s exactly what they would revert to doing the minute they returned to Pennsylvania. There was no need to get too personal. He bit back his compliment and smiled at her.
“Want to take her?” he asked meekly, holding Candy in front of him as if he were afraid to break her.
“You’ve got to learn to do this,” Kassandra said, then shifted Candy until Gabe was holding her on his arm. “See? Isn’t that better?”
“Yes,” Gabe agreed. He could smell Kassandra’s perfume, and that scent tripped the memory of kissing her. He’d hoped he’d blotted that out of his mind for good, but one whiff of her perfume brought it back full force. He felt those odd, wild impulses again, the ones he’d forgotten from his youth. He felt stirrings and longings that went much further and much deeper than were proper for a man who’d only really known this woman for a few hours. And, thinking about it, he couldn’t exactly say he knew her because they’d never actually held a real conversation.
“I think you should carry Candy downstairs,” Kassandra said, making her way to the door. “You could hand her to me as we step into the dining room, so no one sees that you’re not completely comfortable with her, but they’ll assume you are because you brought her downstairs.”
“Sounds logical,” Gabe said, but Kassandra was beating a hasty retreat to the door.
God, he looked wonderful tonight, she thought. She wasn’t sure if the proper name for the suit he was wearing was a tuxedo, but she could tell this wasn’t the kind of suit a man wore to the office. It was more dressy, more stylish, and so perfectly tailored, he looked incredibly sexy. Thinking about him tripped off the memory of kissing him, and Kassandra knew she was blushing. Blushing! She, a woman who’d had a baby, shouldn’t blush over a kiss. And not even a kiss, just the memory of a kiss. Good Lord, she was losing her marbles.
To keep her face hidden from Gabe, she led him down the stairway, but he had to direct her to the dining room. Exactly as they’d planned, Gabe handed Candy to Kassandra the minute they stepped into the room, but they hadn’t needed to plan that far ahead. As Kassandra took Candy from Gabe’s arms, both his parents and his grandmother rose and all three offered to take the child—before they were introduced.
Gabe made quick introductions around the table. His parents were Sam and Loretta, two tall, perfectly groomed, very attractive people in their fifties. His grandmother, of course, was Emmalee, a short, dignified woman—when she wasn’t pretending to be the maid.
Once the introductions were completed, it was obvious that Gabe’s family was having so much fun just having Candy around, that none of them was concerned about how or why she came into this world.
“Oh, Emma told us you had a baby,” Gabe’s mother said delightedly. “Isn’t she darling, Sam?”
Candy grinned broadly. Kassandra pressed her lips together to hide her own grin. “You’re going to spoil her,” she said, then laughed lightly.
“Grandparents
