I know how. Your dad did a bang-up job with the ‘talk’ back in high school. I just can’t believe—you—like this—now.” Then shooting him a concerned look, he asked, “Someone mentioned you were seeing Olivia Deveraux. That you two might be serious.”
“Before Darcy showed up at my office, I would have put money on a future with Olivia. But now.” Now, even two weeks later, he wasn’t any closer to knowing what their future held. Olivia hadn’t changed. “She wants it to work. Offered to marry me and adopt the baby.”
“Generous.”
“If Darcy were considering giving it up. But not for even a single second.”
He thought about her busting him looking at her narrow waist, and accusing him of trying to option her baby. Once again giving in to the reoccurring grin that stomped all over his face every time he thought about her outraged, accusing look, he held up his hands. “She’s going to be an amazing mother. You can see it.”
“Olivia?”
Jeff caught Connor’s stare and the subtle, unspoken question behind it. “Darcy. But, yeah, I’m sure Olivia would, too.”
Connor pushed his drink around in a neat square on the bar. “But you don’t see it with her?”
Worse, he wasn’t even sure he’d looked. Olivia had asked him to give them a chance and so far he hadn’t made the time to actually do it.
“I’ve been so focused on Darcy, there hasn’t been a lot of time for anyone or anything else. She’s living in San Francisco and I’ve been trying to talk her into moving down here. But she’s…stubborn. I think she intends to move, but not until the baby comes. She’s got a job and—” He shook his head. “And the job thing is a really big deal to her. But I’m not giving up. I want her here, like yesterday.”
“Am I missing something about the waiting tables thing? What the hell kind of job does she have that you can’t compete with it?”
Jeff rocked back in his chair and expelled a frustrated breath. “One she got for herself.”
Understanding lit Connor’s eyes. “She does know who you are, right?”
“She doesn’t care who I am.” He raked a hand through his hair. “She won’t take any money until the baby comes. And, damn it, she’s just very independent…and stubborn.”
Connor’s brows pulled together and his jaw cocked to one side.
Jeff scowled at him. “It’s not like that. Even if Olivia weren’t in the picture. We’ve already agreed, in no uncertain terms, neither of us is interested in picking things up from where we left them. What Darcy is to me is the most important person in the life of the most important person in mine. Our relationship is going to be about this kid and it’s got to work forever. Which means there’s too much at stake to risk any potential friction over some affair gone bad.”
And he knew from experience what the fallout from a failed relationship could cost.
Connor took a swallow of his drink. “Right. Definitely not worth the risk for an affair.”
Jeff stared at him. “I’m serious.”
A nod. “Okay.”
Oh, that burned. “Bite me.”
Connor grinned and flagged the bartender for the tab. “Sorry, my friend. Megan doesn’t share.”
* * *
The elevator doors opened at the eleventh floor and Jeff followed Olivia down the hall toward her apartment.
She cast a bright smile over her shoulder at him, her efficient steps eating up the distance to her door. “Thank you for dinner tonight. I know how busy you’ve been.”
That was Olivia. Not raking him over the coals. Sensitive to the situation he was in while letting him know she still enjoyed seeing him when the opportunity arose. He hadn’t meant for their relationship to fall by the wayside, but he’d been neglecting her for weeks. Working long hours and even through the couple of times he’d taken her out, he’d been distracted. There, but not really there. Because being with Olivia wasn’t enough to keep his mind from visiting all the places he didn’t want it to go. To Darcy.
To the space he was trying to give her, and how hard he was trying not to hate the space she already had. To wondering what she’d do if he pushed too hard.
It wasn’t fair. But Olivia had been so accommodating. Assuring him she understood. He shouldn’t put her off. He shouldn’t be able to.
And yet, as he walked behind her his mind kept drifting to another woman. How she was feeling? If anyone was making her laugh? If her belly was starting to show?
“You’re coming in?” Olivia asked at her door, putting the breaks on a train of thought threatening to go off the rails and pulling him back to the woman who ought to be holding his attention for the few hours they had together.
She was watching him expectantly. As if she knew, mentally he’d already dropped her at her door and was halfway back to the office. Where he’d have a fighting chance of losing himself in work.
“Olivia,” he started, catching her chin in the crook of his finger. “I’ve got a call scheduled with Hong Kong in three hours.”
She leaned a shoulder against the frame of the door and looked him over assessingly.
“Then you’ve got two and a half to spend with me.” Her fingers wrapped around his tie to tug him closer. “I know you’ve been waiting, not pushing the physical element of our relationship out of respect for me, but it’s time. You need a distraction, Jeff. Let me help you forget for a while.”
Respect. Maybe that was part of what had been holding him back. But to really respect her meant acknowledging that not taking the next physical step in their relationship had been far too easy. She deserved better than to be used as a distraction. And far, far better than a distraction he already knew wouldn’t work.
He’d tried to tell himself this was the woman for him. The perfect fit he’d imagined her to be when they first started seeing each other. Because she’d been so different from the one who’d walked away… But once Darcy stepped back into the picture he’d started making comparisons.
“Jeff, you said you’d give us a try. Can’t you please, come in and let me show you how it could be between us, if you let it?”
He hated the pleading in her eyes, hated knowing it was about to turn to hurt. But it was, because his hands had already moved to her shoulders, gently putting the space back between them. “I’m sorry, Olivia.”
* * *
Oh, no, not again.
Darcy sat at the folding table in the suddenly too warm back room of the party coordinating business where she’d been hired to inventory catering supplies, stuff envelopes, assemble favors, scoop birdseed satchels and anything else the overbooked business needed assistance with during their seasonal rush.
The pay wasn’t
