The Baby Deal Page 11

  “Good enough to marry?” he joked.

  “Good enough to have dinner with,” she amended.

  “Damn. I knew I should have gone with the blue suit,” he muttered, picking up her coat from where it was draped over a chair and stepping to Delia to hold it for her.

  She turned her back to him to slip her arms into the sleeves and caught the reflection of Andrew's face in a framed mirror on the wall in front of her as his eyes dropped to her derriere. Apparently he liked what he saw there, too, because a tiny smile lifted one corner of his mouth before he actually settled the coat on her shoulders.

  But even if she hadn't spied him ogling her backside he would have given himself away when he said, “I didn't think it was possible for you to wear anything that beat the sarong, but this dress does.”

  With her coat in place Delia turned to face him again, pleased with the flattery but beginning to feel a little self-conscious. “Are you going to feed me tonight or not?” she demanded, to change the subject.

  “Whatever you want,” he answered, swinging an arm in the direction of the door to let her know to go ahead of him.

  The restaurant he took her to was in a private club that had a reputation for a membership of only the most elite of Chicago's movers and shakers. Andrew was greeted by name and as the maitre d' did that, two men stepped out of nowhere to simultaneously remove both Delia's coat and Andrew's. Then they were escorted into a dimly lit, wood-paneled enclave where enough space was left between the linen-clothed tables to make sure conversations weren't overheard.

  After they'd ordered virgin cocktails and hors d'oeuvres, they were left with menus that looked like leather-bound books.

  Andrew didn't open his, he merely set it aside. “They do a beef Wellington that's great. But just about everything here is great.”

  Delia didn't bother with her menu either, placing it out of the way, too. “Sounds good,” she said, more interested in the man she was with than in the food, and wishing that wasn't the case.

  But since it was, she focused her attention on him and said, “How did your brother take the news that you weren't working today?”

  “I don't know. I just left him a message,” Andrew answered with a smile that said he might enjoy it if he'd irked his brother. “I can always tell him it was business, that I was just doing my job and wooing a potential client.”

  “Is that what you're doing?” Delia asked, a bit disappointed that that might be the case.

  “Have we talked business today?” he countered.

  They hadn't. They'd talked about art and movies and books they'd both enjoyed, they talked about other plays they'd seen, and food they liked, but they'd never touched on business. Which, now that Delia realized that, made her feel better again.

  “Maybe we should talk business,” she said, thinking that it might be safer to head in that direction than to continue in the personal vein that had made her like him all the more today.

  “Okay, tell me about how Meals Like Mom's came to be.”

  “I know you haven't been at this long but my work history isn't relevant to selling me advertising.”

  “I'm not here to sell you advertising,” he said as if he were telling her a secret. “Even if that's what I tell my brother, we aren't going to get into that tonight. My brother wants your business. I want more than that.”

  The room was just the right temperature but his words sent a tiny shiver of goose bumps up her arms anyway. Delia cautioned herself against being too susceptible to this man and his charm and instead answered his question just to get conversation going on a more surface route.

  “Meals Like Mom's was sort of an evolution,” she said. “It all started when I was fourteen and wanted an expensive lipstick.”

  “Lipstick? Your business was built on a lipstick?”

  “I was a freshman in high school and I got asked to the spring dance by a junior—Damon Simosa—and I didn't think I could possibly be seen with an older man without this lipstick.”

  “But Peaches didn't have expensive lipstick budgeted in,” Andrew guessed as their drinks and appetizers arrived.

  “She said she had plenty of lipsticks I could wear. But I had my heart set on this one particular one. I just didn't have the money for it. So I lied about my age and got a job fixing trays with a catering company.”

  Andrew sampled his virgin daiquiri.

  “You really could have had a drink, I don't mind,” Delia repeated what she'd told him when he'd ordered the same liquorless drink she had.

  “It seems only fair that I abstain if you have to,” he said, urging her to taste one of the mushroom caps stuffed with lobster.

  After she'd marveled over how good it was, he said, “So at fourteen you went to work for a catering company fixing trays.”

  “Right. But this is pretty boring stuff, you may not want to hear it.”

  “You haven't bored me yet,” he assured. “And we're talking about your business to appease my brother, remember? If you don't tell me you'll be making a liar out of me. So give me the whole saga of your meteoric rise from tray fixer to company owner.”

  “It wasn't meteoric,” Delia amended with a laugh. “I stayed with the company, basically learning every aspect of the business, saving my money—”

  “With the exception of buying expensive lipstick.”

  “With the exception of buying expensive lipstick, and when the owner decided to sell out, I used what I'd saved, supplemented it with a small business loan, and bought the company—which was Cartwright Caterers then.”

  The waiter returned and Andrew placed their dinner order. Once he had, he went right back to their conversation. “But unless somebody has led me astray, Meals Like Mom's isn't technically a caterer.”

  “The longer I did the catering, the more I turned toward organic foods, healthier ingredients, things that were fancy enough for parties or weddings, but that were also not full of preservatives or chemicals. I made sure to put that into my advertising—”

  “See? Now we've talked advertising and I'm legitimate,” he pointed out, making her smile. “Go on.”

  “Well, when people hiring me would see that the food was wholesome, too, they started making comments about how they wished they could have every-night dinners catered that way for their families. I thought there might actually be a market for meals that were as good and healthy and hearty as moms made—”

  “Not your mom, though.”

  “No, but meals like I'd often fantasized that my mom might make. So I branched off from the catering business into packaging meals for one to however many. I already had the kitchens, the equipment that we used for the catering end of things, and the accounts with organic food wholesalers, which meant I could keep costs reasonable—that's a big thing when you're up against drive-through windows at fast-food restaurants that are easy to hit on the way home. So mainly it was a matter of packaging, advertising—”

  “Twice. We're doing good.”

  “And distribution and delivery. But the idea ended up taking off to such a degree that we closed the catering business and got rid of its more complicated headaches, to concentrate on Meals Like Mom's. And here we are.”

  Their salads were served then and when their waiter left them alone again, Andrew said, “So you've always been ambitious.”

  Delia laughed. “Maybe living the way we did in pursuit of Peaches's dream of being a starlet taught me hard work was a better route.”

  “I admire that,” he said.

  “But you wouldn't have traded traveling and having a good time,” she guessed.

  His smile was unashamed. “I have had a good time.”

  “But now it's nose to the grindstone. Or at least it was for the three days before today,” she teased him.

  “You could make me a star and send me back to work tomorrow with the advertising accounts of Meals Like Mom's,” he challenged.

  “Not tomorrow, but it's still under consideration,” she said as their e
ntrées were served.

  “Glad to hear it. I'll report that. But no more business talk,” Andrew decreed, going on to make her laugh with the sordid history of the club that he claimed had been a speakeasy and notorious casino in the 1920s.

  Dinner was followed by nightcaps and dessert at a hotel lounge, where a blues singer with a stupendous voice was a nice finish to a day and evening more full than Delia's social life generally was in a year. Only then did Andrew finally agree to take her home.

  “Thanks for this,” he said as he walked her to her door.

  “For what? You were the one to whisk me away, arrange for everything, entertain me and take care of all the details and all the checks. It's me who should be thanking you.”

  “I'm just glad if you had a good time,” he said, taking her keys from her hand and unlocking her door before giving them back to her.

  He didn't make any move to go beyond the porch, though, standing with his back bracing the screen door open as Delia took only one step inside.

  She flipped on the entryway light and then turned to face him again. When she had, it struck her as strange that something about him had changed in just that moment that she'd lost sight of him. His expression was more thoughtful, more open somehow.

  “You're an interesting woman, do you know that?” he asked her as his eyes delved into hers and seemed to infuse her with a warmth that protected her from the cool late-night air.

  “Oh, I don't think so,” she demurred.

  He smiled a small smile that seemed to say he knew she would say that. “Hey, how can anyone who had a mother named Peaches be anything but interesting?”

  “Peaches was interesting but that doesn't make me interesting by default.”

  “You're independent, you're a visionary, you're brave and strong and determined. You're different from most women I've met up with. I like that.”

  “I suppose working women are sort of a novelty in your circles.”

  “Not only women who work, but women who have any substance. I'm probably not worthy of that.”

  She could tell he wasn't merely saying that. That he was feeling it, too. But not in any self-pitying way. It was more that he was simply recognizing what he did feel.

  “I'd give it everything I've got to be worthy, though,” he added then. “If you married me.”

  “It doesn't have anything to do with worthiness,” she said quietly, again wishing away her own feelings since having the courage to show her a hint of his vulnerable side only made him all the more appealing. “You have a lot to offer. You're personable and sweet and thoughtful and you have a real knack for making everyone around you feel comfortable and appreciated and good about themselves. You're fun and full of energy and I know you're trying hard here, but-”

  “I don't want to be one of the dads like yours and Marta's and Kyle's, Delia,” he said so earnestly Delia could tell what she'd told him about her family had impacted him in a way she'd never meant it to. That it had impacted him enough for him to apparently make it his goal not to abandon the baby.

  But good intention didn't bring with them the same thing that age and experience and hard-earned maturity did. His good intentions allowed Delia to hope for the best when it came to him actually being some sort of father to the baby, but his good intentions weren't enough to convince her to jump into a relationship—let alone a marriage—with both feet. Even though she was surprised to discover a small part of her that almost wanted to.

  He smiled down at her after a moment of the silence her thoughts had caused and lightened his tone to joke slightly, as if he knew what she'd been going to say before he'd interrupted her. “I know, I'm Superman but there's the age thing, and the 'we're still strangers' thing, and probably more things than you're even telling me. But you could marry me anyway and just in case there's even an ounce of you that's tempted to, I want you to know that I wouldn't make you sorry if you did.”

  Delia smiled, too. “But I'm not going to marry you,” she whispered to ease the blow this time, not admitting that there actually was an ounce of her—maybe even more than an ounce—that was tempted.

  It concerned her to realize it, and she decided that on that note she should definitely put an end to this day and evening that had actually done what he'd wanted it to do—it had put a crack in her barriers and resolve, and cast some of that special spell that was Andrew's.

  “I'd better go in,” she said then.

  “You are in,” he pointed out with a nod of his chiseled chin in her direction. “What you really mean is that I'd better go home.”

  “You'd be uncomfortable sleeping in your car,” she joked rather than giving him outright encouragement to leave.

  He took a deep breath and sighed elaborately. “Okay, okay, you still won't marry me and I have to go home. I get it.”

  But he didn't leave. He continued to stand there, staring at her, studying her, looking as if he didn't want to stop.

  Then he bent at the waist just enough to meet her lips with his in a kiss that Delia had the impression he'd only intended to be a simple kiss, like the one from the night before.

  Only right away it wasn't simple at all.

  She didn't know why, whether it was the day they'd just spent together, or the talking they'd done that had brought them closer, or if it was some sort of chemical reaction, but that kiss that she'd been sure had begun as a customary goodbye was suddenly much more.

  Delia wasn't even conscious of him moving and yet in an instant Andrew had pulled her nearer. He'd wrapped his arms around her. He was cupping her head as it inched back with the deepening of that kiss.

  His lips parted over hers and hers parted in answer, making way for his tongue when it came to trace the edges of her teeth, to greet her tongue tip to tip, to circle and spar and introduce an entirely new element as their bodies pressed front-to-front and his arms tightened around her.

  But it wasn't merely Andrew who had altered that initial kiss. Delia discovered herself doing her part, too. Meeting and matching his tongue with her own, playing any game he initiated and initiating a few herself.

  She also found her arms somehow around him. Her hands pressed to the breadth of his back. Her nipples hardened to twin peaks at his chest, demanding to be acknowledged, too.

  She even began to wonder what would happen if she pulled him inside her house….

  Picturing it, she could see herself tugging him across the threshold into the entryway. She could see herself kicking the front door closed behind them. Continuing to kiss him the way she was, only with even more fervor, more passion, more of the urgency that was mounting in her with every passing moment.

  But the longer she considered it, the more caution prevailed.

  She'd already ventured further than she should have with him today. Tonight. She'd already missed work—something that was unheard of for her. She'd already ignored her responsibilities. She'd already given Andrew hours and hours she shouldn't have given him. She'd already done so many things that were unlike her—not even counting Tahiti. And she knew she just couldn't go on doing that. Doing what went against the grain for her.

  So she reminded herself of every reason she absolutely should not be kissing him in the doorway, let alone bringing him inside to do more. She mentally yanked herself out of that spell Andrew had put her under and forced herself to regain some control. She ordered herself to end that kiss rather than urging it on.

  It was no easy task. But after another few minutes of that toe-curling kiss, she finally put her hands between them and pushed until Andrew got the message and stopped kissing her.

  “I know,” he mock-complained in a voice affected by what they'd both just been absorbed by. “Go home.”

  Delia smiled. “Yes, go home,” she confirmed.

  “All right, all right. But not happily,” he lamented, kissing her forehead before letting her loose.

  He butted the screen door away and side-stepped out of its lee, pointing a long finger at her. “B
ut you haven't seen the last of me,” he warned before he turned on his heels and really did leave.

  And tonight Delia couldn't make herself close the door without first watching him walk all the way to his car and get behind the wheel again.

  Because tonight she couldn't refuse herself every last minute of him.

  It was something that gave her fair warning that she was treading on thin ice when it came to this man.

  But with her lips still singed from the heat of his kiss, the fair warning was difficult to take to heart.

  And even more difficult to take to bed with her.

  While memories of the kiss?

  Those traveled very well….

  Chapter Ten

  Andrew had been awake many, many mornings at 5:00 a.m. The difference between those other mornings and this one, though, was that he was usually just rolling in from a long night of partying. This morning his alarm went off and he needed to roll out of bed. And he decided on the spot that he far preferred 5:00 a.m. as the end of the night rather than the beginning of the day.

  But in spite of the fact that he'd only had about three hours sleep, he turned off the alarm, sat up and swung his feet to the floor.

  For a moment he propped his elbows on his knees and rested his face in his hands. But only for a moment before he felt himself drifting off again. Then he shook his head like a dog shaking off water and flipped the switch that turned on the overhead light.

  Of course it blinded him and he squinted against the pain, blinking repeatedly until he could tolerate the glare. Once he could, he reached for his cell phone on the bedside table, knowing he needed to get into gear.

  He had a plan and if he was going to pull it off, he had to get started. Really, really early.

  He knew his stepmother wouldn't be awake yet, but that didn't stop him from punching in her number. He required something from her and knowing her, she'd be so glad he was asking for a favor she'd overlook the pre-dawn wake-up.

  “Helen? This is Andrew,” he said when she answered on the third ring, sounding sleepy and alarmed at once.