“What if nobody else likes that kind of chocolate cake and it was made special for you? If you don’t eat it, it’s going to get old and stale.”
She snorted. “Like you’re going to get stale. I hear women who kiss bar napkins are particularly fond of chocolate cake.”
“Jealous.”
“Not.” She circled back and grabbed a bottle of ranch dressing off the shelf without stopping. “You can offer your chocolate cake to whoever you want.”
She managed to get the words out in a flippant enough tone, but she was crumbling like stale frosting on the inside.
The thought of seeing Kevin with another woman made her stomach roll over and her throat tighten, but she was too afraid to tell him that. She’d never had a friendship like the one she shared with Kevin and she was too afraid to risk it trying to take their relationship to the next level. Or to the level it was at before, as the case may be. And it wasn’t just about Lily’s parents being friends—though that was important to her. She couldn’t bear losing Kevin’s friendship.
“You’ll cave eventually.” He was obviously going for cocky, but the sadness in his eyes made her look away.
It would be best for all of them if she didn’t fall off the wagon again.
Chapter Twenty-One
August
Beth was halfway through the pile of order forms on her desk before she realized she had no idea what she’d just read. With Lily napping in her portable crib at the end of the desk, she was having a few focus issues.
She’d been trying to keep up with some of the work in her apartment, but now that Lily was two months old, it was time to ease back into a real work schedule. Thankfully, Kevin had echoed her desire not to put their daughter in daycare yet, so a few things had been added to the office. The portable crib. A swing and her floor gym. It didn’t leave a lot of room to move around, but it would do as a temporary compromise.
After restacking the order forms, she started over, determined to pay attention. Lily was sleeping, so she needed to be working. That was the only way it would work. She owed it to Kevin who, not surprisingly, had provided a very generous, fully paid maternity leave.
Less than a quarter of the way through the pile of papers, she muttered under her breath and stacked them yet again.
Thoughts of Kevin weren’t any more conducive to concentration than Lily sleeping two feet away, and that made her very unhappy.
Her body was apparently well on its way to recovering from the strain of childbirth and it shared none of her mind’s reservations about reviving her attraction to Kevin. And since acting on it would ruin the delicate balance of friendship and co-parenting they’d found, she spent more time than she should trying to squash the shivers and the aches and the warm and fuzzies she got whenever he crossed her mind. She didn’t even want to think about what happened when she was actually in the same room as him.
It was embarrassing, really. And painful, to fight something she was pretty sure Kevin was willing to surrender to. He still looked at her the way he had before, with that unrelenting open invitation in his eyes. He was less aggressive about it than he was before, though.
He’d been unbearably sweet over the last two months, spending time with Lily whenever he had a free minute and making sure Beth had everything she needed without being pushy. He was getting a lot better at the just-being-friends thing, which was good since that was what she wanted.
No, not really wanted. It was what she thought was best for Lily and that made it the most important thing.
But there were still times, usually when she should have been sleeping, that she wondered what it would be like to be a real family. To wake up next to him every morning instead of him reluctantly saying good-night and going back across the hall when Lily went to bed.
It was too risky, though. There was too much at stake if things went sour and she couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t. There hadn’t been a point in their relationship, other than one date, that hadn’t revolved around Lily and, even though Beth was no longer pregnant, that remained the truth. She didn’t want to be part of a package deal and there was no way not to be.
When Paulie tapped lightly on the door and then stuck her head in, Beth was as relieved to be dragged out of her thoughts as she was to see her friend.
“Come in. She’ll be waking up in a few minutes anyway.”
“Things are getting pretty rowdy out front. Joe stopped in and he’s buying rounds for the house. Seemed like a good time to take a break.”
Sounded like an odd thing for a guy with a former drinking problem to do, but Joe was in Jasper’s fairly often and always had a soda. “What’s the occasion?”
“Probably not my place to tell you, so act surprised, but Keri’s finally pregnant.”
“That’s wonderful!” From what Kevin had said, Joe and Keri had been trying to have a baby since they got married. Almost a year now, she mused, since Lily had been conceived on their wedding day.