Page 24 of One More Baby for the Boss

That wasn’t a risk he could afford to take with her. He had been right to pull away. He had been right to put distance between the two of them.

He frowned. He wasn’t going to be able to go on avoiding Alex the way he had done so far. Already he’d made plans to spend the whole day with her tomorrow. And it was true that Jack was going to be there too, so there was a limit to how far things could go, but hadn’t he just figured out that seeing her with Jack was a big part of what made her so attractive to him? Tomorrow wasn’t going to make things any easier.

Elijah knew that he couldn’t cancel the plans he’d made with his son tomorrow. He didn’twantto cancel them. He was already coming up with ideas for things they could do together. He supposed asking Alex not to come was an option. He could tell her that he wanted to spend the day alone with his son. She would understand that.

But it wouldn’t be true. And it wouldn’t be fair to Jack, who had indicated so clearly tonight how much Alex’s presence meant to him. Elijah didn’t want to create an environment in which Jack felt like he could only be with one of them or the other. For his son’s sake, he needed to get his feelings for Alex under control. He needed to reach a place where he could be around her without being carried away by his attraction to her.

This wouldn’t have been such a problem in his early twenties, in those years before he had met Stephanie but after he had left college. He’d been good at being around attractive women back then. He hadn’t turned all helpless like this any time someone had appealed to him. He supposed he was out of practice, after so long not dealing with these feelings.

He could handle it. It was just going to take him some time to get used to it, that was all. But he could do it for Jack’s sake. It was obvious to him already just how important a person Alex was going to be in his son’s life. He was thankful they’d found her when they had. And no matter how it made him feel, he wasn’t going to risk losing her. Not for anything.

CHAPTER 11

ALEX

Jack’s eyes went wide. “Are those real sheep?”

“Sure they’re real,” Elijah said with a laugh. “Do you want to go and meet them?”

“You mean I can go up to the pen?”

“You can go into the pen,” Elijah said. “Don’t you remember petting zoos, Jack?”

Jack shook his head slowly.

“We used to go when you were a baby. You, me, and your mom. I guess we haven’t been since then. But you loved it when you were little. I thought we ought to come back.”

“And I can gointothe pen?” Jack asked dubiously.

“If you want to,” Elijah said. “You don’t have to. But look, all those other kids are in there. Don’t they look like they’re having a good time?”

“Are the sheep going to bite me?”

“No,” Elijah said.

“Are yousure?”

“They wouldn’t let kids in there if the sheep bit people,” Elijah said. “That’s why regular zoos can’t be petting zoos, because the tigers and bearswouldbite you. But sheep are safe animals. They’re safer than our horses, even.”

“Will you come with me?” Jack asked.

“We’ll both go with you,” Alex said. “I’d love to pet some sheep.”

“Okay…” Jack said. “But if I get scared, we can leave, right?”

“Absolutely,” Alex told him. “You just say the word and we go. But I’m proud of you for giving it a chance. It’s brave of you to do that when you’re feeling nervous about it.”

Jack reached out and took her hand, and Alex looked over at Elijah with a smile. It had been a good idea of his to bring Jack here. Alex had her phone in her pocket, ready to capture as many photos of the day as she could and commemorate the experience. She was already planning to get the best ones printed and put them up on the refrigerator in the kitchen, which was currently bare. It had always made her sad to see it like that. In her opinion, a refrigerator in a home with a kid should be covered with drawings and worksheets from school. She wondered if Jack had never shared those things with Elijah, or perhaps he didn’t have any to share — she didn’t know what his education was like. Maybe there were tons of samples of his work, but Elijah was keeping them in a folder or something. Or maybe he wasn’t keeping them at all.

Either way, she had resolved to do her best to bring some life to that kitchen by adding decorations to the refrigerator. So far, she’d put up a few colorful magnets, something that no one else seemed to have noticed yet. She would use them to hangup her pictures from today’s outing — that would get a lot of attention, she knew, and fast. She just hoped that Elijah would be okay with it. But in this case, she felt it was better to ask for forgiveness than for permission.

They let themselves into the pen with the sheep. Jack clung to Alex’s hand, looking around, clearly still wary about what he had gotten himself into.

“Let’s go pet one of them,” Alex suggested.

“I don’t know,” Jack said.

“Do you want to watch me do it first?”

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