Page 35 of One More Baby for the Boss

CHAPTER 16

ELIJAH

Elijah did his best to go on with his life. He poured himself into his work, and he tried not to neglect the new, improved relationship he had started to build with his son. Jack needed him. There would be no excuse for the night he and Alex had spent together if the result was that Elijah pulled away from Jack again.

But it was hard. Every time he was around Alex, images from that night sprung up in his head. He found himself sucked into fantasies about her at the most inopportune times, and it was utterly maddening. As they stood around the breakfast table on the morning of Family Day at school, putting the finishing touches on the family tree, Alex dropped a marker and bent over to pick it up, and Elijah felt as if he was going out of his mind. He hadn’t been that carried away with lust for someone since he was a teenager.

He closed his hands into fists and ran his fingers over his own calluses to distract himself from the memory of what it had been like to touch her soft, smooth skin. “We’d better go ahead andget that thing in the car,” he said, indicating the tree. “You’re taking Jack to school today, right, Alex?”

“Yes,” Alex said. Was it Elijah’s imagination, or was she avoiding eye contact? He had to wonder whether she was having as much trouble shaking off the memory of their time together as he was. “Jack, do you have everything you need for school today?”

“It’s all in my backpack,” Jack said. “Everything except the tree.”

“You’ll have to put the tree on the floor of the car between your feet, I think,” Alex said. She looked over at Elijah. “You’re going to come by the school around ten, right? That’s when his teacher said the presentations would be starting.”

“Yeah, I’ll be there,” Elijah said. “I just need to meet with one of my foremen first.” He felt guilty about the fact that this meeting had been scheduled for the same day as Jack’s presentation, but he couldn’t exactly put it off. He had been putting off a lot of things lately, and this was just too important.

“Don’t be late,” Alex said, giving him a look that was laden with significance.

“I won’t be,” Elijah assured her. “I wouldn’t miss this.”

And he wouldn’t. Today was the culmination of all the hard work Jack had put into this project, and it was also his very first big school event. The family tree was going to be impressive. Elijah found it hard to imagine that any of the other students could have made anything that would top it. It would be a victory lap for Jack, a chance for him to really take pride in something he had accomplished.

Elijah was so grateful to Alex for everything she had done to make this happen. Without her help, he knew, Jack wouldn’thave had nearly so impressive a project, and it was amazing to see his son start off his school career on such a positive note. Elijah couldn’t have given Jack this moment no matter how hard he’d tried; they had needed Alex to make it happen.

“I’m going to carry the tree out to the car,” Jack announced.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to do it for you?” Alex said. “It’s not heavy, but it is pretty big.”

“No, I can be careful,” Jack said. “I want to carry it myself.”

“Okay.” Alex lifted the tree off the table and placed it carefully in his arms. “Walk slowly, all right?”

“I will.” Jack set off gingerly out the front door and along the porch toward the car.

Elijah watched him go for a minute. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” he asked. “If he dropped it, that would devastate him.”

“Well, I don’t think that’ll happen,” Alex said. “I mean, look at how careful he’s being. He isn’t going to let that thing fall. But even if it did, it’s really solid. It probably wouldn’t break. And if itdidbreak, we could always repair it.”

“But why take the chance at all?” Elijah asked. “Why run the risk of letting something happen to it when he’s worked so hard?”

“I could drop it too,” Alex said. “So could you. This is Jack’s project. If he’s willing to risk carrying it himself, we need to let him do that. We need to let him test himself and make mistakes. It’s part of growing up, and if we do everything for him, he’ll never learn how to trust himself.”

Elijah looked at her. She was still watching Jack, but he was blown away by what she had said — by the way she had said it.She sounded as if she was talking about her own child. And he would have expected something like that to make him angry, to feel as if she was stepping on his toes by trying to talk about how Jack should be raised as if it had anything to do with her. But he didn’t feel that way at all.

It reminded him of how he had felt in the garden shop, when the three of them had been mistaken for a family — how strange that had been, but how unexpectedly pleasant it had felt. The feeling now was the same. Technically, Alex had probably crossed some kind of line by acting as if she was Jack’s parent. But it felt so good to have someone share in loving and caring about his son that Elijah couldn’t find it in him to complain.

He bit his lip. A lot of lines were being blurred lately. It had felt all right to give in to that moment at the garden shop, to let the woman behind the counter believe that the three of them were a family. It had felt all right — no, far better than all right — to give in to temptation when they’d opened the bottle of wine together the other night. It had been wonderful to let someone share his bed again, and he had hoped at the time that sleeping with her would get the constant, nagging attraction to her and desire for her out of his system so that he would finally be able to stop thinking about her in that way every time they were around each other.

That hadn’t happened at all. Now, watching her show such love and care for his son, he felt more full of desire than ever, and he didn’t know what he could do to make that subside. It wasn’t even physical, what he was feeling right now. It was emotional. He didn’t want to take her clothes off — or rather, hedid; he was still a man and she was still the incredibly alluring woman who had been driving him wild ever since she had come into his life.But what he really wanted was to put his arms around her, to hold her against him, to watch Jack out the window together.

Andthatwas the most confusing thing of all. He understood how he could be attracted to such a beautiful, sexy woman, even though it was something he hadn’t felt in a very long time. It made sense, at least. But this was different. This wasn’t attraction. This felt more like he might be falling for her.

It couldn’t be that, though. That was just too complicated. Alex wasn’t here for him. She was here for Jack. And Elijah might be enjoying her company and benefitting from her presence, but it would be wrong of him to forget that fundamental fact.

He cleared his throat. “Maybe we should take a moment to talk before you go,” he said.

“He’s going to be late for school,” Alex said.

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