Page 26 of One More Baby for the Boss

“I can’t get stuck anyway,” Elijah said. “As tempting as it is sometimes… Jack keeps growing up. I can’t pretend that everything is the same as it was four years ago, because I had a toddler then, and now I have this six-year-old boy. My life is completely different whether I want it to be or not.” He sighed. “I think I haven’t given myself permission to accept that. I think I’ve sometimes tried to resist it. Maybe that’s part of the reason I’ve become so distant from Jack. That’s pretty shameful.”

“It’s understandable,” Alex said quietly. “It’s good that you see it now. Maybe that means you’ll be able to overcome it.”

He was quiet for a moment. Then he turned to face her.

“In case I forget to tell you this later,” he said, “I’m very glad you came into our lives that day at the diner, Alex. Not just for Jack’s sake, but for mine as well. I haven’t had a friend I could talk to about these things, and with you here, I feel like I have one.”

Alex’s heart beat a little faster. Was that what they were? Friends? She had been doing her best to remember that hewas someone she worked for. She had been telling herself, over and over, that there was nothing more to them than their professional relationship. It was all she could do to keep herself distanced from Elijah, especially after the almost-kiss between them. Even now, standing in a petting zoo surrounded by small children and sheep, she was aware of his body — the fit of his jeans, the broadness of his shoulders. She wished they had the kind of relationship where she could stand close beside him and wrap an arm around his narrow waist, lean into his body, and feel the warmth of him, the way a few of the women here were doing with their husbands.

They weren’t that. They could never be that. For Jack’s sake, they needed to keep the relationship professional.

And yet, he’d called her a friend. Could they be friends?

It did feel safer. There was much less chance of a friendship ending in a messy way. Maybe she could manage to be his friend without risking the relationship she was building with Jack.

And it felt as though it was worth the attempt, because she agreed with what he was saying. Itwasgood to finally have someone to talk to about the convoluted feelings that came along with a loss, especially since they were both a few years away from their losses. It would have felt different, she thought, if he had lost his wife this year and the pain of it was still fresh. But he was in the same place she was — past the sharpest pain of the grief, but unable to fully believe that it was all right to let go and live his life. They could be helpful to each other. They could talk each other through that struggle.

He was a great friend for her to have. If it hadn’t been for the complicated situation they were in, she would have accepted without hesitation.

Maybe she should.

Maybe she should allow herself to have this. How long had it been since she had genuinely made a new friend, after all? It was something she had missed.

I can look after Jack and be friends with his father at the same time. That’s not a conflict of interest.

She hoped she was right about that, because she didn’t feel as if she’d be able to go back once she started thinking of him as a friend.

But maybe, at the very least, reframing the way she thought about him would help her let go of the desire to kiss him. Because that was something that absolutely had to stop.

CHAPTER 12

ELIJAH

Jack started school three days later. Elijah had been planning to have Alex drop him off for his first day, but given everything that had been going through his mind lately, it didn’t feel right to do that anymore, and he decided to walk his son to his classroom.

The drop-off went well. Almost at once, Jack spotted a group of boys playing with toy doctor equipment and ran off to join them. Elijah exchanged a few pleasantries with his teacher and then drove back home, feeling strangely empty.

The trouble wasn’t so much that he had imagined sharing this moment with Stephanie, he reflected as he drove. The two of them had never gotten as far as picturing a first day of school. It was more that he had never truly let himself envision it at all. It was like Alex had said. He hadn’t thought about the future because it was too painful. He had confined himself instead to living in the past. And even as Jack had gotten older, he hadn’t allowed himself to think about all the ways their lives were by necessity going to change in the coming years.

But now he did think about it. He imagined what it would be like when Jack was a few years older, perhaps wanting to bring groups of friends around. Maybe he would take up a sport or attend a middle or high school dance. Eventually, he would learn to drive, and Elijah would want to buy him a car. And then there would be college to think of…

He shook away the thoughts. He had spent all this time avoiding contemplations of the future, and now they were all crashing down around him at the same time. There was no way he could possibly process all those thoughts at once. Today, the thing to focus on was the fact that Jack had had his first day of first grade.

He’d given Alex the day off, figuring that she would appreciate some downtime, and that she wouldn’t be needed while Jack was away. So he was surprised to come home and find her in the kitchen, stirring something vigorously in a metal mixing bowl.

“Where’s Gio?” he asked. After all, this was why he employed a chef — so that the other members of his household wouldn’t have to do the cooking.

“Oh, he usually takes a break after breakfast and does some shopping for his sister,” Alex said. “I didn’t want to take that time away from him.”

“He does?” Elijah asked. “I never knew that.” It startled him that Alex seemed to know so much more about what was going on around his house than he did.

She looked guilty. “He isn’t going to get in trouble, is he?” she asked. “He gave me his phone number in case we ever need him, and he always has something ready in the fridge in case we get hungry before he comes back.”

“No, of course he’s not in trouble,” Elijah assured her. “I don’t expect him to be around all day. But what are you doing now, if he’s left you with plenty to eat? You don’t have to cook. If there was something special you wanted, we can order it in.”

“No, it isn’t that,” Alex said. “I decided it would be fun to make my mother’s peanut butter brownies for Jack, since this is his first day of school. I thought it would be nice for him to come home to a special treat. Mom always used to make these for us on the first day of school when we were kids, and I thought it would be nice to continue that tradition.” She laughed. “I just hope I’ve got the recipe right.”

“How long has it been since you’ve made them?”

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