Caden was ready for a nap.
Sterling wasn’t.
Caden had gotten off work at seven this morning after a night that had been busier than usual, but he hadn’t gone home to crash. He’d had a date to keep—with a baby.
Tana needed to go to campus for an awards event involving her athletes. It would take her out of the house for a good four hours, at least. Caden was the only person she felt comfortable leaving her newborn with. They’d tried it with shorter trips, like her last doctor’s appointment. Sterling would take a bottle of breastmilk from Caden happily enough, as long as Tana wasn’t around. But if his mama was in the room? Forget it. He wanted Tana, not a bottle, and there was no fooling him. Caden hadn’t realized a baby could be so downright stubborn.
Since Tana was at her luncheon, Sterling had guzzled down the bottle, but he was still awake. That had to be a Murphy’s Law of babies. The one time you were counting on their nap, they didn’t pass out in a milk-drunk stupor.
“Not sleepy yet, Sterling? I am.” Caden stretched out on the couch with the baby on his chest. Sterling fell asleep like this, usually. Hopefully.
Caden held out his phone and pinged his sister-in-law for a video chat.
“Look who I’ve got here.” He angled the phone down, so the baby’s little face and wide open eyes were on the screen. They were still that otherworldly blue Caden had first seen on the side of the road, but they were turning indigo now, well on their way to being brown. Tana had brown eyes.
And the donor?
Caden didn’t give a damn what color eyes he had.
“Oh, what a sweetie. That’s a really young one. He’s so teeny-tiny.” Then she got all high-pitched. “Hello, little cutie patootie, sugar dumpling, pumpkin pie.”
Caden snorted. He’d known Abigail would totally lose it over the baby.
“Whose baby is this?” she asked.
Mine.
“Is it the fire inspector’s? What’s her name?”
“Nah, Christyne’s baby has gotta be at least three months old now. This is my little guy, the baby I delivered. Sterling.” He put the camera back on himself. “You couldn’t forget that name. It was in the papers, if you did. I got a lot of credit for standing there while he was born.”
“Oh, wow. That’s Sterling? The college coach’s baby?”
“Yes, not to be confused with all the other babies named Sterling that I delivered.”
“What is he, four or five weeks now?”
“Thirty-four days.”
Abigail raised an eyebrow. “Pretty specific there. I take it you’re still checking up on him.”
Caden shrugged, which jiggled the baby a little. “I come over and give his mother a break now and then.” Every third night, like clockwork, for the past three weeks. He worked one night, spent one night at Tana’s, then spent one night in his own bed.
He was waiting for Tana to ask him to stay more than a night. It was so much nicer to eat dinner with her than alone. So much better to crash on her couch with a movie they paused for diaper changes. The hell of it was, she wanted to spend more time with him. She was always reluctant to say it was okay for him to leave, and that wasn’t his wishful thinking. He didn’t know why she was so hesitant, but since she had a thirty-four-day-old baby, he wasn’t going to push. Not yet.
“And the baby’s father is cool with this?”
“There’s no father. I wanted to pick your brain a little bit. What do you know about those strollers that are made for parents who run? Really athletic parents who can run fast?”
“Jogging strollers? They’re expensive. Are you guys at the station going to chip in and buy one for the baby?”
“No, we already chipped in and got him a swing. That’s one of the greatest things ever invented. If Sterling doesn’t go to sleep soon, I’m going to put him in it. It’s naptime for me.”
“You sound very domesticated. You’re a thirty-two-year-old bachelor. Pretty good-looking, if not quite as handsome as your brother. You should be driving fast cars and chasing loose women.”
“I need to drive something that’ll pull a horse trailer.”
“Still, your bachelor’s card is going to be revoked.”
Not fast enough to suit me. “Can we focus here? Mother’s Day is Sunday, so I was thinking about getting Tana a jogging stroller. Did I tell you she used to be on Masterson’s swim team when she was a student? I saw her name on the pool wall. She set some school records. Anyway, the doctor won’t let her in the pool for another couple of weeks, and she’s stressed out because she can’t swim. I thought maybe she could go for a run, instead. Is that a good gift?”
“Caden…she isn’t your mother. Why are you buying her a Mother’s Day gift?”
Caden pointed the camera at the baby again, mostly to see if his eyes were still open. They were. “You don’t expect him to buy one for her, do you?”
“It’s just that you shouldn’t—”
“Check this out. He’s got a grip that’ll keep him on the back of a bucking bronco.” Caden wiggled his finger into Sterling’s fist. Five tiny fingers clutched him tightly.
“Caden. Yes, he’s adorable. Now look at me.”
“Edward buys you a gift from Abby and Max. Same thing.”
“No, it isn’t. Edward is my husband. My children are his children. Be careful here. You’re not related to this baby. You’ve got no claim on this child at all. The real father could show up any day, and I don’t think he’s going to like having you spending all this time with his baby.”
“Not going to happen.”
“Yes, it could. Don’t let yourself get too attached to him.”
Caden wished he could tell Abigail the truth, but if Tana didn’t want her own parents to mention sperm donors, she wouldn’t want him to, either. He had to stick to her script. “Tana is single.”
“She wasn’t always, obviously. I’ve known you since you were twenty-two. You’re the kind who plans to settle down. You want Miss Right to come along, so you’ll have the white picket fence and the children and the dog.”
“And the horse. I’m keeping my horse. That picket fence better be tall.”
“You can’t find any of that while you’re playing house with someone else’s woman and child.”
Playing house. This was no game. He couldn’t cool his feelings for Tana no matter how hard he tried—and he’d tried, for almost nine months.
“You need to be out there dating, not babysitting. Find a woman without a history. Someone who hasn’t been with a man in a way that’s going to keep her tangled up with him for the next eighteen years. Someone with a clean slate.”
Caden did it all: took a deep breath, counted to ten and reminded himself that his sister-in-law cared about him.
“So, I’m looking for a virgin who hasn’t done anything with her life yet? Sounds great. Just a big ball of fun.”
“I’m being serious.”
Caden got serious, too. “Tana is a friend. She’s in a tight spot. She doesn’t qualify for maternity or family leave, because she hasn’t been at MU for twelve months yet. She asked me to come over because there’s an event on campus that she’s supposed to be part of. Don’t make more of it than it is.”
But, honest to God, he wished there was so much more to it than there was. They’d get to laughing, and she’d tilt her head or duck her chin or do something a little flirtatious, some body language that would have given him a big green light to ask for her number and invite her to dinner if they’d just met at the pub or a costume party—or a CPR class. But since they were usually sitting on her couch with a baby in one of their laps, she would catch herself flirting, her eyes would get big and round, and she’d act embarrassed while he pretended not to notice.
It sucked.
“Exactly,” Abigail said. “Don’t make more of it than it is, but I have a bad feeling that you are. By the way, that baby is way too young to be put in a jogging stroller. No neck muscles yet. He should be five or six months old before you take him for a run. Bye.”
“Bye. And, by the way, happy Mother’s Day, in advance. You’re a nosy sister-in-law, but Abby and Max lucked out and got a real good mom.”
“Aw. I love you, too. Bye.”
They disconnected the call. Caden kept his phone pointed toward Sterling’s face, hoping to see those indigo-blues closing. No such luck.
He wasn’t one for singing lullabies, but he was pretty good at talking Sterling to sleep. “Looks like I know what you’ll be doing in September, my friend. You’ll be feeling the need for speed out on the jogging trails. I’ll run with you and your mom. I’m not bragging or anything, but there’s no chance I’ll embarrass myself on dry land. Your mom would kick my butt in a pool for sure, but you already know that. She’s only ridden a horse a few times in her life, though, can you believe it? So, I’ll teach you to ride, she’ll teach you how to swim, and the three of us will go for runs together. Doesn’t that sound like a nice life? You go ahead and sleep easy now. September will be here before you know it. The future is pretty sweet.”
* * *
The future sucked.
Tana was going to lose Caden.
She’d thought nine months of not knowing her future had been bad. Would being pregnant be hard? Would she let down the kids who’d come to the university to swim? Was this one-season contract going to be her last?
She’d kept moving forward, hoping the answers would be good ones.
This morning, out of vacation days and sick days, she’d checked her work email and her voice mail, and she’d gotten her final answer. The athletic director had not responded to any of her requests to discuss a contract extension. His administrative assistant had, but only to say their calendar was too full to schedule a meeting. It was a gutless way to let someone go, but being let go was the result.
She wished she could go back to not knowing what the future held.
Her van crawled along with the graduation-week traffic jams. The student-athlete awards were today. Sunday would be Mother’s Day, then Masterson University would graduate its latest batch of Musketeers, and Tana would be officially unemployed. Her faculty apartment lease ran out in two weeks. Tana was going to move back to Houston, back into her parents’ house.
She had no choice.
She dreaded telling Caden after the awards. He was going to be shocked; she hadn’t even hinted to him that her time was running out. The very worst part of her very near future was that she was going to lose her very best friend.
Caden loved her baby. When she left Masterson, he would be devastated to lose Sterling. Then Tana would lose Caden, because who could be friends with someone who caused them so much pain?
She pounded the steering wheel. Damn her boss. Her heart was breaking, but he wasn’t sparing her a moment’s thought. The only thing the athletic director thought about was football. Every other sport only mattered if it won a national championship.
In one season, Tana had taken Masterson’s program far. Having swimmers finish second, third and fourth in multiple events was a greater achievement than having a single superstar place first, while the rest of a college’s swimmers finished so far down the list, the school might as well have not brought them to the meet. To Bob Nicholls, it was so obvious that he couldn’t imagine her contract not being renewed—but that wasn’t how the Masterson athletic director’s mind worked.
Tana had flown thousands of miles and driven a thousand more while pregnant, hoping for that one big trophy she could plop on her boss’s desk, but she hadn’t gotten it. There was no other athletic director she could appeal to, no other channel to use. The only person her boss answered to was the president of the university.
Tana gripped the steering wheel as a crazy, daring idea threatened to knock her sideways.
The president would be at today’s awards. Tana’s swimmers were going to be raking in the recognition. There would be socializing afterward, the polite meeting and greeting that normally took place at any banquet. What if she spoke with the president in that environment, when her biggest coaching achievement, the athletes themselves, would be celebrated? Could she go behind the athletic director’s back without making it look like she was?
She was already dressed for battle. She was wearing the one non-maternity skirt in her closet that had an elastic waistband, the one blazer that looked good, although she couldn’t button it yet. For the first time in thirty-four days, she’d styled her hair and put on her makeup and high heels. It wasn’t as empowering as cat eyes and a cape, but Tana looked as much like a successful director and coach as she possibly could, thirty-four days after having a baby.
At last, she reached the event center. She pulled in to a faculty parking spot and checked her makeup in the rearview mirror. It was time for the coach’s pep talk.
“I think you can do this. You have nothing to lose, and your whole life to gain.”
She was far from fearless, but she was going to try.