Prince Charming's Child

Slowly he stood up. “I’m not ducking those questions, Nik—I want to answer them. But it’s after hours. You look beat. And I don’t think the office is the best place to discuss this. I’m guessing you’d like to go home, put your feet up, get a chance to catch your breath. How about if I pick up some Chinese—or whatever you feel like for dinner—and we meet up at your place?”

“I don’t know...” She started shaking her head.

“I understand—you just had all this sprung on you. And I don’t want you to feel put on the spot. About anything. But before you start making plans about the baby, I think you need to know what happened that night. I’m part of this, too...and it doesn’t matter to me whether we talk at my place or yours, but I assume you’d be more comfortable on your turf.”

She agreed—not, Mitch suspected, because she willingly wanted more time with him, but because she really, really wanted to know what happened that night. After that, they both went in motion. She locked the office; he called ahead to order dinner, and they separated in the parking lot. A half hour later, he’d picked up the Chinese takeout and was swinging his red Miata into her drive.

Juggling the overfull bag of Chinese food cartons, he climbed out of the car and hip-slammed the door with his gaze riveted on her house. He’d only seen it once—the night of the Christmas party. And one look was all it took for him to recall that night in Technicolor and surround-sound detail... but remembering his redhead naked and her warm, willing body and those lethally vulnerable eyes of hers was trouble. At the time, he thought he was waking up Sleeping Beauty. In fact, he could have sworn that was exactly what happened...except that the princess failing to remember a damn thing had totally screwed up the end on the fairy tale.

But the question was what to do now. He stood a moment longer, studying her place, willing answers about Nicole to come to him from her choice of home.

Nik picked up clients from the spray of Oregon tourist towns up and down the coast—Florence and Newport and Reedsport—but her property was between those splashes of civilization, off the beaten path. Once upon a time, it had probably been someone’s summer beach house. The outside was ramshackle, but ramshackle with character. The house was two sturdy stories, with clapboard siding that showed off years of weathering winds. A wraparound porch circled the bottom story, where balconies jutted off bedrooms on the second floor. The yard was an overgrown garden of willowy ornamental grasses like sea oats and sweet grass, a shade spot created by a gnarled old cypress tree. The steps leading down to the bluff edge of the sea were beat-up boards.

Maybe an artist had built the place, because it had that bohemian I - don’t - give - a - damn - what - anyone - else - thinks kind of character. And the first time Mitch saw it, he’d fallen in love. It seemed so right for Nik. The house capsulized the secret romantic and wild free spirit he’d always sensed in her.

In the office, she was so contained. Right from the start, her quicksilver mind had ransomed his heart, but she was a different woman at work, always worrying about doing the right thing, behaving the right way with the team. There was no reason she couldn’t laugh and loosen up—except in her own mind—but from the day he met her, he wondered where she’d learned all that control, what life lessons had taught her all that worry. He’d seen loneliness in her eyes. He’d seen her start to laugh, then cut it off. He’d seen her passionate zest for life a million times when she was brainstorming ideas, but that exuberance got clipped with ruthless scissors around people. Her choice of house reflected both the mystery and challenge that Mitch had always seen in Nik. There was a warm, sensual life-lover under the surface—if the right lover could just coax her to set it free.

Once upon a time, he’d even been arrogant enough to think that lover could be him.

The screen door suddenly clapped open. “Mitch? I thought I heard your car. Come on in.”

He didn’t want to go in. Given a choice, what he really wanted to do was drop the food, grab her, and try kissing her senseless. Just looking at her had always made his hormones stand up and bay like a mournful, lonesome hound, and right now she was damn well breathtaking. A west wind had scuttled away the afternoon’s blustery clouds, and the evening was turning clear as glass. Her hair caught the sunset flame, made her skin glow with a sensual, soft, pearl luminescence.

Still, he cut the juice on the electric charge in his pulse. Kissing her senseless might be an inspiring idea but could too easily end up a disastrous one. And as he hiked toward the house, he discovered they had a new and interesting problem. “You’d better be hungry. I brought enough Chinese to feed a platoon.”

“I can see that,” she said wryly. Swiftly she took the food cartons when he stepped in, but her eyes flashed on his face and then skittered away. Nik wasn’t a skitterer. She’d take on a tiger and not look back for something she wanted to win. So, he mused, she’d done some thinking. And maybe she didn’t remember that night, but it was pretty obvious she was suddenly aware of him in a whole different way. He’d metamorphosed from a nice, safe, tame employee into an unknown quantity of lover.

He liked those nerves. It evened things up. He’d suffered sexual tension all these months alone, when God knew he was more than willing to share. Of course, unanswered questions suddenly hung in the air between them like grenades, but Mitch figured one thing at a time. “If you tell me where the plates are, I’ll help put the dinner on,” he offered.

“You don’t have to help. It won’t take me a second. Can I get you a drink first?”

“Yeah, water—which I’ll get for myself. I didn’t suggest dinner so you could wait on me, Nik. The idea was to give you a chance to relax.”

That plan worked on a par with peace talks in the Middle East. They settled in her blue-tiled kitchen. He watched her poke at her egg roll, fork down a little sweet and sour shrimp, sample some of the war sui gui. Mostly she gulped water and charged down conversational roads like religion and politics—gutsy stuff to argue about, but nothing remotely related to anything on either of their minds.

Mitch didn’t mind her stalling; he thought she needed the unwind time. But typically Nik never cut herself any slack, and as if she realized how long she’d been chitchatting, she suddenly set down her fork. “We’re not getting it done,” she said impatiently.

“Getting what done?”

“Both of us are avoiding the subject of babies like it’d bite us. And it’s my fault. It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it. I do. But somehow I can’t figure out what to say, how to start...”

“There’s nothing to be blaming yourself for. You’re uncomfortable with me—”

“No, of course not. We’ve worked together for months, for heaven’s sakes. Even when we don’t see eye to eye, we trade insults and bicker like old friends. We’ve never really had a problem talking together.”

But there was a difference, Mitch thought, and that difference was her thinking of him as a lover instead of an employee. He pushed back his chair. “Look, how about if we try getting out of the house, take a walk on the beach?”

Her eyes immediately brightened. “Yeah. Fresh air sounds good.” But then she glanced down at her business suit.

“I’ll do the dishes. That’ll give you a chance to change into something warmer and more comfortable than work clothes.”

“You don’t have to do the dishes—”

“It’s nothing, Nik. Go on.”

She hesitated, but then said okay and disappeared upstairs to change. Mitch leveled the dishes in two minutes flat, then wandered into her living room. The night of the Christmas party, the inside of her house had fascinated him as much as the outside—but for entirely different reasons.

The open staircase led to three bedrooms and two baths on the second story. Downstairs, the front door opened onto a massive living area with big bay windows overlooking the ocean bluff. The blue-tiled kitchen was chunked down in the middle, leading down two steps to a dining and sunroom that both faced east. Tucked on like an afterthought was a small wing that contained an office study and bathroom.

The layout was fine—it was the decor that confounded Mitch. At work, he and Nik were a natural team. With his architectural background, he was at home with beams and studs, where she was the pro at color and style and all that female stuff. Hell, she’d built up a thriving business from scratch because her perception was so sharp. Meet a client and right off she tuned into the individual’s personality and all the internal decor ingredients that worked for that person. Get her going on the Feng Shui concepts about balance and harmony and it was tough to shut her up.

Yet the decor in her own place was perplexingly horrible. He wandered around, hands in his pockets, just looking. She’d obviously put time and money into it, but the decorating style was stark minimalist—unrelenting neutrals, taupe carpet, taupe couches, taupe walls. A pale oak table displayed coffee-table art books. Appropriate, pricey pictures hung on the walls. Nobody could criticize a single furnishing. It was all textbook perfect. They’d had clients who’d probably orgasm to achieve the same look, but they weren’t Nik. There were no splashes of colors, no hint of her vibrant creativity or independent spirit.

The living room—the whole inside decor—made him think of a trapped soul. He saw that side of her at work, too. Nik was always proper, hyper about doing the right thing, no bending on standards. Gutsy in her business, but sleeping through life. Restlessly Mitch jingled the change in his pocket, thinking that if he hadn’t glimpsed the other side of Nik, he’d never have this damn fool convoluted problem of being gut-deep in love with her.

But he bad. Memories stirred of another room in her house—the only room where she hadn’t bleached out every stamp of her personality. Her bedroom. He remembered all of it. The thick, soft rose carpeting. The antique sleigh bed. The old-fashioned dressing table with a needlepoint seat, pearls dripping from a crystal bowl, vials of perfume and cosmetic pots and a cloisonnе dish heaped with earrings.

The room reflected the Nik he’d always sensed under the surface, exuberantly female, a free-flow of rich textures and sensual colors. But it wasn’t the furnishings in that bedroom that had kidnapped a niche on his soul the night of the Christmas party. It was Sleeping Beauty coming awake in his arms, coming alive, the rigidly careful Nik forgetting all that control in the dark...but abruptly Mitch heard footsteps.

He spun around to see Nicole bounding down the stairs, dressed in skinny jeans and old sneakers and a voluminous threadbare black sweatshirt.

“I’ll be damned,” he murmured. “Who’d have guessed you’d own anything with a frayed collar? I’m impressed.”

“No teasing allowed. It’s a sacred sweatshirt,” she said dryly.

“I understand. I’ve got a sacred tee from college basketball days. When my dad got sick a few years ago, I showed up in the hospital wearing that tee. My mom was disgusted. I didn’t care. I wanted luck for my dad any way I could get it.”

A flash of a smile in her eyes, but then she cocked her head. “Your dad’s okay now?”

“Fit as a fiddle. You ready to head out?”

“I am...but I’m not sure this is such a great idea. You’re still stuck wearing your shoes from work. I’m afraid they’ll get wrecked on the beach. And it’s cold—I could loan you a jacket, but I can’t imagine having anything of mine that’d fit.”

Mitch figured it’d be an uphill job to teach her some selfishness. Typically she was worried about him—even under the circumstances—rather than thinking of herself. But she was also a good head shorter than his six-three. Imagining how he’d fit in anything of hers made him grin. “These loafers have seen sand before. And I’ve got a fleece jacket in the car I’ll grab when we go out.”

“Okay, then. Let’s hit it.”

Outside, the sky had darkened to a deep velvet-blue, the moon just rising to light their way. He fetched his fleece jacket and zipped up, feeling the sharp salt air suck in his lungs, fresh and invigorating. Pale stars illuminated their climb down to the beach from the board steps. The surf was sleepy at high tide. Foam sneaked up the sand, leaving a lacy collar of froth in its wake. Common to this stretch of Oregon’s coast, giant rocks jutted from the water, plunked down like mythical black sculptures of all shapes and sizes. In the darkness they looked like a giant’s play toys.

He let Nicole set the walking pace, which naturally for her was a full-speed charge. They hiked in silence for a bit, both of them savoring the magic of the sea, the night, the fresh air. Striding next to her, he was conscious of his height and her smallness, conscious of how the worn jeans showed off her fanny and long slim legs, conscious that she stole looks at his face...and conscious that no matter how good walking with her felt, it wasn’t getting their talking done.

“I moved here from Seattle,” he said finally.

“I know. I remember from your job application. You were one of the architects for a firm named Strickland’s.”

“I was an architect there, yes. But what I didn’t mention on the ap was that I owned the firm.”

She tilted her face, her eyebrows arched in question. “Why didn’t you say so at the time?”