Too Friendly to Date

The play of shadows. The contrast of cold air around her, except where he’d touched his mouth to hers.

Aw, crap, this was trouble.

Maybe what she really needed to do was plan a breakup. It was still a lie, but she wouldn’t have to do this stuff.

Of course, then her mother would hover. Ask if she was okay. Start hinting Leah should move back to Minnesota so someone could watch after her. Just in case.

Just in case.

As an adult she could find more understanding in her mother’s smothering. As a teenager it just felt like an affront, but now she could see it through the lens of a mother desperately worried about her daughter’s health. A legitimate worry considering.

Leah wanted to be able to let that understanding make her easy with it. Accept it without having to make up a boyfriend. Maybe even accept it enough that the thought of moving back to Minnesota didn’t make her throat close up with anxiety.

But she lacked whatever decency would allow that.

She needed her space, her autonomy. She’d never be considered 100 percent healthy, but she was the healthiest she’d ever been. She managed her allergies and her asthma, except for when she was cleaning the other night. She took her medication, only occasionally indulged in alcohol. Ate rightish. Exercised more often than not.

It had to mean something. Not just that she could take care of herself, but that she wanted to. Needed to in order to be happy.

Leah drove back to MC with a heavy weight in her chest. It was strange that this impending visit from her family could twist her up in knots, push all those old insecurities and suffocating feelings to the forefront when all she wanted was the family that had caused those feelings.

She wanted Mom to send her care packages with homemade nut-free cookies. She wanted to talk with Dad over a car engine. She wanted to tease her big brother about being as straight as an arrow stick in the mud.

She’d lost all that in the self-destructive years. The support, the comfort, the family. She didn’t want their suffocating ways of showing they loved her, but she did want their love.

Maybe it was too much to ask for. Maybe she simply wasn’t cut out for it.

She groaned into the silence of her truck cab. Once she pushed it into Park, she rested her head on the steering wheel.

She was not going down the self-pity hole. If the past seven years had shown her anything, it was that she was capable of building the life she wanted. So, all she had to do was keep working at it.

And if that meant things getting momentarily weird with Jacob, well, she’d survive it. She’d survived a lot more than some weird inappropriate crush and a fake relationship.

On a deep breath and determined shoulder straightening, she stepped out of her truck and walked into the back entrance of MC.

Voices drifted through the mudroom from the kitchen.

“You’re so good with babies, Jacob.”

Leah stepped into the kitchen and immediately wished she’d gone to her work shed instead. Because Jacob standing in the middle of the kitchen holding Kelly and Susan’s one-month-old girl was just... Was this some kind of karmic punishment for lying to her parents?

But of course, there he was, holding a freaking adorable baby on his hip. Might as well have a puppy lying at his feet and dinner he made on the stove. While doing the ironing.

Well, not with the baby nearby.

Get a grip, you lunatic.

“Hey, you didn’t tell me it was a baby day. I would have put off errands.” Probably not, but she was happy for her friends. Adopting little Presleigh had been something the pair had been working toward for a long time.

And here they were, a pretty little family. She’d focus on that instead of Jacob cooing at a baby. Because, really, karma was a bitch.

“You want a turn to hold her?” Kelly asked.

“Oh, she’s going to need to firm up a bit before you let me near her.”

Susan rolled her eyes, but smiled.

God, babies made her uncomfortable. All that love and need and...expectation. She’d done a pretty good job of hiding that fact from Kelly and Susan, using humor to mask her discomfort. Lack of experience to excuse holding or interacting too much with the gorgeous bundle of blankets.

“How can you be afraid of babies?” Jacob demanded, smiling broadly at Presleigh.

Leah was pretty sure this was killing her. “I’m not afraid. They’re just all soft and...bobbly. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“It’s easy.”

“Oh, don’t push her. It is something to get used to if you haven’t been around babies much. I think it took me a week to stop shaking every time I picked her up.” Kelly gave Leah a reassuring smile.

Presleigh fussed and Jacob easily maneuvered her onto his shoulder, crooning soothing words and patting her back.

Leah was pretty sure her ovaries exploded.

And then the baby spit up a bunch of white curdly goo down Jacob’s shoulder and back. Ick. Ovaries back in place.

“Well, that is unpleasant,” Jacob said, though his tone was amused rather than upset. He handed the baby off to Susan, grabbed a rag out of a drawer and tried to wipe off the offensive fluids.

“Give me a hand here, huh?”

Aw, crap, he meant her. Leah crossed to him and took the rag and gingerly wiped at the spot on Jacob’s back. He glanced over his shoulder at her, and for the love of God, why was she blushing at that? Because you are loony tunes, Santino.

“There,” she muttered, handing the rag back to him, avoiding all eye contact.

Jacob’s phone dinged. “Conference call,” he said, and since she refused to look at him she had no idea if he was looking at her or what. And then he left, thank God. Her whole body relaxed, until she turned to face Kelly and Susan.

Susan stood next to a sitting Kelly, who was now bouncing the baby on her lap, but all three of them were staring at her, heads cocked in identical scrutiny. Okay, not the baby, but Leah wouldn’t put it past the itty-bitty creature with big blue eyes to be scrutinizing, too.

“So...” Kelly offered.

“So what?” Leah crossed her arms defensively.

“Did you guys sleep together or something?”

“What?” Leah screeched.

“That was weird. Like...sex weird.”

“No, it wasn’t. We did not have sex, and we’re not going to have sex, you nut jobs. I just...asked him a kind of weird favor and we’re still working everything out.”

“Was the favor sex?”