Mummy in the Making

Huh…

If she hadn’t seen it herself, Issa didn’t think that route would have occurred to her. Looking on, she’d thought Hutch should rush Ash into the bathroom and flush his eyes out with water. But the tears had been an easier solution and she filed that knowledge away for future use when she was dealing with her own child.

Then it struck her that in that way Hutch Kincaid could be a double whammy.

Not only did he seem to have the kind of personality that had historically been the yin to her yang, but he also had the abilities as a parent that she lacked. Abilities that could potentially compensate for her weaknesses on that count, too.

But being with an outgoing man had never made her more outgoing; it had merely masked the fact that she wasn’t. And when it came to parenting, she thought that she had to guard against thinking that being with someone who was already a good parent would automatically make her a good parent, too. Or worst of all, mask the fact that she wasn’t.

No, when it came to parenting, she had to do everything possible to become a good parent herself.

So yes, there were two reasons for her not to be memorizing every sexy little line that formed at the corners of his beautiful eyes when he laughed.

And if two reasons weren’t enough, she could add one great big huge third reason, she reminded herself.

She was pregnant.

Admittedly, that tended to slip her mind because it didn’t seem real yet. But it was real. And what man would want a woman pregnant by someone else?

No man she knew.

And why was she even thinking anything like that?

Hutch Kincaid was her landlord, he’d fixed her door, he’d offered to carpool with her. There was nothing in any of that to require reminders of why she shouldn’t or wouldn’t or couldn’t get involved with him and she wasn’t quite sure how her thoughts had gotten there.

Except that he laughed again just then and that face of his lit up, and for a moment she couldn’t help staring at him.

He was simply too good-looking.

But that wasn’t important.

Hutch Kincaid was just a guy who happened to own her apartment, live downstairs and know some of the same people she knew. An incredibly attractive guy, but just a guy.

And she was nothing more than his unwed pregnant tenant—pregnant being the most significant part of that because if there was any man-repellent stronger than that, she didn’t know what it was, especially because it had even repelled the man who had caused it.

So whether or not Hutch Kincaid showed signs of being the sort of man she had vowed to avoid, it didn’t matter. She was protected even from herself.

Which was for the best.

She had enough on her plate as it was.

And yet…

There was something that made her a little sad to think that she’d been put on the shelf.

Particularly when it came to Hutch Kincaid.

“Thanks for covering for me at the start of tonight, with the wine,” Issa said to Hutch almost the minute they were back in his SUV when the barbecue was over.

“Hey, it got me chauffeured,” he answered with a laugh.

He was sitting in the passenger seat, angled toward the center console with an arm stretched across the back of her seat. Because Ash was in the car seat in the back, Issa thought that Hutch was sitting that way to keep an eye on his son. But so far his attention seemed more focused on her as Ash almost instantly fell asleep.

“I didn’t even think about the drinking issue giving me away,” Issa explained. “When it seemed like it might, I just froze. You really saved me.”

“Anytime,” he said. “You were pretty quiet all night, though. Did it throw you that much off your game?”

“Oh, no, that’s just me,” Issa lamented.

“The shyness.” he said as if just recalling that about her. “How does that work for a teacher who has to stand in front of a room full of kids and talk every day?”

“It took some work and a lot of shaky-voiced lectures during my student teaching to get me there, believe me. And lecturing still isn’t one of my strengths. That’s why I like to use as many demonstration experiments as I can and beef them up so the spotlight is more on the science than on me.”

“Beefing up the experiments is what led to Gob-o-Goo.”

“Right.”

“But this tonight, it was just family and old friends,” Hutch pointed out, still sounding somewhat puzzled by the evening.

“I’m not the boisterous McKendrick. I think the shyness actually came from home, from hating it when my mother would put us on display like we were her doll collection. So being with family doesn’t make it much better. I got into the habit of shrinking into the background at an early age and relying on my brothers and sisters to be center stage, so that’s still what I fall into when I’m with them.”

“I know all about being put on display,” Hutch muttered more to himself than to her. Then to her, he said, “Or was it worse tonight because of Ian and me?”

It had definitely been worse because of Hutch and all that had been going through her mind about him, but she wasn’t going to say that.

Instead she hedged, “It might have been a little worse because of a lot of things. Like there were also kids, kids, kids everywhere…”

“And that was bad because?”

“Because it was glaring evidence that I don’t know the first thing about them, or about taking care of them, or about what they need or when, or what makes them tick.”

Hutch chuckled kindly. “That sounded a little panicky.”

“Because I feel a lot panicky I must be doing pretty well hiding it, then,” Issa joked even though it was the truth.

“You’re panicked at the thought of parenthood?”

“Oh, sooo panicked! I’ve just never been a kid person. My mother made Hadley take care of the rest of us, so I never had to look after my younger brothers or Zeli. When I was a teenager, I didn’t babysit like my friends did. I just don’t know the first thing about kids.”

“But you’re a schoolteacher,” he pointed out a second time, as if she were giving him conflicting messages.

“In a high school—they aren’t kid-kids. They’re teenagers. Three-quarters of the way to being adults. And I’m only responsible for teaching them chemistry. But a baby…” Issa nodded over her shoulder in the direction of the slumbering Ash. “A toddler? A kid? Feeding it, changing diapers, keeping it clean and healthy and thriving? Walking, talking, brushing teeth, potty training—I don’t even know where to start.”

“Didn’t you want kids?”

“Not particularly. I mean I didn’t plan to have them. I just sort of thought that if that biological clock thing ever kicked in, I’d know it and things might change. But that didn’t happen and this…” She hated referring to the pregnancy too literally. “This was a birth control malfunction. It’s taken a lot of soul searching for me to decide what to do and I’ve decided to go through with it, but I’m just hoping it’s the right choice. And tonight, being around all those kids, made me wonder.”

Like she was wondering at that moment why, for someone who didn’t ordinarily talk much, talking too much was the problem with this guy. And telling him things she had no reason to tell him. Birth control malfunction—had she really said that?