Elley Arden - Baby by Design

He blinked. Shit. He’d never thought of it that way. And Angie wasn’t the only one with a reaction to worry about. Ma. Nonna. How did he expect to go from Trish’s contract employee to the father of her baby without raising his traditional Italian-Catholic family’s collective blood pressure?

“Your mother and Nonna.” Trish slapped a hand over her mouth. “They’ll think I’m a slut.”

“Puttana.” He’d heard the word enough to know it.

“What?”

“That’s what Nonna calls a whore. Puttana.”

Trish paled.

“Hey, hey, hey.” Tony reached for her, but she backed away, pressing against the wall. “You’re not a whore.”

Her face wrinkled. “Thanks for that, but I hardly think they’d agree once they found out I was pregnant by you without so much as a dinner date between us.” She banged her head off the woodwork. “What was I thinking? Angie was right.”

Like fingernails down a chalkboard. Angie was always right, and it irked him. “Let’s go.” He marched up the stairs. “I’m taking you to dinner.”

She scrambled after him. “Tony, it’s not that simple.”

“The hell it isn’t. Ange knows we slept together. It’s only a matter of time before she whines to Ma. But nobody can say a damn thing about it if we’re dating.”

“But we aren’t dating.”

“We are now.” He grinned. “And don’t forget to put on a bra. I can still see your nipples.”

Sitting across from Tony Corcarelli in an IHOP restaurant, Trish surmised this was her life. There was some sort of poetic justice in it. Hadn’t her mother always warned her about falling for the smooth-talking guy? Oh, and Tony was smooth. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be caught dead inhaling a stack of chocolate-chip pancakes at midnight. She swiped at a dribble of maple syrup on her chin.

“Damn, you can eat.” He smiled around a forkful of omelet.

“I eat when I’m worried.”

“You talk a lot, too, which must make a big mess.”

She chewed slower, wrinkled her nose in disgust, and glanced at her shirt to make sure it was syrup-free.

“I’m teasing,” he said.

“You always are.”

“Not always.” He held her gaze with smoldering eyes.

Okay, she’d give him that. He could be serious when the situation warranted. There was nothing teasing about the way he made love. Not that they made love, she reminded herself. They had sex and hopefully made a baby. Big difference. Huge.

She took another bite of pancake and then dropped her hand to her belly beneath the table, rubbing back and forth. Was anything going on in there?

Angie’s interruption and Tony’s late-night dinner caused Trish to miss out on the obsessing she planned to be doing at home. She raised her other hand, wrapping it around a glass of orange juice. What were the chances she was pregnant on the first try?

Taking a sip, she held the cold liquid in her mouth until it warmed and then swallowed. She wanted to be pregnant on the first try, because prolonging interactions with Tony had become unnecessarily complicated. But we aren’t dating, she’d said to him. We are now, was his reply. Why did that silly technicality make her tummy tumble? Dating Tony was a front, so his family didn’t see her as a slut once the test turned positive. She needed to keep that in mind if she was going to get through the next nine or so months sane.

“So what’s on the agenda tomorrow?” Tony sprawled in the booth, arm flung across the back, plate pushed away from the edge of the table.

Trish blinked. “What agenda?”

“What do you have planned?”

“Work,” she said, leery of where this was going. He’d asked to do it again before Angie interrupted, and now they were “dating.” Surely he didn’t plan to exploit their interactions, and yet, this was Tony she was talking about.

“What kind of work?”

“Interior design.”

He bobbed his brows and tilted his head. “Are you this difficult with all your dates?”

“Maybe.” Hardly. Only him. He made her do the damnedest things.

“Then I can see why you’re still single.”

She tossed her napkin across the table at him. It flopped against his chest. He simply smiled and tossed it back.

“You’re going to need that for cleanup, what with all the eating and babbling,” he said.

She couldn’t stop the smirk. “Fine,” she said, dropping the napkin into her lap. “I’m working on the Collins’s house tomorrow morning. Angie’s laying hardwoods in the addition, and I’m meeting with cement contractors. Tomorrow afternoon I have blocked off for shopping. They’re minimalists, so it’s something different.”

He nodded while he dipped a finger into a clump of whipped cream on the edge of her plate. “How does a frilly traditionalist shop for a minimalist?”

“Very carefully,” she said with an easy smile. “Or else the minimalist ends up with a floral-patterned, oversized ottoman where a recycled-materials coffee table should be.”

Tony straightened, sucked the cream from his fingertip with a smack of his lips, and rested his elbows on the table. “Where’d you find a recycled-materials coffee table?”

“No place yet. That’s what I want to buy, but I can’t find what I’m looking for.”

His brows inched higher on his forehead. “Then let me make it.”

“I thought you only upholstered furniture.”

“Honey, you’ve only scratched the surface of what I can do.”

Her tight skin burned. Ever suggestive, always the flirt, he riled her insides until she squirmed on thoughts of the other things he could do. Put it this way, the man had a very talented tongue.

Trish nearly groaned in disgust at the way her brain and body were behaving. Yes, he was attractive, but she refused to pine over him or make him more important than he was. As warped as it sounded, all she really wanted was his baby. She needed to remember that.

Life was entirely too complicated already.

“I’ll tell you what. I have a few sketches of what I’m looking for. You can take a look and see if it’s something you’d be interested in, but no guarantees. If I’m not pleased with the workmanship, then I’m not buying.” There, she thought. The easiest way to remember Tony’s place was by putting him in his place. She was the boss.

His hands disappeared beneath the table, and he leaned forward until his chest was inches from his plate. “Sounds fair. And I’m not worried.” A warm hand landed atop her thigh. “You’ll be buying…again and again and again.” He winked as he pressed fingers into the flesh above her knee. “I’m good at everything I do.”

Trish shuddered. Let’s just hope you’re good at making babies. If she had to endure much more of this, she was headed for major trouble.

Trish wasn’t hungry, but that couldn’t absolve her of lunch with Mom. So she sat in her usual seat at the club, staring over her mother’s shoulder out the window at the golf course.

Angie was on her mind.

Talking hadn’t gone as planned. When Trish arrived at the Collins’s, Angie busied herself with work. The few times she paused long enough for Trish to speak, Angie pretended like nothing was different. Pretending like nothing was different made it feel like everything was different, especially when Angie cited an evening with Nonna as her reason for not hanging out with Trish. Maybe it was the truth. Maybe it wasn’t. But if things were normal between them, Angie would’ve asked Trish to go along.

Trish didn’t want this strain. That’s why she was rethinking her plan.

A sweater-vested man with a caddy half his size walked the green moor. They had the same wobbly gait. Were they father and son? Trish bit her cheek. Some people were meant to be biological parents. Some people weren’t. If she fell into the latter category, then so be it. But then her stomach cramped, and her heart jumped, and Trish immediately wondered if it was the baby.

She slipped a hand to her belly. Every twinge was a reminder that one time was all it took. She had unprotected sex with Tony around the time of ovulation. Pregnancy wouldn’t be a shocker. As much as she wanted to rethink this plan, she’d already put it into motion, leaving her no choice but to improvise for a few more weeks. Then she could take a test, and if the test was negative, she could put a healthy distance between her and Tony, hoping to make things right between her and Angie. If the test was positive… She didn’t know what that would do to their friendship. She only hoped all the Corcarellis would be happy, because she would be.

She rubbed the non-existent bump.

“Darling, get more sleep. You have bags under your eyes. Or change your eye cream. You’re not getting any younger, you know.” Trish’s mother paused for a sip of chardonnay. “Which is why I think you should consider something.” Another sip of wine built anticipation. “Mary Perrault’s son is in town for a couple weeks.”

Trish sharpened her focus from the green outside the window to her mother’s painted face. “Stu is in town?”

“Yes, dear. And he asked if you were seeing anyone. He wants to call you.” Her glistening pink lips curled. “Looks like you have unfinished business.”

“We finished any and all business when he moved to Paris.”

“He may be moving back, but don’t tell him I told you. Your father said the Paris operation isn’t as productive as Glenn had hoped. But never mind that. Wouldn’t it be lovely, darling, for you and Stuart to reconcile after all these years?”

Lovely? Comical, really. Here she sat with her hand on her belly which may or may not contain a speck of Tony’s child, and the only man she ever loved wanted to call her while he was in town for two weeks.