Chapter 7

7

BECKA COULDN’T STOP looking at Aaron. He was shirtless in the kitchen, making pancakes for her, and she’d never seen a more beautiful man. The muscles of his back flexed as he moved, and she clenched her thighs together despite the several outstanding orgasms he’d just delivered. The whole thing was so...domestic.

The only time she’d lived with anyone was roommates back in college. They were always too noisy, too messy and too in evidence everywhere she looked.

Becka didn’t mind noise—her spin classes were so loud with their pumping music that some people wore earplugs. Having the bass thrum through her body as she shouted and directed and got everyone moving for the workout of their life was her happy place.

She didn’t even mind people. Not really. Being a personal trainer was a different kind of happy, working with people who wanted to get healthy or accomplish some specific goal. She loved watching them put in the work and being their own personal drill sergeant and cheerleader, all wrapped into one. And the look on their face when they realized the moment their hard work had paid off and that they’d accomplished what they’d set out to do? Priceless.

But when she was done with work for the day, she wanted to come home and just...be.

Roommates normally made that impossible.

Aaron as a roommate should have made it doubly so.

She twisted on the bar stool to look over the apartment. It was a study in minimalism—a place for everything and everything in its place. There wasn’t a speck of dust on the entertainment center that framed the massive TV, and the leather couch and twin chairs on either side of it didn’t have any wear and tear or so much as a scrape on them. The kitchen was equally freakishly clean. If he wasn’t cooking in it right this second, she would have suspected that he didn’t cook by how clean the countertops were. The man obviously didn’t believe in clutter.

Which was a relief, but at the same time, Aaron being a control freak was stamped over every inch of this place. This was a man who didn’t like messes, and their situation was the very definition of a mess.

As if sensing her thoughts, he flipped the pancakes and turned to lean against the gray marble countertop. “I think it’s long past time for us to talk.”

She couldn’t keep dodging him. It was freaking exhausting, and if Becka actually planned to reduce Aaron’s position in the baby’s life to sperm donor, she never should have moved in with him in the first place. She wrapped both hands around her orange juice and stared hard at the swirl in the marble that looked like Abraham Lincoln’s beard. “You are going to be in the baby’s life. I’m living in your penthouse. Don’t you think that’s enough for now?” Even without looking up, she knew his expression had turned stormy, his eyes leaning more gray than blue. She pushed her juice away. “You keep pushing me, and it’s stressing me out. The learning curve on this situation is pretty rough and, this might be shocking, but I’m overwhelmed. You trying to micromanage everything from my bath temperature to...”

“Drink your orange juice.”

She gave a half-hearted laugh. “Yeah, like that.”

“I’m serious.” His big hand appeared in her line of vision and nudged the glass back into her hand. “The calcium and vitamin D are good for you.”

She closed her eyes and counted to ten. Twice.

Maybe we should just keep banging it out and stop talking, because obviously we are not even close to being on the same page.

“Aaron—” She stopped short at the sound of his sliding a plate to her. Becka opened her eyes to find two perfectly shaped pancakes on the plate. She might have stopped breathing completely when he set both the smooth and the chunky peanut butter next to the plate, each with their respective knives. “How did you know?”

“I’d have to be extremely dense not to notice you walking around with a spoonful of peanut butter in your mouth the few times you’ve graced me with your presence.” He eyed the tubs of peanut butter with narrowed eyes. “They’re both depleted from the last time I checked, so I wasn’t sure which you’d prefer. Let me know and I’ll pick up more next time I get groceries.”

Heat spread up her chest and took residence in her cheeks. It shouldn’t surprise her so much that he picked up on her eating habits, not when he was obviously watching her so closely, but the thoughtfulness of the simple gesture had her throat closing and her eyes burning. “I, ah, use both.”

Conscious of his eyes on her, she spread first the chunky onto each pancake, and then took the other knife and covered it with smooth peanut butter. She carefully cut the food into tiny bites instead of rolling it up like a burrito the way she would have if she was alone. “Thank you.”

“We can make this work, minx. You just have to trust me.”

That was the one thing she couldn’t do. She did trust that he wasn’t a total asshole, and that he showed every evidence of probably being a good father and a decent friend. But if she let herself sink into the ease of being with him, she was in danger of forgetting exactly how devastating her inevitable heartbreak would be. Everything else might have changed, but that hadn’t.

If anything, her reasons for not tumbling head over heels for Aaron had just multiplied. This wasn’t some guy she could avoid after things fell apart.

He was the father of her future child.

She couldn’t just keep shutting him out, though. He was right about that. There had to be some kind of compromise that got them through this with the least amount of strife. That compromise probably doesn’t include amazing sex and screaming his name. Way to muddy the waters. She silenced the snide little voice inside her. There would be plenty of time for self-recrimination on her seventh run to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

She finished her pancakes and sat back. “Did you want kids? I mean, if life played out according to your perfect plan.”

“What makes you think I have a perfect plan?”

Becka rolled her eyes. “I pay attention, that’s what. I think you’re even more type-A than Allie and Lucy—combined. That’s saying something.”

He made a face. “Guilty as charged. Though I only ever really had a plan for my professional life. I’ve known I wanted to work in cybersecurity since I was in high school, and it only took my first internship in college to solidify that I wanted to work for myself and own my own business. That goal kept me busy enough that the personal stuff was always being pushed to the back burner. And the last time I agreed to a date, my prospective date ran off with the matchmaker.”

His date, her sister.

It hurt to think about, but he and Lucy might have fit. They were both ambitious and driven and more than a little pretty. Lucy and Gideon were perfectly matched, of course, but that didn’t change the fact that Gideon had thought Aaron was a good match for Lucy when he compiled his list of bachelors. That was back when Lucy had hired the headhunter to find her a husband—a position Gideon ended up filling in the end.

Becka couldn’t be more different from her sister if she’d tried. She was driven, sure, but her dreams had never been to make partner in some law firm or to own her own business. All she wanted to do was live her life to the fullest, to do what she loved and make enough money to pay her bills and travel to places she’d never been before.

Hard to travel with a baby.

She took a hasty drink of her orange juice, aware of how closely Aaron watched her. “That’s nice.”

“Uh-huh. To answer your question—yeah, I want kids. I always have. My sisters might have been aggravating to grow up with, but we’re pretty close now, and there’s something comforting about the chaos of a home filled with a family.”

She wouldn’t know anything about that. Becka’s parents had divorced early on, and her mother had always been more concerned with her agenda than with her daughters. When Becka was bullied, it wasn’t her mother she ran to. It was Lucy. Her sister had started filling that parental role from an early age, and she’d never quite stopped.

She still remembered the moment when she realized she was more like her mother than she’d ever be like her sister. Becka was fourteen and had been going on about some drama that she didn’t even recall now, years later, and thirty minutes into her bitchfest she’d realized that Lucy was upset—had been upset through the entire conversation while Becka went on and on about her petty problem.

It turned out, Lucy hadn’t gotten into the school she’d pinned her hopes and dreams on and was crushed.

And Becka hadn’t even noticed.

She’d promised herself right then and there that she wouldn’t walk their mother’s path. She wouldn’t keep being a burden on her sister the same way their mother was. She’d be independent and strong and take care of her own problems.

A promise she’d mostly kept over the years. Sure, Becka developed a wild streak in college that never quite went away, and she knew her sister worried sometimes about her resistance to the idea of settling down, but those were small sins compared to the kind they’d grown up witnessing.

At least... they had been small sins.

Until now.

She shook her head, suddenly aware that Aaron was looking at her like he expected some kind of answer. “I’m sorry, I missed what you just said.”

“I asked you if you had ever wanted kids.”

She pushed to her feet. “No. I never wanted kids.”

Aaron watched Becka walk away with her shoulders bowed, looking like someone had just kicked her puppy. Things had been going well. Better than well. They’d been going good . She’d teased him a little, the sex had been outstanding and they’d managed to share a meal and half a conversation.

It’s possible you need to set the bar for “well” a little higher.

He wanted to chase her down, to try to talk her into telling him what put that haunted look on her face. It was more than not wanting children. Even as the words came out of her mouth, she looked conflicted, as if it wasn’t quite the full truth. She wanted kids. She wouldn’t have gone forward with the pregnancy otherwise.

Which meant there was something holding her back, some reason she thought she shouldn’t want kids.

He could call Lucy, but that meant letting her in on the fact that Becka was pregnant, and if Becka didn’t want her sister to know yet, it wasn’t his place to share that information. He’d threatened to, of course, but what had been said in anger and frustration before would be a betrayal of trust now. No, that wasn’t an option.

Not to mention, he wanted Becka to trust him enough to let him in and let them both get to know each other. He couldn’t do that if he kept fumbling shit so thoroughly.

Aaron weighed his options against the inherent risks that went with any path forward. It was possible that if he left things alone and maintained the course, she’d come to him again.

He couldn’t risk being wrong, though. The stakes were too damn high.

So he did the slightly less risky option and called his baby sister. Aaron had always been closest to Trish, partly because she never allowed him to take himself too seriously and partly because their age difference meant they were never competing quite the same way he and Mary did through their younger years.

That mattered, of course, but the reason he called her now instead of Mary was because at twenty-four she was the closest in age to Becka—and the closest in personality. Though Becka was all thorns and prickly edges and Trish was both softer and sweeter, they both harbored free spirits and avoiding being tied down. It was comfortable to be the older brother to that kind of personality. It was significantly less so to be having a child with someone like that.

The line rang several times before it clicked over. “Hey, Aaron. Is everything okay?”

He glanced at the clock and cursed himself. It was almost midnight—way too late for this to be a casual call. “Yeah, everything is okay. I just need some advice and didn’t think to check if it was too late to call.”

“My big brother asking me for advice? You’re right, that’s not remotely serious at all.” She laughed softly. “I’m awake, and you have me on the phone, so stop thinking about how you’re going to make some excuse and call me tomorrow.”

Since he’d been about to do exactly that, he gave a rueful grin. “How are you?”

She sighed. “I’m fine. Just as fine as I was a couple weeks ago when we talked, though I’m about to start chewing through the wall if I don’t get out of this house soon. I love Mom and Dad, and they’re trying to be supportive and not push me, but it’s driving all of us crazy.”

Trish had moved back home after college until she could find a job and it...hadn’t gone particularly well. He made a sympathetic noise. “Well, I have some news that will get you out of the doghouse as least favorite child.”

“That sounds like trouble.” She lowered her voice. “Are you sure everything is okay?”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s not, but it will be.” He had to believe that. He couldn’t allow for any other outcome. Aaron had half a second to wonder if this call was a mistake, but he had gone too far to change his mind now. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Trish. There’s this woman, and we connected, but she won’t give me the time of day and...” She’s going to have my child.

She laughed. “Oh, Aaron. She’s got you twisted in knots, hasn’t she? You already tried to plan your way out of this and it blew up in your face.”

He narrowed his eyes. “How’d you know?”

“Because you’re our fearless leader. You attack every single problem the exact way—as if you’re going into battle. Which is great, and useful, and the reason that you’re as professionally successful as you are now.” Another laugh. “But you can’t date like that, Aaron. I mean, you can , but if you’re calling me, that means she’s independent and isn’t going to respond well to that sort of thing.”

Aaron started piling plates in the sink. “Everything I do pisses her off.”

“Hmm. Have you tried listening ?”

“She doesn’t want to talk.”

“Because you make it into an interrogation when you aren’t paying attention. Figure out what she likes. Do that. See if you relaxing doesn’t relax her a little bit.” A hesitation. “Though if she’s fighting you this hard, maybe it’s time to write the whole thing off? Some walls aren’t worth beating your head against.”

“This one is.” He forced a smile into his voice. “Thanks, Trish. You should come down to the city to visit soon.”

“Sure thing. Just as soon as I figure out the rest of my life. Love you, big brother.”

“Love you, too.” He hung up the phone and went to work on the dishes. His sister’s advice wasn’t necessarily groundbreaking, but she had a good point. He’d approached this from the baby standpoint, because the baby was the only thing they appeared to have in common.

Well, the baby and the sex.

Aaron shook his head and scrubbed harder at the pan. If he wanted to pave the way to a future with Becka and the baby, he needed to know Becka.

He stopped.

Was that what he wanted? Both of them? Because that was a different scenario than simply being a father. He just had to be able to be cordial with Becka in order to do that , and they’d both go on with their separate lives. It was the simplest solution for a child born of a one-night stand.

And yet.

He thought about the vivid woman who’d caught his eye in the first place, the determined one who’d faced him down time and again over the future, and the bowed shoulders she’d worn tonight when she walked back to her room alone. Complicated did not begin to cover Becka Baudin.

There was nothing wrong with complicated, though.

Aaron finished the dishes and dried the pan, still thinking. He just needed to figure out what common ground they had and work from there. It was entirely possible that they had nothing in common and this was all a lost cause, but he wasn’t prepared to believe that. There was something there. Aaron just needed to figure out what it was.