“Yeah, well. If it was up to my boy, there would be cake and new toys daily for the next month at least.”
“And you know what? There should be. We’re bringing a present Wednesday. Shane is five. It’s huge.”
“Riley, I’m trying to hold the line. I mean, he’s had his fishing weekend, and from what I hear, every kid enrolled at Bright Beginnings Daycare will be at Lenore’s on Saturday. It’s enough.”
“And yet you couldn’t refuse him a pizza on his special day…”
“You got it. He asked for pizza, and then he asked if Dillon could come over.”
“There will be a present from Dillon on Wednesday. Deal with it.”
“Sheesh,” he grumbled. “Fine.”
“And Dillon’s in bed right now, but I’ll check with him first thing in the morning, ask him if he wants to go to Shane’s for birthday pizza on Wednesday. Spoiler alert. We’ll be there.”
“Good. See you then.”
She hung up smiling, looking forward to Wednesday, when it would be like the weekend had been—Josh, Riley and the boys, like a family.
A family…
Riley closed her eyes and sank to the club chair by the window in the living room. She set her phone on the little table there and slumped back in the chair.
Josh was her very good friend. She liked him so much—in and out of bed. Their children were best friends. She was having a baby with him.
But they weren’t a family. It wasn’t like that between the two of them. And she had to be careful. With a baby coming, it would be so easy to romanticize the situation, to let herself fall and fall hard. To start hoping that Josh might fall, too.
No.
That wasn’t going to happen. She couldn’t fall in love with Josh—and she wouldn’t. She’d known that all along. Her falling-in-love days were over. They were friends, they had been lovers, and now they would be co-parents. End of story.
* * *
Wednesday, she and Dillon drove out to Josh’s place as planned. Dillon presented Josh with a pair of bright greenwalkie-talkies, they all four had pizza and then played a rousing game of Hungry Hippos.
When the boys went upstairs to play with Shane’s new walkie-talkies, Josh asked her how she was feeling. She looked in his eyes and thought how hard it was not to want him. In fact, when it came to not wanting him, she was a complete and total failure. If the boys hadn’t been there, she would already have grabbed him and dragged him up to his bed.
Would he go?
Why even ask herself that question?
“I’m feelinggreat,” she said, with way more enthusiasm than necessary.
“Well, all right then.” He leaned across the still-open Hungry Hippos board and whispered, “Got a free night this week? We can, er, talk about the future. Shane’s with me till Saturday, but I can wrangle a sitter no problem.”
“Uh, next week is better.” Was it? Really? Not particularly. But she had this…yearning. This week, if she got him alone, she knew she would blow it the same way she had about telling him there was a baby coming. Instead of discussing how their relationship was changing, she would end up in bed with him where she could forget everything but the feel of his big hands on her body.
Next week, she would be stronger. Next week, she would tell him that they had to move on from this fling that had started to feel somehow more serious, more…dangerous to her vulnerable heart.
She just needed a few days to pull herself together. By next week, she would be ready to resist her desire for him and say all the things that needed saying.
“So then,” he said. “Next week, Lenore has Shane. Any chance we can manage some time alone, just the two of us?”
“Uh, sure.” She was staring at his lips, thinking about kissing him. Thinking about doing a lot more than just kissing. Because she was hopelessly attracted to him, and sometimes she wondered if that attraction would ever go away. “I’ll find out when Annette or Macy can watch Dillon.”
“That’ll work. Let me know.”
She said she would and then promised herself that she would use the time alone with him to discuss how their relationship was changing, to make it clear to him that the time had come for them to move on from their secret love affair because…
