“Impossible?” she offered.
“Serendipitous,” he ventured.
“You win.” She gave him a half-smile. “I like your word better.”
His hands started to stroke her shoulder and she could feel the sickly sense inside her drain out, as if his fingertips just flicked it away.
“I think…” Alex said, taking one more step closer until he was hovering over her. Her body absorbed his heat, and she was aware of every pore of skin on his neck, every bit of stubble that had grown in the past couple hours. Her fingers itched to touch, but held back, for reasons she began to hate.
“I think,” he repeated, “that your answer may be more accurate.”
“I can admit when I’m wrong.” Where the hell did that come from?
He broke the space between them, bending down and planting a soft kiss on her cheekbone. He whispered in her ear, “I enjoy an impossible challenge..”
“Josie?” Laura’s voice caught her off guard. At the end of the hall, silhouetted by the light behind her, her best friend stood in the threshold of her postpartum room, the gown diaphanous, wearing those little paper slippers that no one liked. “What happened?” Laura called. “Are you sick?”
“She’s fine,” Alex answered for her, his arm sliding around her shoulders, the comfort both overriding the sexual tension from the day past and tapping into it in a very different way. He guided her back toward Laura’s room. “A big case of nerves.”
“Nerves?” said Laura. “Josie? About what?” Long blonde hair poured over Laura’s shoulders, covering one bare breast, the nipple tucked inside a flap of cloth. Modest Laura, who wouldn’t go to the dining halls in college in her pajamas or without freshly done hair, was standing in a hospital hallway with her boob hanging out. Josie laughed inside at the incongruity.
“About holding your baby,” Alex answered.
“I wasn’t nervous about holding the baby.” Josie broke away from him. “That is ridiculous. I’ve held hundreds of babies working in clinicals.”
He shook his head as they reached Laura. “Not the same—it’s never the same when you hold one that means so much to you.”
Tears filled Laura’s eyes. “That’s how I feel too—like I’ve just been handed this tiny thing and its very breath relies on me.”
“That’s because it does,” said Mike, who joined the conversation in the hallway. “And on me,” he added.
“And me,” said a voice from behind as a giant giraffe head poked through the door.
A loud, lusty cry came from the bassinet in the room and Laura took off in a near-sprint, stopping after two steps and then gingerly finishing the trek to Jillian. Mike yawned, covering his mouth and apologizing in muffled tones through the sound. At 8:30 in the morning the yawn would have seemed out of place to anyone who didn’t know just how sleep-deprived they all were.
“We’re going to go home and get some real sleep as soon as the baby settles down,” Mike said. “Laura can manage for a few hours, plus they’ll take Jillian—” He stopped short as the name came out of him, brow furrowed in a pensive expression.
“It’ll take some getting used to, won’t it?” Dylan commented. His face mirrored Mike’s.
“It’s okay, though.” Laura’s voice was strong and focused. “Her name suits her.”
Dylan took the crying baby from Laura and began singing softly, a song Josie didn’t know. The baby quieted immediately and seemed to focus her cloudy, bluish-brown eyes right on him. Mugging for her, he made cooing sounds, keeping Jillian transfixed. Josie hoped her dad had been like that with her when she was a little bundle of new flesh and love like Jillian. The unexpected thought made it suddenly hard to breathe, and she wanted to crawl out of her own skin.
“I think I’ll go soon, too,” Josie said, giving Dylan a short salute. “You guys are carrying on totally fine.” Nothing’s fine, she thought, edging toward the door.
Dylan handed the baby off to Laura and turned to the stuffed animal he’d brought, animating the eight-foot giraffe. “Hear that? It’s fine, Daddy Mike.” The giraffe was the only thing in the room taller than Mike, forcing him to look up to it. Standing on tiptoes, Mike gave it a big smooch on the mouth.
“Daddy Mike? That’s what you’re calling each other? Daddy Mike and Daddy Dylan?”
“What else are we supposed to call ourselves?”
“How about Billionaire One and Billionaire Two?” Josie smirked. Laura gave her a warning look, but clearly was amused. Alex stared at all four faces, bemused.
“There’s an inside joke here that I’m not getting.”
“There are a lot of inside jokes here that you’re not getting, dude,” Dylan replied.
“Yeah,” Josie said, looking hard at Dylan. “It’s—”
Laura, Dylan, and Mike, from behind, all shouted, “Complicated!”
Frowning, Alex looked around the room again, then zeroed in on Josie. “Since they’re so complicated, how about you and I go do something simple?”
“That’s awfully forward of you,” she said, pulling her shoulders back, pretending to be coy.
“I meant let’s go for a walk. That simple enough for you?”
“Oh.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say. Getting out of the hospital would go a long way toward helping her to figure out how the hell she could get back to some semblance of stable. “Okay.” She and Alex waved and left the new family to settle the baby and say their own goodbyes.
Chapter Six
As they rode the elevators down to the main entrance, Josie’s mind flipped through three thousand one hundred and twenty-two scenarios, most of them involving being f**ked against the side of the elevator wall.
Damn Grey’s Anatomy for putting these ideas in her head. Ever since that show had come on, every hospital had a running joke about doctors and nurses ha**ng s*x in elevators—and here they were, completely alone, riding down four flights. The half-smirk on his face as they stared straight ahead made her wonder what Alex was thinking right now.
The nearest coffee shop was a good five blocks away, and Alex turned toward it, which told Josie that this was going to be no simple, short stroll around the hospital grounds, but more like a…date.
Date? The word seemed too formal, as if she were ascribing something to this interaction that gave it more meaning than it really had. He walked slowly, and she was grateful; his long legs could have taken strides that made her walk as quickly as an officious little child. He didn’t seem bothered by having to walk slower. That relaxed, casual nature made him comfortable with whatever situation he found himself in. His outfit was pleasant and the way that his pants hung on his h*ps and cupped his ass was much more appealing to look at than even the flowering dogwoods that lined many of the homes they walked past.