Wrecked (Stories of Serendipity #8): #8 (21 page)

Kelly squeezed her mother again. “Of course it will be, Mom. That’s what having a baby is all about, but you can’t be a super hero all the time. I love you, and I’m super glad that Jason will be here to make sure you don’t go crazy.”

“He’ll make me crazy,” Renae muttered under her breath. Kelly squeezed her shoulders once before standing.

“Is it okay if I run over to Uncle Dobby’s for a little while? I wanted to take them some of the rosemary sourdough.” She turned to Jason. “It’s his favorite.”

“Sure.” Renae sighed, resigned to her fate.

Jason followed Kelly to the door where he’d left his bags, and she turned to him when she reached the door.

“I’m really glad to finally meet you. Mom’ll be okay. She just never has adapted well to change. And this is a big one.” She threw her arms around Jason in a hug, catching him off guard. By the time he’d regained his equilibrium to hug her back, she was gone.

Jason had brought his sax, a duffel filled with clothes, and a backpack full of library books. He rummaged through his things to find the book he was looking for and then went to lecture Renae about proper nutrition and the importance of folic acid while trying not to look at her. He was feeling triumphant with his victory, cocky even, but a niggling doubt of unease that he might be handling this all wrong was tickling the base of his skull. Nevertheless, excitement at finally being a part of her pregnancy, the prenatal development of his child, overshadowed everything else.

K
elly must have told Dalton and Alyssa about Jason when she took over the bread, because Renae’s phone started ringing thirty minutes after her daughter left the house and didn’t stop for two days. First her mother, then Jessie, then every other one of her girlfriends called to say how wonderful it was the baby’s father was back in the picture. Renae hadn’t even known all of them knew she was pregnant. When Les called to make sure she was okay with Jason there, she’d lied and told him everything was fine, although things were far from fine

The first morning after he’d stayed in the guest room, Renae had awoken to find Jason in her kitchen making breakfast. She gawked at his appearance: sleep-tousled hair, flannel pajama bottoms, oversized t-shirt, glasses? Jason was sporting a pair of dark-framed glasses that were surprisingly super sexy. They framed his determined, blue eyes as he poured her a cup of coffee and put it on the table in front of her.

“You get one cup of coffee a day. It’s half-caf.”

She grunted and took a sip of the brew, deemed it sub-par in her hazy state and added two spoonfuls of sugar and a dollop of cream. She did her best to ignore the sleepy sex god in front of her. He saw her with the sugar spoon and continued.

“And you need to watch your sugar intake. Gestational diabetes is a bitch.” He motioned to all the cookies on the countertop. “You can’t eat all this.”

Nobody talked to her this early in the morning. Kelly knew better. Certainly nobody talked to her like this. “They’re gifts. Don’t be an asshole, Jason. I’m a grown up and perfectly capable of taking care of myself.” She took another sip of her coffee. “This sucks.”

He grinned at her widely, obviously a morning person. “It just takes some getting used to. It’s better for the baby.”

She could tell that all this better for the baby stuff was going to get old real quick. “You can’t come in here and dictate my life like this.”

“Oh, but I can. As soon as you decided I didn’t need to know about my baby, you dictated my life for me. This is how I can make it up to you both.” He set a plate in front of her, and she looked at it warily. “A two egg-white omelet with spinach and Canadian bacon, and here…” he set a bowl of fruit next to the plate. “Blueberries and strawberries and a glass of milk.”

Despite her anger at his suddenly controlling demeanor, the breakfast looked delicious. Her morning sickness had faded away in the last two weeks, and she suddenly found herself ravenous. Renae ate, begrudgingly offering murmurs of appreciation, to which Jason’s ever-present smirk annoyed her to no end. This was going to be a long holiday.

That was four days ago, and the mornings hadn’t gotten any easier. She had cut her coffee intake back, but that half-caf stuff was crap, and she wasn’t getting used to it.

Now it was Christmas Eve, and she was trying to get everything ready for dinner with her family. It was a tradition. Dalton came over with Alyssa and their children, their mother, and Kelly. Jason had made himself scarce during the day while Renae had been at work, but today she was off, and getting ready for dinner. Jason had spent the morning at the hospital with his dad but had been around all day long. Totally up her butt.

His sudden controlling behavior reeked of Cody, although Jason seemed to be more concerned about the baby and its safety. The control didn’t extend to his own self-gratification. But control was control, and Renae was having a hard time giving it up.

He was driving her crazy with his dictates and his smell. He was everywhere. She bent over to arrange the gifts under the tree and he was telling her how to squat so she didn’t pull a muscle. She put the roast in the oven and he was taking it out of her hands so she wasn’t lifting too much weight. When he followed her to the bathroom to make sure she was okay, she lost it.

“I can’t do this!” She shouted as she flushed the toilet.

“Do what?” The innocence in his voice really rankled her.

“I can’t have you following me all over the place, checking on me, correcting me, telling me how I should do things. I am forty-five years old, have managed a pregnancy already without you, and am perfectly capable of taking care of myself!”

“Prenatal medicine had come a long way in eighteen years, Renae. There are so many things you don’t know.”

“How do you know I don’t know?”

“Do you have a birthing plan written down?”

“A what?”

“See?” He raked his hands through his already disheveled hair, and Renae couldn’t help but want to smooth it out for him. She resisted the urge, gritting her teeth together.

“Look.” She was forcing a calm she didn’t feel. “This is Christmas, and I have a houseful of people coming over for dinner tonight. It is always stressful for me, trying to please my mother since my dad died. You can help me get ready for them, and we can try to pretend to be pleasant to each other, or you can fight with me about every little thing I do wrong. You choose.”

He expelled a whooshing breath, sending a minty stream of warmth across her face. “You’re right. I’m sorry. The stress can’t be good for the baby.”

Renae threw her hands in the air. The baby. At least he cared about the baby even though his manner of showing it was driving her crazy.

“So what’s next on your agenda? Give me something to do.”

“You can pull down the Christmas dishes and wash the dust off them.” She led him into the kitchen and pointed to the top shelf of her pantry where the box of dishes were.

Somehow, they managed to work together the rest of the day, Jason helping where Renae asked, visibly chewing on his lip when she purposely did something to annoy him. He was making an effort to not stress her further, and she appreciated it.

But he still smelled too damned good.

About an hour before everyone was due to arrive, Renae found Jason rearranging the packages under the tree.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re exchanging gifts tonight, right? I was adding some.”

“You brought presents for my family?”

He shrugged. “They’re mine now, too… by default, of course.”

Shaking her head, “I’m going to jump into the shower for a minute. Will you put the green bean casserole in the oven in thirty minutes and take out the roast?”

“Sure. Will there be time for me to shower too?”

The image of him naked and soapy floated through her mind, and she forced it back. “Sure.” It sounded choked, but that wasn’t anything new for her. Renae’s voice had been doing weird things around Jason since he’d showed up on her doorstep. She left him by the tree and went to her bathroom to shower.

When she was finished, she stood in front of her mirror in her underwear studying her body. She’d done this a lot lately, wondering what it would look like as her pregnancy progressed. Before she’d gotten pregnant, her body hadn’t been bad for a woman her age. In fact, compared to others she knew, it was pretty great. Just jiggly. Now, her waistline was disappearing, and her stomach had begun to swell a little.

When she’d been younger, her body had bounced back after giving birth to Kelly really quickly. Now she wasn’t sure what was going to happen to it. She wasn’t vain about her looks, but with Jason suddenly underfoot, she found herself trying to dress nicer, eschewing her sweats for jeans, and trying to keep her hair clean.

As she dressed carefully for the evening in a new dress she’d bought before Jason made his grand re-entrance back in her life, she continued studying her appearance, wondering what he would think.

Her legs were good, and she’d bought the dress to show off that particular feature. She knew her family would be looking at her waistline, and she honestly didn’t want her pregnancy to be the main topic of conversation at dinner. So she’d bought a dress with ruching at the waistline to disguise her bump and show off her cleavage.

She affixed a pair of pearl earrings and was struggling with the clasp of the matching necklace when a knock on her bedroom door startled her, and she dropped it.

“Come in.” She called as she got on her hands and knees to find the necklace.

“What are you doing?” Jason’s voice poured over her with concern, and she looked up to find him staring at her, piercing blue eyes filled with desire and pasted to her breasts. Renae looked down at herself and realized she wasn’t leaving much to the imagination. She climbed up to her knees and adjusted the top of her dress as Jason walked over to where she was kneeling, his hand out to help her up.

She grabbed it and ignored the tingles, pulling herself up to her feet.

“I dropped my necklace down there when you knocked.”

He bent easily and picked it up. “This necklace?” She watched his Adam’s apple work as he swallowed and she nodded. “Turn around. I’ll put it on.”

She couldn’t ignore the electricity flowing between them as she turned and lifted her hair to expose her neck to him. She felt his knuckles graze the sensitive flesh there and closed her eyes to the sensation.

“What did you need?”

“Oh… Um, the Brussel sprouts. What were you planning to do with them?” His voice near her ear was low and tickled, sending a shiver up her spine.

“Sautee with cranberries and brown sugar, but that’s a last minute thing. I can do it in a minute.”

“Sounds good,” he whispered.

She turned to find his eyelids heavy, his pupils wide, the irises a deep cobalt color. The intensity of his stare made her knees weak and her tummy do strange things.

“You can shower now. I’ll take care of the rest.”

He shook his head slightly, as if to clear it, and Renae realized she wasn’t the only one having lusty thoughts tonight. She put her hand on his firm chest to push him back, but he covered it with his own.

“I-” Her heart dropped at the tender look on his face. She wanted this to be pleasant so badly, but getting her hopes up would be stupid.

She shook her head, “Let’s just get through this evening, okay?”

Finally, Jason took a step back. “Okay.” He firmed his face and turned. “See you in a minute.”

Ten minutes later, Renae was in the kitchen tossing the Brussel sprouts in a large sauté pan with the cranberries and brown sugar, coating them with the glaze the brown sugar was creating with the melted butter.

“Smells amazing in here…” Jason sniffed appreciatively as he sauntered into the kitchen, the citrusy smell of his cologne wafting around him.

“Thanks. You want to put the trivets on the table? Dalton and Alyssa just called. They just picked Mom up and should be here soon. And we need some Christmas music on, too.”

Jason was messing with the remote to the TV, trying to find the station that played music when Dalton’s voice rang out. “Merry Christmas!”