Caroselli's Christmas Baby. Michelle Celmer

you suggesting that we cheat on each other?” Even if it wasn’t a real marriage, that could be an obstacle. And while she was sure Nick would have no trouble finding willing participants, with her big belly and swelling ankles, she was fairly certain no men would be fighting for the chance to get into her maternity jeans.

      “I’m assuming you plan to use artificial insemination,” he said.

      She felt a little weird about discussing the particulars, but he was a part of this now. It would be his baby, too. “That or in vitro, which is much more reliable, but crazy expensive. Either way it could take several months.”

      “Or we could pay nothing at all,” he said.

      She must have looked thoroughly confused, because he laughed and said, “You have no idea what I’m talking about.”

      “I guess I don’t.”

      “Think about it.” He wiggled his eyebrows and flashed her a suggestive smile.

      Wait a minute. He couldn’t possibly mean—

      “Why pay a doctor to get you pregnant,” he said,

      “when we could just do it the old-fashioned way for free?”

      Two

      Terri gaped at Nick, her eyes—which were sometimes green and sometimes blue, depending on the light—wide with shock and horror. It took her several seconds to find her voice, and when she did, she said, a full octave higher than her usual range, “That was a joke, right?”

      “Actually, I’ve never been more serious.” Nick would be the first to admit it was a pretty radical idea, but on a scale of one to ten, this entire situation had a weird factor of about fifty.

      He had given Nonno’s offer a lot of thought and had come to the conclusion that he just wasn’t ready to settle down yet. It wasn’t so much the idea of being a father that put him off—he loved kids—but the marriage end of the deal that gave him the willies. His parents had gone through hell, and put Nick and his two older sisters through it, too. Now with his sister Jessica’s marriage in trouble, as well, the idea of marital bliss was nothing more than a fairy tale to him. And not worth the pain of the inevitable divorce. Not even for ten million dollars.

      It had never occurred to him that the actual marriage could be a sham. Not to mention so mutually advantageous. And who in his family would question the plausibility that after twenty years of devoted friendship, his and Terri’s relationship had moved to the next level? The women in his family ate up that kind of romantic garbage.

      Terri tucked her long dark hair behind her ears. He’d only seen her do this when she was nervous or uncomfortable, and that wasn’t very often. She was one of the most centered, secure and confident people he’d ever known. Sometimes this led to her being a touch impulsive, but in this instance could only work in his favor.

      “The sooner this kid is born, the better,” he told her. “So why would we spend a lot of time and money on procedures that could take months to work?”

      Indecision wrinkled the space between her brows and she picked at the frayed cuff of her sweatshirt. “Aren’t you worried that it might make things weird between us?” she asked.

      “Maybe a little,” he admitted. “But, haven’t you ever been curious?”

      “Curious?”

      He gave her arm a gentle nudge. “You’ve never wondered what it might be like if you and I …”

      It took an awful lot to embarrass her, but there was a distinct red hue working its way across her cheekbones. That was a yes if he’d ever seen one, even if she didn’t want to admit it. And he couldn’t deny that he’d thought about it himself more than a time or two. She was funny and smart and beautiful, so who could blame him?

      “I’ve never told you this,” he said. “But there was a time when I had a pretty serious crush on you.”

      She blinked. “You did?”

      He nodded. “Yep.”

       “When?”

      “Our junior year of high school.”

      She looked genuinely stunned. “I—I had no idea.”

      That’s because he’d never said a word about it. Up until then, he’d never viewed her in a sexual way. Nor, it seemed, did many other boys. She had been a late bloomer, a typical tomboy, lanky and tall—taller than all the other girls and even a fair share of the boys—and as far from feminine as a girl could be. But she’d spent the entire summer after their sophomore year in Europe with her aunt and something intriguing had happened. She left Chicago a girl, and returned a woman.

      Boys in school began paying attention to her, talking about her in the locker room, and he wouldn’t deny that she became the subject of a few of his own teenage fantasies. Not that he would have acted on those feelings. They were, after all, only friends, though that fact did little to erase the jealousy he felt when he saw her with other boys, or would hear the rumors of the things she had done with them. And as much as he liked how she changed, he resented her for it. He wanted the old Terri back. But he got over it, of course. What choice did he have?

      “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.

      “Aside from the fact that I thought it would probably freak you out?” He shrugged. “It was a crush. I had them all the time. And our friendship was too important to me to ruin over raging teenage hormones.”

      “But you would be willing to ruin it now?”

      “Maybe if we were sleeping together just for the sake of doing it, but this is different. We have a legitimate reason to have sex.”

      In his experience, romantic love and friendship occupied opposite sides of the playing field, and he would never let one interfere with the other. Which is why he was so sure that if they approached this situation logically, it would work. And when all was said and done, everyone would get exactly what they wanted.

      “It’s a means to an end,” he said. “It wouldn’t mean anything.”

      She shot him a look. “That’s just what every girl wants to hear when she’s considering sleeping with a man.”

      “You get my point. And yes, it could potentially change our relationship, but not necessarily for the worse. It might even bring us closer together.”

      She didn’t look convinced. Maybe she was opposed to the idea for an entirely different reason.

      “Do you have moral objections?” he asked. “Or is it just that you find the idea of sleeping with me revolting?”

      She rolled her eyes. “You are not revolting. And though it’s embarrassing to admit, I had kind of a crush on you once, too.”

      If that was true, she’d done one hell of a job hiding it. “When?”

      “It pretty much started the day I transferred into Thomas Academy school in fourth grade.”

      He recalled that day clearly, when she’d walked into his class, bitter, sullen and mad as hell. It was obvious to everyone in the elite private school that she was an outsider. And trouble. A fact she drove home that very first day when she had come up behind Nick on the playground and pushed him off his swing, knocking him face-first in the dirt. He wanted to shove her right back, but he’d had it drilled into him by his mother to respect girls, so he’d walked away instead. Which only seemed to fuel her lust for blood.

      For days he’d tolerated kicks in the shin, pinches on the arm, prods in the cafeteria line and endless ribbing from his buddies for not retaliating. With his parents in the middle of a nasty divorce, he’d had some anger issues of his own, and the unprovoked attacks started to grate on him. A week or so later she tripped him on his way to the lunch table, making him drop his tray and spill his spaghetti and creamed