Desire Collection: December Books 1 – 4. Elizabeth Bevarly

and turned her back on him.

      “Faye, you can’t keep avoiding me.”

      “I wasn’t avoiding you. We spoke.”

      “Through the written word only. And, yes, before you remind me again, I have been in touch with Lydia and, not so surprisingly, she canceled dinner. It seems she wasn’t quite ready for instant motherhood.

      “But, back to you—after you left I was worried about you and until I was certain I could take Casey out of state with me, I couldn’t exactly drop everything and come running to check on you, either.”

      She’d been aware of all that. She automatically went through the motions of making his coffee from the espresso machine in the corner. Once it was made to his preferred specifications, black and sweet, she carried his mug across to his desk.

      “As you can see, you had nothing to worry about. I’m fine.”

      Piers put the carrier with the sleeping baby on his desk and turned to face her. His hand shot up and his fingers captured her chin lightly, tilting her face toward his. A shiver of anticipation ran through her. Was he planning to kiss her? Here, in the office?

      “Still too many shadows, Faye. Too many secrets. I don’t want there to be any secrets between us,” he said gently. “Not anymore.”

      “Secrets? I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m an open book.”

      He laughed, a short, sharp sound that expressed his disbelief far more eloquently than any words could have done.

      “Okay, so you want to play it that way for now. Fine. We’ll get back to business, but you won’t be able to hide from me forever.”

      Casey chose that moment to wake and squawk his disapproval with his new surroundings. Faye was riveted by the sight of Piers, in full corporate splendor, lifting the child from the car seat and holding him to him as if he’d been doing it from the day Casey had been born. The little guy settled immediately.

      “You’re spoiling him,” Faye noted, settling behind her desk.

      “According to Meredith, you can’t spoil a baby. You can only love them. I’m inclined to agree.”

      Faye felt that all too familiar clench in her chest. She knew very well how it felt to love babies. And to lose them.

      “Have you had any more news from your lawyers?”

      “They tell me they’re going to attempt a case based on abandonment. As Quin’s next of kin, they believe I stand a strong chance of being able to adopt Casey outright. At the very least the emergency guardianship application has been approved.”

      “Are you sure that’s what you want to do? Adoption? It’s a big commitment. What if his mom changes her mind? What if even now she’s looking for him?”

      “She knew where to find me the first time, she can find me again. If she does reach out, then maybe we can get to the bottom of why she didn’t see fit to contact us earlier about Casey.”

      Faye thought back to the note. “Do you think she knew that Quin had...?” Her voice trailed away.

      “To be honest, no. I think she heard I was coming back to the house for Christmas and acted impulsively. Maybe she thought I was Quin. Who knows? From what we’ve been able to glean, she worked on a temporary basis for the company that catered for me. She’s very young, only nineteen. She’s from Australia and had been backpacking her way across the country and picking up casual work where she could. I don’t even know if Casey was born in Wyoming. Whatever the case, his place is with me.”

      Piers’s voice was emphatic on that last statement.

      “Well, as long as you realize he’s not like a toy you can pick up and put down at whim. He’s a lifetime commitment. When you start a new relationship, I hope, whoever she is, she’s on board with having a baby in her life.”

      Piers shot her a searing glance. She could see the banked irritation in his eyes.

      “What are you implying, Faye? That I’ll just ignore Casey when it suits me?”

      “I’m not implying anything. But, let’s face it, you’ve only had a few weeks with a baby, part of which you had with me and the rest with Meredith who probably hardly let you hold him once she got there. You didn’t have any work or other priorities to deal with, so you could focus completely on him. It’s not the real world. The reality involves dealing with fevers and colds, teething, colic, potty training, tantrums, sleepless nights on top of the busy schedule you usually keep. You seem to think it’s going to be a walk in the park, but it’s not like that. Raising a child is damn hard work.”

      “And you’d know because?” He pinned her under a hard stare, silently demanding she answer him.

      “I know because I’m not some Pollyanna who thinks everything is always going to be all right. Bad things happen. Life doesn’t always go the way you expect to.”

      As soon as she said the words she wished them back. It was almost the anniversary of Quin’s death. Piers knew as well as anyone else who’d suffered great loss that life could deliver unexpected blows along with the highs.

      She hastened to make amends. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m out of line. I’ll get out of your way. I have a meeting with the new brand manager at ten so I’d better get down to marketing.”

      “Yeah, you do that,” he said, his voice carrying a note of determination that made Faye’s stomach lurch a little. “And while you’re at it, ask yourself why you keep such strong emotional barriers up between you and everyone else. It’s not just me, is it? It’s everyone. Because while you’re questioning my ability to commit to Casey, I think perhaps you ought to be asking yourself why you’re not capable of committing to anything but your work.”

      She looked at him in shock. His acuity cut straight through everything and got immediately to the point. She took in a deep, steadying breath and met his gaze, but even as she did so she could feel the sting of tears burning at the backs of her eyes.

      Piers saw the moisture begin to collect and his expression turned stricken. “Faye, I’m sorry, this time I overstepped.”

      “No, it’s okay,” she said, blinking fiercely and waving a hand between them. “I’d better go.”

      * * *

      Piers watched her leave, feeling as if he was little more than a slug that had crawled out of a vegetable patch. What on earth had spurred him to be so cruel to Faye like that? Was it because she’d hit a nerve when questioning his commitment to Casey? Or had it been her comment about bad things happening to people? Which she apologized for, the voice at the back of his mind sternly reminded him. Either way, he knew he’d done wrong. He couldn’t afford to lose her and it wasn’t just because she knew his company almost as well as he knew it himself.

      The last two weeks without her had been oddly empty. Sure, he’d been busy with the baby, who’d already grown and changed in that short time. Yes, Meredith had helped him, but he’d made sure he’d been Casey’s primary caregiver. But Faye’s absence had made him all the more aware of what she’d come to mean to him on a personal level. If only he could get past that barrier she kept so firmly between them. He sensed the only way that would happen would be if he learned what had occurred in her past to make her so closed off and wary.

      Obviously his people had done a background check before she’d been offered the job here, but it had focused on her credentials and experience, and had been peripheral to what he needed to know about her now. Maybe he needed to delve a little deeper. A part of him cautioned him about digging into her past without her knowledge—warned him that if she wanted him to know that much about her, she’d tell him herself. But Piers didn’t get things done by waiting for other people. Sometimes you just had to take control and steer the course yourself. This was one of those times.

      By the time Faye returned from her meeting, Piers