Bound By A Baby. Maureen Child

      Tula knew something was different, she just couldn’t put her finger on what it was exactly. Ever since she and Nathan had returned from their walk, Simon had been…watching her. Not that he hadn’t looked at her before, but there was something more in his gaze now. Something hungry, yet wary.

      There was a strained sense of anticipation hanging over the beautiful house that only added to the anxiety she had been feeling for days. She was on edge. As though there were tightened wires inside her getting ready to snap.

      Just being around Simon was difficult now. As it had been ever since that kiss. He made her want too much. Need too much. And now, with those dark eyes locked on her and heat practically rolling off of him in waves, she could hardly draw a breath.

      She made it through dinner and through Nathan’s bath time and was about to read the baby his nightly story. Oh, she knew the baby didn’t understand the words or what the stories meant, but she enjoyed the quiet time with him and felt that Nathan liked hearing the soft soothing tones of her voice as he fell asleep. Before she could begin, Simon walked into the nursery.

      Tula smiled in spite of the coiled, unspoken strain between them. For the first time, he was inviting himself to Nathan’s nightly ritual. “Hi.”

      “I thought I’d join you tonight.” Simon looked at her for a long moment, then shifted his gaze to the tiny boy in the crib. Slowly, he walked across the floor and Tula sensed that she was witnessing something profound. Simon’s features were taut, his eyes unreadable. There was a careful solicitude in his attitude she’d never seen before.

      Leaning over the crib, Simon looked down at the boy in the pale blue footed jammies as if really seeing him for the first time.

      “Simon?” she asked quietly, as if hesitant to break whatever spell was spinning out into the room. “What is it? You’ve been weird all night. Is something wrong?”

      He shifted a quick look at her before turning his gaze back on Nathan. The baby stared up at him, then rubbed his eyes and sighed sleepily.

      “Wrong?” Simon echoed in a thick hush of sound. “No. Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s right. I got the paternity test results this afternoon.”

      She sucked in a breath of air. Of course, from the beginning, she had known that Simon was Nathan’s father. Sherry wouldn’t have lied about something like that. But Tula could understand that Simon, a demon for rules and order and logic, would have to wait to be convinced.

      “And?” she prompted.

      “He’s my son.” Three words, spoken with a sort of dazed wonder that sent a flutter of something warm racing along her spine.

      He reached into the crib and cupped one side of Nathan’s face in the palm of his hand. The baby smiled up at him and Simon’s eyes went soft, molten with emotions too deep to speak. Tula watched it all and felt her own heart melt as a man recognized his son for the very first time.

      Seconds ticked past and still it was as if the world had taken a breath and held it. As if the planet had stopped spinning and the population of the earth had been reduced to just the three of them.

      This small moment was somehow so intense, so important, that the longer it went on the more Tula felt like an outsider. An intruder on a private scene. That thought hurt far more than she would have thought it could.

      For weeks now, she alone had been the baby’s entire universe. When she was forced to share Nathan with Simon, she was still the central figure because Nathan’s father was, if nothing else, a stubborn man. Determined to hold himself emotionally apart even while making room in his life for the boy. Now she saw that Simon had accepted the truth. He knew Nathan was his and he would be determined to have his son for himself.

      As it should be, Tula reminded herself, despite the pain ratcheting up in the center of her chest. This was what Sherry had wanted—that Nathan would know his father. That Simon and his son would make a family.

      A family, she told herself sadly, of two.

      With that thought echoing over and over through her mind, Tula stepped back from the crib, intending to leave the two of them alone. But Simon reached out and grabbed her arm, pulling her to a stop.

      “Don’t go.”

      She looked up at him. The room was dark but for the night-light that projected constellations of stars onto the ceiling. In the dim glow of those stars, she watched his eyes and shook her head. “Simon, you should have a minute alone with Nathan. It’s okay.”

      “Stay, Tula.” His voice was low, hardly more than a dark rumble of sound.

      “Simon…”

      He pulled her closer until he could wrap one arm around her shoulders. Then he turned her toward the crib and they both looked down at the boy who had fallen asleep. There would be no story tonight. Nathan’s tiny features were perfect, the picture of innocence. His small hands were flung up over his head, his fingers curling and relaxing as if in his dreams he was playing catch with the angels.

      “He’s beautiful,” Simon whispered.

      Tula’s throat tightened even further. It was a miracle, she thought, that she could even breathe past the hard knot of emotion clogging her throat. “Yes, he is.”

      “I knew he was mine, right from the first,” he admitted. “But I had to be sure.”

      “I know.”

      He turned his head to look down at her. Emotions charged his eyes with sparks that dazzled her. “I want my son, Tula.”

      “Of course you do.” Her heart cracked a little further. He would have Nathan and she would have…Lonely Bunny.

      “I want you, too,” he admitted.

      “What?” Jolted out of her private misery, she could only stare up into brown eyes that shimmered with banked heat. This she hadn’t seen coming. She hadn’t expected. Something inside her woke up and shivered. Was he saying…

      “Now,” he said, drawing her from the room into the hall, leaving the sleeping infant laying beneath his night-light of floating stars.

      “Simon—”

      “I want you now, Tula,” he repeated, drawing her close, framing her face with his hands.

      Ah, she thought. He wanted Nathan forever. He wanted her now. That was the difference. She chided herself silently for even considering that he might have meant something different. A twist of regret grabbed at her but she relentlessly pushed it aside.

      She’d been in his home for nearly a week. She knew Simon Bradley was a cool, calm man who didn’t make decisions lightly. He liked to think he responded to his gut instincts, but the truth was, he looked at a situation from every angle before making a decision.

      He wasn’t the kind of man who would take some sexual heat and a shared love for a child and build it into some crazy happily-ever-after scenario. That was all in her mind.

      And her heart.

      She should have known better. How silly, she told herself, staring up into his eyes. How foolish she’d been to allow herself to care for him. To idly spin daydreams that had never had a chance to come true.

      The three of them weren’t a family. They were a temporary unit. Until Simon and Nathan had found their way together. Then good old “Aunt Tula” would go home and maybe come to the city once in a while for a visit.

      As Nathan got older, he would no doubt resent time spent with her as simply time lost with his friends. He would be awkward with her, she thought, her heart breaking at the realization. Kind to a distant relative when his father forced him to be polite.

      The little boy she loved so much wouldn’t remember her love or the comfort he had derived from it. How she had sung to him at night and played peekaboo in the mornings. He wouldn’t know that she would have done any thing for him. Wouldn’t recall that they