The Baby Arrangement. Lisa Dyson
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“No, no, please.” She’d get down on her hands and knees to beg if that was what it took.
He reached for the shower-door handle.
“Don’t open the—” she yelled without thinking, sucking in a breath when her head reminded her to lower her voice. “It might escape.”
“It won’t hurt you, Bree. In fact, it’s probably more afraid of you than you are of it.”
“Isn’t that what people always say about small creatures who are venomous or carry disease?”
He ignored her and opened the shower door a little at a time. Bree squeezed her eyes to mere slits as he stepped carefully inside the stall, shutting the door behind him. He cornered the frog and carefully picked it up. Cupped in Nick’s large hands, the frog looked smaller than she’d originally thought. Maybe two to three inches at most.
“What are you going to do with it?” she asked when he stepped out of the shower.
He held the frog gently in one hand. “I’ll take it outside and release it.” He winked at her. “Don’t worry, I won’t do it too close to your cabin.” He gestured to her bandaged foot with his head. “Don’t forget, you can’t get that wet.”
“I know. I thought it might be easier to take a bath.” She gestured to the separate tub. Truthfully, she’d forgotten that she had to keep her foot dry. That seemed to be the least of her problems. The total loss of memory about what had happened last night was her major concern.
“There’s probably a plastic laundry bag somewhere if you’d like me to seal up your foot.”
That sounded like a better idea. A long soak in the tub would feel wonderful, but if she wanted to wash her hair, the shower would be best. “Good idea, but I can handle it myself.”
Bree heard Nick go outside and she searched the room for the laundry bag while trying to put two and two together. The hard part was that she had no two and two to put together. Her memory was completely blank.
She had drunk a lot more than she usually allowed herself, that much was clear. After she’d passed out in the doctor’s office, embarrassing herself beyond measure, she remembered coming to and finding the doctor almost finished stitching her foot. Nick had actually been very sweet by distracting her while the nurse gave her a tetanus booster shot. Bree moved her arm tentatively, happy that it didn’t hurt too much, at least not yet. Although nothing was as bad as her headache at the moment.
She remembered Nick walking her back to her cabin. But wait a minute... They’d stopped walking when they’d heard laughing in the distance and Bree had recognized her girlfriends’ voices. So they’d followed the sound to the hot tub. Right, the hot tub.
Amber had been curled up in a towel on a lounge chair, an empty champagne bottle on the ground next to her. Hannah had sat on the edge of the pool, dangling her feet in the water. Roxie. What had Roxie been doing? Oh, right. She’d been in the hot tub with a couple of other people.
She remembered something else, but had no clue how much time had passed between the two memories. There was something about a boat. Had they been on a boat?
The rest was a blank until she woke up this morning next to Nick. At least they’d been fully clothed.
Had they slept together? Evidence pointed to them doing just what Nick had suggested. Sleeping or—more precisely—passing out.
Nick walked back into the cabin then, ending her musings. He headed directly to the small kitchen sink in the corner of the cabin and washed his hands.
“Have you been tested?” she asked.
He spun around. “Tested?”
“Yes. Have you been tested for...for STDs?” The thought that she might have been so stupid made her stomach roil.
“Did you remember something from last night?” he asked, instead. He turned away to finish washing his hands as if she’d merely inquired about the time.
“I don’t like to take chances in case something happened between us. Just answer the question. Have you, or have you not, been tested recently?” She could barely breathe, anticipating his reply.
He dried his hands on the towel hanging on the side of the upper cupboard and finally faced her, a dead serious look on his face.
“Yes, I’ve been tested. You don’t have to worry.” He was hiding an emotion that Bree couldn’t quite decipher.
“You don’t have to worry about me, either,” she said quickly, in case that was what his reaction was about. Her gynecologist tested her yearly, but you had to be having unprotected sex to contract an STD.
That counted her out since she hadn’t had sex since—
“Did you find a plastic bag?” he asked.
She was happy to change the subject. “No, I got distracted.” Trying to remember if she’d screwed up last night.
He walked to the closet next to the bathroom door and opened it. He reached in for the dry-cleaning bag hanging there. “This will work perfectly. Do you have a rubber band or something to go around your leg to seal it?”
She nodded and hobbled to the bathroom where she had a hair scrunchie she thought would fit over her foot and ankle. He’d followed her and she handed it to him.
“Sit down over there.” He pointed to the closed toilet.
“I told you I can do it myself.”
“I heard you the first time,” he said. “But if your head feels anything like mine, then it’s going to explode if you lean over.”
As much as she wanted to argue, she knew he was probably right.
She took a seat and watched the top of his head as he dealt with the plastic bag, wrapping it tightly enough around her ankle to keep out water. He looked up at her and asked, “Is that too tight?”
She shook her head, and that same vague memory came to her as his gaze met hers. She couldn’t wrap her head around it because it didn’t make sense. “Were we on a boat last night?”
“A boat?” he asked. “You remember being on the boat, too?”
So there was a boat.
She nodded slightly. “We were all there. You, me, my friends.” She paused. “Wait. There was another guy there, too.”
“Pete. Pete Buchanan.”
She nodded. “Yes. That sounds familiar.”
“He’s my cousin, although he’s legally my brother. My parents raised him after his mom and dad were killed in a car accident when he was eight.”
“Oh, that’s terrible,” she said. “So it was his boat we were on?”
“No, we borrowed it from a friend of his who lives in San Juan. This vacation was all Pete’s idea. He thought I needed to get away, stop focusing on work so much.”
“Sounds familiar,” she said. “That’s exactly what the girls said to me. ‘Go have a vacation fling,’ they said. ‘You work too hard.’”
“I guess we have that in common,” he said quietly.
He was being very nice to her, and she hadn’t been as thankful as she should be. In fact, she’d been openly hostile. Opening her mouth to speak, she was suddenly very aware that he still had his hand on her calf. Their eyes met and she couldn’t look away. Without thinking she put her hand to his bearded cheek, remembering the softness of it when he’d kissed her on the beach.
She wanted him to kiss her again. In fact, she wanted more than a kiss. She wanted him. All of him. She wanted to take her girlfriends’ advice and have that vacation fling.
With Nick.
She