That she could lean in and touch her lips to his.
But of course, she didn’t say so.
She wasn’t going to get weak and blow this.
Too much was at stake.
* * *
The next several days settled into a routine of sorts. Jamie ran every morning. Worked with his tennis team most afternoons during the week. Started two of his online classes. Drove up to the university in Mission Viejo to his campus office to attend meetings and prepare for classes there that were due to start after Labor Day. He had dinner with Tom a couple of times.
And had dinner with Axel and his mother, Sandra, once, too. She’d made steak tartare. Was a great cook. A good mother. And an immensely attractive woman who did absolutely nothing for him. He enjoyed the evening. Figured, when she said they’d do it again sometime, that he’d accept that invitation.
He didn’t tell them, or anyone in his life other than Tom, that he was going to be a father. Things were still so new. So private. He wanted to savor the news for himself, not answer questions about the somewhat unusual choice he’d made.
Which meant that, other than the brief time spent with Tom, the only time he could really be himself, live the life that was coursing through him, was during his visits with Christine. With his baby.
They had them regularly in various locations and during different times of day, and he got through everything else on his schedule just to get to those visits. Christine had been right. Bringing out his attraction to her, naming it for the transference it was, made things much easier between them. They’d been to the grocery store once, just chatting as they walked up and down the aisles together with their own baskets, each doing their own shopping. When they both reached for the same box of bran cereal, they might have touched hands, but he saved them from the collision just in time. He let her have the first box and took the second for himself.
A couple of days later they met at a bagel shop midmorning, for a quick snack. She liked her bagels plain with butter. He was a cream cheese guy all the way.
The Sunday after her visit to his classroom, they took a walk on the beach. He’d hesitated before suggesting that particular outing. The beach was a constant in his life, a part of every day, which meant that it would play an important role in his child’s life as well and should be familiar.
It was also the place where he felt closest to Emily.
A place he reserved in his mind for just the two of them.
Needing Emily to be as much a part of their baby’s life as possible was what eventually convinced him to suggest that Christine join him there. She was attending a fundraising cruise later that day, but had agreed to meet him just after sunrise. In his running shorts, T-shirt and tennis shoes, he waited for her at the parking lot to the Marie Cove resident public beach entrance.
And glanced away when his body immediately reacted to the feminine thighs shaped softly by the black capri yoga pants she had on. The colorful midlength sport top that outlined a stomach still completely firm and flat didn’t help.
With a flip-flop in each
hand, she walked up barefoot to tell him hello.
Maybe he should have run first, so he’d be smelly and not feeling at all sexy when she met his gaze and smiled.
An easy smile.
An understanding one?
As soon as they were on the sand, it seemed suddenly mandatory that he tell Christine that he sometimes talked to his deceased wife as he ran.
“Did she run with you?”
“No,” he said as he noticed a series of little bird tracks left in the sand. Something he didn’t generally see as he ran. “She was always a bike rider. When we were in high school, she’d ride her bike and I’d run alongside her.”
“You didn’t like riding?”
“I did. I still do. We used to take day, and half-day rides. I just prefer running for daily exercise.”
“I hate exercising.”
The news kind of pleased him. Seemed to put more of a separation between the two of them in real life, as if the only things they had in common were bran cereal and the baby she was carrying for him.
“Which is why I play racquetball.”
That was in the tennis family. He left the comment alone in his mind.