“Apparently she just wanted to flirt with Mitch,” Piper said. “You may have competition as her number one guy.”
“Never gonna happen.” As if to prove his point, Parker turned her head toward the sound of his voice and waved her arms. “That’s my girl.” Smoothly, he shifted the baby from Mitch’s arms into his own, where she snuggled in, content.
A flicker of something that might have been disappointment flickered over Mitch’s face. But he covered it with mock affront. “I’m wounded, Parker. I thought I was the only one for you.”
Piper shook her head. “Daddy’s girl for sure.” But there was such love under the chagrin as she looked at her family.
“How old is she?” Tess asked.
“Three and a half months. I swear, she’s the best oops ever.”
“She wasn’t planned?”
“Good gracious no. We’d been married like five minutes, and a baby this soon was so not our intention. But the Universe had other plans.” Piper leaned in to kiss her daughter’s cheeks. “Yes it did!”
Not knowing what else to say, Tess bit into one of the crostini. She was way outside her milieu right now and didn’t want to inadvertently stick her foot in it. As a staunch career woman, she absolutely couldn’t imagine that kind of an oops being a good thing. It was awesome that Piper and Myles had made the best of the situation, and clearly they doted on each other and their baby. But Tess doubted that she or anybody among her circle of friends would respond so positively to that kind of bomb. Still, watching them together set up a funny little ache in her chest.
She’d never thought much about kids and family. Marriage was something way out on the horizon. Kids were even further past that. She had goals, and she’d been on the fast track to meet them from the moment she graduated Yale with her MBA. There hadn’t been anybody she’d even momentarily considered a candidate for a husband. Truthfully, she’d thought maybe she was too much like her father for marriage.
But it seemed she’d been wrong about her dad. Maybe she was wrong about herself. Her gaze swung to Mitch. As he met her eyes from across the room, she thought maybe, just maybe, for the first time in her life, something was more important than her career. Which meant she’d better nail this proposal so she and Mitch got the chance to find out.
Chapter 7
“Does this sauce smell off to you?”
When Tess held up the spoon, Mitch obligingly took a sniff. “It smells heavenly.” He started to lean in to sniff her, but she screwed up her face in a frown, attention back on the sauce.
“Something’s not right.” She put the spoon in her mouth, considering. “Too much garlic? Or maybe I need a
touch more anchovy paste.” Grabbing a fresh spoon from the drawer, she scooped up more sauce, blew on it gently, and offered it to him. “Here, you taste.”
Tasting pasta sauce should not be this sexy. Mitch wondered if she realized how charmingly domestic she looked, fussing over an enormous meal in his kitchen. Did it make him a chauvinist if he imagined her with a little apron on to complete the picture? And maybe those power heels and nothing else?
“Delicious.”
She still didn’t seem quite satisfied, fluttering her hands in frustration. “Agggh.”
He snagged her neatly around the waist, lacing his fingers at the small of her back. “Baby, relax. It’s gonna be fine.”
“This needs to be perfect.”
“My family is many things, but perfect isn’t one of them. Are you more nervous about the presentation or about cooking for all of them?”
He’d known she was anxious about the family dinner. He got it. The Campbell clan was…a lot. Especially for somebody who’d been an only child. Remembering what she’d said about cooking relaxing her, he’d made a bid to be host this week, so everybody was coming here. Tess had jumped at the idea of cooking and had, as far as he could tell, pulled out almost every pot, pan, dish, and cooking implement he owned—which, okay, wasn’t as much as a kitchen like his would suggest. She’d drafted him to wash and chop and be general gopher, while she made use of the food processor he’d never even taken out of the box to create the filling that was going into the little pockets of pasta she’d made from scratch. They’d worked easily together, laughing, talking. But the closer time came to the actual dinner, the more wound up she got.
“I’m not nervous.”
“Really? Because you look a little green.” She was, as his grandmother was apt to say, looking a little peaked.
“I still feel a little off from the jet lag. And I’m worried about getting everything ready at once. It’s been ages since I attempted anything so complex.” Patting his chest, she shoved back and went to check on the bread in the oven. “As to the presentation, I’d feel better about doing this in a boardroom instead of a dining room.”
“Do you want me to set up a projector with a PowerPoint on the wall?” He said it as a joke. The flicker of hope across her face had him laughing.
The doorbell rang.
“Damn it.” Her fingers briefly strangled a kitchen towel, her lips pressing into a thin line.
“They’re going to love it.” To emphasize the point, and because he knew he couldn’t touch her for the next few hours, Mitch kissed her one last time. A soft, lingering kiss that would, hopefully distract her from the nerves and tide him over until the hordes had departed. Tess’s eyes were glazed and her cheeks prettily pinked when he pulled back, her hand resting against his chest, over his pounding heart. Mitch lifted that hand to brush another kiss over her knuckles. “I’m gonna go let in the starving masses.”