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Varushka shook her head, looking grim. “Why are you giving her the hammer to break your heart with? If you already know things between you are going to end, why even let it start? Maybe you’ll be happy for the moment, but you’ve had your heart broken enough in this life, my friend. If she is your choice, I understand that, but I worry for you. I worry for Beau. She needs her father’s attention on her, not on his broken heart. And she doesn’t need to get attached to a woman who won’t stay. Or do you think you could charm her into staying?”
He groaned in self-annoyance. “I tried to let her go, but I like her too much. I’m just hoping that eventually Beau will charm her and she’ll choose to stay with us.”
“That’s a big task for a baby. And then what? Beau would have an excellent father and maybe a resentful mother.” She encouraged Ruslan to kick his feet. “If you’re going to bring someone to our ways, you’d be better off with someone like my cousin Antonia. She still lives in Russia, but I’m sure with your wealth you can arrange for a visa if you like each other well enough. She’d be an excellent mother for Beau.”
Her eyes twinkled. It wasn’t the first time she’d tried to sell him on the idea of her cousin, having gone as far as showing him her Facebook profile, complete with pictures of her helping Varushka with Ruslan.
“Even if Antonia doesn’t suit you, there are several mothers who are single at the groups we go to, although I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that. I may have to tell you which ones are really single, though, and not just looking for a diversion from their husbands. You have a bad effect on married women.”
“But not on you?” he asked with feigned flirtation.
“Have you seen my husband?” She grinned impishly. “There’s a reason I’m already looking forward to making our next baby.”
Will barked a laugh, which startled the toddler with the mom next to him. He felt bad, but the woman smiled coyly at him rather than giving him a dirty look.
Varushka leaned close to him and said, “That one is married.”
The two of them laughed, and he caught a glimpse of Juliet watching them with curiosity.
He stared at her a long moment, and even from this distance he could see her cheeks turn pink. Slowly, she reached up and pulled the bobby pins from her hair, holding his gaze the entire time. He had to glance away and realized that he might have created a monster. She knew one of his weaknesses and was using it against him. He’d have to punish her for it later.
Varushka sighed and patted him on the arm. “Oh . . . I know that look. I can see my warnings are already too late.” She sighed. “If things end badly and you want to talk, you must come for coffee. I don’t have a lot of experience with dating, but Konstantin did break my heart once. I remember all too well how it feels.”
Later, when Will emerged from the change room, Juliet was surrounded by women. He recognized three from the swim class, and the other was the young woman who worked at the front desk. As he approached, Juliet broke away from them and grabbed the diaper bag from his shoulder. She gave the group of women a friendly wave that seemed tense. He brushed a kiss along her temple, and she smiled up at him, but then made a beeline for the door.
“Making friends?” he asked, wondering what on earth was going on.
“I’ll explain when we get in the truck.”
They made their way to the parking lot, and Will found himself looping an arm around Juliet’s waist when a man checked her out. Now that she was wearing his collar, he was already ridiculously possessive.
“So what did you think? I wasn’t wearing a Speedo, but I think my ‘Little Bunny Foo Foo’ lip-sync is damned sexy.”
“You’ll have to sing it for me again later, just to refresh my memory,” she teased.
He kissed her smirking mouth and for a moment things felt too weirdly perfect, as if he were a married man with a lovely wife and adorable baby. It hit him like a truck. This was exactly the feeling Juliet had probably been wanting to avoid—as though they’d skipped all the getting-to-know-you fun parts of their relationship and moved straight into happy family territory. He pulled away before she did, having spooked himself and trying not to spook her. Normal couples didn’t go to mommy-and-me swim class as a third date.
Or maybe that was a single-parent reality . . .
Or maybe bringing Juliet with them this morning had been rushing things.
As he buckled Beau’s car seat into the backseat of the truck, he struggled to get the sudden wave of anxiety under control. Just because they looked like a happy little family to the outside world didn’t mean that they were locked in for the long haul. If things didn’t work out with Juliet, it wasn’t like she was the baby’s mother. It wasn’t like they were married. She had her own place and . . .
Stupid. Why was he panicking?
He got into the truck. When he looked over at Juliet he realized she was clutching the diaper bag to her chest as though she’d been traumatized.
“What happened?” He prompted again as he pulled out of the parking lot.
Juliet gav
e a long, low, humorless laugh. “I’ve never dated a guy like you.”
“Like me? You mean the kink?”
“Well, there’s that, but that’s not what I’m talking about. That was . . . intense.”
“The women at swim group?”
