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She cocked a brow even though she knew his last name was Logan. Same as the uncle and cousins who’d hired him. Still, it never hurt to let one’s adversary believe he hadn’t been worthy of much interest up to now.
To his credit, his surprise showed only in his eyes.
“Logan,” he supplied. “And, no, I do not have children.”
Eden nodded and made a mental note. A very crisp “No, I do not” rather than “Not yet” or “I haven’t been so fortunate.” She colored her responding “Ahh” with gentle implication.
“Your commercial was lovely to look at,” she said sincerely. “Almost made me want to get pregnant again. If someone could guarantee I’d be like the woman in your ad. Now, there’s a gal who looks as if she could have triplets and not lose any beauty sleep. Most of us moms with little ones are lucky if we brush our teeth before noon.”
From her peripheral vision, Eden saw the women in the room nod and smile.
“I hope I’m not being too personal, Ms. Carter,” LJ said, obviously realizing he could lose the ground he’d already gained if he wasn’t careful, “but you’re far more attractive than the actress who was hired for the commercial. If you have a child young enough to be teething, I think we put the wrong woman on TV.”
Garnet Kearn beamed at him. Wayne Thorpe and Miles Remington raised their brows as if it was an option worth considering.
Score: Logan, 1. Carter, 0.
Eden couldn’t ignore the fact that he’d just made her look like Gladys Kravitz, butting in where she didn’t belong. When she’d first received the memo regarding the meeting, she’d considered the invitation to be little more than a courtesy. Who needed a layperson’s input with an advertising pro onboard? Now that she’d met the whiz kid, she revised her opinion.
You need me, buddy boy. And I need you to protect my place of employment. She was determined to speak up whether he liked it or not.
Smiling as if she thought he’d paid her a compliment, Eden cracked her knuckles under the table. He might know advertising, but Mr. New York was about to discover that mommies and babies were her areas of expertise.
LJ relished the victory he’d just won. Before Ms. Carter had tossed in her two cents, he’d been about to tie this job into a bow pretty enough to impress his uncle. No way would he allow someone to undermine a victory that was only moments away.
Her gripe could waste a lot of time if the board wasn’t savvy about marketing. No one on any sofa in any home in America had ever bought a product or service because it promised to make him look and feel exactly the way he looked and felt sitting in front of his TV.
Advertising, even for services like those provided by the Children’s Connection, appealed to people’s fantasies, to their idealized versions of themselves and the lives they would like to lead. Who fantasized about being overworked, sleep deprived and covered in baby puke?
He decided to use her objection to hammer his point home. My apologies, beauty, but this is a business meeting, not Mommy and Me.
“I’m glad you found the commercial aesthetically pleasing.” He spoke directly to her. “We want to plant a strong, positive image in the mind of anyone looking into an adoption or fertility clinic.”
When her pale brows gathered and it appeared she was going to rebut, he held the floor tenaciously, shifting his attention to the others.
“It goes without saying that the Children’s Connection has suffered a number of blows to its image and that the result has been public questioning of the organization’s agenda. More crucially, this board’s basic values have come under attack. I intend to plant an image firmly in the minds of every viewer that leaves no doubt about the Children’s Connection’s first love—the creation of families. I want hopeful parents to know we are unabashedly romantic about helping to build those families and watching them grow. That we will be part of their lives far past inception or birth or an adoptive placement. The world may be cynical…the Portland Children’s Connection is not.”
LJ always knew when he’d hooked his audience. The energy in a conference room began to hum. If he felt it, he was making his point.
Around the table members of the board sat taller in their faux-leather chairs. LJ’s uncle Terrence and aunt Leslie linked hands atop the table. The unconsciousness of the gesture told LJ a great deal.
Though he kept his gaze on the others, he could feel the frustration simmering in the woman seated beside him. What was her beef? So the actress in the commercial was skinny. Eden Carter’s body was made to attract men, most of whom would go nuts over her more liberal curves. The subtle Southern lilt in her voice wouldn’t hurt, either.
He had a fleeting desire to apologize for cutting off her protest—very fleeting. He’d never been that nice in business. And since he was about to win his father’s approval for the first time in two decades, he wasn’t about to let a pretty blonde with a body image issue compete with his father-approval issue.
Beside him, the woman cleared her throat. When LJ looked at her, she smiled.
“That is a wonderful saying. ‘The world may be cynical. The Children’s Connection is not.’” She splayed a hand on her chest. “I’m a sucker for great sayings. I still get weepy over ‘You had me at hello.’ Still, if I understand the recent allegations, it’s our credibility that’s at question. We’re being called irresponsible. Or out-and-out liars.”
Damage control alert. LJ’s brow furrowed so deeply he could have grown carrots. Eden Carter looked and sounded like an angel, but as she turned to address the people around the table, she was far from heavenly. She was a bad-ass thorn in his side.
As she began speaking, he ground his teeth and felt pain stab his head. If she gave him a migraine, he was going to stop being polite.
“In our First-Time Moms class we tell women exactly what to expect,” she said in that soothing, eminently reasonable tone she had. “We insist they be armed with real-life information so their experience won’t overwhelm their expectations. The public should know that. They should know we educate and arm our clients with knowledge before they become parents and while they’re pregnant and after their babies arrive. Our prospective clients and all those nasty people who have been so rude to us need to know we would never ever try to snow anyone. We don’t merely value honesty around here, we insist on it.”
She thumped, actually thumped a fist on the table. He almost felt sorry for her, because she’d obviously forgotten that she was addressing a board of directors, not just a roomful of fellow employees. If this were a Frank Capra movie and Jimmy Stewart were on the board, fist-thumping idealism might work.
“If our intentions are in question,” she continued, as earnest as could be, “then, shouldn’t we be as frank as possible now? We don’t have to sugarcoat reality to make it palatable. The truth is good enough. The Children’s Connection is good enough.” She placed both palms on the table and sat forward in her chair. “I ought to know. I work here, and I’m a client.”
Hold the phone.
LJ’s brain, which was starting to hurt, scrambled to take in the information that she was a Children’s Connection client. By God, he loathed surprises.
How was she a client? Of which services had she availed herself? Adoption or the fertility clinic?
And what did she do here, anyway?
Racking his brain some more, he sought a polite way to remind everyone present that he was the professional here and that Little Bo Peep didn’t know advertising from a flock of sheep.
He opened his mouth, but applause came out. Huh? Frowning, he glanced around.
Every soul around the table had his or her hands in prayer position, clapping enthusiastically. Heads nodded. Broad, unmistakably proud smiles wreathed every face.
He looked to his left.
Eden Carter ducked her head humbly, adding an “Oh, pshaw” shrug before she picked up her plate of cookies and passed it around.
And he was worried about finding a polite way to discredit her?
His irritation rose and his head pounded harder with each “Ahhh” a bite of her apparently excellent baked goods inspired.
The hell with polite.
The meeting was out of his control, the first time he recalled that happening ever, and he had five feet, six inches of curving Betty Crocker to thank for it.
When the plate of cookies made it back to their end of the table, she reached in front of him and held it aloft. Unshakably pleasant, she offered, “Cookie? Only—”
“Three Weight Watchers points?” he recited along with her. “I heard.” Smiling with no humor at all, he reached for a perfectly round disk studded with chocolate chips. Examined it. “It looks good. And sweet.”
Returning the cookie to the plate, he curled his lips into something feral. “But I’m an Atkins man.” He leaned toward her, his words for her ears only. “See, I have a goal. Don’t think for one second that I’m going to let a little sugar get in my way.”
Chapter Two
“Then he looked at me with his beady eyes all scrunched up and nasty and said, ‘Don’t think for one second I’m going to be nice about this!’ Or something like that. That was the idea, anyway.”
Eden sat on an Elmo beach towel spread atop the grass in Woodstock Park and recounted the afternoon’s weirdness for her best friend and housemate, Liberty Sanchez. Eden’s accent, modulated and subtle on a typical day, sounded particularly twangy when anger became her overriding emotion. “Oh, mah Gaawwwwd, what a weasel.”
Snatching a red grape from the bag she’d brought for their dinner picnic and popping it into her mouth, Liberty shrugged with the fatalism she’d developed over her thirty years. “Sounds like a typical businessman. You get in his way, you’re dust.” Her near-black eyes narrowed. “Was it so important to make your point, Eden? I mean, I know you care about your business, but as long as what’s-his-face—”
“Lawrence Logan, Jr., rich boy.”
“As long as Junior saves the day, does it matter so much how he does it?”
Eden cast her friend a look of disbelief. “Since when did you decide the end justifies the means? I do like that you called him Junior, though.”
Remaining worked up, she slapped her hand on the towel, close to her playing son, who dropped his Elmo phone. Swiftly, Eden retrieved the toy and handed it back. “Sorry, honey. Mommy is in a snit, all right. You gotta bear with me. Some people get under my skin, and I just can’t scratch hard enough.”
“Maybe,” Liberty said with her usual dry brand of calm, “the problem is you scratch yourself and think the other person is going to bleed.”
Eden scowled at her best friend since middle school. “You have got to stop going to those twelve-step groups. You’re absolutely ruining my resentments.”
Liberty said nothing more. Wrapping up the grapes and stashing them in a plastic container along with a tofu quiche she’d made for their dinner, she stowed the container in a nylon backpack and slipped the straps over her shoulders. While Eden got Liam ready for the short walk home, Liberty shook out their blanket.
Watching her friend, Eden knew, as she’d always known, that although she and Liberty had reacted differently to their life circumstances, they’d both grown a protective armor that functioned as a second skin. Most of the time they understood each other quite well. They were excellent roommates and good friends. Moreover, Liberty was studying at night to be an ob-gyn nurse. Eden had wondered whether introducing a baby to the mélange would encourage Liberty to look elsewhere for housing, but her roommate’s enjoyment of babies had smoothed the path so far.
Fitting Liam into his front carrier became easier with an extra set of hands as Liberty wordlessly adjusted the straps Eden had trouble reaching.
“Thanks.” She passed Liberty the Elmo phone and took the cold purple teething ring Liberty handed her. Liam accepted it eagerly from his mother and began gumming. “You always know just what he needs. You sure you don’t want one of these? I know a great fertility clinic.”
Liberty’s laugh sounded like a squawk. “No, thank you.” She smoothed Liam’s dark baby curls. “I’ll stick to helping them come into the world and babysitting this one.”
It was the answer Eden expected. Liberty’s childhood had been as tough as Eden’s, one reason they’d bonded as girls and remained tight as they sprinted toward thirty. Whereas Liberty had decided she didn’t know enough about happy families to help create one, Eden for years had longed to start a family of her own and to give her kids what she had not had—a magical childhood.
Like Liberty, she enjoyed the work of bringing children into the world. That, coupled with her keen interest in natural medicine, had led to her work as a doula and eventually to her job at the Children’s Connection. She’d worked hard, made a nice home, but had never met the guy. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t tried. Just the opposite: she’d tried too hard.
The fallout from her failed relationships polluted the memory of her late teens and early twenties. Truth be told, she’d had a few too many relationships.
Her head had been so doggone stuffed with dreams about forever and about that big strong somebody she could cling to in times of trouble…geez Louise, her poor brain hadn’t had any room to work.
She’d turned a new leaf, thank God. Hadn’t had a relationship in an age, and never let herself even think anymore about strong arms and a man who’d die for her and blah, blah, blah.
Her Southern ancestors may have thought it was impossible to raise a family without a man, but Eden knew better. It would have been pure foolishness to wait until she’d met someone marriageable before she’d had a baby. Her ovaries might have been the size of pinheads by then.
Besides, she’d learned the hard way that waiting for someone to fix things generally meant you stayed broken. A smart woman solved her own problems.
And a scared woman made deals with her Maker. Eden had made one.
Since the age of fourteen, she’d been keeping a journal in which she wrote down her thoughts about life, her hopes and prayers and gripes. A few years ago, when she’d decided to have a child on her own, she’d written it in her diary like this: “God, give me a baby, and you’ll never have a single cause to call me an unmindful mother.”
From the time she’d conceived, she’d known her first priority would always be Liam. Nothing would get in the way of providing a lighthearted and stable growing-up time for her little boy. And that meant—
NO MORE MEN.
She’d written that in her journal, too, with a red permanent marker. Her life had fallen apart when she was ten because of a man. She’d been in second grade when her mother, an artist with a wild spirit, had become a bit too wild. By the time her mother was diagnosed with manic depression, her stepfather had thrown in the towel on the marriage and their family. Her birth father was no help, having moved with no forwarding address before Eden learned to say “Dada.” Two men had broken her heart and she’d spent the better part of her young womanhood acting as if a man was the glue to put it back together. It upset her to think about it, because she so, so knew better!
Now that she’d finally gotten her mind settled on being a singleton, it was just God’s sense of humor to give her a case of hormones that made her libido jumpier than a frog on fire.
Pregnancy had increased her cravings for more than Doritos and peanut-butter-cup ice cream. Fortunately, she’d had work to focus on during the months she’d carried Liam. Then she’d given birth, and postpartum concerns trumped sexual interest any day of the week.
Drat LJ Logan for showing up and revving her engine even while he was busy irritating her. The man had some powerful pheromones, and the truth was he’d been on her mind all evening.
“I wonder what Junior’s story is,” she murmured, knowing she should have bitten her tongue. It was just the simple truth that one of her failings as a human was her habit of thinking about the very things she shouldn’t.
Liam dropped his teething ring. Liberty made a beautiful save and handed it back without missing a beat. “Story about what?” she asked.
“About why he doesn’t want kids.”
“How do you know that? From what you told me, the two of you didn’t get chatty.”
“Well, no, but I asked him straight out whether he had any. His answer was absolutely a negative. The boy practically shouted it.”
“So you stayed after the meeting and talked to him?”
“I asked him during the meeting.”
“In front of the board? In front of the people who hired him?”
“Of course, and don’t look at me like that.” Heat suffused Eden’s face and chest. “I was trying to make a point.”
“You’re not supposed to make points in front of a man’s boss. Not if you hope to have even a barely civil relationship with him.”
“I don’t need a civil relationship with LJ Logan.” That was the truth, too. “I need him to do his job well enough to help save the Children’s Connection, and right now I have my doubts.”
Liberty shook her head. “As long as I’ve known you, you’ve had excellent interpersonal skills.”
Eden was about to say thank you when her roommate added, “Except when it comes to men. Then you’re a dolt.”
Eden stopped walking. “I beg your pardon, please? I have never had complaints from males regarding my communication skills.”
Liberty patted her shoulder. “Don’t get your thong in a knot. You start to sound like Scarlett O’Hara when you’re upset.” She continued walking. “All I’m saying is, remember Hal Sneeden? He called you emotionally withholding.”
Eden felt a stab of pain but told herself to ignore it. “Oh, that.” She waved a hand and strolled after Liberty. “That doesn’t mean I can’t communicate. I never wanted to get emotionally intimate with Hal Sneeden. And you agreed I could never get serious about him, anyway. Remember? Because if we’d gotten married I’d have been Eden Sneeden.”
Leaving the park, they headed down the sidewalk toward home. “People would have said, ‘There go Eden Sneeden’s kids.’” Bending forward, she kissed Liam’s head. “I would never do that to you, precious.”
Liberty’s throaty laugh lightened the atmosphere, but inside Eden struggled not to feel hurt all over again. The breakup with Hal had happened seven years ago, and when she recalled his words they still gnawed at the edges of her confidence, like bugs on a leaf. His exact words had been, “I’ve never felt really close to you.”
Well, shoot! She gritted her teeth as tears gathered at the corners of her eyes. She didn’t care a fig about Hal Sneeden anymore; she really didn’t. But even though she’d dated much more frequently than Liberty had, it had not escaped her notice that Liberty had close platonic relationships with men, whereas she, Eden, had never had a boyfriend she could also call her friend.
She chewed on that some as they walked the brief route home, where families—the typical, nuclear variety—dotted their path like land mines.
Passing a gray bungalow, both she and Liberty raised their hands to wave to the Scotts, a family of five that included three kids, a mother and a father, all of whom could be found outside playing or working together on even the poorest excuse for a nice day. Farther ahead were the Michaelsons—two toddlers, working mom, stay-at-home dad who liked to construct temporary forts out of fallen branches and twigs. Like their neighbors, they were determinedly finding things to do outside, relishing the early spring weather before the next spate of April showers.
Outwardly, Eden kept smiling. Secretly she couldn’t wait to get home, where she could hole up inside the rest of the night and ignore all the happy three-, four- and fivesomes.
Portland was truly a family town. Several years back it had been touted as one of the ten best cities in the country in which to raise children. That made it a great place to pursue her work as a childbirth coach. A terrific place to have and raise Liam. It was less terrific when she didn’t want to be reminded that Liam might someday think she’d shortchanged him by bringing him into the world without a daddy.
And sometimes when she lay in bed—not at night, but in the morning—and listened to the twitter of birds and the sound of her son’s breathing, she wished for someone to turn to, to whisper with, to plan the day.
