Who had been, apparently, watching the entire thing.
“I need to get out of this wet underwear,” he said. He dragged his gaze over her and the nearly see-through top, the tantalizingly hard-tipped breasts, the pants that clung to her legs.
“I’m, um…” She crossed her arms over her chest. Then dropped her arms. Then sighed. “I’m going to go shower and change clothes.”
“Okay.” He could let her go now, because he felt more confident that she’d be back.
“Can one of your friends go to the store with you today?”
“One of my friends?”
“You have a ton of friends who are dads,” she pointed out. “They’d be great resources about what you need to get, yes? Plus another pair of hands for him.” Her gaze dropped to the baby.
Yeah, he did have friends who would be great resources.
He didn’t want them. He wanted Harper.
“I can’t bother them,” he said.
That was completely untrue. Any of them would jump to help him. Hell, all of them would. At once.
“You… can’t?” she asked. “Or you don’t want to?”
“I don’t want to.”
“You want to play house with me. You think that will make me more likely to… what? Sleep with you?”
“Oh, I think the chances of you sleeping with me are one hundred percent,” James told her honestly but also with a teasing grin.
“Then why do you think I should hang out with you and the baby today?”
“Because it’s been fun so far.”
“You’ve been pooped on, and I’ve been puked and peed on,” she pointed out.
“And I’ve gotten to wake up next to you, see your almost naked nipples, and finally kiss you,” he said. “I’d take as much of the other stuff as needed to have those things happen.”
Her cheeks got pink. “Finally?” she asked softly.
“You’re lying if you say you don’t know that I’ve wanted to kiss you for a long time, Professor.”
She pressed her lips together, studying his face. “I have to teach that class, and I have a meeting after. But I can shop with you before that, and I can come over as soon as I’m done.”
He nodded. “I’ll take it.”
She didn’t say anything else. She just chewed on her bottom lip—the lip that he wanted to suck on almost as badly as he wanted to suck on her nipples—and then she turned and left the apartment.
He looked down at the baby. “I don’t know who you are, exactly,” he said. “And I realize I’m changing your diapers and feeding you and stuff. But I might just owe you one.”
The baby hiccupped then farted.
James laughed. Best wingman ever, and he couldn’t even talk.
4
She was crazy.
She wanted to be at home with James changing diapers rather than lecturing to bright young minds about the connection between language and societal change.
They’d gone shopping earlier and had gotten everything they needed, including a carrier for the baby that James could strap to his body and still take Ami for a walk. They’d all seemed very happy and settled, and Harper had found it difficult to leave them.
That was crazy.
Almost as crazy as how quickly James had settled into all of this.
“Harper!”
She turned as she was almost to her office door. Her friend and fellow professor, Dr. Celia Ownsby, was coming toward her with a huge smile.
“Hi, Celia.”
“Hi. Hoping you’re free for lunch.” Celia gave her a grin. “I haven’t heard how the big date with James went.”
Harper had been expecting her friend to find her and ask for details. She’d been so disappointed that their date had been interrupted, that she hadn’t texted or called her one true girlfriend about it. And then James had brought a baby home.
It seemed like that had happened a week ago in some ways.
Harper really wanted to get back to the apartment. But she knew that was ridiculous. She had a meeting in a little over an hour. Going home in between class and that meeting was silly. By the time she got there, she’d only have a few minutes to check in on everything.
Just last night she’d been worried about getting too involved anyway.
Of course, it had only been six months ago that she’d been thinking she should avoid getting involved with James Reynaud altogether.
Now, here she was.
Her phone dinged with a text, and she swiped to open the message.
It was a photo of the baby lying on James’s couch, bracketed between a denim-clad thigh, that had to be James, and a shaggy little dog lying with his back pressed to the baby’s other side.
Harper felt her heart swell and everything in her demand she go directly home.
Except her mouth. Thankfully.
She looked up at Celia. “Lunch would be great.”
Harper tucked her phone into her purse without sending so much as a heart-eyes emoji back. In spite of the fact that she couldn’t quite shake the thought that James had just sent her a perfect photo. Three things she could quite easily fall madly in love with.
She was already in love with the dog.
And the guy who belonged to that thigh… well, he’d been wearing her down for a few months now.
It was the affection and protectiveness she felt for that little bundle in the middle that was startling. It was just a natural maternal instinct she hadn’t been in touch with before this. It didn’t mean anything other than her estrogen levels were high or something.
Harper and Celia walked to the campus cafeteria. It wasn’t glamorous but it was close and had very good chicken salad. They picked out their food, scanned their faculty badges, and chose a table near the windows, away from the noisier groups of eaters.
“So, how was it?” Celia asked without preamble, stirring sugar into her tea.
Harper sipped her water and thought about the entire evening with James. How had it been? Crazy. Unexpected in every single way. Sweet. Scary. They’d bonded. She’d thought they were already bonded over Ami, but the baby? That had been a new level. Partly because he was a human being and that put everything on a new holy-crap level. But also because he was more work. And neither of them knew what they were doing. It was different with the dog. She knew now that James had had dogs growing up, and her grandmother had owned a dog and—
“Harper?”
She focused on Celia. “What? Oh… yes?”
“Wow, that must have been some date.” Celia put her spoon down and leaned in. “It was that good? I mean, did he just put you up against the wall and knock the plaster down or what?”
Harper felt her cheeks heat. She wasn’t a prude. She read very erotic fiction, and she was a huge proponent of women’s sexuality being open and honest and fully satisfying. She wasn’t a virgin. She talked about men and sex with her friends.
But she’d never felt this way about a man. Especially one she wasn’t really dating and hadn’t slept with.
She felt like she and James were intimate on another level, and they hadn’t even seen each other fully naked. Yet.
Of course that sent her thoughts spinning to the shower and how the water had made his boxer briefs mold to his body—his big, hard body. And how he’d told her he’d intended to give her five orgasms. And how he’d kissed her.