The Boss's Baby Surprise

“Three guys. No, four. There’s news coming on, now.”

“TV in a bar is a real guy thing, isn’t it? Figures show a significant difference in the demographics we get when the layout of the restaurant is—”

He stopped. Celie tried to smile, to encourage him to go on by showing him that she was listening, but she couldn’t. All at once, the image on the television screen had her vision and her concentration in a tight lock.

Reporters were jostling to get close to a politician so they could ask questions. Cameras flashed, lighting up the screen like explosions.

Camera flashes.

She’d seen camera flashes in her dream about Nick’s baby in Cleveland last night. She’d interpreted them wrongly until this moment, but she knew they were significant all the same.

“Cleveland,” she said aloud. The baby was in Cleveland.

She stood up automatically, as if the cameras were flashing in her own face and the reporters wanted to interview her, wanted to put her picture in the newspaper. Then she sat again, just as abruptly, as the strength drained from her legs. That message about Cleveland and Nick’s baby was suddenly so clear—far more clear than she liked. She didn’t want this to be happening to her. She wanted her life, and her subconscious, to stay just the way they were.

“Cleveland?” Nick asked. His voice came from far away, and he shot a quick look behind him, toward the television screen, following the direction of Celie’s gaze. “No, that’s Washington, D.C. Some political scandal. What’s the matter, Celie?”

“I—had a dream last night, with cameras flashing in it,” she answered, her gesture at the television as limp as a wet rag. “I didn’t realize until now that that’s what they were. I thought they were explosions. They mean something. They’re important, somehow. And the dream has something to do with Cleveland.”

Your baby is in Cleveland, Nick.

Should she tell him this?

Or would he think she was as crazy as she feared she might be?

“Well, we’re going there next week.” He frowned. “We have the art museum opening.”

“That’s right. I’d forgotten.”

As part of its corporate philanthropy, Delaney’s was sponsoring a major sculpture exhibition, which would be seen in only four U.S. cities during its world tour. Cleveland was one of them. Celie had been extensively involved in liaising with the Great Lakes Museum of Art during the planning stages of the tour, but most of the details had been finalized months ago.

With her mother’s accident, she’d forgotten the opening was so close. Nick had meetings in Cleveland that day, and she’d already booked hotel rooms for an overnight stay after the event. She’d been looking forward to the glamorous occasion, and had bought a new dress—simple, black, appropriate but glamorous all the same. Now she wondered, with a sick, sinking feeling, if she ought to be dreading the evening instead.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Nick said. “Here take a sip of your drink. No, hang on…”

He slid out from his side of the booth and came to hers. Resting his upturned hand on the table, he coaxed her head forward and down so that his palm cradled her forehead. His other hand stroked the nape of her neck for a moment, then slid lower, to rest on her back.

“Take some deep breaths,” he said. “Are you going to get sick?”

“No.”

“When you can sit up, take a drink and then tell me what’s wrong. This is the second time I’ve seen you like this in a week.”

He stroked her back. His touch was firm enough that she could feel the weight and warmth of his hand, but light enough that it caressed her skin through the thin knit fabric of her top like running water. It wove a net of sensation all around her—a net that she could have cocooned herself in for the rest of her life.

When she sat up, a little too soon, his face blurred in her vision but she could still perceive the depth of his concern, and it disturbed her.

She’d never needed him in this way before, and now, as he’d said, it had happened twice in a week. She didn’t want to need him, didn’t want to have a reason to need him. She wanted her life fully under control, and she was sure he’d feel the same. They both took pride in their professional boundaries, and in how much they could handle on their own.

“It’s okay,” she told him. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah, right,” he drawled. “Sure you’re fine.” He brushed her hair behind her ear, touched her shoulder lightly, frowned at her. He narrowed his eyes, and his lips parted. Celie stared down, and heard the hiss of his breath, very close. “Are you still worried about your mother, Celie? Did you come back to work too soon? You look like you’re falling apart.”

“I keep having dreams with messages in them,” she told him, pressing her hands together in her lap. “Last week, I dreamed about my mom breaking her leg. I have cameras flashing in my face as if they’re telling me something. I hear your—I hear a baby crying, and the crying is a message.”

“I’m not sure that I believe in dreams like that,” Nick answered slowly. “In fact, I know I don’t.”

“I never used to, either.” She looked up at him again and tried to smile. “Until I started having them. I don’t want to believe in them. But how can I help it, when they come true? If you could talk me out of believing them, Nick, trust me, I’d be grateful.”

She reached to pick up her glass, and gulped a mouthful of her drink. The dry fizz stung in her mouth. A loud burst of laughter came from a nearby booth, and a party of new arrivals trooped past to the group of low chairs in the far corner. Delaney’s was filling up, and getting noisier.

“Let’s get out of here,” Nick said. “I want to put a good meal into you, and I want to talk about this. But not here, where I’m thinking about Delaney’s and trends and the next advertising campaign. Let’s go somewhere quiet, where nothing else is going to impinge.”

Celie didn’t argue.

Nick flung some cash on the table and they left immediately. Celie paid no attention to where they were going until he parked in front of one of the city’s most exclusive restaurants. Salt was the kind of place where most people needed a reservation, even on a weeknight. Nick Delaney didn’t, because unlike the college-student waitress at his own restaurant, the deferential maitre d’ at this establishment knew at once exactly who he was.

“Better?” Nick said, as soon as they were seated.

Only a few tables were filled as yet, and the clientele was well-dressed and very well-behaved. So were the staff. The waiters skimmed back and forth on silent feet, and even the sounds that came occasionally from the kitchen were muted against a background of soft, smoky music.

With effort, Celie created a smile. “Are you saying you don’t like your own restaurants?”

“I love our restaurants. Tonight, this place seemed like a better idea. Somewhere more discreet, where we can relax. With staff who’ll protect our privacy. I want to hear about the dreams, Celie.”

She told him about the image of her mother lying on the kitchen floor, and the image of cameras flashing, somehow telling her Cleveland. She didn’t tell him what she knew about the crying baby yet, but she did tell him about the hat pin, the woman in front of the mirror and the scrap of torn broderie anglaise.

Since she still had the hat pin in her purse, she took it out and showed it to him.

“You’re right. It has to be the renovations upstairs,” Nick said. He ran a fingertip along the gray metal toward the point, and for half a second Celie could almost feel the touch of his finger on her own skin.

His confident tone reassured her, but she pushed at the issue, all the same. “Renovations give people dreams that come true?”

“Renovations could give someone a hat pin on their windowsill.” He looked up. “Isn’t that what you thought, yourself?”

“I’m not so sure, anymore.”

“And, yes, renovations are stressful and unsettling. People dream more when they’re unsettled. The dreams themselves can be explained.”

“Then do it, Nick, please. I want explanations for this.”

“You were already concerned about your mother, right?”

“She’s elderly. Her bones aren’t strong, and she takes risks without thinking about them. I’ve been responsible for her since my father died, eleven years ago, and she’s never regained the ground she lost when she lost him. Part of her just…left…and I’ve had to pick up the slack.”

“You don’t talk much about all that.”

“There’s no need. It’s under control and it’s not your concern. I love Mom, and I’m happy to help her. But, yes, I do worry.”

“So there you go. Both your conscious and your subconscious mind feared an accident, and it happened.”

“And the flashing cameras? What do they mean? Why are they saying Cleveland to me?”

“The exhibition opening next Tuesday night is a big deal. You know that. The press will be there. No surprise if we get cameras flashing in our faces. Subconsciously, you must be a little nervous about it.”

Celie pretended that he’d convinced her. She wanted him to have convinced her, but he hadn’t. Not really. The dreams remained too vivid in her mind for that. They threatened her own sense of who she was.

As she’d just told Nick she’d run her mother’s life, and her own, from the age of seventeen. She didn’t have a mystic, intuitive streak. She had responsibilities. She couldn’t afford to have dreams that competed with reality in her mind.

Their waiter brought menus and they both ordered. Celie chose a fennel bisque soup and grilled chicken, while Nick decided on shrimp and beef. “Would you like some wine?” he asked.

“Just a glass.”

Even one glass turned out to be a mistake. It loosened her tongue just that little bit more, and as they ate she found herself telling him, “There’s another dream I’ve been having, too, Nick, repeated night after night. It makes even less sense than the others.”

“More predictions? Do I want to hear this? I’m trying to help you get your feet back on the ground, Celie.”

“Are you?”

“For the best of reasons. You’re getting too stressed over this. It’s eating at you more than it should. Look at the way you’re frowning at me.”

“You’re right. I am.” She squeezed out a smile and touched her forehead with her fingers, trying to smooth the frown away. “I—I don’t know if the dream is a prediction. But it gets a little clearer, each time. Maybe you can tell me, because I do think that there’s a message in it, and the message is for you.”

She took a breath, and twirled the hat pin between her finger and thumb. Its rounded, pearly end gleamed in the leaping golden light from the candle in the center of their table. Nick’s china-blue gaze was fixed on her face, and she felt as if she was swimming in the deep pools of his eyes.

“Tell me, Celie,” he said. “Don’t hedge it, or qualify it, just tell me.”

“Okay, then, here it is. Is there any chance, Nick, that somewhere in this world—” Cleveland, let’s say “—you have a baby you don’t know about?”

“A what?” Nick almost yelled the words.

“A baby,” Celie repeated.

She leaned forward and captured Nick’s big, firm hand in hers without even realizing she’d done it. It felt warm and dry and strong—even stronger when he twisted it out of her grasp and closed his fingers over her knuckles. He squeezed them and looked down, drawing her attention to the body contact. “Pick up your spoon, Celie,” he said.

“I’m sorry.” She slid her hand away at once, and continued, “It’s a little boy. I hear him crying, and I get up to go to him, and then there’s a woman who tells me it’s all right, I don’t have to, because you’ll go. And the crying stops, and I feel a sense of peace because I know you’re there, holding him, belonging with him. Only last night, you didn’t go.”

“I…didn’t…go.”

“To the baby. And I realized it was because you didn’t know that he exists. Believe me, as I’ve said, I’m not happy about these dreams, and I know this one sounds—”

“He doesn’t exist, Celie. The dream is nonsense.” He frowned. “Boy or girl, I’ve never fathered a child.”

“But I’m wondering if that’s true,” she persisted, still caught in the strong, sticky web of the dreams, forgetting her allotted place in Nick Delaney’s life, overlooking her own doubts. “You know, sometimes a woman gets pregnant and she has reasons for not wanting to tell the father. It happens. I don’t want to trespass into your personal life, but if you think back, look through your diary, isn’t there someone who could have gotten careless with—?”

“No.” The flat of his hand came down hard on the table. “I’m telling you, it’s not possible, Celie, and you need to believe me on this. I really hope you’re not suggesting that I give you a list of the women I’ve slept with.”

“No, of course not.”

“And that I should call them up and ask?”

He looked angry now.

Of course he did! This whole conversation was an affront to his privacy, to the boundaries they both believed in and to their whole working relationship. Celie should have seen it, but even if she had, would the dreams have prompted too strongly for her to resist? She needed to understand what was going on.

Her fingers slipped, and the hat pin pricked the ball of her thumb, as if to taunt her, “Gee, didn’t you handle this well?”

She dropped the hat pin on the table, beside the remains of her meal. She had no appetite left for it, now. The restaurant had filled, and the few couples who’d been here when she and Nick first arrived had reached coffee and dessert. If Nick didn’t want to listen to this, then it was time to go.

“Just how long do you think such a list would be, if you don’t mind my asking?” Nick said, his voice deceptively quiet and controlled, this time. His blue eyes sparked.

“I’m sorry,” she answered quickly. “I thought I should tell you about what the dream seemed to be saying. That’s all. Since it was so vivid. And so real. Of course I’m not suggesting you keep a—a list.”

“But you’re suggesting there’d be some names on it if I did? That there’s a woman out there from my past—and this is an infant we’re talking about, so you think it’s my recent past—who’s been pregnant with my child over this past year and I haven’t known? That I could have been that careless, that casual, and not even thought to follow up on it?”

She gaped at him, her cheeks on fire. “I’m sorry,” she said again. It sounded terrible when he said it like that. What was happening to her? How could a few dreams have taken such a strong hold on her imagination?

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