His arms come around me like steel bands, pulling me roughly against his chest as I loop my own around his neck. Our tongues touch, and the instant flash of heat makes me wet. I have missed him. Oh, my God, I have missed him.

  I groan into his mouth, and he changes the angle of his head, sealing his lips more completely over mine as his tongue slides languidly against mine. He growls softly, his growing erection poking into my belly. I arch my back, sliding my hands up the warm, smooth planes of his back—

  He draws away abruptly, looking down at me, into my eyes, with a furious expression in his icy blues.

  “We need to figure things out,” he says gruffly.

  My breath is shallow and makes me feel light-headed. “I agree.”

  “But I have a tour in an hour. It’ll last for most of the day. Meet me for dinner?”

  I nod, still a little dumb struck from the force of our kiss and the way he cut it off without warning. “Yeah. Okay.”

  “Hotel lobby at six,” he says.

  “I’ll be there,” I promise.

  Then he kisses me again—just a quick, fierce touch of his lips to mine—before tugging on Livia’s leash and leaving me wanting much more, though I stand in my hotel room alone.

  Chapter 10

  Gideon

  I don’t know what got into me this morning, yelling at her like that. Certainly, she has a right to go where she wants to and with whom, and hell, all she was doing was letting Liv outside. But she fell asleep long before me, and I spent hours watching her, waiting to feel tired and silently vowing that I’d never let anything bad happen to her or the Orange.

  To wake up and find her gone? It worried me.

  Did I overreact? I sure did.

  On my way to the hotel to meet her for dinner, I swing by the Northwind Gift Shop where they sell flowers and pick up a dozen roses for her. At first, I try to decide between pink or red, but pink feels like I’m making a statement about wanting a daughter, and red feels like I’m pushing a romantic agenda. In the end, I decide on yellow with orange tips because, well, orange feels perfect.

  “You want a bow?” asks the young woman behind the counter.

  “Yes, please,” I say. “Orange if you have it.”

  “You got it.”

  She rewraps the blooms in cellophane and ties them with a fancy bow. Not that I’m a connoisseur or anything, but it looks nice, and I hope Addy likes it.

  When I get to the Best Western, I park in the lot and head to the restaurant, looking around to see if she’s already there. She’s not, so I ask for the same table as last night and place her flowers on the table in front of her chair. The soft snicker of the teenage waitress filling our water glasses isn’t lost on me, and suddenly I feel like a greener teenager than her.

  Truth is, I haven’t had a ton of experience with women. I dated a few girls in high school and college, but I met Tamra in Fairbanks the summer after I graduated, and we were together for ten years and married for five. I’m out of practice dating. Maybe a big bouquet of flowers is too much? I start to reach for them—

  “Are those for me?”

  I look up to see Addy standing beside the table, and the difference in how she looks tonight versus last night is striking. There’s more color in her face, and her hair is unbound, clean, and shiny. She’s wearing navy-blue leggings with a navy and white gingham sweater, and if my eyes don’t lie, there’s a small swell of belly that I don’t remember from January that makes butterflies take flight in mine. She looks beautiful—sexy and sweet at the same time, and I could burst with pride that she’s carrying my child.

  “Yeah. Hey. Look at you! You look great,” I tell her, half-standing awkwardly as she pulls out her own chair and takes a seat across from me.

  “Thanks,” she says with a slight smile. She picks up the massive bouquet and brings it to her nose. “These are gorgeous.”

  “Um. They’re orange,” I tell her with a little shrug. “They have orange, um, tips.”

  “Oh! I see! How thoughtful!” Her small, pleased gasp makes the waitress’ snicker worth it, and I feel good about doing something right after hurting her feelings last night and yelling at her this morning.

  “I’ve been pretty awful since you returned.”

  “How do you figure?” she asks.

  “You mean…aside from questioning your morals in the Best Western parking lot and yelling at you for letting my dog out this morning?”

  “I left you without a word in January, then show up out of the blue in April and surprise you with the news that you’re going to be a father. I think you’ve been pretty amazing, actually.”

  “Nah.”

  “No, I mean it. You bought me dinner and stayed with me last night. You assured me that you’d be a part of our lives no matter what. When I got annoyed with you this morning, you didn’t seem mind, and when I kissed you…”

  Her cheeks bloom pink.

  “And when you kissed me?” I prompt her.

  “You kissed me back,” she finishes, picking up her water glass and taking a sip.

  “I’ll always kiss you back,” I promise.

  She grins at me over the rim of her glass before placing it on the table. “That said, though, I’ve given it a lot of thought today, and I think we should have some boundaries in place.”

  “Boundaries?”

  “Ground rules.”

  “About what?”

  “Um…us.” She bites her lower lip like she does when she’s nervous. “I don’t think we should move too fast, you know? Um, physically.”

  My eyes flick to her belly, then back up. “Are you kidding?”

  She shakes her head. “No. We’re going to be parents. I think we need to concentrate on the Orange, you know? On what she’s going to need from us and the sort of parents we want to be. I don’t want us to get sidetracked with, you know…”

  Sex.

  I can’t lie. I’m disappointed to hear this. I was hoping that in addition to being parents, we’d be able to pick up our physical relationship where we left off in January. That she’s hitting the brakes is frustrating.

  “Hey,” she says, reaching for my hands. “Not forever. Just for a little while, okay? As we’re figuring out some things?”

  She’s not being unreasonable, so regardless of how much I want to throw her over my shoulder like a caveman, march upstairs, and make love to her for days, I nod.

  “Phew!” she exclaims with obvious relief, picking up her menu. “My burger last night was so good, I want another.”

  One thing about Addison that I’ve noticed is that she’s great at changing the subject when she doesn’t want to talk about something. And then, out of the blue, when she’s ready, she’ll spill her guts. There’s no rhyme or reason to it that I can figure out yet, so I just hope that at some point we can revisit this conversation. Either that or our attraction to one another, which I thought was pretty electric, isn’t as hot as I thought.

  Wait.

  Shit.

  Is that what this is all about? She’s not attracted to me anymore? Like, maybe she just wants to be friends or co-parents or something? Because fuck, that would suck. That’s not cool with me. I have feelings for her. Aside from the fact that I want to fuck her until she can’t walk straight, I—fuck, I don’t know. Do I love her? Or do I just care really deeply for her? I don’t know what to call it. I just know that I—

  “Gideon? Gideon?”

  Has she been saying my name for a while?

  I blink at her. “Uh. Yeah? Huh?”

  “What are you having?”

  I glance at the menu. “The, uh…the halibut.”

  “Creole or parmesan crusted?”

  “I’ll ask if they can pan-sear it or broil it.”

  “Healthier choice,” she says, nodding in appreciation as she places the menu down. “Are you a health nut, Gideon Grigoriev?”

  “Health nut? No. Cholesterol-conscious, yes.”

  “Does it run in your family? High cholesterol?”

  “It does,” he says. “My mother’s been on meds for it since she was forty.”

  “Your mother is…Alutiiq, right? That’s how you say it?”

  I nod. “Yep.”

  “Is that an Eskimo tribe?”

  I don’t mean to—because I’m positive she means no offense—but I wince. “Um…no.”

  She grimaces. “I’ve said something wrong.”

  “Not on purpose,” I clarify, “but yes.”

  “Educate me,” she says, taking another sip of water.

  “Okay…well, you want to be careful with the term Eskimo. I’m Alutiiq, also called Sugpiaq, and we’re Alaskan natives of the southern coast, and we’ve been around for…oh, approximately 7,500 years.”

  “Are you for real?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your tribe’s been around since 5500 BC?”

  “Yes.” I grimace. “But um, okay…‘tribe.’ Nobody much uses that word anymore either. It’s primitive, you know? It was used by anthropologists to describe ‘backwards’ people. We prefer the word ‘Nation.’”

  “Gotcha.” She nods. “The Alutiiq Nation.”

  “Exactly,” I tell her. “And by the way, it’s cool you asked.”

  “Are you saying I’m cool?” she asks, grinning at me.

  “Was that ever in question?”

  She chuckles softly as the waitress comes to take our order. I watch her as she speaks to the young woman who laughed at her flowers. Direct and polite, she orders her cheeseburger the way she wants it, saying please and thank you but with a no-nonsense, no-bullshit authoritarian air that seems to come naturally to her. I order my halibut, glad to hear it can be grilled, then turn back to my date.

  “How did you learn to…” I shrug, a little bit at a loss for words. “…be the way you are?”

  “I don’t—”

  “You grew up in Detroit, right? And from what you told me last night, you didn’t have the easiest childhood. So how did you become a lawyer? How’d you get so polished?”

  She sits back in her chair, thinking this over for a second. Finally, she raises her eyes to me. “Anything can be learned. I didn’t grow up in a well-to-do household where my parents read books and spent evenings discussing philosophy by the fire. I grew up in crappy apartments in shitty neighborhoods where food came in bursts, electricity stayed on when the bill was paid, and someone was either beating us up or trying to touch us. And that was before we were put in foster care, which had its own set of challenges. But I guess I just wanted more than I had. I wanted to be able to buy enough food that I’d never run out. I wanted the lights to always stay on. I wanted to be safe. I was part of the popular girls’ clique in high school, mostly because I tutored all of them for free, but it gave me this great opportunity to go to their houses and see the way they lived. And their parents all had two things in common: good educations and a lot of money. I decided I wanted both.”

  “Were you always smart? Things came easy to you?”

  She nods. “Yes. I always did well at school. It was easy for me. Effortless, even. Getting along with people was harder because most of the time, people frustrate me.”

  “Do I frustrate you?” I ask her.

  Her eyes widen. “No.”

  “Not at all?”

  She rolls her eyes, then asks, “Was it hard for you to go to college?”

  I shrug. “My grades were decent. I was offered a scholarship.”

  “You know,” she says, “it occurs to me that on paper we might look pretty different, but scratch the surface a little, and we’re not. Neither of us knew our fathers. Both of us are blessed with brains. We both got scholarships to go to college, and I’m betting we were both first in our families to do so. I’d also be willing to bet that neither of us carry much debt, and while I was taking care of Elliot and my mother, you were sending money home to your mother too. Am I right?”

  “Actually, yes. Mostly you are. Except the part about sending money home. My mother works at the local school. Unless she was in trouble and needed it, she’d never accept money from me.”

  “What does she do there?”

  I smile at her. “She’s the lunch lady.”

  “Your mom was the lunch lady? When you were in school?”

  I nod. “Yep. She sure was. Still is.”

  “And you didn’t mind?”

  “Nah. She’s great. Everyone loves her. You’ll see.”

  She’s still smiling at me, but her grin fades a little, and she casts her eyes down. “I guess.”

  Bearing in mind her relationship with her own mother, I get why she may be hesitant to meet mine. I try a different tact.

  “There’s a festival in Tatitlek every May. Cultural heritage week. I’d love for you to come with me this year. I mean…if you want to. No pressure. Will you still be here? What are your plans?”

  “Sure, I’ll come,” she tells me. “I’d like to see where you grew up, and besides, the Orange is a quarter Alutiiq, right?”

  It’s such a simple statement, but it takes my breath away.

  “Yeah,” I say, feeling instantly emotional. My child is one-quarter native, and there’s something incredibly awesome about that. “That’s right.”

  “My ultrasound is on May thirtieth. I was thinking I’d stay until then.”

  “So you’ll be here a month.” Because I’m still smarting from our “boundaries” conversation, I say, “You’re welcome to stay with me.”

  She shakes her head, but her smile is warm. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. There’s a lot going on here. You helped me look for Elliot. You were with me when we found out what happened to him. We slept together. Now we’re having a baby. Don’t you think that’s enough to get used to? Without adding cohabitation to the equation?”

  I get what she’s saying. Honestly, I do. But I like the idea of having her in my space. I love the idea of keeping her and the Orange safe. And if I’m really being honest, I’m more attracted to her than ever now that she’s carrying my baby. I want her in my bed, and I’m so fucking frustrated that she doesn’t want that right now.

  “Next you’re going to say you only want to be friends,” I say, frowning at her.

  “Don’t count on it.” Her lips wobble. “I tried to climb you like a tree this morning.”

  “I didn’t mind. Forget boundaries. You can climb me all you want.”

  She leans forward. “You know I want you, right? You know I’m attracted to you? Gideon, I’m more attracted to you than I’ve ever been to anyone else. In my entire life.”

  Is it stupid that part of me suddenly unclenches, almost sighing with relief? Because I was pretty sure that our attraction was mutual, but I guess I needed to hear her say it.

  “I feel the same way,” I tell her, reaching for her hands.

  “But! But sex confuses things,” she tells me with pink cheeks and a shy smile. She lets me lace our fingers together, though, which takes the edge off my yearning for her. “Don’t get me wrong, I loved having sex with you. Obviously. And maybe we’ll add that to our relationship again at some point. Part of me really, really hopes so. But Gideon, right now we need to figure out how to be parents. We need to talk to each other and learn about each other and figure out how to do this. There are so many things I don’t know about you…Are you religious? Do you believe in corporal punishment? Would you ever consider leaving Valdez? How do you feel about day care? There are so many things to talk about, and I know that being pragmatic isn’t exactly sexy, but…it’s not just about us. It’s about…”

  “…the Orange,” we say at the same time.

  I let her words sink in, and I start to understand why she wants to tackle co-parenting before addressing our relationship.

  “The Orange has to come first,” I say, squeezing her fingers gently before pulling mine away.

  She nods. “Exactly.”

  “For the record,” I tell her, “I was raised Russian Orthodox, I still go to church on holidays, and I believe in God. I don’t believe in hitting children under any circumstances. I would leave Valdez if I absolutely had to, but I’d prefer not to leave Alaska. I have nothing against day care, but there’s no substitute for a parent being hands-on. You?”

  “I was raised without religion, though I do think there’s got to be something out there, so I suppose I’m technically agnostic. I would never intentionally hurt someone smaller and weaker than myself, so hitting and spanking isn’t in my wheelhouse. I don’t mind the thought of leaving LA, but I don’t see myself staying in Alaska long-term. And I definitely don’t see myself being happy as an at-home mom.”

  Huh. Okay. Wow. We’re…different. More different than I would have thought.

  I tilt my head to the side. “So…you’d be open to letting me introduce religion, we agree there’s no place for hitting kids, we have no idea where we’ll live, and if someone’s staying home with the Orange, it’ll be me?”

  She grimaces. “I wish it was that simple, but we literally just opened ten more conversations. I’d want to know more about the religion and experience it for myself before letting our child go with you. And where we live is a huge conversation, because ideally, I don’t want the Orange to be a plane ride away from either of us, but we need to be happy adults too. And all I can tell you for sure,” she says, looking up to thank the waitress, who sets our dinner plates in front of us, “is that if someone’s staying home to change diapers and heat up bottles, it won’t be me. No how. No way. I’ll love this baby with all my heart, but I know my limits, and I’m not cut out for being a full-time caregiver in that way.”

  I’m starting to understand what she means by us needing to figure out how to do this without the distraction of living together or being carried away with our feelings for each other. She’s right. We have a hundred conversations ahead, and for all I know, she’s heading back to LA in a month. We better make the most of the time we have together.

  “I have an idea,” I tell her. “I know you don’t want to stay with me, and I totally get it, but how about coming over to my place for dinner every night? We can cook or order or just heat something up, but every night we can talk about our backgrounds and being parents and how we want to do this. We can start figuring it out together. What do you say?”