Jennifer Mikels - The Fertility Factor

“Me, too,” Carrie said between bites of her chicken sandwich.

They stayed longer than they should have and rushed back toward the center at Madison Avenue and Seventy-eighth Street. Lara said goodbye as the other women were about to enter the center, said she had an errand to run. She had time before the first afternoon appointment arrived. The truth was she wanted to be alone. She needed time to think.

She wandered into Central Park, found a bench. She’d been deadly serious with her co-workers. Her usual optimism had waned with her friend Gena’s early-morning, tearful phone call. Lara had ached for her. The news had stormed her with doubts and despair about her own ability to get pregnant.

In two years she’d celebrate her fortieth birthday. She didn’t have time anymore. She needed to get pregnant now.

“It’s lunchtime, Mancini. What are you doing sitting here, alone?”

The male voice jerked her head up. Even with sunlight in her eyes, she knew who stood before her. Light glowed around him, but she saw the easy, half smile tugging at a corner of his lips.

“Hi.” Mentally she prodded herself to act normal. That was no easy task. Derek Cross tripped every feminine instinct within her. “The park’s a good place to think.” He’s your boss, your boss, your boss, Lara repeated to herself like a mantra.

Beneath dark, straight brows, his deep-set, hazel eyes narrowed with concern. She ranked his eyes as one of his best features. Cool, unreadable—sometimes. Filled with unmeasurable warmth during other moments, like today. “Are you okay?”

The light breeze tossed his dark-brown hair. She thought he was even sexier with the strands slightly disturbed, mussed in much the way they’d look from a woman’s touch. “Yes, I’m fine.” The world is spinning, and I’m getting older. And all I can think about is how sexy you look. The black polo shirt clung to muscled biceps and a lean, flat belly. She’d just known he would have such a well-toned body. Denim curved around a tight butt and followed long, strong-looking legs. A shiver inched its way up her spine. She wouldn’t drool, she promised herself. It didn’t matter that she was much too old for such nonsense. He made her hot, all six-four of him. “Have you had your lunch yet?”

He tipped his head slightly in a questioning manner.

Mentally she moaned. Did he think she was asking him to have lunch with her? “I mean—” Oh, this was insane. She was an intelligent woman who managed to snag even a stranger’s attention with interesting conversation, so why was she acting like a ninny? “I just finished having it. My lunch.” Scintillating, Lara. This will undoubtedly be the last time he talked to her about anything except a patient. At the office he’d always been all business. “With Josie and Carrie.” She needed to get a grip. “Do you know them?”

His eyes held an amused smile. “Yes, I know them.”

“I—” She paused, vowed to drown herself if she blushed. She needed to pretend they were at work. Tongue-tied was not normal for her. If anything, she’d been accused, mainly by family, of being gabby.

“Do you need anything?”

Oh, what a question.

“Is there something I can do to help? If there is, tell me,” Derek added while he braced the bicycle he’d ridden to the park against the bench.

She shook her head, wished he’d stop asking. She might tell him that she was frightened. She wanted to hold a baby. She ached to hold her own baby. “Are you here with your son?” she asked, and strained for a smile. He’d make beautiful babies, she decided. The boys would have that long, straight nose, that strong, sharply angled face. They’d be as gorgeous as their father.

“Joey and I came to the park to play catch.”

From previous conversations with him, she knew that he and his son usually went to the park on the weekends. As Derek shifted his stance, she realized he’d angled his body while talking to her so he never lost sight of his son. She thought the boy with his dark-brown hair and blue eyes already had his father’s great looks.

“And we came for lunch. One of my son’s favorites. Hot dogs.”

Lara stood up to leave. “That’s a favorite of mine, too,” she said but didn’t move as he smiled. She liked his mouth, too. Firm looking with a full bottom lip. Then there were the slashing high cheekbones. She’d always been a sucker for a man with high cheekbones.

“I’ve heard you’re a fantastic cook. I wouldn’t think you’d touch a hot dog.”

She barely kept an idiotic grin from forming. What a perfect opportunity to say she’d be glad to cook him something some evening. Of course, she couldn’t. “I like cooking. Even hot dogs.”

“Anyone who can cook hot dogs rates high with my son. Is today special?” he asked, gesturing toward her clothes.

“We—” She paused. During her stint as an actress, she’d kissed a few heart-stopping, handsome males. Didn’t matter. She was sunk around Derek Cross. “We had an expensive lunch today—a once-a-month treat.”

“Nice.”

Dumbly she waited for him to say more.

Instead he shot a look at his son and beckoned him toward them. “Do you remember Ms. Mancini, Joey?”

“My name’s Lara.” She’d met him a few times before when Derek had brought him to the office, but he’d been younger, and she assumed he wouldn’t remember her. She gestured toward Joey’s baseball mitt. “Your dad told me that you love baseball.”

Derek frowned. “Did I?”

A twinge of disappointment whipped through her. She’d been so thrilled when he’d shared his celebratory mood and had told her about his son’s first home run on the previous day. “Yes, in passing.”

“I remember you. Do you want to play?” Joey asked.

Derek touched his slender shoulder. “Joey, she can’t—”

“I could, if I had more time. I love baseball, too.” Lara glanced at her watch, a serviceable round face with a black band. “Do you like the Yankees?”

“Yeah!”

“Me, too. I try never to miss a game.”

“There’s one on television today.”

“I know,” Lara said. “But I can’t watch it. I have to get back to work.” Maybe she was talking too much.

Derek sent her a questioning look. “I’d never have guessed you were a fan. Baseball seems too quiet for you.”

A laugh bubbled in her throat. “Too quiet?” Amusement stayed with her. She knew his background. The Cross family claimed a lineage that dated back to the American Colonies. How did Derek view her? Flighty? Eccentric? Because she’d been an actress? She’d learned from one man that the upper crust viewed theater people as a step above bohemians. James Braden III had made it clear that grease-paint and blue blood didn’t mix. “I have brothers. Quiet is not in the Mancini vocabulary.”

Derek flashed a smile. “They play ball?”

“One of them was always asking me to play catch.”

“I gather you come from a big family?”

“Three brothers, two sisters,” she said, feeling more at ease because Joey was near.

“I never knew that about you.”

Why would he? She was his nurse, nothing more. He’d have no reason to bother finding out anything about her. But he knew about her love of cooking? Why? Had he asked about her? Probably not, she decided. Someone might have said something, maybe at Christmastime when they’d had a potluck buffet at the center and everyone had brought a homemade dish. “Maybe some other time we can play,” she said, just to please the boy. She knew she’d never be with them again. “If that’s all right with your daddy,” she added.

Joey sent her a quick grin, obviously taking her words to heart. “Is it, Dad?”

With a gentle hand, Derek cupped his son’s shoulder. “We’ll see.”