Barbara Boswell - The Brennan Baby

His eyes happened to stray to her face and he realized that she was watching him stare at her chest. She lifted her brows and nailed him with her pale blue eyes.

Dev felt awkward, a condition he rarely experienced. “What’s the baby’s name?” he heard himself ask, even as he mocked himself for finding the need to make inane small talk. Gillian certainly didn’t.

“Ashley.” She shifted the wiggling baby to her other hip.

“Ashley,” Devlin repeated. “I treated a lot of Ashleys during my pediatric rotation in med school. I’ve often wondered what inspires one out of every three mothers these days to name their daughters Ashley. An interesting phenomenon, yet to be explored.”

“Sorry to be so unoriginal. If I’d known you hated the name, I’d have chosen something else,” she added, her tone caustic.

Dev smiled slightly “I didn’t say I didn’t like the name, just that there are a lot of Ashleys around.”

“Her name is Ashley Joy Morrow. Case closed.”

Devlin recognized the note of finality in her tone. She sounded like an officious bureaucrat, which he decided, she might well be. After all, she was a medical social worker who worked in after-care patient placements at the hospital. Didn’t her position place her firmly within Officious Bureaucrat Realm?

In that case, how could he resist baiting her? It would be positively un-American not to.

“Morrow. Then that would currently make you Gillian Morrow, wouldn’t it?” He gleefully reopened the name game and watched her stiffen in response. “Of course, I knew you as Gillian Bailey back in your wild and crazy single days.”

He felt a perverse pleasure at her frown of annoyance. Gillian had been the polar opposite of wild and crazy while he’d known her. Conservative and stable would be apt, but she would consider that a compliment and right now he was set on riling her.

“I still use Bailey. I was divorced right after the baby was born so I never got around to changing my name,” Gillian imparted the information reluctantly. “And I was never wild and crazy,” she added, stung. She’d spent her whole life trying not to be, though she’d certainly acted that way around Devlin Brennan during the three months they’d been together.

“Divorce?” Dev appeared genuinely surprised by the news. “Well, that didn’t last long, did it?”

“If you mean my marriage, no, it did not.” Gillian looked at the ground, then smoothed the baby’s thick dark curls with her fingers.

He noticed every nervous gesture she made. Clearly, her brief marriage was a sore subject for her. Being Devlin, instead of tactfully letting it go, he pressed her on it. “What happened? And where is Mr. Morrow now? Completely out of the picture—or simply off to one side?”

“I think you’ll understand if I don’t share the details of my divorce with you,” Gillian said frostily.

“Mama!” Ashley roared.

“She’s getting restless, I have to go inside.” Gillian moved toward the door on the right, exactly across the hall from the door of Devlin’s apartment.

“You’re visiting someone who lives there?”

“I live there. We moved in yesterday.”

Devlin felt winded, as if someone had kicked him in the belly. “You’re joking.”

“Why would I joke about that?”

A mirthless smile tilted the corners of his mouth. “Because I’m moving in there.” He pointed to his apartment with his thumb. “Right across the hall from you.”

They exchanged looks of mutual dismay, which each quickly attempted to conceal with a facade of cool unconcern

“Well, if you ever need a baby-sitter, don’t call on me,” Dev said glibly.

“Don’t worry about that. I don’t want you near my baby.”

She sounded a bit too fervent. Dev was insulted. “You don’t think I could baby-sit? I happen to be great with kids.”

“I’m sure your superficial charm is as effective with children as it is with women But that isn’t what—”

“Devlin, you are a dog,” the booming masculine voice interrupted her in midsentence. At that moment Cade rounded the bend, carrying an enormous cherry-red BarcaLounger recliner. His dark brows narrowed in an expression of disapproval at the sight of Devlin, lounging against the wall. “You knew if you wasted enough time, I’d drag this monster up here myself.”

Gillian moved quickly to stand against the opposite wall, ceding the right-of-way. Little Ashley made a loud crowing sound of delight, as if the sight of the big red chair pleased her.

Cade cast a startled glance at the child, and the baby smiled at him. Suddenly the chair slipped precariously in his hold. Devlin rushed over to grip the other side before it hit the floor.

Cade didn’t seem to even notice. “Is that your baby?” he asked Gillian, who nodded her head.

“How old is she?” Cade demanded to know.

“Eleven months.” Gillian began to inch away.

She appeared to be unnerved and Devlin couldn’t blame her. He found Cade’s insistent interrogation to be vaguely embarrassing, not to mention peculiar. Then again, maybe it wasn’t peculiar to Cade, Dev conceded. He didn’t know his brother-in-law all that well; maybe the man quizzed everybody in his path as a matter of course.

“Any other information you need to know, Cade?” Dev asked jokingly, trying to ease the tension that seemed to emanate tangibly from Gillian. He didn’t want her to be scared of his brother-in-law! “The kid’s birth weight, her blood type? Maybe her cereal preference?” He smiled at Gillian, inviting her to share in the humor. She did not smile back.

Cade’s frown deepened.

“Gillian, this is my brother-in-law, Cade Austin.” Dev felt obliged to make an introduction as an explanation for all the questions. “Cade, Gillian Bailey.”

“A close friend of yours, I presume,” Cade intoned darkly.

A delicate shade of pink colored Gillian’s cheeks. “I wouldn’t say that we’re friends,” she murmured.

“More like ex-acquaintances who decided to pass on friendship.” Dev was flippant. “She is also my new neighbor. Gillian just told me that yesterday she and the baby moved into the apartment across the hall from mine.” He inclined his head toward Gillian’s door.

She winced. She couldn’t have made her displeasure with the situation more obvious if she’d shouted it aloud for all to hear.

Devlin frowned, irked. Though he was hardly thrilled by the prospect of living in such close proximity to an ex-girlfriend, he knew he could handle it. And if he could, so could she. After all, it wasn’t as if he’d dumped her, turning her into a hurt and angry rejectee. She had been the one to break up with him. And shortly after, she’d married another man.

Not that he had been hurt or angry, not that he’d felt rejected, Dev assured himself. He had been surprised, yes, but he hadn’t really minded. There were plenty of women here in the lively university town of Ann Arbor, more than enough women working within the behemoth medical center to give him easy access to Gillian replacements. He hadn’t had a bit of trouble finding them, either, during the twenty months since their breakup.

Not that he was keeping count, of either the months or the women.

“You’ll be living across the hall from each other?” Cade’s gaze, laserlike in its intensity, traveled from Devlin to Gillian to the baby.

“Looks that way, doesn’t it?” Devlin stated the obvious. He’d had enough of the conversation. “Let’s get the chair inside.” He began walking toward his front door. Since Cade held the other half of the chair, he either had to drop it or go along.

Gillian watched the two men tote the chair into Devlin’s apartment, then quickly opened her own door and disappeared inside, clutching baby Ashley in her arms.