Bear My Babies

Thomas walked over to her, standing over her with a concerned look on his face. “I already have a clean-up crew on their way and a contractor coming to fix up this front door.”

Melissa nodded her head, not sure how to use words at the moment.

“Oh Mr. Fix-it,” Tilly cooed from the other side of the room earning a glare from Melissa. Of course Tilly would never forget how to speak in a crisis.

“You didn’t have to do that, Thomas.” She finally found her voice, afraid if she didn’t speak up, Tilly would say something else to try and mortify her.

Melissa was grateful, but a little embarrassed he was taking care of everything. It really wasn’t his place to do anything. It wasn’t like they were a couple and he felt responsible for her happiness. It made sense that he would want her to be safe since she was about to become the mother of his child, but to fix things in her life that had nothing to do with the baby seemed wrong to her. She had already got her hopes up the night before when they went out to dinner, and she was embarrassed how crushed she was when he mentioned going out with Hilary. She wasn’t going to allow herself to feel warm and fuzzy for him again just so he could stomp on her feelings with some supermodel blonde on his arm. No, she had learned the hard way the only person she could depend on was herself. She was perfectly capable of calling a fix-it crew and putting her office back into order.

“Nonsense,” he said, dismissing her need to put distance between them.

Melissa wondered if he really was as clueless to her desires as he was acting.

“Really, my insurance company should be taking care of this. It’s the reason I pay them for things like this. I don’t need your crew.” She tried not to let the anger of her office being destroyed and her weird jealousy cloud her voice, but she had a feeling she wasn’t as successful as she wanted to be.

“My crew can work with your insurance company. Truly, it is no problem. It will all work out; let me help you with this.” He put a hand on her arm. Melissa opened her mouth to argue some more, but he cut her off. “I don’t want you to stress out about anything, you guys take the day off and let my crew handle it.”

She wanted to tell him no, but the concern in his eyes was her undoing. They both stared at each other, and at least for Melissa, the rest of the world, especially her destroyed office, faded away into the background. He looked so warm and inviting to her. Why did he have to have Hilary for a client? she thought as they were lost in each other’s eyes.

“We can do your shots at my office today instead, okay, Melissa?” Bruce said, breaking her out of her stare down with Thomas.

Thomas blinked and stepped back half a step as if he had just realized they weren’t alone. Melissa silently cursed and thanked Bruce at the same time for ending the spell she had been stuck under. Thomas had Hilary so there was no reason for her to pretend he was going to be something he wasn’t. They made the terms of the agreement, and if she thought about it hard enough, she would remind herself why wanting Thomas to take care of her was a bad thing. She just had to think, really hard.

“Okay,” Melissa nodded to Bruce, ignoring Thomas and Tilly. “Let me go get everything we need. Then I’ll meet you at your office.”

“I can help you,” Bruce said moving as if he was going to follow her back into the exam area where she kept her injections.

“No. You go open up your office and I’ll be there in a little while. I need a moment to get my head straight.”

“Are you sure?” Bruce asked, still not moving to leave.

“She said she needed some time. She’ll meet you at your office when she gets her shots.” Thomas moved so he was standing front of Melissa, blocking her view from Bruce.

After a moment, Melissa heard Bruce move away, his footsteps heading toward the shattered door.

“I’ll see you at my office,” he said as one final jab before he left.