it’d be to give into anything Orlando might actually put out there. She was also determined to get her life together, the sooner the better, especially if things changed between them. Knowing how he felt about the person who’d cheated him out of those first months with his baby, she had all the more reason to hold off on spilling it about that. She’d since decided, maybe if their bond got even tighter, he might be more apt to forgive her. Hearing the ways the guys talked down at the shop helped her not get any crazy ideas about giving into just a fling. Just as Orlando said Byron had decided to go back to just having his fun with girls but not getting into anything serious with any of them, all the guys down at the shop seemed to think the same way. With the exception of his married partners, most of the other guys who worked there openly joked about getting laid and bagging a different chick every weekend. Now Orlando had pretty much told Danica it’s what he did too. That he’d even been upfront with Felicia when he’d first started seeing her. So maybe he stared at Danica a little too long sometimes. Maybe he was thinking naughty things when he smiled at her the way he did that left her breathless. He’d all but spelled it out for her already. He was all for a good time as long as she didn’t start getting clingy. Felicia was a perfect example of what would happen if she did.
“Ma, ma, ma, ma!”
Glancing down at the precious baby and hearing him call her this was all it took. This was more than the reinforcement her heart needed to remind her she had no choice. She needed to dig deep and summon all the self-discipline she could to make sure she didn’t ruin this. So far, everything had fallen perfectly into place. How could she be stupid enough to even start fantasizing about something so out of the question? The baby had given her the most precious gift he could possibly offer her—his first word. He still hadn’t even said dada despite all the coaxing she’d done to get him to. And this is how she repaid him by giving into her fluttering insides?
Between the mental scolding and the blissful sound of the baby calling her mama, she was done! After holding him and cuddling him for a few more minutes, she placed him back in the stroller and headed back to the house. They’d blast Cri Cri while she prepared his early dinner and got him ready for his bath. No more thinking about the only thing she’d been able to think about since Orlando walked out the door that morning. It was out of the question and just not happening. Period.
The roar of Orlando’s truck was one Danica recognized even before he entered the driveway of his home. It had one of those after-market mufflers that made for a much louder-than-the-average exhaust pipe you could hear clear up the street. He claimed he got it to save on gas since his older model restored truck was a bit of a gas guzzler, but Danica was sure he enjoyed how loud and powerful it made the truck sound. Normally, it brought a giddy smile to Danica’s face as she listened to the truck near the house and then roll into the driveway. It meant she’d be face to face with him real soon. But today it had her insides roiling. As the roar got even louder when he rolled into the driveway, Danica took a deep breath but smiled big, widening her eyes at the smiling baby. She’d just finished getting him in his jammies. Orlando had since called to give her a heads-up that he’d be running late today. The shop wasn’t open to the public on the weekends. But Orlando and his partners still went in to work on VIP projects. Because of Beast’s fame, they’d acquired quite of bit of celebrity clientele. Not just other sport figures like De La Hoya who were car buffs, but television, movie, and recently some reality show celebs who were in the same business had reached out to them. Orlando mentioned this weekend they’d be meeting with a few guys from a car restoration reality show out of Vegas. But they’d dropped in a day early, late that afternoon. When Orlando called, he wasn’t just giving her a heads-up