Free Baby by Design: Designing Love Book One (Crimson Romance) by Elley Arden

home. You need to stay here. And we need to think some more before we act.”
    She nodded. “I suppose that’s best.”
    “If we do this thing, we’re going to have to spend a lot of time together to convince my family it’s real. I’ll piss them off if it looks like I’m just messing around with you.”
    But truth be told, messing around with Trish hadn’t left his mind since he laid eyes on her in those fishnet stockings. And to think he was this close to a free pass.
    He slipped a hand to her face, cradling her soft cheek, loving how she responded, dropping her chin and resting against him. “Good night,” he whispered, pulling her face gently to him as he leaned in and placed a chaste kiss on her forehead. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
    He stood, snatched his coat off a nearby chair and walked into the hall.
    “Thank you, Tony.”
    He stopped with his hand on the front door knob. “For what?”
    “For not thinking I’m crazy.” She lifted a hand and brushed a clump of hair off her face, tucking it behind her ear, letting her fingers rest at the back of her neck. With her head tilted and her lower lip drawn between her teeth, she looked nervous, but her blue eyes sparkled with determination. There it was again, that irresistible blend that made Trish unique and Tony interested.
    He had to remind himself it wasn’t smart for him to stay until they both had more time to think things through. With a smile and a twist of the knob, he stepped outside. “Lock this door behind me.”
    “Okay.” She raised a thin brow and wrapped her arms around her waist. The motion deepened her cleavage.
    Tony stood on the porch, toes touching the metal threshold separating wooden slats from slate title. “Whatever you do, don’t let me back in.”
    She dropped her arms and walked those wicked legs in his direction, stopping just inside the foyer, toes touching the metal threshold too. “Don’t let you back in ever?”
    “Just tonight.”
    “Ah.” Her lips hitched as she nodded. “Chemistry, right?”
    “Absolutely,” he answered, stepping backward so as not to get caught up in the tractor beam pull. Not yet, anyway. He had a lot of thinking to do.
    • • •
    The next morning, Tony squatted beside the bench seat he’d removed from Angie’s Cadillac, hoping that working on Angie’s project would take his mind off Trish’s project—that one kept him up all night. If he wasn’t thinking about how much fun he’d have making a baby with Trish, he was thinking about how much fun he’d have being a father. But when he stripped away the thoughts of fun, he was left with a couple concerns, like how fast could a woman get pregnant, and how long did Nonna have to live?
    He knew the basics about pregnancy. He knew how to make it happen. He knew babies baked for nine months. But he didn’t know if Nonna had nine months to live. No one did. He’d seen her a handful of times since the diagnosis, and she didn’t look any different to him. Sadder maybe, but not sick. Even the doctors couldn’t be pinned to a timeframe, and chemo and radiation could change the course of things. All Tony knew for sure was that if he wanted this baby to bring joy to Nonna, then the faster he could get Trish pregnant, the better. So what was stopping him?
    He scraped a palm over the stubble on his left cheek and reached for an electric carving knife, hoping the mindless motion of cutting foam would put his worries to rest, but before he could flip the switch, a bang vibrated the garage walls.
    “Grinding?”
    “Excuse me?” Tony didn’t look in Angie’s direction.
    “What were you thinking, Tony? Grinding with Trish!”
    He looked then, more than a little surprised his sister had details about last night this early in the a.m. “She told you?”
    “No, Piper Betts couldn’t wait to tell me. She’s keyboardist in that jazz band.”
    “Oh,” he said, sitting back on his heels, oddly relived that Trish hadn’t been the one to