City lights streamed past the windows on one side. On the other side the vast darkness of Lake Michigan was blocked by hotels and office buildings, with an occasional empty space giving a glimpse of the lake, spotted here and there by the running lights of freighters.
He glanced at the woman beside him. She was staring out the windshield as if she’d forgotten he existed. She’d been silent a long time. Dammit, he just knew she was coming up with new complications for him to sort out. “Does it move sometimes?” he asked abruptly.
“What?” She turned toward him, her eyes blank, as if she’d been far away.
“The baby. Do you feel it moving sometimes?”
“Oh.” Her hand pressed her stomach, the fingers spreading as if she already had a big belly to support instead of a little bulge. A smile slipped over her face, changing it, making her look softer than he’d ever seen her. “Yes. She or he is asleep right now, I think, but I’ve been feeling movement for about a month now. It feels…” She shook her head, her expression full of wonder. “I don’t know how to say it.”
“It’s a good feeling, though? It doesn’t hurt or anything?”
Her glance was almost shy. She nodded. “It’s good.”
“Will you tell me the next time you feel it move? I’d sort of like to feel it, too.”
Her cheeks flushed and she tucked her chin down as if he’d asked for something intensely personal. “I guess so.”
“Good.” He thought a minute. Maybe agreeing to let him share the baby before it was born was an intimacy she hadn’t planned on. So he added, “Thank you.”
She nodded and fell silent again.
Oh, she was going to make things difficult, he knew. She probably couldn’t help it—she was a difficult woman. But he had some complications of his own in mind for her.
Charlie didn’t want to marry him, but she had to. For her sake, his sake, and most of all for the sake of the life she was carrying. So he’d persuade her. Rafe knew just how to go about that—the same way he’d gotten himself into this mess.
He’d seduce her.
Three
Charlotte hadn’t known what to expect of Rafe’s apartment. She’d been pretty sure it wouldn’t resemble his parents’ home on Lake Shore Drive. Grant and Emma Connelly lived in a Georgian-style manor furnished in antiques and elegance, with landscaped grounds that included an ornamental pool and a boxwood maze. It was altogether gracious and tasteful, not to mention intimidatingly rich.
But Rafe wouldn’t be interested in gracious or traditional. He was fond of the casual, the eclectic, the downright odd. So she hadn’t been surprised when they’d arrived at a converted office building in an area that was as much commercial as residential. But still…
Whatever she’d unconsciously expected, she thought as she stood in the middle of Rafe’s living space, this wasn’t it. She rubbed the back of her head, where the threatened headache had settled, and turned in a slow circle, taking it all in.
Except for the kitchen, the entire downstairs was one big room. The floor was wooden, the ceiling high, the colors bold. Furniture and floor treatments rather than walls defined the spaces. A change from wood to tile marked the dining area, which was anchored by an enormous painting of a jester, complete with whimsical hat, tasseled costume and airborne balls of many colors.
A sectional sofa in glowing apricot created an L-shaped conversational area in front of a fireplace. The fireplace itself was modern and white; the wall that held it had been painted deep blue. That same wall also held bookshelves, three windows, a stereo and a huge-screen TV. Facing the TV were cushy chairs upholstered in green and yellow and purple. A hammock swung gently in front of the single big window on the right-hand wall. Next to it was an iron staircase flanked by a stunning wooden statue of a nude woman.
“You have a strange look on your face,” he said. “If you don’t like the place, blame my sister Alexandra. She picked out most of the furniture.”
She stopped looking at Rafe’s things and looked at Rafe. He stood in the middle of all that color, looking dark and dangerous and out of place in his beard stubble and shaggy hair. In this light, the color of his eyes wasn’t black, but blue—dark blue, like a stormy sky. “There’s a tie on your chandelier,” she said.
He glanced up, surprised. “So there is.”
A bubble of laughter rose in spite of her aching head. She turned away, fighting a smile. The room was classy, expensive, extravagant—and extravagantly messy. Things were everywhere they didn’t belong. Books, magazines, newspapers, clothing. A guitar. Two big, thoroughly dead plants. Computer parts were strewn across the glass-topped dining table, along with more papers, a pair of socks and a tool chest. The leather coat he’d loaned her was tossed across a low hassock. The wooden nude by the stairs wore a plastic lei and a Cubs cap.
She found the clutter oddly endearing. Rafe had always seemed like too much of a good thing—too sexy, too rich, too confident. His bright, sloppy apartment made him more human. Something warmed and softened inside her.
He sighed. “It’s a mess, isn’t it?”
“Ah…” She hunted for something tactful to say, but came up empty and settled for honesty. “Yes.”
“Messy doesn’t bother me, but you like things tidy. I’ll see what I can do tomorrow.” He glanced around, frowning as if he wasn’t at all sure what that might be. “It is clean. You don’t have to worry about that. Doreen comes at least once a week when I’m in town, and the woman is a demon on dirt. She’ll clean anything that doesn’t get out of her way. Nearly vacuumed me once when I was taking a nap, but fortunately I woke up in time.”
Oh, the smile was winning, damn him. She bent to straighten a leaning pile of newspapers. “Were you napping in the hammock?”
“It’s a restful spot. You don’t need to do that.”
“I can’t help myself. What’s behind the red wall?”
“The kitchen. There’s also a half bath down here. The full bath is upstairs, along with my bedroom and office.”
“And the guest room? Where I’ll be staying—is that upstairs or down?”
“Ah…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “There isn’t exactly a guest room. I used that for my office.”
Temper made her head pound. “If you think I’m going to climb into your bed—”
“You’ll be there alone…if that’s what you want.”
She refused to dignify that bit of blatant provocation with a reply. Turning, she headed for the stairs.
The rooms upstairs were smaller than down, but still much larger than the living room of her old apartment. A glance through the first open door revealed a room that was mostly high-tech office, though piles of papers and odds and ends of workout equipment hid some of the computer paraphernalia.
A glance through the opposite doorway made her smile and step inside.
His bathroom was long and narrow, walled in cobalt-blue tile, with gleaming white fixtures and a large shower stall bricked in glass blocks. That long wash of blue ended at a square, step-up tub deep enough to drown in. “Oh, my.” She went straight for the tub. “I think I’m in love.”
Rafe stood in the doorway. “Who would have thought it? The efficient Ms. Masters is a closet sybarite.”
“Just a bathtub sybarite.” And Rafe had her dream bathroom. She sighed in pleasure and envy and glanced over her shoulder. “So why are the towels hung up instead of dumped on the floor?”
“Childhood trauma. My mother was fierce