If ever there was a time for him to be knocked over by a feather, Rick thought, now was it. Maybe he’d just heard her wrong. “Why?”
“Because that’s where they keep sperm.”
This was an insane conversation. What are you doing here, Rick? Why are you eight years too late?
She ran her tongue over her dry lips. “I wanted a baby.”
For a second, he couldn’t think. Dragging a chair over to her bed, he sank down. “There are other ways to get a baby, Joanna.”
Suddenly, she wanted him to go away. This was too painful to discuss. “They all involve getting close to a person.”
Memories from the past teased his brain. Memories of moonlit nights, soft, sultry breezes and a woman in his arms he’d vowed to always love. Who’d vowed to always love him.
Always had a short life expectancy.
“They tell me that’s the best part,” he said quietly.
She looked away. “Been there, done that.”
Her flippant tone irritated him. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask if there’d been money involved in this transaction, as well. But the question was too cruel, even if she deserved it. He let it go.
Rick rose, shoving his hand into his pockets as he looked out the window that faced the harbor. “So there’s no one else in your life?”
“My baby.” Her baby would make her complete, she thought. She didn’t need anyone else.
Rick looked at her over his shoulder. “Someone taller.”
She knew she should be fabricating lovers, to show him that she could go on with her life, that it hadn’t just ended the day they parted, but she was suddenly too tired to make the effort.
“Not in the way you mean, no.”
Funny, whenever he’d thought of her in the last eight years, he’d pictured her on someone’s arm, laughing the way he loved to see and hear her laugh. It had driven him almost insane with jealousy, but he’d eventually learned how to cope.
Or thought he had until he’d seen her last night, her body filled out with the signs of another man’s claim on her.
He turned and looked out on the harbor again. The sky was darkening, even though it was only two in the afternoon. There was a storm coming. Unusual for April. Boats were beginning to leave. “I went by your house this morning.”
Her house. Her poor house. Joanna held her breath. “And?”
There was no way to sugarcoat this, but he did his best. “It was only half destroyed by the fire.” Rick turned to look at her. “But it’s not habitable.” He saw the hopeful light go out of her eyes.
“Damn, now what am I going to do?”
He approached the matter practically. “Well, it’s not a total loss. It might take some time to rebuild—you do have coverage, right?”
Yes, she had coverage, but that wasn’t why she was upset. Fighting back tears, she sighed. “That’s not the point. I was going to take out a home loan on it.” The appointment had been postponed from last week. She fervently wished she’d been able to keep it. Now it was too late. “Nobody gives you a loan on the remains of a bonfire.” Joanna struggled against the feeling that life had just run her over with a Mack truck. She’d been counting on the money to see her and the baby through the next few months until she could go back to work and start building their future. “Now I don’t have the loan or a place to live.”
Rick studied her face for a long moment. And then he said the last thing that she expected him to say. The last thing he must have expected himself to say.
“You can come and stay with me.”
Three
She stared at Rick, momentarily speechless.
As far as she knew, prenatal vitamins did not fall under the heading of hallucinogenic drugs and she’d had nothing else to throw her brain out of alignment. Why, then was she hearing Rick make an offer she knew he couldn’t possibly have made?
“What did you say?”
Her eyes were even bluer than he remembered, bluer and more compelling. He had to struggle not to get lost in them, the way he used to.
“I said, you can come and stay with me—until you get on your feet again,” he qualified after a beat, feeling that the offer begged for a coda. This wasn’t meant to be a permanent arrangement by any means. He was just temporarily helping a friend. For old times’ sake.
If she could have, Joanna would have walked away. As it was, all she could manage was a pugnacious lift of her head.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t take charity.”
He felt as if she’d insulted him, insulted the memory of what had once been between them. Or had that only been in his own mind? Right at this moment, the chasm that existed between them seemed a hundred yards wide. Sometimes, it was hard to remember how it had gotten this way.
“It would have been charity if I’d just put a wad of bills in your hand and told you not to pay it back.” He shrugged, struggling to rein in anger that had materialized out of nowhere. “This is just putting a couple of empty rooms to use.”
She assumed by his offer that he was staying at the estate. It was the last place she wanted to be. Not with the past vividly rising up before her. “I really don’t think your father would exactly welcome the invasion with open arms.”
“One woman and an infant are hardly an invasion—or an intrusion,” Rick added before she could revise her words. He guessed at part of the problem. His parents had never treated her with the respect that he’d felt, at the time, that she deserved. His mother was gone now, but there was still his father. “And my father is Florida on vacation.” An extended one, he thought. His father hadn’t been back to California for several months, actually.
A vacation meant that the man was returning. “So, what’s that, a week, two?”
“More like three months or more.” With things like teleconferencing, there was not as much need to appear in the flesh anymore, Rick thought. He couldn’t say that he disliked the arrangement. The less he saw of his father, the better.
Her mouth curved with a cynicism that was ordinarily foreign to her. “Oh yes, I forgot, the rich are different from you and me—” She glanced up at him. “Well, from me at any rate.”
He heard the bitterness in her voice. Was that directed at him? Why? He hadn’t said anything to trigger it. But then, as his father had once pointed out, he really didn’t know Joanna at all.
Something within him made him push on when another man would have just shrugged and walked away. He wasn’t even sure why.
Maybe because, despite the bravado, she looked as if she needed him. Or at least, someone. “Mrs. Rutledge is still there.”
At the mention of the woman’s name, Joanna’s face softened. She and his parents’ housekeeper had gotten on very well during the days when he had invited her to his house.
“How is Mrs. Rutledge?”
Like a fighter returning to his corner between rounds, Rick gravitated toward the neutral topic. “Still refusing to retire. Still thinking that she knows what’s best for everyone.”
Joanna smiled, remembering. “She always reminded me of my mother.”
More neutral territory. Rachel Prescott had been the woman he’d secretly wished his mother could have been. He’d spent a great deal of time at Joanna’s house