“You heard me.”
“Did you say you think … you’re pregnant. You don’t know? Why would you come here before you were sure?”
His glowering made her squirm uneasily. “I took four pregnancy tests, and they were all positive. I can’t eat. And I fainted, didn’t I? I’ve been nauseated the last two mornings. My period’s late. I could go on with the symptoms. Did I tell you I really like pickles right now? What do you think all that adds up to?”
A sledgehammer was pounding in his brain.
“Plus, because of you the feds kicked me out of my apartment, and I have nowhere to stay.”
“Have you had your condition confirmed by a doctor?” he asked.
She grabbed another sliver of apple. Shaking her head, she bit into it. “Not yet, but the way things have been going, I’d bet my miserable life that we’re probably pregnant.”
“We …”
“We!”
“Okay, but you could still be wrong about … us.” He looked sick to be using the plural pronoun.
“Right …. Four pregnancy tests can definitely be wrong on planet Earth. Anything in our magical realm is possible,” she said dully.
“Could be a bad batch.”
Shaking her head at him, she decided to try the white cheese he’d put out. In between bouts of nausea, she had a voracious appetite. What she really wanted was a dill pickle. Not that she was about to ask for one.
His face was hard and set as he watched her. “And you’re sure that if you are …”
Beneath his critical gaze, she lost her craving as a strange panic welled up inside her. She’d told him she couldn’t eat with him staring at her like that, but his mood was so bitter she thought maybe now wasn’t a good time to nag, so she laid the piece of cheese back on the platter.
“What? What is it? Why are you scowling at me like that?” she said. “What have I done now?”
He took a deep, worried breath.
“What?” she demanded.
“Sorry I have to ask this. Are you absolutely sure that … if you’re right … about you being pregnant … that I’m … that I’m the father?”
Vertigo made his granite countertops whirl round and round. His darkly handsome face blurred sickeningly.
“You moralistic jerk!” Fury consuming her, she sprang out of the chair and lunged at him. “Am I sure? Damn right I’m sure!”
He caught her wrist in midair and used it to swing her against the long length of his muscular body. Her full breasts slid against his ripped torso. In an effort to catch herself, she grabbed his lean waist. Then she fought to launch herself free of him. He used the leverage to pull her closer.
“Calm down. I just had to be sure.”
“I’m totally positive,” she yelled, kicking at him even as she pushed at his chest. “I told you that you’re the only man I’ve …. I’ve slept with … in months.”
His eyes had taken on the polar chill of blue ice chips. “What about my brother?”
Fury suffused her.
“Your father said you were going to marry him,” Jake persisted.
“My father made that up. Logan and I dated, but our relationship didn’t work on any level other than friendship. Not that my lack of a sex life is any of your business!”
“Maybe I disagree. After all, you claim I’m the father of your child.”
“If I’m pregnant, so are you! Not that I would choose you!”
“Nor I you!”
“Believe me, I … I wish it was somebody else’s! Somebody I met in a bar would be nicer! So let me go!”
“Are you going to try to hit me again if I do?”
“After what you just said, you deserve a bullet … you know where. But no, since I’m a lady.”
“You could have fooled me.” Releasing her, he watched her warily.
She backed a few steps away from him and rubbed her wrist.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m sorry to upset you, but I had to know. I used condoms, if you’ll remember. Lots of them. I took precautions.”
“Oh, yeah, well, you didn’t take enough!”
He stared at her for a long moment. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “If what you say is true, and you’re pregnant, and it’s mine, I’ll accept full responsibility for the child … and for you … despite who you are … which means our next step should be to see a doctor.”
“If what I say is true? If? You still don’t believe me?” Her eyes narrowed and her pulse sped up. “Well, it’s true! Despite who you are! I hate this ….”
“So the hell do I, but it looks like we’re stuck with each other, at least until we get some sound medical advice.”
“I’m afraid a doctor will only confirm the worst!”
“Obviously, you believe that,” he said. “But I won’t believe it until I hear him say it.”
“Dr. Preston’s a she. When she does, then what?”
“We’ll handle it,” he muttered.
“Well, if you think you can make me stop this pregnancy …”
His black brows slashed together. It was his turn to hiss in a breath and gape at her. “You don’t know me at all if you think I’d destroy my child.”
His outrage was so intense, she knotted her hands and stood up taller.
“How could I know what you feel on the subject or on any subject, when for all practical purposes we’re strangers?” she whispered.
“Strangers, cher? You wish. I wish. Unfortunately, that’s the last thing we are. I’d say we’re intimately connected.”
“I shouldn’t have come. Look, I’ll figure out how to do this on my own. I have a friend in London who’s offered … Never mind! Forget I ever came here.”
“As if I could.”
She turned away from him and stared at his backyard, which looked overgrown and badly in need of pruning. She did so love working with plants. Oh, how could she think of gardening at a time like this?
Jake was silent and still for a long moment, but she imagined his eyes boring into her back. Then his breath sped up, and he spanned the distance that separated them.
“I don’t want you to go,” he said, planting his hands on her shoulders. “You were right to come here. We’ll figure this out … together.”
Before she knew what he was about, he’d pulled her tightly against him. Some part of her wanted to twist out of his grasp, but another wanted to relax into his hard warmth and strength, so she let him pull her closer. The times when someone had held her and comforted her in life had been so rare since her mother’s death, and that night with him had been wonderful.
Then the next day her father’s empire had crashed very publicly, and her father had told her that Jake had been one of the main whistle-blowers who’d brought him down.
“I am to blame for what happened that night,” Jake muttered against her throat, his voice deepening with needs that at first she did not understand. “I wanted you and you wanted me, too. I didn’t realize what your father had done until the next