The Pregnancy Test (NY Girlfriends #1)(28)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Damien’s eyebrows shot up.

"I thought it was ridiculous, but then I did get pregnant, and hearing you call the baby a bun, I just had the thought, that well, maybe this is the way things were supposed to happen."

Lying a little on her side, she touched the swell of her stomach. "Maybe I was meant to have this baby just like this, and it’s not an accident at all. Maybe I was meant to give up the shop and come work for you."

No matter her feelings on Ben, she wouldn’t go back and give up her relationship with him, because he had given her this child, unwittingly or not. A child she wanted more than anything, ever.

And she wouldn’t give up this night with Damien.

The lamplight set his face in the shadows. "I’m not sure I believe in fate or destiny, Mandy, but all I know is that I’m really damn glad you’re here with me."

"So am I, Damien." She laid her head back down on his chest and felt him relax one slow breath at a time.

Her thoughts emptied one by one, her body replete and satisfied, her skin sticky in the hot night air.

They lay still, together, until her eyes started to drift and she knew she was in danger of falling asleep. "I guess I should head back to my room," she murmured, to be polite and give him an out if he didn’t want her there.

"Stay," he said, shifting a little so she oozed off his chest and down onto the bed. "Sleep with me, Mandy."

"Okay." Tucking her hands under her chin and turning her nose away from the tickling hairs on Damien’s arm, the word was barely out of her mouth before she was asleep.

Chapter 12

Damien stared at the ceiling, watching an insect flutter ecstatically around the light on the ceiling fan.

He hadn’t given a whole lot of thought to Mandy’s baby.

Sure, he’d felt that odd sensation of her stomach spasming beneath his hand.

Yes, he could see the small bump growing below her belly button. And he appreciated her breasts, which were full and tender, but he’d never seen them before her pregnancy, so most of the changes in her body meant nothing to him.

Intellectually, he’d seen the worry on her face on the beach, the hurt that dickhead Ben had offered her money to leave him alone. He’d heard her talk about her fears, her need for day care, her desire to be a good mother.

But he hadn’t really thought the whole thing through. In a few months Mandy would be walking around looking like she’d swallowed a basketball, then she would have a baby in one of those chest parachutes women used to carry their babies around, and her whole world would revolve around that child.

He’d known, but he hadn’t gotten it, and he still wasn’t sure he did. But when she had started to tumble forward onto him, some instinct he hadn’t even known he’d had had leapt to the surface and reminded him she was carting around precious cargo.

Mandy slept deeply next to him, her ankles crossed, legs drawn up, her breath warming his arm, and he understood her fears. Suddenly he was terrified.

What the hell had he done here? He had slept with a pregnant woman. A mother.

Way to be uncomplicated.

He couldn’t have just found an acquaintance willing to have a carefree night of fun. No, after three years of abstinence, he went and had sex with a woman pregnant with another man’s child. How did they say dumb ass in Spanish?

Damien shifted on the bed, curling his hand behind his head. He supposed he could have slept with another woman, someone confident and independent, who just wanted commitment-free sex. He’d had a few offers like that in the last couple of years and had turned them down.

That wasn’t what he wanted.

What he wanted was someone to talk to, someone who would understand why he needed what he did, someone to just hold for a little while. Someone who would make him laugh, while knowing they couldn’t have a relationship.

Someone he could be deeply attracted to.

That was why he’d slept with Mandy.

That was why he’d do it again.

And her baby was part of the package, part of what drew him to her, the love and worry in her brown eyes.

Damien sat up, drummed his finger on his knee. He couldn’t sleep. Nothing new there. He usually only slept four hours a night, then once a month or so collapsed in a twenty-four-hour coma where he slept straight through a Saturday. The first few times it had happened, he’d scared himself. But he’d learned it was a system that worked for him. He couldn’t sleep during the week, not when his mind was busy and he would lie there hour after hour thinking, seeing, feeling.

So he’d learned to drop into bed only when he couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore; then once a month he caught up on his sleep. Big improvement from the days when he hadn’t been able to sleep at all because of the nightmares, because of the guilt, because of the feeling that he had failed miserably.

In the first weeks after Jessica had been found, raped and strangled in an alley, he couldn’t close his eyes without seeing the agony of her, once so vivacious and confident, lying in that morgue. Then the police had decided he was the prime suspect. They had thought he could have done that to Jessica, his wife. The pain had eaten him from the inside out, leaving him a jittery insomniac, hovering on the edge of insanity.

He was better now.

But never whole. Never again.

Damien got out of bed, glancing down at Mandy as she sighed in her sleep and turned her head in the other direction on the pillow.

He couldn’t have a relationship with Mandy, but he was so glad they had this, here, tonight. With her teasing smile, Damien thought she’d taken a part of him buried deep inside under a layer of avoidance and had started to help him heal.

Grabbing his boxer briefs off the floor, he pulled them on and grimaced as his feet stuck to the tile floor because of the humidity. He pulled a soft drink out of the minibar and popped the top off. He thought it was cool they had Coke in glass bottles, like he’d had as a kid.

Taking a swig, he plopped on the chair at the round table holding all his work papers, notes, and his computer.

He could work.

But after five minutes, he admitted his concentration was off. He stood up, stretched his sore leg muscles, wondering why sex always seemed to use muscles that the gym could never touch. He straightened the table, picked up Mandy’s dress and folded it. Tossed her torn panties in the trash, indulging in a fantasy of buying her a new pair. Sheer, low cut, hot pink.

He’d never been a pink kind of guy, but the idea of seeing Mandy’s soft mound behind sassy pink had him hard.