The Pregnancy Test (NY Girlfriends #1)(30)
Author: Erin McCarthy

"I forgot to turn on my vaginal air pressure gauge," she snapped. "I don’t know! I was too focused on not losing my mind to worry about physics."

He looked hurt, the idiot. "Well, I didn’t know… I’m sorry, Mandy. I didn’t mean to do anything harmful to you or the baby."

Oh, damn. His hand was stroking on her again, and she felt like the biggest bitch for yelling at him. "I know that. Of course you wouldn’t hurt me. But you startled me, and frankly, I haven’t read that chapter in the book so I have no bloody idea what you’re talking about."

Which was rather distressing to realize that she was walking around making choices for herself and her baby without having the facts straight first. What was the matter with her? Who was she to think she could raise a child and not make a disaster out of it?

"I’m sure it’s fine. We just won’t have oral sex again. And when you go to your next prenatal appointment, you can ask the doctor about it. Oh, and we should avoid deep penetration or having you on your back for long periods of sex." He nodded, as though this all made perfect sense to him and that this wasn’t an incredibly bizarre conversation for a man to be having with his knocked-up secretary.

"I have to use the loo." She shoved on his chest so he would back up. All thoughts of sensual good-morning sex were gone, shot into orbit by his vaginal-blowing fears.

"I’m starving," he said, obviously not picking up on her tension as he sat up and moved to the edge of the bed. "Do you want to grab some breakfast? Then I should probably get some work done for a couple of hours."

"That’s fine. I’ll shower while you’re working." And read the damn Everything Guide to goddamn Pregnancy.

She didn’t want to make any more mistakes. She didn’t want Damien, who wasn’t even the baby’s father, to have a better sense of what was happening to her body and baby than she did.

And most of all, she wanted to know why along with all the other sacrifices she had to make, she couldn’t even be allowed the pleasure of having Damien eat her out.

Chapter 13

Showered, dressed in a bikini, and armed with information, Mandy went off in search of Damien around lunch-time.

He had completely freaked her out, on so many levels, with his behavior that morning. He had brought back to the surface her doubts about her abilities as a mother, made her feel guilt for ignoring the textbook she really should have read two months ago, and he’d worried her that maybe she had done something sexual she shouldn’t have.

What kind of mother was she? She should be knitting booties like a proper mum, not having sex with her boss.

Unfortunately, being naked with Damien seemed much more appealing than laboring her way through the creation of a yarn sock.

Then added to all of that was the confusion over watching Damien Sharpton focusing in on her child. She supposed he wasn’t acting completely out of person, since he seemed to have taken a divide-and-conquer approach to her pregnancy. He had devoured all the information available to him, now was prepared to do everything by the book, literally.

He had sent her into the shower with admonishments about the water temperature not exceeding one hundred twenty degrees.

Like she even knew what that was just by turning the taps. She had never quite mastered the whole Celsius/ Fahrenheit conversion.

But no matter if the behavior fit Damien’s aggressive, assertive personality, it was unnerving. And his concern, no matter how thoughtful, coupled with the way he had opened up to her the night before, made her feel a strange, confusing longing that she had no business feeling.

They needed to keep this simple. They needed to keep this about sex.

But it was so hard when Damien had become her friend on this trip. He had shown her parts of him that were hidden from everyone else. She saw the humor and the caring and the worry. The loneliness.

He had made her feel so relaxed, so sexy, so capable. He didn’t doubt her abilities to raise her child. He didn’t look at her and see nothing but poor choices. Damn it, he liked her, respected her, trusted her, and that was so appealing.

And now he wanted to look after her unborn baby.

It couldn’t happen. She couldn’t let him in like that, couldn’t learn to lean on him, get used to him being in her life. He had said he didn’t want a relationship and she believed him. He hadn’t healed from his wife’s death, and his heart wasn’t his to give away, even if she were looking for that, which she wasn’t.

Was she? Mandy halted in the hallway outside Damien’s room, startled by her thoughts.

No, of course she wasn’t. She was still hurt and dealing with Ben’s rejection, and most importantly of all, she needed to focus on her job and her baby. There was no time for a relationship in her life, and it would only be a needless distraction. Plus she never wanted her child to become attached to a man who wasn’t its father and who could leave at any time. Bad enough Mandy would have to explain someday that the child’s biological father had no interest in seeing her or him. She couldn’t create a situation where her child could be rejected a second time.

So it had to be about sex, and nothing more.

That had been fabulous between them, so what in the hell was wrong with just leaving it at that?

Annoyed that Damien had complicated things, she pounded hard on his door.

"Come in," he called.

Mandy flung open the door, determined to seduce him into a nooner. She’d spent the entire morning reading the Everything Guide, and there was absolutely no reason why they couldn’t be as sexually active as she wanted to. The book had even encouraged it as a way to keep you relaxed and alleviate stress.

Damien was sitting at the table trying to work on his laptop, a gigantic hamper taking up most of the space and leaving him dangling precariously on the edge.

"What is that?"

"I don’t know." His fingers flew over the keyboard. "It’s for you. The front desk had it when I went to check messages and send a fax. It came on the flight from Heathrow."

Mandy went to the table and leaned to read the label. Right in front of Damien. Dangling her breasts in front of him like really big carrots. It wasn’t subtle, but she had only two days to work with.

He made a strange coughing noise.

She would have turned to check on the promising sound, but the behemoth package was from her mother. Mandy laughed in comprehension. "Oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s from my mother." She untied the bow on top and let down the cellophane wrap. "It’s a food hamper from Fortnum and Mason."