Her Baby's Hero. Karen Sandler

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СКАЧАТЬ gave him a dark look as she passed him, and when he glanced at her over his shoulder, she still had her eye on him. He ignored her, starting toward the house.

      Sara had left the door slightly ajar, and he started to push it open. He could almost see his long-dead mother wagging a scolding finger at him. Biting back impatience, he knocked and waited.

      She had to be just inside, but several seconds dragged by before the door finally moved. When Ashley stepped clear, his world narrowed on that first glimpse of her face.

      He’d remembered her as attractive, but her brains had placed her above most of the gorgeous women at school who couldn’t resist the allure of his money. What he hadn’t recalled was the silkiness of that strawberry-blond hair, how enticing her soft brown eyes were.

      Then his gaze drifted down, giving in to the impulse to take in all of her. If her face had sent his imagination racing, his first sight of her body stopped it in his tracks. He understood that what she’d called him up here to discuss was far more complex than money.

      Ashley Rand was obviously, noticeably, most certainly pregnant. And if he’d learned any math at all back at Stanford and Berkeley, the baby was his.

      How could she have thought she’d ever be ready to face Jason Kerrigan again? Standing just across her threshold, he looked even more stiff and formal and coldhearted than she remembered back at Berkeley. His neat, gray polo shirt and impeccably creased charcoal slacks screamed boardroom rather than backwoods ranch. No doubt, dirt wouldn’t dare come to rest on that pristine fabric.

      “Hello,” she said, at a loss as to how to muster any other greeting.

      He didn’t answer, his gaze fixing for a moment on her face before it dropped again to her six-months-pregnant belly. Under his scrutiny, a nausea kicked up that rivaled her eight weeks of morning sickness. She had to resist the urge to shut the door in his face.

      His perfect patrician brow furrowed. “We used a condom.”

      She tried to smile, but her face felt too stiff. “Best-laid plans.”

      His gaze locked with hers. “Why did it take so damn long to tell me?”

      “Everything about that night was a mistake. I wasn’t keen to revisit it.”

      His jaw worked. “I still had a right to know.”

      She should have called him the moment the test stick turned blue. But sometimes she could hardly believe that night had actually happened, that two near strangers—barely friends—had burned for each other that way. Then, after the ultrasound and Dr. Karpoor’s startling news, she’d needed time to wrap her mind around her predicament, time to get past the panic. It had taken her this long to get up the courage to call.

      Even now she was reluctant to share the miracle inside her. “How do you know it’s yours?”

      He didn’t even blink. “It’s mine.”

      She dug her heels in at his arrogance. “How can you be sure? I wasn’t a virgin.”

      He fixed her with his dark eyes. “You might as well have been.”

      While she reeled at that bald assessment, he looked past her into the house. “Can I come in?”

      Again the impulse surged inside her to shut the door. If she ignored him, maybe he’d leave, then she could pack everything up in her bug and disappear. She certainly had enough experience disappearing.

      But things were different now. She started teaching at Hart Valley Elementary in another week, had a classroom full of second-graders to educate. It was what she’d trained for these past several years at Berkeley. Not to mention Sara and her new baby. How could she leave her sister and nephew behind?

      He put a foot up on the threshold. “We need to talk about this, Ashley.”

      She imagined Jason stepping inside, the small space filled with his presence. Back at Berkeley—until that night—she’d never entertained the least lascivious thought about Jason. But now memories crowded her mind, his skin against hers, his mouth everywhere. The images overwhelmed her. She would be an idiot to allow him into the close quarters of her quirky octagonal house.

      She needed a chance to get her head on straight again, to reestablish Jason as the prickly, straitlaced man she recalled from school. Anything else she might be feeling was just hormones and not worth crediting.

      Pulling the door shut behind her, she squeezed past him onto the deck of the front porch. “Let’s take a walk.”

      He followed her down the porch steps and toward the pasture and paddocks where the horses dozed. As they passed the tack room, she grabbed the brand-new bucket of treats Sara had left there. Before she’d gone more than a step, Jason plucked it out of her hand. “You shouldn’t be carrying anything heavy.”

      She tried to take it back. “It can’t be more than five pounds.”

      He pulled it out of her reach and read the label. “Five point five.”

      She would have wrested it from him, but the last thing she needed was a tug-of-war. Giving up the battle, she continued toward the paddocks. He gestured for her to go first when the walkway narrowed around the corner of the covered arena, and she made sure to keep her distance. Up the hill, the horses had noticed their approach and stood at attention in their paddocks.

      In early September, the Sierra foothills still shimmered with heat. The grass on the rolling pasture that had glowed a vivid green in the spring lay drooping and yellowed now. September’s shorter day was a relief, but at four in the afternoon, sunset was still a few hours away.

      They arrived at the first gate to the pasture area. He put a hand out to stop her as she reached for the latch. “How far along?”

      She bit back her irritation. “You can count as well as I can.”

      He pushed open the gate before she could. “Six months, then.” He studied her swollen belly. “You’re pretty big.”

      “Thanks for the reminder.”

      When she reached to shut and latch the gate again, he stood in her way to do it for her. The temptation to give him a poke rose up inside her, but that would mean touching him. She wasn’t touching him. “I’m not an invalid, for heaven’s sake.”

      “I know.” His gaze moved from her face down the length of her, and despite her swollen body, she felt a trace of heat in the wake of his scrutiny. She’d heard sometimes women were more easily aroused during pregnancy, but she hadn’t believed it, until now. Maybe rampant prenatal hormones explained the baffling attraction she felt for him.

      Not that he wasn’t easy on the eyes. He was as close to beautiful as a man could be, lean but muscular, with high cheekbones and deep brown eyes that had always fascinated her. There were lines bracketing his full mouth that hadn’t been there back at school and a new burden on those broad shoulders. She suspected she knew what weighed him down but wanted to see if he’d bring it up on his own.

      One of the horses nickered, then the other five joined in. “They’re waiting,” she said, hand outstretched for the treats.

      He pulled СКАЧАТЬ