Little Secrets. Maureen Child

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      Her eyes were shining, her smile was hypnotic and she smelled even better than the food. Jack was on dangerous ground already. Having her invade the office he thought of as his own personal cave wasn’t helping anything. Now he’d be seeing her here, even when she wasn’t. There had to be boundaries. For everyone’s sake.

      “Why’re you really here?” he asked. “Isn’t the bakery busy enough for you?”

      “Oh, it really is. But Casey’s a great manager.” She took a sip of water. “As you said yourself, I’m the boss, I can take a break when I want to.”

      Tough having your own words thrown back at you and used against you.

      “I can’t,” he said, but he kept eating the chow mein. It really was good. “Look, I appreciate this, but it’s not something that should become a habit.”

      “Really?” She tipped her head to one side. “Why not?”

      “Because we both have work,” he said and knew it sounded lame. But off the cuff it was the best he had.

      “Uh-huh.” Thoughtfully, she took another bite of her broccoli, then asked, “Sure it’s not because you’re trying to avoid being around me?”

      “If that were true,” he countered, “why would I have married you?”

      “Such a good question.” She took another bite. “Have an answer?”

      This was not going well. He was losing a battle he hadn’t even been aware he’d entered. “You know why we got married.”

      “The baby.”

      “Exactly. This wasn’t about us having lunch or dinner together,” he pointed out, but hadn’t stopped eating yet. “This isn’t about cozy nights at home, Rita, and you know it. It’s an arrangement with an expiration date.”

      “Hmm. And, it wasn’t about you driving me to work every morning either and yet...” She shrugged again, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

      Well, he’d stepped right into that one.

      “That’s different,” he argued. “You used to live above the bakery now you have to drive to work—”

      “Six miles,” she threw in.

      “This isn’t about the distance, it’s about safety.” He took a drink of water. “I’m not letting you drive through the city alone in the middle of the night when it’s just as easy for me to drive you.”

      “So you’re worried about my safety. That doesn’t sound disinterested to me,” she mused, taking another bite.

      “Being concerned doesn’t mean worried.” Though he was. Hell, the thought of her driving alone through the city in the middle of the night gave him chills. What if she got a flat tire? Or the car just died? Or something happened with the baby?

      She took another bite and watched him as she chewed and swallowed. Sunlight filtered through the windows and made her dark hair shine with golden highlights. Just watching her chew had his body going on red alert. It was that mouth, he told himself. That full, generous, completely kissable mouth that was doing him in.

      “You work so hard to pretend that you’re oblivious to me and your family, but it’s not working.”

      His frown deepened and rather than argue, he took another bite of his lunch.

      “Look it up in a dictionary, Jack. Concerned means worried. And that’s exactly what you are. Worried, I mean. Oh, don’t say anything,” she said, waving her chopsticks when he started to deny it, “I know it bothers you to be worried, so that’s almost the same as not being, unless you think about it carefully and then it’s exactly the same thing and you don’t want to recognize that, do you?”

      Jack stared at her. “What?”

      Shaking her head she took a sip of water, “Nothing, never mind. Doesn’t matter right now. I didn’t get the chance to tell you, but your sister came to the bakery to see me yesterday.”

      His head snapped up. Suddenly, her conversation was taking several different paths at once and none of them were making sense. “Cass?”

      “You have two sisters as well as two wives?” she asked, teasing.

      “Funny.” That smile was really hard to resist and he was pretty sure she knew it since she kept flashing it at him.

      “A little, maybe.” She shrugged again. “Anyway, Cass wanted to talk about you, big surprise.”

      Well, there went the appetite. He set his plate aside, reached for his water and took a long drink. “That’s what this visit is about then,” he said. “What Cass had to say.”

      “Nope.” She shook her head, sending those brown curls into a wild dance that made him want to spear his fingers through them. “I was coming to surprise you anyway. This just gives us more to talk about.”

      “No, thanks.” He took another drink, half wishing it was a beer. “I’m not interested in conversations and besides, I have to get back to work.”

      “No you don’t,” she said, setting her plate aside, too. “You’re just trying to get rid of me again.”

      “Again?”

      She sighed. “Jack, you avoid me every chance you get. The penthouse is big, but not so big that we shouldn’t run into each other more often. But you see to it that we don’t.” She ran one hand lovingly over her baby bump, but her gaze never left his. “Even when I trap you into breakfast in the morning, you just bolt it down and dodge every attempt at conversation.”

      “Four thirty in the morning, not the best time for chats.”

      “What’s your excuse then for dinner?” Still shaking her head, she said, “Usually, you grab an apple or something and disappear into your office. Or if you do sit down with me, we don’t talk. Heck, you hardly look at me directly.”

      It was too damn hard to look at her. To want her so badly it was a constant, driving ache inside. He was paying, daily. His atonement continued and he could only hope that he survived it somehow.

      “Rita...”

      “Your family’s worried about you.”

      He scraped both hands across his face, then stood up, unable to sit still any longer. “You don’t have to tell me about my own family.”

      “Are you sure?” She stood up, too, and faced him, toe-to-toe. A part of him admired that spine of hers. He’d liked it right off, from the moment they met and she hadn’t been afraid. But right now, he wished she was more cautious, less ready for a confrontation.

      “They want to help you and they don’t know how,” she said. “I don’t know how.”

      “I didn’t ask for help,” he reminded her tautly. “I can deal with things my own way.”

      “Not so far,” СКАЧАТЬ