Her Best Friend's Baby. Vicki Thompson Lewis

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СКАЧАТЬ at her every time she climbed into the car.

      Before starting the engine, she turned to Morgan. “How long do you think you can stay?”

      “A few days, maybe. But I’ll need to call the office and tell them where I am. My partner can probably take care of—”

      “You didn’t tell your office you were coming here?”

      He looked surprised by the question. “I didn’t tell anyone.”

      “Morgan!”

      “I haven’t been in the most organized state of mind recently.”

      “Well, I know, but people must be frantic! Your office is one thing, but what about your friends, your parents? All sorts of people.”

      He regarded her steadily. “I called my parents right after the accident. As I talked to them and felt no empathy at all, I was brutally reminded that they try to avoid anything messy and cruel. When I told them there would be no funeral, so they weren’t required to do anything, they sounded relieved. They told me to call if there was anything they could do. But I knew they didn’t really want me to call.”

      Her heart ached for him, but she knew exactly what he was talking about. Her father had been like that after her mother died. He’d promptly hired Arielle as Mary Jane’s nanny and then had proceeded to distance himself from his daughter, who was a constant reminder of harsh realities like death. Arielle had been her family from that moment on, Arielle and the good friends she’d made here in Austin.

      “As for friends,” Morgan went on, “I have to confess we weren’t all that close to anyone. We were both busy with our careers, and we didn’t take much time to socialize other than business dinners, meet-and-greet kinds of things. I can’t think of anyone who would be all that concerned as to my whereabouts.”

      “I’m sure you’re wrong about that, but you should at least call your office.”

      He nodded. “Yeah, I will.”

      “Do you have a calling card?”

      “Of course.”

      She pointed to a pay phone a few feet from the restaurant. “I’ll wait.”

      His eyebrows rose. “Are you giving me an order?”

      “As a matter of fact, I am. I don’t know how they do things in New York, but out here in Texas we give people a shout when it’s necessary. I would say running off to Austin and leaving your medical practice high and dry qualifies.”

      “My God, you’re lecturing me!” He seemed ready to give her an argument.

      She met his gaze. “I may be a mere child in your eyes, and an uneducated waitress on top of that, but it’s possible I know more about some things than you do, in spite of the fact you’ve gone to college for about a million years and probably graduated magna cum incredible.”

      He blinked. “I don’t think of you as an uneducated waitress.”

      “That’s what I am,” she said quietly. She noticed he hadn’t contradicted her statement that she was a mere child. He still thought she was too young—too young for him. “I finished high school,” she said, “but I was sick to death of sitting in stuffy classrooms by that time. Waitressing is the only thing I know how to do.” She paused. “Well, that’s not quite true. I know how to—”

      “Never mind!” he shouted.

      Her eyes widened. “I was going to say crochet. What did you think I was going to say?”

      “I’ll make that call.” He was out of the car in an amazingly short time, considering that he had to unwind his body to get through the low-slung door.

      But he didn’t get out quickly enough to keep Mary Jane from seeing that he’d blushed red as a stop sign.

      While he made his call, she studied him without fear she’d be caught gawking. She needed to look at him more closely and decide what she thought about all this. For one thing, she wanted to make sure that she wasn’t rising to the bait. If she wasn’t careful, she’d take his assumption that she was only a kid as a challenge to prove she was every inch a woman. That would be bad.

      Once he’d made his connection to New York, he leaned a shoulder against the curved cubicle surrounding the telephone. Now that she’d begun to see him as a man instead of a pediatrician and her best friend’s husband, she allowed herself to notice the wide set of his shoulders, his narrow waist circled with a black leather dress belt, the pleated trousers that didn’t totally hide his nice butt. He shifted his weight. Definitely a nice butt.

      He wore his wavy brown hair short, and she found herself gazing at the nape of his neck with the urge to kiss him there. They’d never really kissed at all, come to think of it. What had happened between them last night hadn’t been a romantic interlude, more like a bid for survival. She wondered how it would feel to be truly kissed on the mouth by Morgan. For some reason she figured he’d know how to use his tongue.

      She imagined him without those rumpled clothes and felt the stirrings of lust. He had strong-looking legs. She remembered that much from this morning, before he’d started getting all guilt-ridden and she’d stopped noticing his body.

      No doubt it wasn’t kosher to be sitting here checking him out, considering their circumstances, but she couldn’t seem to help it. Maybe she was using curiosity as a distraction from the scary grief that hovered over her like King Kong. If so, it worked pretty well.

      Yeah, she was damn curious about what kind of lover Morgan was. Arielle wasn’t the type to drop coy little hints, like some wives did, about her husband being a stud. Mary Jane had assumed Morgan was a nice guy but not particularly exciting in the bedroom.

      Last night notwithstanding, and she couldn’t really count that, he might still be a ho-hum Romeo. But if Morgan was no fun in bed, then her radar was way off. She was picking up signals like crazy from this man. He was starting to make her drool, to tell the truth. She didn’t feel particularly noble admitting that to herself, but it was true.

      She might be able to blame the pregnancy for her sexual interest in Morgan. In a way, that made the lust all his fault, his and Arielle’s. She liked the idea of pointing the guilty finger at her hormones. Those rambunctious little dudes were the villains, getting her all worked up.

      But if she followed that line of reasoning, she should be drooling over anything in pants. Plenty of male customers came through the door at the diner, and she hadn’t felt inclined to jump their bones. She’d felt generally deprived sexually, but it hadn’t affected her discrimination.

      Morgan hung up the phone and turned. As he walked to her, her heart did a little dance of welcome. He was only staying a few days, she reminded herself. They obviously needed each other to make it through the first shock and come to grips with their tremendous loss. When they’d recovered their balance, he would go back to New York and continue with his life there while she would stay in Austin and continue hers. She’d probably better cool it.

      He climbed into the car and shut the door. “Calling was the right thing to do.” He looked at her. “Thanks.”

      “So they can manage without you for a little while?”

      He СКАЧАТЬ