Just A Little Bit Pregnant. Eileen Wilks

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      Two

      At 10:20 that night Jacy pulled into the parking lot of her apartment. She wore a yellow T-shirt with the sleeves torn out over a hot-pink leotard and turquoise bike shorts. Her windows were down, though the temperature still hovered near eighty. After a workout she liked to feel the wind on her damp skin as she drove home, even if it was only muggy city air lifting her hair from her neck.

      Another woman might have called a friend after the confrontation with her baby’s father. Although Jacy considered a couple of people at the paper good friends, it didn’t occur to her to call them. Not then. Instead, she’d driven for hours, using the excuse of an interview to hit the highway. When that didn’t help, she’d gone to her gym to try to work through her emotions physically.

      That hadn’t done much good, either.

      Jacy’s neighborhood straddled the line between respectable and scary. Her apartment complex was fifty years old and hadn’t been anything special even when new, but it was centrally located and she liked it. The walls were thick, the plumbing worked and every spring the azaleas burst into exuberant bloom.

      No flowers bloomed this late in the summer. Tonight the air smelled of exhaust fumes and charcoal from the fast-food place down the street.

      Jacy turned off the engine, rolled up her windows, grabbed her tote in one hand and her pepper spray in the other. She’d taken three steps away from her car when she saw the man sitting on the outside steps to her apartment. Waiting. Watching her.

      She froze.

      Night and the harsh light from the lamppost nearby laid hard black shadows across the man’s face and form, turning him into a fluidly changing study in black and white as he stood. His hat threw his face in shadow, but she didn’t need to see his features to know whose body uncoiled from one of the lower steps.

      “If you have to carry pepper spray to walk from your car to your apartment, you’re in the wrong neighborhood,” Tom Rasmussin said.

      The sudden starkness of Jacy’s face hit Tom like a blow to the stomach. He hadn’t meant to frighten her. But then, he hadn’t intended most of what he’d done to this woman, had he?

      Guilt had a bad taste, yet there were worse emotions. “We need to talk,” he said.

      She walked slowly toward him. Damn, it ought to be illegal for women to wear those exercise clothes in public. Especially a woman like her. Jacy had a body that could make a strong man beg, a body he remembered only too well.

      His gaze slid to her belly, mostly hidden now by the yellow T-shirt. It looked flat still.

      “You picked a lousy time to talk,” she said. “It’s late.”

      “This isn’t exactly the time I picked. I’ve been waiting here two hours.”

      For the first time she smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant expression. “You would have waited longer if I’d known you were here.”

      He didn’t doubt that. “I’d like to come up.”

      She studied him a moment longer before nodding. He didn’t need to be a mind reader to know how reluctant she was to let him in—every stiff muscle of her body as she passed him on the stairs spoke clearly of how little she wanted to be around him. He didn’t much blame her. The night probably wouldn’t get any better for her, either, considering what he had to say.

      Her apartment made him jumpy. The large living area overflowed with color and clutter... and memories of the one other time he’d seen it. Books and magazines were scattered everywhere, from the hedonistic couches crowded with pillows to the small dining table where her computer sat.

      The book on top of the nearest pile had a picture of a mother and a baby on the dust jacket. Tom looked away.

      She’d told him no that night. After a long, hot kiss, she’d told him he was going too fast. His hand had been on her breast. She’d looked up at him with eyes slumberous with hunger and shiny with feelings he should have respected—and he’d never hesitated.

      It hadn’t been hard to change her mind.

      Tom took a deep breath. He’d known this wouldn’t be easy, hadn’t he? He took off his hat and bent to set it on her coffee table.

      “You want a drink?” Jacy asked.

      He looked at her, standing stiff and wary at the other end of the red couch. Her hair fell loose around her shoulders as if she’d just climbed out of bed. He had a sudden, visceral memory of her, of how she felt from the inside—and he wanted her. Oh, yes, he did want her, wanted to touch her one more time, wanted the thrill and insanity of losing himself in her, letting the fire have them both until everything else, past and future, was burned away. He’d never experienced fire like hers before that night, their one night together.

      Memory melted into fantasy. What would it be like if he reached for what he wanted and tumbled her down onto one of the brightly colored couches? What if he slid his hand up under that yellow T-shirt as they fell...

      Hell, СКАЧАТЬ