One-Amazing-Night Baby!. Heidi Rice

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      He was right.

      Unshed tears stung behind her eyes. She wanted to run away, hide. Wake up when everything was sorted and she and her baby could live happily ever after.

      Her voice was a strangled whisper. ‘You hurt me, Cooper.’ Through telling Evangeline about the baby as much as anything.

      His thick sooty lashes lowered as his hand combed back her hair. She felt his heartbeat booming through his body and against her. ‘Forgive me.’

      Her heart squeezed. Oh, God. Did he have to look at her like that?

      ‘Tomorrow you’ll be asking me to forgive you again.’

      His jaw flinched as his gaze lowered to her lips. ‘I’m not perfect.’

      She hesitated, then somehow, somewhere, found a small grin. ‘Can I get that in writing?’

      The tension bracing his frame seemed to ease. He took half a step back to search her eyes more deeply. ‘Does that mean you’ll stay?’

      He was insufferable, boorish.

      Dangerously close to irresistible.

      She set her jaw and tried to look fierce. ‘It means you’re on probation. That’s your one and only Get Out of Jail Free card.’

      As he groaned with relief, drew her in and pressed an almost chaste kiss to her brow, she didn’t know if he realised, but in her heart she knew it was true. She owed it to her baby to give him one more chance. She owed it to herself and the baby to stick to that and not give in again.

      CHAPTER TEN

      ONE month and one day after the costume party, Sophie stood looking over the meerkats’ replica desert home at Sydney’s Taronga Park Zoo. No winding caves or upper storeys. These cute cousins to the mongoose lived on ground-floor quarters.

      Just like her.

      But she didn’t regret giving in to Cooper’s request that she move downstairs. It would be arrogance on her part to say she did. And, to be fair, after their talk-and-make-up that morning he’d been on his best behaviour. So much so, she’d begun to wonder whether miracles did happen and destiny had in fact shone its light on them both.

      But it was early days yet. Surely a leopard didn’t change its spots? A man of Cooper’s determined and uncompromising character didn’t turn over a new leaf overnight. Each day when they said goodnight, and she curled up in her bed alone, she told herself, Wait a little longer and the bombshells will start falling again.

      Every day she waited for the former Cooper to return. Every day she waited for the sparring to begin again. And every day that passed without a sighting, she found herself believing and caring a little more.

      Whistling, Cooper returned with two bottled waters. He set one upon the waist-high fence and, smiling at a meerkat’s pointed little face and alert upright posture, unscrewed the other bottle and handed it over.

      Sipping on her water, Sophie wondered again at Cooper’s newfound restraint with regard to trying to seduce her. Was this self-discipline part of a calculated game to have her crumple beneath the incessant craving and beg him to take her in his arms?

      If that were indeed the case, all she could say was … it was working. Whenever he smiled that certain sexy way, or strode around in front of her in nothing more than a towel and foam upon his face, she had to call her body to heel. Unfortunately it never listened.

      After removing his baseball cap, Cooper swiped the bottle’s condensation over his brow. The winter sky was a perfect dome of saturated blue, and the temperature had been delectable—though it was dropping now the afternoon was fading.

      After quenching her thirst, she recapped her bottle, and Cooper turned for her to slot it into the khaki knapsack slung over his back. ‘We should visit the kangaroo park next,’ she said. The last stop on today’s busy agenda.

      She adored the clean, open atmosphere of Taronga Park. More so, she loved that endangered species like the Asian elephant and Nepal’s Red Panda were being cared for here.

      He checked the time. ‘Then we’d better get a move on. They’ll be closing soon.’

      They meandered down a gently winding bitumen slope, Cooper keeping a half-step ahead—Sophie suspected in case she stumbled or tripped.

      He snapped a digital pic of a massive croc grinning around a mouthful of jagged teeth. Showing her the shot, he asked, ‘Any update from the infamous Mr Myers this week?’

      Cooper was aware that, as it had turned out, the principal hadn’t wanted to see her regarding anything personal, but rather had needed to discuss a parent’s complaint over a student’s assignment mark. Perhaps it was nerves, but Sophie had imagined a curious glint shining from behind Mr Myers’s large old-fashioned frames as he’d spoken to her from his orderly desk that day almost a month ago.

      ‘I must have been mistaken,’ she said, stopping to read a direction chart to make sure they were on the right path. ‘Myers still doesn’t seem to know anything about the pregnancy.’

      ‘But he’ll need to soon.’

      Irrespective of how well things had been going between them, her hackles quivered. They’d been through this. ‘I don’t want to hide it. I just don’t feel a need to blurt it to the world.’

      Her body. Her privacy. Her prerogative.

      And there was another reason for not jumping in and telling everyone at work—the first twelve weeks of pregnancy were known for incidents of miscarriage. But she had entered her second trimester, thank heaven, and was discovering a whole new interesting side to her fluctuating hormone journey.

      Cooper seemed to read her mind.

      ‘What were you looking up on the net last night? You shut the page when I came into the study.’

      Sophie quashed a jab of embarrassment and twisted her mouth. ‘Hmm … sorry.’ She shrugged. ‘Can’t remember.’

      He laughed—a deep, rich, scrumptious sound. ‘You look as guilty now as you did then.’ He gave her the evil eye. ‘You weren’t tinkering with the naughty sites, were you?’

      She dug deep for an answer. ‘Not exactly.’ Then, more firmly, ‘No.’

      They collected a bag of dry food pellets and entered a reserve full of kangaroos and wallabies but, almost at closing time, devoid of humans. The minty smell of eucalypt was close to overpowering.

      Opening a pellet bag, Cooper walked around her. ‘I see you’re trying your best to intrigue me.’

      He followed as she trod carefully up to a grazing wallaby. Sophie crouched, and glowed inside when the sweet little face nuzzled into her hand. Their eyelashes were so long—she ran a palm down its back—and their fur so incredibly soft.

      Cooper nudged again. ‘Anything you want to share, Sophie? I’m all ears.’

      The wallaby’s wet nose wriggled against the pocket of her palm, full СКАЧАТЬ