The Pregnancy Plan / Hope's Child: The Pregnancy Plan / Hope's Child. Brenda Harlen

me naked.”

      He lifted his brows.

      “But not since I was in diapers,” she admitted, and gave him a small smile.

      She’d always been beautiful. But when she smiled, when the light of humor sparked in the depths of her violet eyes and those soft pink lips curved, she was absolutely radiant.

      Sitting across the table from her now, looking at her over a pizza box, he wondered how he’d ever settled for anything less, how he’d ever believed that his feelings for anyone else could compare to the emotion that filled his heart when he was with Ashley.

      His gaze locked with hers, held. And suddenly the air was sizzling with the attraction that had always sparked between them.

      “Did you have those five freckles at the base of your spine when you were in diapers?” he asked.

      He could tell by the darkening of her eyes that mention of those freckles had stirred memories for her, too.

      “I don’t know,” she said softly.

      “Do you still have them?”

      “I don’t know,” she said again.

      Obviously the ex-fiancé had never kissed each and every one of those freckles, as Cam used to do. But he wasn’t going to mention the other man’s name again. He didn’t even want to think about her being with anyone else. He wanted—

      The scrape of chair legs against the floor tiles severed his thought as Ashley pushed her chair away from the table. Which was probably for the best, because he had no business thinking about what he wanted to do with Ashley when so much of his life was still unsettled.

      “I should, uh, clear this up,” she said.

      He carried the plates into the kitchen for her, and pulled out the waste basket to scrape them before loading the dishwasher. But he paused when he saw what was in the receptacle.

      “I’m guessing this is the eleven-by-fourteen,” he said.

      “What?” She turned around, saw that he’d found the broken picture frame. “Oh. Yeah. It is.”

      “It’s a good picture of you,” he said. “You look happy.”

      She shrugged. “I was.”

      And the man in the photo with her looked happy, too. Of course, he had Ashley in his arms, so he had reason to be happy. Which made Cam realize her former fiancé wasn’t just a bastard, he was an idiot. He’d been poised to start a life with this beautiful, vibrant woman, and he’d thrown it away.

      Okay, so maybe he was being a little bit hypocritical. Because twelve years earlier, Ashley had wanted to talk about their future and he’d let her go. But he’d barely been nineteen years old, too young to be thinking in terms of “till death do us part” and too stupid to know what he was giving up.

      Cam picked up his beer, took a long swallow. “Are you still in love with him?”

      Ashley returned the unused napkins to the holder then leaned back against the counter. “How is that any of your business?”

      “When a man kisses a woman it’s important to his ego—crucial, in fact—to know that she’s thinking of him and not anyone else.”

      She eyed him warily. “If a man doesn’t know that about a woman, then he has no business kissing her.”

      “That’s why I asked the question.” He set the now empty bottle on the counter and stepped closer to her, bracing his hands on the edge of the counter so that she was boxed between them. “Are you still in love with him?”

      Ashley didn’t dare answer his question with the truth.

      The truth was, she was no longer convinced she’d ever been in love with Trevor. Certainly she hadn’t loved him as she should have loved the man she was planning to marry. But if she admitted that to Cam now, he would interpret it as an invitation and, as desperately as she wanted to feel his mouth on hers, she couldn’t let that happen.

      Because she knew that one kiss would lead to more, and she didn’t want more. She’d meant what she said when she told Megan and Paige that she didn’t want a man or a relationship. She didn’t want to risk her heart again.

      “Yes,” she said.

      “Yes what?”

      “Yes, I still love …” Oh Lord, she couldn’t even remember his name. She could only think of Cam. She only wanted Cam. “.I still love him.”

      “Liar.”

      The word was a husky whisper against her lips before he captured them with his own.

      She couldn’t stop herself from responding to his kiss any more than she could stop her heart from pounding or her body from yearning. His tongue traced over the seam of her lips, and they parted willingly, eagerly.

      It seemed to her that they’d grown too far apart to fit together easily. The moment he slipped his arms around her and drew her against him, she knew she’d been wrong.

      Cam had always been a fabulous kisser. When they’d first started dating, back in the early days of their relationship when they hadn’t gone any further than kissing, he would hold her and kiss her forever. This kiss reminded her of that—as if it would go on forever, as if he could be content to just kiss her forever.

      Ashley wasn’t feeling content. She pressed against him, wanting to be closer, wanting more.

      His hands slid up her back, his fingers tangled in her hair, and he drew her head back. His mouth trailed from hers to trace along her jaw, down her throat. His tongue stroked, his teeth scraped, his lips soothed.

      He shifted, drew her nearer, so that she was nestled intimately between his legs, so that she could tell he wanted her as much as she wanted him. Desire—hot and reckless—churned in her veins, rushed through her body, making her feel as if she was seventeen years old again.

      Of course, her teenage heart had been filled with more love than lust, and though she’d given herself to him willingly, even eagerly, she’d been unprepared for the complete and total heartbreak that was all he’d left her with when he went away.

      A heartbreak that, at the time, she didn’t ever think she would recover from. A heartbreak that she’d felt even deeper and sharper than the pain caused by Trevor’s betrayal.

      She’d loved Cam once and he’d trampled all over her emotions. She wouldn’t let him do it again. She didn’t want to feel anything for the man who’d broken her fragile heart so many years before.

      But as she kissed him back, she couldn’t deny that she was feeling something, though she didn’t know how to define what that something was.

      Attraction? Undoubtedly. Cam Turcotte had been a teenage heartthrob, and the years had added to rather than detracted from his appeal.

      Lust? No doubt a healthy dose of that had been thrown into the mix. And maybe that wasn’t surprising, considering that she was a twenty-nine-year-old woman who hadn’t been on a date since the end of her engagement.

      She’d had offers. When she’d gone out with Paige and Megan or friends from work, she’d been approached by men who expressed an interest. But she hadn’t even been tempted. In fact, she hadn’t felt anything but numb for so long she didn’t know what to think about the feelings that were spiraling through her now.

      When would she ever learn?

      Obviously the trauma of slicing open her hand had affected her brain. It was the only explanation for letting him kiss her, for letting the kiss go as far as it did.

      He’d caught her in a moment of weakness, but she was drawing the line, right here and right now. She would not get caught up in the seductive magnetism of Cam Turcotte. Not again.

      She had to end this now—that would be the smart thing to do. But it felt