P.S. I'm Pregnant. Heidi Rice

footsteps as she hightailed it down the stairs.

      The muffled slam of the front door echoed at the bottom of the house.

      He flopped back on the bed, stared at the ceiling and frowned at the fancy light fixture his interior designer had insisted on shipping in from Barcelona.

      What the hell had that been about?

      He might as well have set her tail on fire, she’d shot out of the room so fast. Either he’d been hallucinating, or he’d just been treated to the female equivalent of the ‘wham-bam thank you, ma’am’ routine.

      He guessed he ought to be hurt, but first he’d have to get over the shock.

      Not that he hadn’t been dumped before, mind you. Of course he had. He could still recall Mary O’Halloran, slapping him down in front of all his mates when he’d been thirteen and full of the carelessness of youth. He’d snogged her and forgotten to call her the next day so he figured he’d deserved it. In fact, he still felt a little guilty whenever he thought about Mary.

      But even Mary, riled to the hilt, hadn’t dumped him without chewing his ear off first for twenty minutes about all his shortcomings. And he’d never met a woman since who wouldn’t talk you to death about ‘the state of the relationship’ as soon as look at you. God, when he thought about all the times Rachel had insisted on ‘having a little chat about where they were headed’ his stomach sank.

      So why should he care that Daisy had brushed off his offer to talk? Sure, he hadn’t really meant it. All he’d wanted to do was calm her down, get her to stick around.

      He lay on the bed, the ripples of sexual fulfilment making him feel lethargic, and tried to convince himself it was all for the best. He should be overjoyed. It made things a lot less complicated. He wasn’t looking for anything serious and neither was she.

      He rubbed his belly, stretched his legs under the sheet, contemplated taking another shower, then caught the heady whiff of her scent. Heat surged into his crotch. He frowned and sat up, staring at the tent forming in his lap.

      The damn problem was, he wasn’t pleased. Because he wasn’t finished with her yet. Okay, they had nothing in common, and their one-night stand, or one-morning stand or whatever the hell it was didn’t have any future. But still, he hadn’t wanted it to end, not yet. He’d had plans for today. Fine, so them getting naked and having mind-blowing sex hadn’t been a definite part of it, but he didn’t see why they shouldn’t go with the flow there. They might not be compatible out of bed, but they sure as hell were in it. In fact they were more than compatible. She’d been as blown away as he had by the intensity of…

      He stopped, his brain finally catching up with his indignation. Had she been spooked by how good they were together? He relaxed back into the pillow, the pounding heat in his groin finally starting to subside.

      That had to be the problem. Daisy might be the most pragmatic, forthright woman he’d ever met, but she was still a girl. And wasn’t it just like a girl to analyse everything to death? To worry about what great sex meant instead of just enjoying it while it lasted.

      He huffed out a laugh.

      And now he thought about it, he didn’t have to feel hard done by either. Little Daisy might turn out to be his ideal woman. Someone sexy enough to turn him inside out with lust and smart enough to know he wasn’t a good bet for the long haul. Hell, they’d only just met and she’d already figured that out. Now all he had to do was show her that just because they weren’t going to spend the rest of their natural lives together, didn’t mean they couldn’t spend the next little while exploring their potential in other areas.

      He whipped back the sheet and leaped out of bed—his faith in the wonder of womankind restored. He’d have that shower after all, get dressed and then head to her place and invite her back for breakfast. Whatever she had planned for the next couple of days he’d persuade her to drop it.

      Daisy seemed to be remarkably susceptible to him—whether she liked it or not. Getting her over this little hump so they could finish what they’d started shouldn’t be too tough. He strode into the bathroom, his whistled rendition of ‘Molly Malone’ echoing off the tiles.

      CHAPTER SIX

      CONNOR was feeling a lot less jolly two hours later as he stood on Daisy’s doorstep. He braced the box under his arm, heard the furious feline hiss from inside and stabbed the door buzzer, impatient to see Daisy again and get at least one thing sorted to his satisfaction.

      It had taken him an eternity to chase her landlady’s cat down and get it in the box—and he had a criss-cross of scratches on his hand for his trouble. Unfortunately the cat wasn’t the only thing that had mucked up his morning. After a panicked call from the architect on his Paris project, he’d had to book a Eurostar ticket for this afternoon.

      As soon as he’d put the phone down to his PA, Danny had been on the line from Manhattan, begging him to bring his trip there forward a week to stave off the now apparently imminent possibility of the Melrose project going belly up. He really hadn’t needed another conversation about Danny’s ludicrous ‘fake fiancée’ solution so he’d ended up agreeing to fly over there from Paris at the end of the week.

      All of which was going to stall his plans to get the delicious Daisy Dean back in his bed any time soon. But once he’d finally wrestled the cat into the box, he’d made up his mind he wasn’t prepared to write the idea off completely. Not yet.

      He glanced at his watch. He knew a cosy little four-star restaurant in Notting Hill where he and Daisy could discuss their next moves over a glass of Pouilly Fumé and some seared scallops before he grabbed a cab to St Pancras International. He didn’t see why he shouldn’t stake his claim before he went. A three-week wait would be a pain, but he could handle it if he had something tangible to look forward to when he got back.

      He pressed the buzzer again. Where the hell was she? It was ten o’clock on a Saturday morning and she’d been up most of the night—surely she couldn’t have gone out?

      He noticed the ragged paint on the huge oak door and glanced up at the house’s elegant Georgian frontage. Crumbling brickwork and rotting window sills proved the place had been sadly neglected for years. She really did live in a dump.

      The thought brightened his mood considerably.

      Maybe he could persuade her to housesit while he was gone. He’d had a call back from the estate agent while he was having his spat with the cat. Even if he got an offer straight away as the guy seemed to think, it would take a bit to do all the paperwork. And he liked the idea of Daisy being there, waiting for him when he got back from his trip. He was just imagining how much they could enjoy his homecoming when the door swung open.

      ‘Well, if it isn’t the invisible neighbour.’ The elderly woman standing on the threshold stared down her nose at him, which was quite a feat considering she was at least a foot shorter than he was. The voluminous silk dressing gown with feather trim she wore looked like something out of a vintage Hollywood movie. Her small birdlike frame and the wisps of white hair peeking out of her matching silk turban would have made her look fragile, but for her regal stature and the sharp intelligence in her gaze. Which was currently boring several holes in his hide.

      ‘What do you want?’ she sneered, eyeing him as if he were a piece of rotting meat. ‘Finally come to introduce yourself, have you?’

      As Connor didn’t know the woman, he figured she must have mistaken him for someone else. ‘The name’s Connor Brody. I’ve a cat with me belongs to the landlady here.’

      He put the box down in front of her, the screech from inside making his ears throb and the slashes on his hand sting.

      She gasped and clutched a hand to her breast as her face softened. ‘You’ve found Mr Pootles?’ she whispered, tears seeping over her lids. She bent over the box—the anticipation on her face as bright as that of a child on Christmas morning.

      He stepped forward, about to warn her she