For Their Baby. Kathleen O'Brien

It’s near my hotel, though, so it’s not far out of the way.”

      She had taken a job? Here, in San Francisco? Thank God he was accustomed to controlling his face in court, so he didn’t let his shock show. But…surely she wasn’t planning to stay here long enough to need a job!

      And that’s when he realized that, despite everything, he had continued to believe that this whole mess might go away soon.

      That she might go away soon.

      He tried to relax his hands on the wheel. “Where’s the job?”

      “At the Bull’s Eye,” she said. Her chin tilted up maybe an eighth of an inch. “Weekend bartender.”

      The silence that followed the statement was loaded, like a gun. A hundred incredulous phrases leapt to the tip of his tongue, and though he somehow bit them back, she obviously guessed at every one. She didn’t look at him, but the muscles in her body seemed coiled, ready to strike if he dared to criticize.

      But a bartender? Damn it, a bartender? On her feet, in the middle of the night, in that neighborhood? As fragile as she looked? She’d lost ten pounds since the Bahamas—ten pounds she didn’t have to spare. Did she really think the Bull’s Eye was any place for a pregnant woman? Hadn’t she had enough of groping drunks to last her a lifetime?

      Something hot and tight moved through his chest, and he found his fingers clenching the wheel in spite of his best efforts.

      He knew how any of those questions would sound. Controlling. Patronizing. Snobbish. The mother of my child, a bartender?

      He could hear her comeback now. Guess you should have thought of that, jackass, before you slept with a bartender.

      He turned right onto Market, his tires complaining as he took the corner a little sharply. He eased back on the gas and forced himself to take a breath. Regroup, he ordered himself. This wasn’t about snobbery, but he’d be damned if he knew what it was about.

      He had no say over where she worked. And whose fault was that? His own. He was the one who had dictated the rules here. He had rejected any official investment in Kitty, her life or her unborn child, until and unless the tests proved the baby was his.

      So what was this sudden overprotective reaction all about? Why did he care what she did to earn a few bucks while she waited for the test results?

      Because—

      Because the whole thing was impossible, that was why. Insane. She was nothing to him today, but tomorrow they might be as intimately connected as two people could be. Nothing in between. Either she was a lying nutjob who would vanish like a bad smell, or she was the mother of his child, who would change his world forever.

      And he couldn’t do anything but wait to see which way the coin fell.

      This shouldn’t have happened. They’d had one sexy, rather sweet night together, the way millions of people the world over did all the time. They’d both been trying to drown some sorrows, forget some ghosts. Neither of them had dreamed they might be stepping into this kind of trap.

      So what the hell was he supposed to say? What the hell was he supposed to feel?

      The silence stretched on, but eventually grew less tense as she seemed to realize he wasn’t going to lecture her. She gave him directions as needed, and by the time they reached the Bull’s Eye, David felt back in at least some semblance of control.

      He parked near the door—it was far too early for a crowd, even in this neighborhood. He turned off the engine and swiveled toward her. She looked pale, as if the wordless emotional standoff that had just passed between them had taken its own kind of toll.

      He offered a smile as a truce. “Would you like me to come in with you?”

      She shook her head. “I won’t be a minute.”

      She was as good as her word. Less than sixty seconds later, she emerged from the small, dark, brown-planked building, hugging a white plastic sack to her chest. Her face was bent over the sack, and she walked so quickly he wondered if she was running from someone.

      Had her new boss given her a hard time?

      She pulled open the door and lurched in.

      “Is everything okay?” He couldn’t see her expression. Ducked down like this, her face was hidden by a cascade of springy green curls. “Did you get your uniform?”

      “Yes.” Her voice sounded odd. Was she crying?

      “Kitty—”

      “Please,” she said in that same muffled strangeness. “Could you take me home now?”

      “Of course.” He started the car and pulled back onto the main drag. She still hugged that bag, wrapping her arms around it as if it were a life raft.

      He tried to think of something to say, but failed. He had an insane urge to tell her that if she hated the idea of taking that bartending job, she didn’t have to do it. He’d help out, financially. Hell, even if the baby wasn’t his, he would help. He didn’t want her to have to serve drinks in that greasy, half-rotted dump.

      But he couldn’t say any of that. He had no idea what he could say. He’d never felt so wrong-footed in his entire life. Thank God her hotel was only three blocks from here. All he had to do was get there without saying or doing anything to upset her more.

      From the moment they’d met at the doctor’s office, he’d seen that she was angry with him, desperately angry at being forced to submit to the test. What he saw as common sense, she saw as a monstrous personal insult.

      Or perhaps a cowardly attempt to dodge responsibility.

      That, he realized, wasn’t entirely untrue. He’d never pretended to be a saint. He didn’t want to be a father, not now, not like this. He didn’t want to bring his first child into the world…like this. So, yes, damn it, he did want a way out of this impossible situation. If by some miracle the baby wasn’t his, what a get-out-of-jail-free card that would be.

      For him.

      But… He glanced at Kitty’s huddled body and her trembling fingers. What about for her? The baby wasn’t going to go away just because David found out it wasn’t his. What would she do then? If he wasn’t the father, and she knew it, why would she have come to him in the first place?

      Because she had nowhere else to go. No other safety net below her, ready to catch her fall.

      “The lab has promised to expedite the results,” he began awkwardly. She made a strange sound he couldn’t identify, and he wondered if she thought expedite was pompous and absurd. Hell, this was like trying to have a conversation with someone from another planet. You didn’t know what the simplest words meant to them.

      “They’ve promised an answer by Wednesday,” he soldiered on. “So I’ll call you as soon as—”

      She waved her hand toward him, making another peculiar noise. She fumbled with the bag.

      “Kitty, look,” he said, frustrated, but starting to get worried. Why wouldn’t she tell him what was wrong? “I know this is rough on you, but I want you to know that, no matter—”

      And then, with one final, strangled moan, she opened the bag and promptly vomited all over her brand-new bartender’s uniform.

      THE FOLLOWING MONDAY AFTERNOON was crisp and windy, the blue sky filled with long scalloped rows of clouds that looked like fish scales. It would have been a great day to feel healthy, rested and free.

      Instead, Kitty felt sick, exhausted and trapped.

      It was only the second day of her job selling puppets at Punch and Judy—the retail job she’d taken at the wharf because the bartending gig didn’t offer enough hours. And already her patience meter was sagging toward Empty.

      She had hoped this store, which sold gorgeous, quirky hand puppets, might be less boring than other retail