Playboys' Christmas Surprises: A Christmas Baby Surprise. Catherine Mann

creak of the door snapped his attention across the room. Alaina stood in the doorway frowning. Damn it. How much had she heard? Had his mother’s strategic verbal land mines already blown his second chance all to hell? Courtney might have said she intended to respect his wishes, but he wasn’t 100 percent certain she wouldn’t try to find some way to finagle her way past on a technicality.

      “Alaina?” he asked, waving her inside.

      She stepped deeper into the room. “Please introduce me to your mother.” She tugged a Christmas plaid burp cloth off the shoulder of her blue cotton dress that skimmed her curves. “I’m sorry I don’t remember you, ma’am, but you’re right. We’re all lucky to be here together since I very well could have still been in that hospital bed. Or not here at all.”

      He exhaled hard, grateful she’d misunderstood his mother’s comment. But he couldn’t count on continued luck. He needed to make progress with his wife and get his family back. The sooner the better.

      * * *

      Two hours later, Alaina opened the closet in her bedroom. Hers and Porter’s.

      The space was larger than her first college studio apartment.

      One side was lined with rows of Porter’s clothes, suits and casual wear, each piece hung and arranged with precision, even down to sleeve length. She walked along the row, her fingers trailing the different textures. She could almost imagine the cloth still carried the heat of the man who wore them.

      A half wall sectioned the male and female side of the “closet.” Shoes fit into nooks, purses, too. And somehow she knew to push the button on the end—jewelry trays slid out in staggered lengths and heights. The stones that winked at her varied from semiprecious to mind-bogglingly expensive.

      Who was she now? In this life? This house with an apartment-sized closet?

      Even that thought gave her pause, reminding her that she hadn’t grown up with finer things like the ones in this house. How comfortable had she been living here? Had she grown jaded and used to these luxuries?

      Glancing back at the elegant driftwood four-poster bed, she began to seriously consider their arrangements as they became reacquainted. He’d said he wouldn’t pressure her and she hoped he meant that. He couldn’t possibly think they would be sharing a bed. Not yet. In spite of the attraction that still simmered between them, she wasn’t ready for intimacy just now.

      But someday?

      She could barely envision getting through the night, much less through the next few weeks. She turned to the closet again and studied the racks of clothes and rows of shoes and purses and her clothes as if they could give her some hint about the woman she’d been in those missing five years. Certainly one who enjoyed shopping and bright patterns. Grasping at the clothes, she enjoyed the cool feel of the silks and satins. This closet was luxurious—the kind women might fantasize about. Alaina half hoped one of these garments would stir a memory, and the past five years of her life would come rushing back to her.

      No such luck.

      She released a floor-length gown with a jeweled bodice and glanced down at the simple cotton dress she wore, so different from the rest of her clothes. Had Porter packed this for a reason or had he simply grabbed the first item his hands fell on?

      The cotton dress didn’t feel like the artsy sense of herself she remembered from five years ago. In fact, the house didn’t much reflect her, either. Where was her love of Renaissance art? There were no paintings or statues she would have chosen. Everything was generic, decorator style, matching sets. Had she really spent time here? Been happy?

      Where had the traces of herself gone?

      The sense of being watched pulled her back into the room, where she found her husband standing by the four-poster bed with a tray of food. He wore a T-shirt and jeans now, the pants low slung on his hips as if he’d lost weight recently. Perhaps he’d been worried sick about her and Thomas. She tried to imagine what the past month had been like for him, but came up empty. It was hard enough for her to grasp her own situation, let alone empathize with his when she didn’t know him beyond what the past week had shown her. But all of those interactions had been in the hospital with its sterile environment and lack of privacy. The four and a half years they’d supposedly known each other were wiped clean from her mind. Not so much as a whisper of a memory.

      “I thought you might be hungry. There wasn’t much of a chance to eat with the trip home, settling Thomas and my mother’s surprise arrival.” He set the tray on a coffee table in front of the sofa at the foot of their bed. His thick muscled arms flexed, straining against the sleeves of the cotton tee. She tried not to notice, but then felt slightly absurd. He was her husband and yet a stranger all at once.

      “That’s thoughtful, thank you.” She watched him pour the tea, the scent of warm apples and cinnamon wafting upward. “Between a night nanny for the baby and a full-time cook-maid, I’m not sure what I’m going to do to keep myself occupied.”

      “You’ve been through a lot. You need your sleep so you can fully recover. I’m here, too. He’s my child.”

      “Our child.”

      “Right.” Porter’s eyes held hers as he passed over the china cup of tea with a cookie tucked on the saucer. “He needs you to be well. We both do.”

      The warmth of the cup and his words seeped into her and she asked softly, “Where are you planning to sleep?”

      He studied her for a slow, sexy blink before responding, “We discussed that in the car.”

      “Did we?” She wasn’t certain about anything right now.

      “We did.” He sat on the camelback sofa, the four-poster bed big and empty behind him as he cradled a cup of tea for himself in one hand. “But just to be clear, nothing will happen until you’re ready. You’re recovering on more than one level. I understand that and I respect that. I respect you.”

      His sensitivity touched her. She should be relieved.

      She was relieved.

      And yet she was also irritated. She couldn’t help but notice he still hadn’t said he loved her, that he wanted her. He wasn’t pushing the physical connection that obviously still hummed between them. Was he giving her space? Was he holding back because she couldn’t possibly love a man she didn’t know? She kept hoping for some kind of wave of love at first sight. But they were fast approaching more than a few hundred sights and still that wave hadn’t hit.

      Attraction? Yes. Intrigue? Definitely. But she was also very overwhelmed and still afraid of what those memories might hold. She wasn’t able to shake the sense that she couldn’t fully trust him. If only he would say the right words to reassure her and calm the nerves in the pit of her belly.

      She looked around the room, everything so pristine and new looking, a beach decor of sea-foam greens, tans and white. More of the matched set style that, while tasteful, didn’t reflect her preferences in the least. “How often did we come here?”

      “I have a work office in the house. So whenever we needed to.”

      She set aside the tea untouched. “You’re so good at avoiding answering my questions with solid information.”

      A flicker of something—frustration?—flexed his jaw. “We spent holidays here and you spent most of your summers here.”

      “Then how do I not have any friends in this area?” Where were the casseroles? The welcome home cookies? Or did the überwealthy with maids and night nannies not do that for each other?

      “Many people around here are vacationers. Sometimes we invited friends or business acquaintances to stay with us, but they’re back home in Tallahassee or at their own holiday vacation houses. We also traveled quite a bit, depending on my work projects.”

      “So I just followed you around from construction job to job?”

      “You make that sound passive.