Her Best Friend's Baby. Vicki Lewis Thompson

a perfect age for bearing a child, but mentally—”

      “What a crock! You don’t know a damn thing about my mental age. I have to say, Morgan Tate, you are a real pr—uh, prude.”

      “Go ahead and use the first word you thought of,” he said. “It fits.” He’d much rather have her anger than the bleakness he’d seen in her eyes when she first woke up. He’d probably shattered her illusions forever, but she was trying to pretend she was worldly enough to handle it. He’d never loathed himself more than he did at this moment.

      She whipped out of bed. “Go ahead and beat yourself up about last night if you want. I don’t intend to do that, because I knew exactly what I was doing, and it seemed like the best thing for both of us at the time. Maybe it was wrong.” She sent him a challenging look. “But it’s done. Now I’m going to go take a shower.”

      “Mary Jane, it will never, ever happen again.”

      “I wouldn’t expect it to.” She drew herself up a little taller, which still wasn’t very big. She couldn’t be more than five-three, max. “Especially since you consider me such an infant. There’s a half bath downstairs if you want to use it.” Then she marched into her bathroom like royalty and shut the door.

      He wanted her so much he nearly groaned aloud. He was a pig, not worth someone putting a bullet through his head. His wife had been dead two days. Until Mary Jane had taken him into her warm body, he’d been as good as dead, too. She had saved him, pulled him from the black pit of hell, and he yearned for her with an unholy fierceness.

      But she would never know.

      MARY JANE STOOD under the shower and let the hot water pour over her head. She wondered if a person could drown in the shower if they breathed in the water. It was a tempting thought, but it probably wouldn’t work. You had to be pretty determined to drown yourself, like the guy who walked into the ocean in that old movie A Star is Born.

      Besides, even if she started to drown, there was a doctor in the house. He’d revive her. Yes, there was a doctor in the house. An embarrassed doctor who thought he’d forced himself on an innocent young woman. He’d turned a thing of beauty into something ugly.

      It was right, what she’d done last night. She clenched her fists and raised her face to the hard spray. The right thing. If he couldn’t understand that, then to hell with him.

      Except that she wanted him to understand it. She wanted him to see that last night had been her last gift to Arielle, her attempt to take care of the man Arielle had loved so much. Arielle would have understood. Mary Jane would never have allowed last night to happen that way if she hadn’t believed, deep inside, that Arielle would have been okay with it.

      Well, if she didn’t intend to drown herself in the shower, which she would never do anyway because she had the baby to consider, then she might as well stop stalling and wash up.

      As she moved the washcloth over her body, her nerve endings hummed in response. Her heart might feel like a hunk of lead, but her body was saying thank-you for the favor of a little loving. She’d only had two serious boyfriends in her life. One had been a good lover but a terrible conversationalist, and she’d discovered how important it was to her to be able to talk to a man when they’d stopped kissing for a little while. So the second relationship had started with lots of conversation. Great conversation. And he’d turned out to be a dud in bed.

      According to Lana, finding the combo of a good talker and a good lover was definitely the old story of looking for a needle in a haystack. And Lana, being twenty-six, had four more years of experience than Mary Jane, so she knew all about needles and haystacks. Lana said some women finally settled on which was more important, the body connection or the brain connection, and went with that.

      Mary Jane had never had the guts to ask Arielle if she got both when she married Morgan. Arielle had been so enthusiastic about what a great person Morgan was, not mentioning his body, that Mary Jane had concluded the brain connection was the main thing. And yet…powerful, smooth strokes…feeling complete…rising, reaching together.

      Shaking her head, Mary Jane put the image out of her mind. It could have been a lucky accident that she and Morgan had been so in tune last night. One time didn’t count. Morgan and Arielle had likely connected primarily on the mental level. After all, Arielle was extremely smart, and she’d once said sex wasn’t the most important consideration in a husband. Mary Jane remembered how she’d laughed and argued with Arielle about that. But Arielle had stuck to her guns. She…

      She was gone.

      Stuffing a washcloth over her mouth to hide the noise, Mary Jane cried under the shower until the water turned cold.

      WHILE GETTING DRESSED, she could hear noise downstairs in the kitchen—the faucet going on and off, the refrigerator door closing and cabinet doors banging shut. She could guess what Morgan was up to. He was checking to see what she’d been eating. Wonderful. She’d planned to stock up on fresh veggies today. Her supply was pretty much gone.

      She wondered if he’d found the brownie mix in the cupboard or noticed the box of doughnuts sitting on top of the refrigerator with one stale raised glazed left in it. She’d left the bag of Jolly Ranchers right out on the counter.

      Well, too bad. She would not be treated like a wayward child in her own house. Glancing at herself in denim overalls and a T-shirt as she passed the dresser mirror, she realized that’s exactly what she looked like. Damn.

      Quickly she rummaged through her drawers and pawed through the clothes in her closet, looking for something more sophisticated. Finally she gave up. Unless she planned to parade downstairs in the silky silver number she’d worn on New Year’s, she was SOL. The silver dress wouldn’t fit anymore, anyway.

      She should probably do something with her hair. Freshly washed, it curled and cavorted everywhere. But she had to tame her hair for work, and after six days of that she was sick of tying it back. Screw it.

      She should put on shoes. Otherwise she’d appear in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant. Smiling grimly, she slipped her feet into a pair of leather mules, took a deep breath and went downstairs.

      Morgan sat in her sunny little kitchen nook making a list on the back of a paper sack. With the dark stubble on his chin and the sleeves of his white dress shirt rolled back, he looked like a gangster, or maybe a pirate. He sure didn’t look like a respectable New York City pediatrician.

      He glanced up when she walked into the kitchen. “We need to go to the store, but first I’ll take you to breakfast. There’s nothing decent to eat here.”

      She wasn’t hungry, but she’d deal with that question later. “I was going to—” She caught herself as the words came out sounding more belligerent and defensive than she wanted them to. Clearing her throat, she started again. “I was planning to shop today,” she said quietly. “I just got off six straight days at work.”

      “Six days straight?” He looked scandalized. “You’re still at the diner, right?”

      “Yes.”

      “We have to do something about that. Six days straight is criminal. Who’s your boss? I want to talk to—”

      “Hold it!” So she sounded belligerent. She couldn’t help it. He wasn’t going to waltz in here and take over her life. “You are so not going to talk to Shelby Lord! She asked me to work an extra day as a special favor, and she’s very concerned about my health, if you must know. I told her I would be fine with it, and I am fine with it.” She’d never admit that the last day had been more tiring than she’d expected.

      He tossed the pen he’d been using on the table and pushed back his chair. Standing, he ran his fingers through his hair and glanced at her. “You may be fine with it, but hours and hours on your feet are not the best thing for the baby. Why do you insist on continuing to work there, when we’ve offered to subsidize you so that you could quit?”

      Pain shot through her and she stared at him, wondering if he realized he’d