The Pregnancy Pact. Kandy Shepherd

      “And I was trying to hold up one end of it and you were trying to stuff it through the door. I told you it was a sign the house did not want it, and then you shoved extrahard. The frame of the door cracked and Behemoth catapulted into the house and nearly crushed me.”

      “Except I saved you,” he said.

      She looked at his face. Her eyes were very wide. She looked as if she was going to step toward him.

      Suddenly, he remembered how they had celebrated getting that chair into the house. On the chair. And she had seemed affectionately tolerant of Behemoth after that.

      The memory was between them, liquid and white-hot. It didn’t mean anything that she still had the chair, did it?

      “Go to work,” Kade said gruffly, deliberately stepping back from her. “You probably wouldn’t be of any help in your delicate state anyway.”

      Too late, he realized that a delicate state usually referred to pregnancy, and that, of course, was the topic that was a minefield between them.

      Thankfully, she seemed a little rattled, as he was himself, by the Behemoth memory. He didn’t intend to share the secret of the furniture-moving dolly with her. She would come home, and the floors would be completely done, and the furniture back in place and she would be filled with complete admiration for his adeptness in all things masculine.

      And she would be so sorry things had not worked between them.

      That thought blasted through his brain from nowhere that he could discern.

      “Where should I put the furniture?” he asked hastily.

      “Oh. Good question. Try the guest room. I use it as an office. It probably has the most room in it right now.”

      “Okay.”

      She cast one last rather insultingly doubtful look around the living room, but then looked at her watch and made a squeaking noise. She disappeared and came back in a few minutes, her look improved ever so slightly by a nice handbag, ultrahigh heels and dark glasses that hid the circles under her eyes.

      “All right,” she called. “Good luck. See you later.”

      Then she turned and, with her heels clacking sexy defiance of that horrible dress, went through the kitchen and out the back door. The door seemed to snap shut behind her. Was he mistaken, or had she been eager to get away from him?

      * * *

      Jessica could not wait to get out of that house! Her husband was an attractive man. His executive look—the tailored suits and linen shirts and silk ties, the manicured nails and the beautifully groomed hair—was enough to make any woman give him a second glance.

      And yet the man he was this morning felt like her Kade. Casual in jeans faded to nearly white, his plaid shirt open at the beautiful column of his throat, his sleeves rolled up over the carved muscle of his forearms, a faint shadow of whiskers on his face. It was who he had been in private—dressed down, relaxed, so, so sexy.

      Add to that the tool belt riding low on his hips, his easy confidence about pitting all that masculine strength against Behemoth...

      Behemoth. Back in the day. When everything was still fun.

      Good grief, she had wanted to just throw herself against him this morning, feel his heart beating beneath her cheek, feel his arms close around her.

      The robbery had left her far more rattled than she ever could have believed. Her sleep was troubled. She started at the least sound. Her mind drifted back to that morning if she let down her guard for even a second. And she felt dreadfully alone with the stress of it.

      It was making her weak. The fact that he knew how she would react made her lonely for him, even though the sane part of her knew wanting to lean on Kade was an insane form of weakness. She had already tried that once, and he wasn’t good at comforting her. Probably what had stopped her from throwing herself at him this morning was uncertainty. Would he have gathered her to him, rested his chin on the top of her head, folded his arms around her? Or would he, after an uncomfortable moment of tolerating her embrace, have stepped away?

      She did not think it would be a good idea to make herself vulnerable to Kade again.

      But even with that resolve strong within her, Jessica arrived at work feeling rattled.

      Her stomach was in knots.

      “Good grief,” said Macy, her part-time staffer, stopping in her tracks. “Where’d you get that dress?”

      “You know perfectly well I got it from the rack of Poppy Puppins at the back.”

      “It looks horrible on you.”

      Jessica didn’t want to look horrible. She hated it that Kade had seen her looking horrible, even though she had deliberately worn the outfit to let him know she did not care one whit what he thought of her.

      Sleep deprivation, obviously, was kicking in, plus it was some kind of reaction to being the victim of a crime, just as Kade had said, because Jessica felt as if she was fighting not to burst into tears.

      “It has buttons on the front!” Jessica exclaimed for the second time that day. Ignoring the pitying look from Macy, she headed to office and slammed the door behind her.

      She could not focus, even before she had the thought. The thought made her stomach feel as if it had become the lead car on the world’s biggest roller coaster. It plunged downward and then did a crazy double loop. She bolted out of her office and into the store.

      “Jessica? What’s wrong?”

      Jessica stared at Macy, not really seeing her. This was the thought that was tormenting her: Had she told Kade to put the furniture in the guest room? But she used that room as an office! And if she was not mistaken, she had the names of adoption agencies and lawyers who specialized in that field strewn all over the desk.

      “Are you okay?” Macy asked. She dropped a tiny stuffed football and rushed to Jessica’s side. “Are you going to faint?”

      Jessica looked down at the bill of lading she still had clutched in her hand. She did feel terribly wobbly. “I think I’m okay,” she said doubtfully.

      “I was supposed to babysit for my sister at noon, but if you want, I’ll see if my mom can do it instead.”

      Jessica was ashamed that her distress, her weakness, was that obvious to her employee. But her soon-to-be ex-husband had always had a gift for rattling her world, in one way or another.

      What did it matter if he knew she was contemplating adoption? But at some deep, deep level, she did not want him to know.

      So though usually Jessica would have said a vehement no to an offer like Macy had just made, she didn’t. Usually, she would have pulled herself together. She could just phone and tell Kade to put Behemoth in her bedroom instead of the office.

      She looked at her watch. He’d been there, in her house, for an hour and a half. It was possible he was already in the office, poring over her personal papers, uncovering her secrets.

      “Oh, Macy, could you? I’d be so grateful.” She shoved the bill of lading into Macy’s hand.

      And it wasn’t until Jessica was halfway home that she realized she had not even waited for Macy’s answer, but had bolted out the door as if her house was on fire.

      Which, in less than half an hour, it would be.

       CHAPTER NINE

      JESSICA PULLED UP to the front of her house. She usually parked in the back, but such was her sense of urgency, she had decided to cut seconds by parking out front instead.

      Her sense of her life spiraling out of her control deepened at what awaited her. All the living room furniture was on