She had a baby growing inside of her! Cort's baby.
Her
baby. Sweet, keen joy coursed through her, followed closely by an ache. A familiar acheâthe gnawing at her heart that had only grown worse every day since she'd left Cort.
She would have to call him, as soon as she had the positive result confirmed by a doctor. How would he take the news? Would he be happy, or disappointed? He'd come so close to being free of her. Would he see it that way? He'd said he wanted a baby. He'd deliberately set out to make her pregnant. But he'd done it as a favor to her, out of a sense of guilt and responsibility. She didn't want that from him. She didn't want that for her baby.
She closed her eyes with a sudden surge of yearning. If only he loved her!
Struggling to master her emotions, she forced her attention back to her work and copied catalog numbers onto an order form. Miriam, the posh yet motherly designer who had worked with Laura for years, advised a customer about upholstery selections. Janet, a quiet, shy young woman with the soul of a true artiste, sketched intently at the worktable.
“Laura,” called Miriam from the front of the shop, “someone's here to see you.”
Surprised, because most of her customers contacted her by phone and friends rarely dropped by the shop, Laura glanced up from her work.
Her heart flipped over and landed with a thud.
Cort.
She stared in shaken disbelief. She felt as if her secret news and tortured yearning had somehow joined forces to conjure him from thin air. Tall and broad-shouldered, his jet hair glinting with snowflakes, he stood with his hands in the pockets of a long, black cashmere overcoat. The
crisp, white collar of a dress shirt contrasted with the swarthy bronze of his strong throat and jaw. His vivid blue-eyed gaze locked with hers.
Her pulse clamored. What was he doing here? Why had he come?
She rose slowly from behind her desk. She couldn't utter a single word of greeting.
He's the father of my baby.
Would she be forced to give him the news in person? She wasn't sure she could handle that What emotion would she see in his eyes, if any?
She turned away from his potent gaze, her face warm, her pulse pounding. “Miriam, this is Cort Dimitri from Atlanta. You'll probably recognize his name from the file I gave you. Cort, Miriam Brenner. And this is Janet Ingram,” she belatedly added as Janet gaped at Cort from another desk, looking dazed and smitten.
He murmured a greeting to both women, a groove deepening beside his mouth, although he had yet to smile. Laura was grateful that he hadn't. Her knees were weak enough as it was.
“Mr. Dimitri,” Miriam welcomed with a suave smile, “how nice to meet you.” She offered her hand and he took it. An intrinsically feminine glow lit her gently lined face. ”I've fallen in
love
with your house from the photos. Iâ²ll be overseeing the project from this point on, so I'm the one to answer any questions you might have.”
Laura had almost forgotten her instructions for Miriam to handle all correspondence with him. Maybe she could keep him occupied while Laura slipped out...and never came back....
“I'll keep that in mind, Miriam.” His low, smooth voice reached inside Laura like a caress. “But I'm not here about the house. I've come to see Ms. Merritt.” His gaze meandered from Miriam to her. “It's personal.”
Warmth rushed to her head, making her feel slightly disoriented. A subtle vitality pulsed in the room. His virile presence electrified the very air she breathed.
Laura dreaded being alone with him. She'd longed for him too much. She wanted to feel his arms around her, his mouth on her. He didn't love her, and the heartbreak was so hard to live with. And now they'd have a child to raise. “I'm afraid I'm too busy to leave the shop. Maybe we can meet later.” Her pulse raced. She needed time to collect herself...fortify her defenses....
“Come with me, Laura.” It was a soft, gruff request. A command.
She longed to go. And feared the same.
“I'll mind the store,” Janet piped up in her shy, quiet way. “You just go ahead.”
“Go,” urged Miriam. “Be sure to bundle up, hon.” Before Laura could invent a plausible reason not to go, Miriam had helped her into her coat as Janet looped the strap of her purse over her arm.
And Cort watched her,
only
her, with a smoky intensity she knew only too well.
As if in a dream, she moved toward him. He opened the door for her and ushered her out with a light pressure at the small of her back, barely a touch, but she felt the heat of his hand through the thick wool of her coat. And then they were outside, walking toward a gleaming silver Mercedes sedan.
The bracing winter air rushed against her heated face and lifted tendrils of her hair, but she still felt overly warm.
Tell him. Tell him.
She couldn't! She had to get the pregnancy confirmed by a doctor first, she rationalized.
The circle was red, not pink,
her conscience argued. There was no doubt about the positive result.
But she was so afraid of what she would see or
not
see in his gaze. “Why are you here, Cort?”
He stopped beside the car, his expression brooding. “You turned my
file
over to someone else? Why? To avoid me?”
“No! I just...well...” she couldn't escape his probing gaze “...yes.”
A muscle moved in his jaw. “Don't do that, Laura. Don't ever do that.”
Her heart thudded. She had to force the conversation into safer channels. “Have you looked at my plans for your house?”
“Yes.”
“Did you...?”
“Let's go somewhere private to talk. Your house. Where is it?”
She hesitated only a moment. She couldn't deny him the chance to speak with her alone. He was the father of her baby; he had rights. Inalienable rights. Like, the right to
know
he was the father of her baby! And they had many serious issues to discuss. Like...custody arrangements. Her heart contracted painfully. “My house is right there.” She nodded toward the quaint side street with snowy sidewalks, small lawns, tall bare oak trees and old-fashioned houses with covered front porches. “The second house on the right.”
He held out his hand to her. She hesitated to take it. She wanted to touch him in the worst way. But then she'd have to let him go. A frown gathered again in his eyes, and she reluctantly slipped her hand into his. He wove his long, dark fingers through hers, his palm hard and warm against her own, and pulled her deliberately close to him. Her heart pounded in her throat as they walked through the light dusting of snow to her house.
She'd been so lost. His touch, his nearness, his strength felt like a safe, warm harbor, if only a temporary one.
He halted on the walkway that led to her porch and peered at her house. She glanced at him, wondering why he was looking. She saw nothing out of the ordinary about the small, white, red-roofed bungalow.
“This is the right house,” she assured him, thinking that maybe he doubted it.
He slanted her an unreadable glance. She climbed the porch steps and unlocked the door. He followed her inside and surveyed the small, neat living room with a bewildering frown. His gaze then lighted on the unadorned fir tree in the corner. “I wouldn't have believed it,” he murmured, “if I hadn't seen it for myself.” He turned his gaze to her. “Why haven't you decorated for Christmas?”
She blinked, taken aback. She'd never known Cort Dimitri to acknowledge the existence of holiday decorations, let alone look for them. “I...I haven't had time. I've been busy.”
“Busy?” He unbuttoned his long, heavy cashmere coat and draped it over an armchair. “I know you better than that.” He then unfastened the buttons of her coat. “I don't care how busy you were. By now you should have transformed this entire city block into the North Pole. What happened?”
She averted her face, unable to move away because of his hold on her coat. Incredible how his questions over a relatively frivolous concern provoked the urge to smile and to cry at the very same time. “I guess I haven't been in the mood.”
He slipped the coat off of her, tossed it onto the chair and tipped her face up to his. “What mood have you been in?”
Dangerous, to expose herself this way to his probing
gaze. “Stressed,” she whispered. “Because of the...uncertainty of...of everything.” The truth. Unarguably the truth. But not all of it. Not by a long shot.
“You never handled stress this way before. If anything, it used to send you into a decorating frenzy.” The mild humor in his tone contrasted with the intensity of his stare. “Have you been feeling...down?”
She bit her bottom lip to suppress a ridiculous quiver. She didn't have to answer him, but his concern and compassion were wearing down her already weakened defenses. “A little, maybe. Nothing to worry about, though.”
I've missed you! Nothing seems important without you.
And she realized that a great deal of her fear had to do with that. How could she make her baby a happy home when she anguished so deeply over Cort? Would that ever change?
“I brought you something.” He reached down for his coat, slid his hand into one of the pockets and brought out a flat, slim, red package wrapped in cellophane.
She stared at it as he placed the item in her hands. A lump swelled in her throat. “Microwave popcorn.” Her vision wavered, and she choked back unshed tears, overcome by a sudden urge to hurtle herself into his arms. She sat blindly down onto the sofa. “To string around my tree.”
He sat down beside her. “If you want to pop it, I'll, uh, you know...help string it.”
And that, silly though it was, undid her. He was offering to string her popcorn! He
hated
to string popcorn. She'd had to badger him into it at the Hays Street house. A sob rose in her throat and she made a move to launch from the sofa.
He caught her by the shoulders. “Laura?” His dark face swam before her in patent concern.
Hot tears welled in her eyes. She buried her face in her hands and gave in to them.
He pulled her firmly into his embrace, running his hand up and down her back, sending tingling trails of heat through the silk of her blouse. “What's wrong?” he whispered against her hair. “Why are you crying? It's not something like that silly scarf again, is it?”
That made her laugh...which only made her cry harder. Why was she so emotional with him? Sure, she loved him. Sure, she couldn't have him, and he'd break her heart for the rest of her life, and she'd have to play the role of his ex-wife, but was that any reason to cry?
â³Iâ²m sorry,” she croaked, pulling herself together with an effort and glancing at him apologetically. “I...I just haven't been feeling too well lately. And I'm t-tired. And I did try to string the popcorn last night, but I burned it. And the smellâ” She shuddered, and her hand went to her stomach. “I just can't make popcorn right now. I don't mean to sound ungrateful, butâ” The look in his eyes stopped her.
A troubling new intensity beamed from those midnight-blue depthsâ
not
the same kind of intensity she'd come to know. What did it mean?
She drew back nervously from his arms, found a tissue - in her slacks pocketâshe'd been needing them quite frequently latelyâand dried her face. “We...we can string lights on the tree, if you'd like.” “You're pregnant,” he breathed.
Not a question. Not a suggested theory. A statement.
If that wasn't just like him! She struggled to hold back tears again.
He grasped her face between his hands, and his gaze blazed a serious questionâa demand for confirmation. “I'm not telling you anything you don't know. Am I?”
Her heart stood still. She prayed to see joy.
And love, please God.
Was that asking too much? “No,” she whispered. “You're not telling me anything I don't know. The circle on my test kit turned red this morning.”
Cort couldn't stop himself from staring at her.
Pregnant. With his baby.
A sense of awe swelled to such immensity within him that he could barely breathe.
His baby!
He would be a father. And she, the woman he loved, the woman he would always love, was the mother of his child. Nothing had prepared him for the visceral shock of this moment. Crazy, he knew, since he'd suspected the truth before he'd even left Atlanta. And when he'd seen her, that suspicion had only deepened. Something in her gaze and manner had alerted him to a profound change in her.
Something about that change troubled him.
Anguish, he realized, putting a name to it with a sickening thud of his heart. He sensed a low-key but very real anguish in her. Did she not want this baby? He remembered then that she'd whispered something to that effect just before she'd left him. She wanted a baby from the man she would eventually fall in love with...not from him.