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“Nope,” she answered cheerfully.
“That’s going to be a problem for you the last couple months of your pregnancy, don’t you think?” She could practically hear the wheels turning in his head as he tried to figure out how to use this to get her out of the apartment and into his house.
Not that she would let that happen.
“I already asked my doctor about it. She said it should be fine—exercise is good for me and the baby. She did warn that if I ended up having a C-section, I wouldn’t be allowed to go up and down them the first few weeks, but at this point there’s nothing to indicate I’ll have anything but a normal delivery.” She smiled at him blithely.
“So, there are early indicators that someone might need a C-section?”
“Yes, but I don’t have any of them.” She reached for his hand, squeezed it, as they finally made it to her door. “Relax, Nic. Everything’s fine with my pregnancy so far. It’s totally boring, which is a good thing, my doctor assures me.”
He still didn’t look convinced, but he let it go as she unlocked her apartment door. “Are you coming in?” she asked after she’d stepped into her three-foot-by-three-foot entryway.
“Do you want me to?” He watched her face closely as he waited for her answer. “You look pretty tired.”
She felt pretty tired. The day had brought so many emotional highs and lows she felt as if she’d run a marathon—or maybe two. The exhaustion of her first trimester had disappeared a few weeks ago, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t tired at the end of every day. As Stephanie had told Desi the other day when she’d been caught napping in the break room, making another person was pretty hard work.
But she and Nic still had things to talk about—such as her ground rules and whether or not he really wanted to do this now that he’d seen just how small her apartment was. “It’s fine,” she told him, stepping back so he could enter.
He must have read the tiredness on her face, though, because he shook his head. “I think I’ll get going. Let you get some rest.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket, then looked a little shamefaced as he asked, “Can I get your number again? I promise not to erase it this time.”
“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see about that,” she said.
She’d meant it as a joke, but his eyes shot to hers. He was deadly serious—deadly earnest—when he told her, “I’m not going anywhere, Desi.”
Yeah, that’s what they all said. And somehow it had never quite worked out that way for her. Oh, they all had a really good reason for why they had to leave—or why she had to—but the results were always the same. Her, alone, trying to pick up the pieces of a heart broken by too many people too many ways and too many times.
But she was done with that, she told herself as she rattled off her phone number. Done with opening herself up to someone only to watch the person walk away. So she’d give Nic a chance, she’d let him into this baby’s life, but that was it. There was no way she would let herself depend on him. No way she would let him hurt her when he finally decided to walk away.
It had taken him eight weeks to erase her from his phone when she didn’t answer his texts. Once the baby was born and everything got harder, how long would it take him to leave them both?
Not very long was her bet. Not very long, at all.
“Get some sleep,” he told her after saving her number. “I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll talk about the logistics of me moving in. I want to do it as soon as possible.”
“How soon is that?” she asked warily.
“This coming weekend, if that’s okay with you. I’d do it sooner, but I know you have work and the last thing I want to do is rock the boat for you at the paper.”
She snorted. “Yeah, well, I think that boat has already been rocked pretty hard today.” The memory made her wince even as it brought the guilt back. She’d almost ruined Nic and his brother, almost brought down their entire company, and yet here he was, telling her that he didn’t want to disrupt her job. If things had been reversed, she’d probably be calling for his head on a silver platter, baby or no baby.
“I’m sorry,” she told him. “An apology is not close to being enough when my carelessness nearly cost you and your family everything, but I don’t know what else to say.”
“Clean slate, remember?” He leaned over then and pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead. “We’re starting over.”
Were they? His gentle, platonic kiss somehow managed to send heat sizzling along her nerve endings. Because from where she stood, it felt as if they were picking up right where they’d left off eighteen weeks before.
It was an alarming idea, considering the close quarters they would be living in. And the no-sex rule she was serious about enforcing. Chemistry between them had never been a problem, and she knew if she let him back in her bed, getting rid of him would take a hell of a lot longer than it would otherwise. After all, how would they find out how incompatible they were in real life if they never actually got out of bed?
She knew this, understood it, even believed it wholeheartedly. And still her body swayed toward him, still she tilted her face up for a kiss that shouldn’t happen. Still she longed to feel his hard, calloused hands brushing over her skin.
Nic’s eyes darkened as she stared up into them. They turned the same green as the storm-tossed Atlantic, and she felt more of her resistance give way. If he kissed her right now…if he touched her, she wasn’t sure she’d have the strength to say no.
But in the end, he did neither. Instead, he took a couple of steps back, until he was no longer in touching distance. He gave her a sweet smile—sweeter than anything she thought a guy like him was capable of—and said, “Go get some sleep. I’ll call you in the morning and we’ll get the details of my move worked out. We’ll both feel better then.”
She was glad he sounded certain, because suddenly she was anything but. Still, she nodded, gave him the best smile she could muster. “Yeah. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
They stood there for several long seconds more, neither of them taking the first move to break the new and tenuous connection between them. All she had to do was step back and close the door. All he had to do was turn and walk away. And still they silently watched each other. Silently imagined what might be coming next…for both of them.
