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Hold it together. Don’t get too worked up. You’ll only make a bigger fool of yourself than you have already.
He grabbed her wrist though, held her still. ‘Tess, wait up. Don’t rush off. It’s not... It’s just a surprise. I wasn’t expecting this.’
She twisted her wrist out of his grasp. ‘Please don’t worry, Nate. As you once said to me, it’s not that big a deal.’ She wanted to get away, before the dam of emotion burst inside her and spilled the thimbleful of dignity she had left. She’d always secretly known she wasn’t really a lovable person. How much more proof did she need?
She made it across the room to the door, and raced outside, sending up a silent prayer of thanks when the lift doors opened instantly.
‘Damn it, come back here, I need to get my boots on.’
She heard Nate crash out of the door after her, probably trying to stamp on his boots as he ran. But the lift doors had already closed when he slapped his palm against them.
She let the tears fall, for the hopes she’d had and the hopes she’d lost. Sinking down against the carpeted wall, she brought her knees up and rubbed her hands over the growing mound of her belly.
She sniffed, scrubbing the moisture away.
It didn’t matter. She couldn’t let it matter. Whatever relationship she and Nate had now wouldn’t be about them any more, it would just have to be about the baby—which was really the way it should have been all along.
She’d told him it wasn’t a big deal. And it really wasn’t. She’d just made a mistake. A stupid mistake.
She ought to be used to it by now. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
NATE slammed his fist against the cottage’s kitchen door, his heartbeat pummelling his chest and his stomach churning in frantic waves of nausea. If she wasn’t here, he didn’t know what the hell he’d do.
He’d raced down the condo’s stairwell after having the elevator doors close in his face, but by the time he’d got to the parking garage there’d been no sign of Tess or the Beemer. He’d tried her cell a couple of times, then given up on that. He could hardly chew her out while she was behind the wheel. What with the time it had taken to race back up to the condo to get his car keys and his wallet and factoring in the stop he’d had to make before hitting the cliff road when he’d realised the Jeep was running on fumes, it was now past midnight.
He could hear the chirp of a nightcrawler coming from the pots of flowers on the porch, but not a sound from inside the cottage. He banged his fist against the door again, ignoring the pain radiating up his arm. He couldn’t feel it. His whole body had gone numb the minute she’d looked at him and told him she wanted them to be together, that she wanted him, that she loved him.
She couldn’t really mean it. That had been his first thought. And then his second had been one of self-preservation.
He’d simply shut down, his mind reeling with a confusing combination of hope, need, vulnerability and blind panic. And before he’d managed to come to his senses, to try and make some sense of his feelings and hers, she’d been disappearing out of the door. And now he didn’t know if she was safe in the cottage bedroom or lying in a pile of mangled metal at the bottom of a cliff.
He took a shuddering breath, eased it out through his teeth.
Don’t go getting melodramatic.
Tramping down on the panic that had seized him through the never-ending ride down the cliff road, he finally had the sense to try the door handle. It turned in his fist, and the door swung open onto the darkened kitchen, the full moon throwing eerie shadows onto the surfaces.
He sighed with relief, then felt his temper kick again. He’d have to have words with her about locking the door.
He heard the soft pad of a footstep and a sharp intake of breath before light blinded him. He cursed, his retinas burning from the sudden blast of fluorescent light.
‘Nate! What the hell are you doing here? It’s the middle of the night.’
He shielded his eyes, until Tess finally came into blurr
y focus. Her slim figure, dressed in a skimpy negligee, stood in the kitchen doorway with her long legs akimbo, her blonde hair falling in disarray around her shoulders, one hand clasped to her breast and the other brandishing a leather-bound book above her head like a weapon.
She’d never looked more beautiful to him in that moment. But bone-shaking relief was soon replaced by temper.
‘What the hell do you think I’m doing here?’ he said, his temper not helped by the painful shot of lust that hit his groin when his gaze accidentally absorbed the shadow of her nipples peaking against the wispy material of her gown. ‘I came to check you got home okay. I told you not to drive back on your own.’
She swore, her chin taking on a mutinous tilt he recognised only too well, before she slammed her makeshift weapon down on the tabletop. ‘I’m perfectly fine, as you can see, apart from the fact that you nearly gave me a heart attack banging on my door and then breaking in here in the middle of the night.’
‘I didn’t have to break in,’ he yelled back, outraged all over again. ‘The door was wide open because you don’t have the sense to lock it before you—’
‘Oh, just go away, will you?’ She stomped off down the corridor, leaving him seething in the kitchen. ‘I’m going back to bed.’
