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“Maybe. Maybe, actually. But I don’t want that either.”
And neither did she. Because yeah. It would be easier if this particular baby went away, and if she wanted to have a baby she could just go do it with a turkey baster, and actually commit to the single-motherhood thing. But she didn’t want that. Because in so many ways Kit Carson felt like her destiny, and while she couldn’t explain it, standing there resisting it as hard as she was, this felt a little bit like destiny too. Or maybe she was just trying to find more excuses for the fact that he made her behave like a wanton. Either way, this was complex in a way she really didn’t want. And yet, it was the reality.
“I don’t either.”
He nodded, his expression hard, and then he turned back to the pancakes. She was silent while he finished cooking breakfast. And she didn’t have it in her to be stubborn enough to turn down the glory that was this home-cooked meal. Because it really did look good.
“So... Do I want to know why you know how to cook breakfast? Is it that guy thing? Where you have to know how to do it, because you have a lot of one-night stands?”
“No,” he said, snorting. “My one-night stands never stay for breakfast, Shelby.”
She scoffed. “But you do have them.”
“I have, yes. And you haven’t.”
“Just you.” Heat sizzled between them and she did her best to ignore it. “Here you are. At breakfast.”
“Here you are. Having my baby.”
“Here I thought I was having my baby,” she said.
But the way that he looked at her, and the way that he’d said it, sent a shiver through her that had nothing to do with maternal instinct. It was that biological insanity that had brought them here in the first place.
“Mine too,” he said.
“Right. Well. I guess so.”
“If you enjoy the breakfast... There’s plenty more where that came from.”
She swallowed hard. “I think there needs to be some ground rules.”
“Well. Let’s go over the rules while we eat.”
He dished up the breakfast for both of them, and she let him. Because it had been a long time since someone other than her mother had done anything like caring for her.
And she had to admit that she did enjoy it. A man moving around her kitchen. In her house. In her life. But the more she was trying to turn her thoughts right side up, the more she had to really think about the implications of this. He needed to be in her child’s life. In their child’s life. It was what he wanted. It was important to him. And that meant that they were going to have to be civil. More than civil, they were going to have to deal with each other. The passage of time. The way their lives might change. Proposing that they stay separate was safe in a lot of ways. Things would never be worse between them than they were now. They wouldn’t allow for it to get sticky and toxic.
Sure, there was the unknown. Whether or not he would marry someone else.
She didn’t think that she would.
But...
She ignored the cramping in her stomach that came as a direct result of that thought.
He wasn’t really the marrying type. And anyway, if he ever became the marrying type, that was his business. She just felt possessive about it right now because... Well, she was pregnant with his child. That gave her the right to be possessive, didn’t it?
It was just a temporary state of being. While she housed part of his genetic material. So there. That seemed like a logical place to put it.
He set the plates on the table, her mug of tea. And she sat in front of the plate, across from him, her heart thundering harder than she would like.
“We have to keep this like this,” she said emphatically.
“Excuse me?”
“We’re almost friends. And I think that’s probably the best place for our relationship.”
“We’re almost friends?”
