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Eighteen
Pen smoothed cocoa butter over her stomach, determined to avoid stretch marks at any cost. She’d read that moisturizing helped, and she’d started her nightly routine almost right after she found out she was pregnant.
As she ran her hand over her rounding belly, she considered the warring feelings inside her.
Frustration with Zach. Frustration with herself. Amusement for how he’d decorated the room for a son. Admiration at the way he was determined to be a good father. And the biggest: so much love for her unborn baby, she was ready to burst with it.
If she was being honest with herself, that love was inching closer and closer to Zach himself. Encircling him and swallowing him up in it. But she couldn’t confuse her love for their daughter for romantic love with him. They weren’t the same.
When she’d asked him about Lonna, he’d confirmed one of Pen’s biggest fears. Falling in love meant you could lose it all. And for all of Zachary Ferguson’s bliss-chasing, he’d drawn a very distinct boundary around true love.
Romantic love had no place in his plans. Not any longer. Not since Lonna.
It was unfair.
Unfair because for the first time in her life, Pen feared she was starting to fall in love...with a man incapable of loving her back.
“Hey,” came a soft rumble from the doorway.
Pen spun the lid on the lotion and set it on her nightstand. “Hey.”
Zach’s hooded eyes and sideways smile had replaced his flattened mouth and ruddy complexion. After their conversation in the baby’s room, he’d mumbled something about working and shut himself in his office. She hadn’t seen him since.
They weren’t fighting. Not really. They just had very different views of the way things were.
For Penelope, she needed to leave before she fell for him and couldn’t pull away as easily. For Zach, there was no hurry because falling for her wasn’t a remote possibility.
Perhaps acknowledging that was what hurt most.
“I overreacted,” he said, walking into the room. “Did you eat?”
“All I do is eat.” She gave him a tired smile. “Did you?”
“Just ate a sandwich.”
“Dinner at nine-thirty.”
“Bachelor,” he explained.
Her heart squeezed at the word. That was the problem. Even with his pregnant fiancée in the house, Zach still considered himself single.
His eyes searched the room before landing on her again. “I don’t want you to move out. I don’t want to miss anything.”
She had to close herself off from the sincerity in his voice. There was a bigger picture—the baby girl residing in her growing belly.
“You won’t miss anything,” she promised. “My stomach is going to get larger, my ankles more swollen, my temper more out of control. It might even get as bad as yours.”
He shook his head in agreement. “I’m sorry about that.”
He sat on the bed and lifted the delicate edge of her short cotton nightie, skimming the lace hemline up to expose her thighs. When one large, warm hand landed on her skin, she found it suddenly hard to breathe.
This was such a bad idea. Sealing her tumultuous feelings with sex wouldn’t bring her closer to a resolution but take her further from it.
“How tired are you?” His green eyes sought hers.
Who was she fooling? Could she really convince herself she wasn’t in love with him? Not when he looked at her the way he looked at her now. Not when he was watching the monitor at Dr. Cho’s office with rapt attention and pride. And not when he touched her—especially when he touched her.
Zach claimed her as his that night in the mayor’s mansion. She thought then it’d been about sex and physical love, but now she realized that claim was staked deep in her heart and soul. And the proof of it was incubating in her womb.
