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Air burst from her mouth as though she’d been punched in the gut, and tears scalded behind her eyes. “Where was this objectivity yesterday in my bedroom when you were kissing my stomach and introducing yourself to our unborn child?”
“You’ve had weeks to get used to the idea of becoming a parent,” he said, turning to look at her. Tight lines bracketed his mouth. “I’ve had less than a day. You’ll have to excuse me if I need some time to wrap my head around everything.”
Fuming at Rafe’s turnaround in attitude, Jane’s temper burst out of her in a barrage of words. “You are unbelievable, Bennett. But I tell you what, while you’re sitting there wrapping your head around shit, why don’t you think about this. You’re theonlyman I’ve ever been with without a condom.”
“Condoms aren’t perfect,” he ground out. “It says so right on the packet.”
“I’m aware of that. You know what else I’m aware of?” Not waiting for an answer, she got to her feet and glared down at him. “My menstrual cycle, whom I’ve had sex with and when.”
“I thought you were on the pill,” he said, climbing to his feet and gaining the height advantage again. Jane bristled at the injustice of having to take the moral high ground from a lower vantage point.
“I was. But apparently they’re not perfect either. It says so right on the packet,” she said, spitting his own words back at him, then turned to go back inside.
Rafe grabbed her hand, and she hated herself for the jolt of longing that shot through her at his touch. “Where are you going? This conversation isn’t over.”
It was as far as she was concerned.
Yanking her hand free of his, she strode purposefully back through the front door, throwing the words over her shoulder as she did. “Pregnant lady, remember? I need to pee.”
Rafe slowly released a calming breath.
At least it would have been calming if calm were a state of being even remotely achievable at that point.
As much as he appreciated—cherished, even—Jane’s fiery spirit, he also loathed it at times.
Rafe hated fighting.
But growing up in a household with seven brothers and one sister who refused to be left out of anything meant he grew up doing exactly that.
Fighting for space, fighting for hot water, fighting for privacy, fighting over the last bowl of Coco Pops, and even occasionally fighting for girls.
Until that one fateful day when Jane Melville had somehow morphed from his little sister’s irritating best friend into a fiery-haired goddess with creamy skin and gemstone eyes and a tight little body with a heart-shaped arse.
All other women had suddenly paled in comparison.
And how had she effected this wondrous transformation? By feeding him soup and reading him poetry.
Rafe had been sent home from university with the flu—achy joints, cold sweats, never more than two feet away from a spew-bucket flu. It was disgusting. He was disgusting.
But Jane hadn’t cared.
She’d circumvented his father’s quarantine order by climbing through his bedroom window with a thermos full of homemade chicken soup and a copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
When he first saw her perfect little arse coming through the window, he thought he was seeing things, figured he was delirious with fever, but then she’d said, “Quarantine-schmarantine,” and, “If you even think about throwing this up, I will never speak to you again, Bennett.”
Then she’d spent the next couple of hours alternately spoon-feeding him the best chicken soup he’d ever eaten in his life and reading to him in her sensuous voice.
Shakespeare had never sounded so good, and Rafe was pretty sure he’d only kept that soup down through sheer force of will.
Now he stood in front of the toilet door, waiting for that same infuriating redhead to reappear.
“Jesus!” she gasped when she opened the door and found him staring down at her. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack? Stop following me.”
Cocking one brow at her, he said, “This is stillmyhouse.”
Her lips thinned into a scornful smile that belied the lightness in her voice. “Fine. I’ll go home, then.”
Rafe growled. “I don’t want you to go home, Jane. I want you to talk to me.”
