AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I don’t care what you want,” she said, folding her arms across the small swell of her breasts, drawing his attention to the hint of cleavage visible in the neckline of her T-shirt. “You called me a liar.”
He lifted his gaze to hers and frowned. “I never said that.”
“You may as well have.”
“’Scuse me.” Oliver shoved his way between them where they stood in the narrow hallway. “Amused spectator coming through,” he said, then disappeared into the bathroom and kicked the door shut.
Rafe looked back down the hallway towards the main living area and scowled. For a household filled with over a dozen people, it was quiet.
Too quiet.
Fucking eavesdropping bastards.
Grabbing Jane’s hand, he dragged her farther along the hall and then into his bedroom, locking the door behind them. “Now, where were we?”
She pulled away. “I was going home.”
“Janie—”
“What?” she snapped. “You want to insult me some more?”
“That was never my intention,” he said through gritted teeth, then scrubbed a hand over his scalp and stared down at her. “You never gave me a chance to explain.”
Jane anchored her hands on her hips and lifted her chin. “That’s because I didn’t feel like listening to anything else you might have to say. In fact, I still don’t.”
Rafe’s temper burned beneath the surface, ready to erupt. How was it he could face down hardened criminals in a court of law and not bat an eyelid, but five minutes alone with this one small woman had him ripping his hair out? What little he had left after shearing it off.
Standing almost a foot shorter than him, Jane’s head barely reached his chin. She had to look a long way up to stare him down, but she could do it like no other woman he’d ever known.
Andfuckif it didn’t turn him on.
Unbidden, thoughts of her curled in his lap, her hands on his chest and her lips on his throat sprang to the forefront of his mind, and he let his gaze drop to her breasts once more.
Jane shifted her weight from one foot to the other as Rafe slowly perused her lithe figure, lingered over the swell of her stomach and itched to reach out and stroke his hands over it, to feel the life growing inside her.
A life he helped create.
Maybe.
His thoughts changed direction again, and the muscles in his throat worked as he swallowed down his desire. And his apprehension.
“I need to know, Jane,” he said, his voice croaking with suppressed emotion. “I need to be certain if the baby is mine or not. You know how my brain works—I need facts, absolutes. Without them my imagination runs wild and concocts a laundry list of doubts. Please, Janie. I need to know.”
A tight smile spread across her face and a devious gleam lit her eyes. “So what you’re saying is, if I don’t tell you what you want to know, it’llreallyannoy you?”
Rafe gritted his teeth. “You know it will. But you’re missing the point.”
She folded her arms again. “How much?”
Confusion pulled at his brow. “What?”
“How much will it annoy you?” she said, seemingly ignoring his statement about missing the point. “Because to be completely honest, the thought of pissing you off is pretty appealing right now.”
Closing his eyes for a moment, Rafe took the time to count to ten. Slowly. She wanted to punish him for not quite calling her a liar?
Fine.
With a heavy sigh, he opened his eyes and said, “You know how much it annoys you when people call coriander ’the fancy parsley’? That’s how much not knowing will annoy me.”
