All too aware of her yard-work dishevelment, Cecilia resisted an urge to reach up and smooth her unraveling braid. “No. I was just taking a break from weeding. Would you like some lemonade?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
Standing and picking up her tray, she nodded toward the back door. “Let’s go inside.”
Whatever he had come to say, she thought it best not to discuss it out here, where there was the possibility of being overheard. He moved to open the door for her, and it was impossible for her to walk past him without her shoulder brushing him. Even that brief, rather impersonal contact made her pulse rate increase.
So much for convincing herself that she had already put last night behind her.
Setting the tray on the counter, she heard Geoff close the back door. She wasn’t able to look at him just yet, so she busied herself by opening a cabinet and reaching for a glass.
Geoff rested a hand on her arm. “Cecilia?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t really want any lemonade.”
“You don’t like lemonade, either?” she asked, referring to his comment about the coffee the night before.
“I like lemonade. I just don’t want any right now.”
She closed the cabinet and turned to face him, his hand still resting on her arm. “I didn’t expect you to come back today.”
“I didn’t expect to be back,” he admitted.
“So why…?”
“I wanted to talk to you.”
She felt her cheeks warm. “If you’ve come to discuss the proposition I made to you earlier, it isn’t necessary. I told you to forget about it.”
“Have you forgotten about it?”
“If you mean, have I realized that I made a mistake discussing it with you, the answer is yes. It was an impulse that I should have stopped to think about before blurting it out to you. If I had, I would have realized what a crazy idea it was.”
“So you aren’t going to try to…well, to conceive, after all?”
She lifted her chin. “I didn’t say that. If I’m ever going to have a child, I’ll have to do something about it very soon.”
“With someone else.”
Her cheeks burned hotter. “Despite my indiscretion this morning, my re
productive choices are personal. I would rather not discuss them with you any further.”
He eyed her moodily. “Do you have someone else in mind?”
“Geoff!”
“Well, do you?”
Jerking her arm away from his grasp, she whirled to pace. “No. But I’m not giving up on my dream. If it means mortgaging my house for treatments or hanging out at singles bars or whatever I have to do, I will have a child. I can’t accept that I won’t ever be a mother.”
She wasn’t sure what, exactly, she had said to bring a scowl to his face and an edge to his voice. “It sounds as if you’ve made up your mind.”
“I have.”
He nodded. “Then so have I.”