Heiress's Baby Scandal

“About last night,” he began, but she held up her hand.

“Don’t worry about it.” She took a slow sip of her coffee as if to stress her next point. “Last night was no big deal.”

Ouch. He studied her pale face, trying to read her thoughts, but, as she had for most of the morning, she held her emotions in check. Her face was a blank slate.

“You’re sure?” He wasn’t. Every aspect of the night had felt like a very big deal. Like something new and wonderful.

“Positive.” She set her coffee cup on the table, looked into his eyes, but quickly glanced away, toying with the empty sweetener packet papers. “We drank too much champagne and got caught up in the celebration.”

Sounded feasible to him, except that nothing similar had ever happened before and he hadn’t had that much champagne.

As he searched Eleanor’s eyes, her claim didn’t feel right. Just as the blank expression on her face didn’t feel right. Not after having seen her so alive just a few hours before. He wanted a glimpse of her smile, just to see if he’d imagined how his pulse reacted. He wanted to touch her to see if he’d imagined how his body responded to her skin against his.

“Okay, so we drank too much and got caught up in the moment.” He didn’t buy it, but he’d go with the flow for now. “You were leaving without waking me. Why?”

What was wrong with him? Mornings-after were no big deal. At least, they never had been before.

“If we hadn’t gotten called in to the hospital, I would have made you breakfast,” he added with a grin, but the gesture didn’t feel natural.

Just as she hadn’t in the delivery room, Eleanor didn’t respond to his grin other than to get pink splotches on her otherwise pale face. “Is that what you usually do? Cook breakfast for your … guests?”

He had cooked breakfast for women before. Several times. But never at his place. He didn’t have women at his apartment. Going to their place kept things simpler. Easier to walk away when it wasn’t your place you were leaving. He had brought Eleanor to his apartment, made love to her in his bed and she’d been the one who’d been going to walk away. He hadn’t liked that one bit.

Ty sighed. He’d had a great time the night before. Not just the

sex, but the entire evening. Truthfully, he wouldn’t mind a repeat—several repeats. Obviously, she wasn’t of the same mind. She’d seemed to enjoy herself well enough, but maybe the champagne really had been why she’d relaxed and smiled so freely at him.

It seemed she wasn’t overjoyed that she’d spent the night with him. Actually, she was acting as if he’d been one big disappointment all the way around.

That was a feeling he was all too familiar with.

Well, hell.

“Breakfast?” Ty downed the rest of his coffee in one gulp, not caring that the hot liquid scorched his throat, then stood and answered her question. “Not always, but at least you got a cup of coffee out of the deal.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

LEANING BACK IN her chair and staring at the computer screen, Eleanor brushed a loose hair away from her face. Her entire body ached with fatigue and she’d been fighting nausea all morning.

She’d been at the hospital since about 4:00 a.m. Not that she’d been sleeping much since the night she’d spent with Ty. Sleep evaded her and when she did finally drift into sleep, memories haunted her dreams.

She rubbed tight muscles in her neck and left shoulder, forcing herself to quit thinking about Ty yet again. She’d survived five weeks without him and she’d survive the rest of her life, too. She just needed to focus on one day at a time, focus on work.

Rochelle wasn’t doing well. The tiny little girl had taken a turn for the worse and nothing Eleanor did seemed to be making a difference.

She studied the baby’s chart, looking for anything she might have missed, anything she could try that she hadn’t tried already.

There wasn’t a logical reason why Rochelle had taken a turn for the worse. The baby had been getting a little stronger each day and then she’d just stopped.

The baby’s father hadn’t been to see his tiny daughter, was still grieving the loss of his wife and couldn’t bear becoming attached to a baby he felt certain wasn’t going to live. Eleanor had called him, told him that she was concerned about Rochelle’s sudden failure to thrive and that she wasn’t sure if they were going to be able to turn the baby’s prognosis around. She’d asked him to come to the hospital, but he hadn’t made any false promises.

“I heard you were still here.”

Eleanor’s heart jerked, slamming hard against her rib cage. She hadn’t heard Ty walk up to where she worked in the small, private dictation room.

“You not talking to me?”

Taking a deep breath, she glanced up from the computer screen she’d pretended to study to keep from looking at him. She wanted to look so badly it scared her. She wanted to throw herself into his arms. Perhaps never having been the center of all that sexy Texan charm would have been better.