When she opened the door, his heart lurched at her red-rimmed, swollen eyes. All day he’d been caught up in his own feelings about Darby’s news. He’d asked how she felt, but truth was he’d asked in regard to how her feelings affected him.
How could he have been so callous?
“You’ve been crying.”
Emitting a low sniffle, she rolled her puffy eyes at him. “So? Pregnant women cry.”
He supposed they did.
“Are you going to invite me in?”
Sighing, she stepped back, waited for him to enter the apartment, then shut the door.
He sat down on her living room sofa, looking around for something to focus on besides the woman he wanted to take into his arms and promise it would all be all right. Somehow.
“You said you wanted to come by so we could talk,” she reminded him. “I don’t know what to say, Blake, so you’re going to have to do the talking.”
He didn’t know where to start.
“I’m sorry I put you in this position.”
She didn’t glance at him, just sank onto an overstuffed chair at the far end of the sofa and curled her legs beneath her. “You weren’t the only one in that hotel room. My getting pregnant took both of us.”
That it had. Blake vividly recalled just what the two of them had done to get her pregnant, was haunted by the memories every time he closed his eyes, every time he saw her.
“We can’t change the past.”
“No,” he agreed, wondering when talking to Darby had gotten so difficult, when he’d gotten self-conscious of each word. Of course he knew the precise moment. When they’d become lovers. He ached for his easy relationship with Darby, ached for what he’d lost in her friendship, her partnership. But she was right. They couldn’t change the past. “Which leaves us trying to make the best of the future.”
Her head lowered to her hands. “Agreed.”
“I know you got upset when I asked this earlier, but my question was a legitimate one.” He moved to the end of the sofa closest to her, reached for her hand, but she jerked away, shaking her head rapidly back and forth.
Trying to convince himself that Darby’s rejection wasn’t the cause of the sharp pain slashing across his chest, Blake sighed. “Tell me what you want, Darby?”
What did she want? Darby wondered.
“I want us to go back to the way we were,” she admitted, surprised at her candor, but figuring at this point she had nothing to lose. She’d already lost the best thing in her life, the thing she’d had for years yet hadn’t had at all—him. “I miss my partner and friend.”
He nodded as if he understood. “I’ve missed you, too.”
He had? “Have you? I haven’t gotten that impression these past few weeks.”
“Our friendship and business relationship was special to me. I hate that we let sex come between that.”
Friendship. Business relationship. Sex.
Darby winced.
“Our relationship won’t ever be the same, Darby. No matter how hard we try, we can’t go back to how things were.”
Perhaps she’d said the wrong thing. Because she really didn’t want what they’d had before. She wanted what she’d had in Alabama. She wanted Blake to be in love with her. For real.
She wanted to look into his eyes and see desire and love for her.
She wanted him to feel the same about her as she felt about him.
Because she was in love with Blake.