My Babies and Me

He’d kill the bastard who’d done this to her.

“Who is he?” Michael reached for his slacks and, not taking time for underwear, pulled them on. He would hunt the guy down and kill him with his bare hands for not loving Susan more responsibly. Hell, for loving her at all.

“I don’t know yet.”

So intent was he on finding some shoes, a shirt, he barely heard the words when she first uttered them. But as he buttoned his shirt, cussing at every little buttonhole, her voice slowly sank in.

Whirling, he faced her. “You don’t know yet?” He had to be asleep, having the craziest nightmare of his life. There was no other way to explain the things he was hearing.

Unusually winded, Susan shook her head.

There’d been more than one man? “Well, when are you going to find out?” Didn’t they have to wait until after the baby was born to determine paternity?

“I’m not sure.”

“I’m going downstairs.”

Michael took the stairs three at a time—half sliding, half running in his hurry to get away from her. To get away from the whole sordid mess. With a Scotch in hand, and one small light on above the bar, he paced his living room, doing some quick desperate math. He’d seen Susan at Christmas, but he’d only been able to spare the one day and her whole family had been around. He’d been busy as hell all through the fall with year-end approaching, and dammit, this baby couldn’t be his.

His gut hard, he figured out that it had been a good four months since he’d made love to Susan. And there was no way she was four months along. Her belly was as flat as always. He knew. He’d just spent the past two hours intimately acquainted with it.

Not that he’d wanted the baby to be his. He finished off the shot of whiskey he’d poured. Not at all. Certainly no more than Susan wanted to be pregnant. He couldn’t think of anything she’d want less. Except maybe death. Or anything he’d want less, for that matter.

He also couldn’t get past the sick feeling of knowing that another man had done this to her. Dammit! Why hadn’t she been more careful?

“You’re angry, aren’t you?”

She’d appeared behind him, wearing a rumpled men’s shirt. She’d found the shirt he’d worn to work earlier and wrapped herself in it. The shirt reminded him of his meeting with Coppel.

“No.”

“Don’t lie to me, Michael.”

He turned toward her. She was right. Lying to each other was one thing he and Susan had never done.

“Okay, yeah, I’m angry.” So angry he could feel his nostrils flaring.

“Why? It has nothing to do with you.”

So why, if that was supposed to make it okay, didn’t he feel okay?

“For one thing, I’m angry as hell at the irresponsibility of whatever man did this to you.”

She frowned, dropping down to his leather couch, folding her feet beneath her. “Did what to me?”

Michael swore, out of all patience. “Got you pregnant, of course.” Did pregnancy make a woman stupid, too? He’d thought it only caused pickle cravings and crying attacks.

Susan laughed. Shocking him. “In the first place, Michael, a man can’t get me pregnant all by himself.”

She had him there.

“Secondly, I’m not pregnant—yet.”

The whiskey was clouding his brain.

“And in the third place, I haven’t slept with anyone but you in my entire life.”

Well, that was okay then.