CHAPTER EIGHT
SHE WAS AN AMAZING WOMAN. An amazing person. Somehow Phyllis Langford had taken a situation he could in no way be proud of—an unplanned, illegitimate pregnancy—and made it a good thing. Made him feel like he’d scaled a mountain. How could he completely hate himself for getting her pregnant when it turned out she wanted the baby so badly?
Instead of ruining her life, he’d somehow bettered it.
Matt walked across campus Thursday afternoon, the collar of his maroon leather jacket lifted up around his neck to ward off the unusual chill. The temperature would be back in the seventies the next day. As soon as the sun came out again. In the meantime, he, like probably the majority of Arizonans, was enjoying the rare cool day.
If he didn’t hurry, he was going to miss her. Phyllis only had another fifteen minutes of her office hour. And he wanted to assure himself that she was okay. Needed to assure himself.
She wanted this baby. And suddenly he was filled with a forceful determination to do everything in his power to see that she had it. He intended to reestablish the tentative truce he’d made with himself in Shelter Valley.
He’d see her through the pregnancy and in doing so, provide a way to slip back into the life he’d built before he met her. No harm done.
Her door was open. A student just leaving.
“Thanks, Dr. Langford.”
“Anytime, Steve.” She sounded as though she was smiling.
Matt felt a little like smiling, too.
“Hey, teach, how you doing?” he asked, appearing in her doorway as soon as the student was a couple of doors down the hall. He didn’t give her time to get involved in anything he’d have to interrupt.
“Matt?” She was frowning, looking up from a typed paper, red pen in her hand. “What’s up?”
Casual visits aren’t in our agreement, Matt translated. He was a bit relieved by the message. He wanted to give her every ounce of his strength to bring a healthy baby into the world, but he didn’t want to give her any false ideas.
He closed the door behind him, noting the wary look in her eyes. “Have you had any more bleeding?” he asked softly, moving closer to her desk.
Her gaze cleared and she put down the pen. “No,” she told him, open now. “I’ve been nervous all day, but there’s nothing. Thank God.”
Apparently talk about the baby was okay with her. They both understood that they were on a common mission that had everything to do with this baby and nothing to do with the two of them.
“How about morning sickness? Is that gone, too?”
“I didn’t get that lucky,” she said with a grimace.
“But you’re getting enough fluids like Dr. Mac said?”
“Yes, sir.” She was smiling at him. And then she frowned again. “Why do you care so much all of a sudden?” she asked sharply. “You aren’t getting ideas about this baby, are you?”
“Of course not.” He set her mind at rest immediately. “Not for myself, if that’s what you mean.”
Phyllis sat back, her forearms resting casually on the sides of her padded leather executive desk chair—identical to the one his butt spent so much time in at the Performing Arts Center. “Sorry about that,” she said. “I can’t believe how often I’m flying off in crazy directions these days. I’ll sure be glad when this phase of the pregnancy passes.”
“Just to set the record straight—” he placed his hands on her desk, met her gaze head-on “—you have nothing to fear from me. My life is exactly how I want it. I have no interest in close personal relationships, nor am I ever going to foist myself on a kid who, as I know firsthand, would be better off without me.”
“You’ve said that before.”
He nodded. “I mean it.”
“Why?”
The question hit him between the eyes. He’d lowered his guard, left himself unprotected without even knowing it. Open to the kinds of questions he didn’t allow people to ask.
“I told you before. I have a past.”
“Hate to break this to you, Matt, but everyone who’s lived for more than about a second has a past.”