Becca's Baby

“No.” He didn’t even hesitate and Becca started to relax a little.

“How can you be certain?” She didn’t know why she had to push him, other than that she couldn’t get Martha’s pain-filled eyes out of her mind.

“Because if I was ever going to want another woman, it would’ve been the new English professor I hired, and I’m not the least bit tempted.”

Becca’s world crumbled.

“You’re interested in one of your teachers?” She couldn’t imagine a worse nightmare.

“No!” he said, chuckling. “Didn’t I just say I’m not?”

“But you like her.”

He turned Becca then, tenderly, until he was looking into her eyes, his face mere inches away.

“Only because she reminds me so much of you.”

She couldn’t trust him anymore. Couldn’t believe what he was telling her. “You want her.”

Her fear, her overflowing, hormonally unbalanced emotions, bubbled up from inside.

“I do not want her, Rebecca,” he said, never more convincing in his life. His eyes were steady, full of frustration, but steady. Unwavering.

However, according to Will, Todd had been perfectly steady, too, when he’d come begging, requesting money for Stacy. Apparently if the girl was young enough, beautiful enough, a man would do anything for her.

“She wears her hair the way you used to when we were in college, held back in those barrette things and long, almost to her hips.”

“I thought you liked my hair shorter.”

“I do!” Will sighed, his brows furrowed as his frustration built. “She just reminds me of a simpler time. A time when no answers were necessary because I didn’t know there were any questions.”

“What else about her reminds you of me?”

“Her intelligence. You’ve always been my equal or more in any debate.”

And they’d had some good ones.

Becca leaned back against him, tired, wishing for oblivion to take her away from her whole confusing life. At least until she had enough strength to make sense of it.

“But mostly,” Will continued when she just wanted the whole conversation to be over, “it’s her eyes.”

He’d been close enough to notice her eyes?

“They’re blue like yours,” he said, hurting her even more, “but what really reminded me of you—of the way you are now, not twenty years ago—was the shadows in them. I wish I could take the shadows out of your eyes, Bec.”

There was no mistaking the sincere, intense note of caring in his voice. No doubting which woman he was with at that moment. And really no doubting his fidelity. Whether she believed him about the occupants of his dreams or not, she knew that Will had never been unfaithful to her.

At least not yet.

“Please make love to me,” she whispered.

His hands splayed possessively across her belly. “I’m still not sure….”

“I know we have problems, Will,” she said in a rush. “I’m not dumb enough to think that sex will wipe them away. But it might help.”

“I want you, Becca, so badly I ache with it most nights, but—”

“I won’t hold you to anything,” she promised him.