The Baby Gamble (Texas Hold'em)

“No. I mean, if you want to, okay.” Her glass shook as she raised it to her lips. “But we don’t have to on my account.”

He couldn’t say he was unhappy about that. He wasn’t much of a conversationalist at the best of times.

“So, where would you like to go?”

“My…The only place there is to lie down, beside the floor, is my bedroom.”

Deciding the floor was out, Blake indicated that she should lead the way. And followed her past the kitchen and down the hall he’d traversed by himself the week before, seeking her out. The night he’d come to tell her he was not going to father her child.

The door to the fairy-tale nursery was shut. As was the one across the way. From the last door, the one at the end of the hall, he could see soft light glowing. She’d prepared for him.

The gown. The lighting.

And the sheets pulled back on a simple twin bed set on a basic metal frame. That yawning welcome was all he could see as he stopped in the doorway to the room where Annie spent her nights. Alone. She’d pulled the sheets back for him. For them. For at least a short while, he would rest his head in Annie’s bed.

Blake had no real sense of how long he stood there staring.

But it was long enough for his starved body to grow hard with wanting her. He wanted nothing more out of life than to climb into that bed, take Annie into his arms and never climb out again.

Except he wasn’t here to want that.

He was here to do a job. And then leave. The thought didn’t lessen the tension in his lower body one whit.

Draining his glass, Blake took a couple of steps into the mostly bare room. Set the goblet on a plastic Parsons table that held an abundantly leafy green plant. Reached for the top button of his shirt.

Focusing on the potted ivy, his gaze following the vine as it curled down around the table to trail along the floor, he undid the second button, too. And then the third, and pulled the shirttails out of the waistband of his slacks.

He caught Annie staring at him, an unreadable expression on her face. Mouth open, brows drawn, she clearly wasn’t regarding him with anticipation. Or any of the eagerness his own body couldn’t seem to control.

Perhaps she’d expected him to leave his shirt on.

Dropping his hands, Blake turned toward her, facing her across the room, with no idea what to say.

“I’m sorry, Annie,” he finally rasped. “I have no idea how to give you a baby without making love to you.”

“I know,” she answered, as if she was fully prepared for the anticipated activity. Prepared, but not looking forward to it.

Frustrated, he began to wonder if he’d made a bigger mistake than he’d thought in coming here, agreeing to this.

And then he remembered why he’d said yes. The only reason. Because his friendship with Cole sure hadn’t p

rompted his decision. He’d do a lot to honor that relationship, give the younger man the shirt off his back, even if it was the last one he had. But not this.

“Are you certain you want to go through with this?” he asked.

Her nod was tentative at best.

If not Blake, there would be someone else. Of that he had no doubt. He knew Annie too well. She might be vulnerable in places most people didn’t see, but his lovely ex-wife was as determined as any human being could be. There was no stopping her, whether she was setting out, at age thirteen, to raise her eleven-year-old brother, as if they hadn’t both just lost their father, and most of their mother’s attention, too. At twenty, to put herself through college and work full-time. At thirty, to raise funds for battered women in San Antonio. Or at thirty-six, to have a baby.

And the idea of another man here, or in some clinic, impregnating the love of his life with a child who wasn’t Blake’s, had been more than he could bear the thought of. Since he’d had the choice. The idea of her being at risk to all the unknowns that could result from a stranger’s participation in this event had been more than he could allow.

Since he’d had the choice.

“Help me out here.” The words were almost torn from him.

She wrapped her arms across her chest. “I didn’t think it would be this hard. This…awkward.”

“How did you picture this happening?”