And the way those huge doe eyes got just a bit wider told me everything I needed to know.
I gentled my voice. “Pregnant.”
“No. We used…” She held her hand out. I grasped it, relieved when her fingers curled around mine. I didn’t realize how much I needed it until she latched onto me.
Katherine had shot a beer bottle at my head when she’d told me she was having my baby. Helluva way to start our happily ever after. No wonder she walked away when Wes was barely more than a toddler. Amazing she’d lasted that long.
“Nothing’s one hundred percent.”
“No.” She shook her head. “That can’t be it.”
“Can’t it?”
She shook her head, her gaze darting all over her room without landing on me. “I wasn’t sick in the morning. I…” Her words drifted off as she tried to come to terms with the idea of it. Denial was spinning her eyes like a slot machine.
No spinning lights with jackpot there.
Even as my gut spun just the same, I wanted to drag her closer. I couldn’t even figure out why. The same kind of crazy emotion that bombarded me the minute she got close to me. Now it was growing. Like a tangled bougainvillea vine I’d tried to unlace from my fence at my house.
But it kept coming back.
No matter how many days I put between us, she was the vine I couldn’t get off my skin, out of my senses, out of my damn brain. I laced our fingers. Maybe I didn’t want to fight it anymore.
“Hey.” I cupped her jaw and turned her face toward me.
She frowned and shook her head. “I wasn’t sick in the morning.”
I laughed. “Morning sickness is relative, darlin’. It can happen anytime. My cousin had it at ten in the evening every night for a month.”
“I don’t even make it to ten o’clock.”
My gaze sharpened on her. “Tired all the time?”
She pulled away. “I’m a teacher. Of course I’m tired all the time.” She paced away from me and back, her long fingers making fists, then releasing before she tapped her thumb along the pads of each finger.
“Counting?”
She pushed her long reddish-gold hair away from her face. “What?”
“Fingers.”
She fished her hand again. “I don’t have time for this.”
“Afraid it doesn’t work like that.”
She dug her phone out of her ass pocket.
Those damn shorts were going to be the death of me. Ancient, frayed in all the right places. The wear mark riding high on the sides where her endless legs met her hips. Christ, the dreams I had about those legs. I wanted them wrapped around my head again. She was surprisingly toned and firm and when she was lost, screaming my name, she forgot how strong she was. In my dreams, I’d happily suffocate with her taste on my tongue.
I sucked back a groan and dragged my shirt down over my work pants. She didn’t need to see the proof of what planted that baby inside her. Maybe a baby. I crossed my arms over my chest. “We’ll go get a test.” Or seven. Needed to be sure.
“No.”
My arms dropped to my sides. “What do you mean no?”
“Not now. I have Sage’s baby shower in…” She swiped her hair out of her eyes again. “I have to go. I have to get ready.” She paced her postage stamp-sized living room and then quickly rerouted herself to the bedroom.
I followed her, standing in the doorway. The last time I’d stood in this exact spot, she’d been splayed out on the bed recovering from what we’d done. I tried not to think about the way I’d rolled her over an