The second he gave her that knowing smile, though, her mouth went dry and her tummy went completely topsy-turvy.
Or maybe that feeling was actually her first bout of morning sickness.
* * *
Grant Whitaker’s elderly aunts, Birdie and Bunny, loved it whenever he found the time to fly in from Jacksonville to visit them and help out at Furever Paws. Apparently, though, they had kept the details of this visit to themselves. Judging by Rebekah Taylor’s wide-eyed stare and dropped jaw, she had no clue that his aunts had asked him to review the latest marketing plans in order to get more people at their adoption events.
Even if his aunts hadn’t asked for his help, he probably would’ve found another reason to get back to Spring Forest to see Rebekah before long. He hadn’t talked to the no-nonsense director of the animal shelter in more than a month. He’d thought they’d finally turned a corner after sharing a couple of drinks—and much more—that night. She’d been sound asleep when he’d had to leave to catch his flight back to Florida, so he’d left his number in a place where he knew she wouldn’t miss it. And while he hadn’t expected a call the first few days after they’d spent the night together, Grant had been hoping for at least a “see you next time you’re in town” text.
Rebekah Taylor was as straitlaced as they came and had a reputation around the pet shelter for running a tight ship. Or as tight a ship as one could run with the elderly Whitaker sisters in charge. The director was wound so tightly, she reminded Grant of one of those coils that launched like a bouncing spring the second someone released some of the pressure. Several weeks ago, when he’d run into her and her friends at happy hour, he’d ended up being the lucky one who’d helped her unwind.
He’d had a good time that night—better than good, if he was being honest with himself—and he’d thought she’d enjoyed herself, as well. In fact, right this second, his fingers twitched instinctively, as if they were also remembering the way her muscles had clenched against them when he’d brought her to...
Grant’s already sunburned neck grew warm and he had to give his head a quick shake to clear it while Rebekah fumbled with her keys as she tried to unlock the front door.
“Here, can I give you a hand?” he asked as he reached out to take the keys from her. The second his thumb grazed her palm, an electrical current shot through him. As she jerked her arm back, he realized that she must’ve felt it, too.
So the attraction was definitely still there, even if Rebekah was holding her giant tote bag between them like a shield, blocking his view of her full, round breasts. As though he hadn’t already committed to memory the sight of the dark bronze skin framing deep-brown nipples.
She had a death grip on the two white bags in her other hand and blew a curly strand of black hair out of her face. While she didn’t look angry, she also didn’t look very pleased to see him. In fact, the smooth skin at the base of her neck revealed a jumping pulse, making him think the overly controlling office director wasn’t feeling all that in control right this second.
Grant tried to hide his grin at this sudden revelation. Just because she’d let her guard down around him once didn’t mean she’d be willing to do it again. Rebekah was a tough woman to read, but he remembered her slightly tipsy words that night as she’d finished her third mojito after her friends left the bar. “We can’t let anyone know about us drinking together like this. It would be extremely unprofessional for me to socialize with a member of my bosses’ family.”
“Then we probably shouldn’t tell anyone that I’m going to come over to your place when we leave the bar,” he’d replied just before signaling for the check. Her thick lashes had lowered seductively and one corner of her full lips had lifted in invitation. It’d been a bold pickup line from a guy who normally didn’t have to resort to lines to get women, and Grant hadn’t expected it to work with someone as reserved as Rebekah. It turned out that his taking charge that night had worked out extremely well for both of them.
However, something in her hazel eyes—possibly panic—told Grant that he shouldn’t re-create the same take-charge strategy at her workplace. Or in the light of day. He cleared his throat and turned back to the door, jamming the first key he saw into the lock. It only went halfway.
“It’s the third one,” she said, using her chin to nod toward the key ring that had suddenly become slippery in his damp hands. It took another two tries, and when he finally pulled the glass door open, she rushed by him in a cloud of the plumeria scent she always wore—he’d noticed the bottle of expensive lotion on her bathroom counter that night—and headed straight past the empty reception desk and down the hallway leading toward the business offices.
Grant stood there for a few seconds, letting the air-conditioning from inside filter past him to the humid summer heat outside. She hadn’t even thanked him for getting the door, let alone said goodbye. It was one thing to want to keep their personal business on the down low, it was another to completely brush him off. Some of the animal handlers were probably on duty in the back, but since the shelter wouldn’t be open to the public until ten o’clock, there wasn’t anyone in the newly refinished reception area to see them. It was almost as though she wanted to pretend he wasn’t even there.
Grant wasn’t in the habit of having one-night stands with his aunts’ employees—or anyone else, for that matter—so a part of him understood her desire to try to forget the whole thing had ever happened. He’d felt the same way the past few weeks when it had become apparent that she wasn’t going to call him. By avoiding any sort of conversation, Rebekah was actually providing him with the perfect escape, the perfect excuse to avoid any sort of messy emotions or awkward conversations about how things could never work between them.
But the memory of Rebekah’s curves pressed against him and the sound of her throaty moans were too fresh in his mind.
Plus, he still had her keys.
Grant’s flip-flops slapped against the lacquered finish of the concrete floor as he took long strides toward the biggest office. The door was already closed so he gave a brisk knock before twisting the handle and letting himself inside.
Rebekah stood behind her desk, both hands braced on the tidy surface and her chest puffed out, as though she’d been in the middle of some deep breathing exercise before he’d barged in.
Grant didn’t do tension or uncomfortable silences. So when his eyes landed on one of the bags in front of her, he shifted gears to a neutral topic.
“Sutter’s Pharmacy, huh?” He hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his favorite board shorts and tried to appear as casual as possible. “Are you feeling out of sorts?”
“I’m fine!” Rebekah’s words came out in a squeak and her round eyes grew even larger as they filled with alarm. Whoa. He’d just been trying to lighten the mood. He hadn’t meant to make her uncomfortable.
“If you say so. Anyway, I came in here because you forgot your keys,” he said, dangling them in front of his chest. His father had raised him to be a gentleman and he knew the proper thing to do would be to place the key ring with the silver softball charm on her desk. But he couldn’t stop himself from testing to see if the sensation he’d felt from their earlier physical contact had just been a fluke.
Rebekah was a tall woman and easily reached one arm across her desk. When her fingers met his, another flare of heat shot through him. She yanked her hand back so quickly, it knocked one of the white sacks off her tote bag.
There was a rattling sound as something rolled out of the bag and fell to the floor right by his feet.
Rebekah must’ve raced around the desk because she was suddenly diving at the container in front of him. But she wasn’t fast enough. The words on the label flashed in his brain as though they were blinking in neon lights, even after she clutched the bottle to her chest.
Something in his gut twisted, and the air in his lungs suspended. It took him several time
s to get the words out and his voice sounded far way when he finally asked, “Why are you taking prenatal vitamins?”
Chapter Two
Rebekah bit her lip, trying to resist the urge to hide the bottle behind her back. She’d already flung herself on the ground in front of him as though she were a combat soldier jumping onto a live grenade. At this point, there was no way to pretend the emotional explosion hadn’t already detonated around them.
Still.
How had he read the label so quickly?
She didn’t realize she’d spoken the question out loud until Grant replied, “I won the national speed-reading championships for my high school four years in a row.”
“You’re a speed reader?” she asked as she rose to her feet, seizing on the opportunity to redirect the conversation.
“I was also the Duval County Spelling Bee champion in eighth grade,” he added. “But I don’t especially feel a need to discuss my academic accomplishments right this second. Is there something you want to tell me, Rebekah?”
She watched his soft lips move, yet his question sounded so formal, as did the way he said her name. Her parents were the only ones who called her Dimples, and she hated it when people used the common nicknames Becky or Bekah, or even Beck. So it wasn’t as though Grant should be calling her anything other than Rebekah. Still, his question felt like a chastisement all the same.
Straightening her spine, she forced herself to look him directly in those ocean-blue eyes and said, “I might be pregnant.”
“Whoa.” He sank into the paisley upholstered chair right in front of her, swiping the sun-bleached blond hair off his forehead. “I mean...whoa.”
Yep, that was the response she’d been anticipating.
And now that he was acting as she’d initially expected, Rebekah felt her own role fall back into place as she took charge of the situation. “I took a test this morning, but I’m waiting for the doctor to confirm it.”
“How...” he started, then scrubbed a hand over the golden stubble on his jaw. “I mean...”
“How did this happen?” she offered. “I’m sure the usual way.”
“I was actually going to ask how far along you are.” He used his tan forearms to push himself up a little straighter and Rebekah wondered if he was already calculating the date in his mind.
“I’m four weeks late, so that would put me at eight weeks.” She held up a warning finger. “If I am, in fact, pregnant. Like I said, there’s no need to get all worked up over a store-bought test.”
Or two tests, if anyone was counting.
Grant sucked in a deep breath, his nostrils flaring slightly as he exhaled. “So when do we go to the doctor to confirm it?”
We. The skin on the back of her neck tingled. “Well, I have an appointment next week. If you want, I can send you a text afterward and let you know if there’s any news.”
There was no point in mentioning that she’d need to ask for his cell phone number again.
“A text? If there’s any news?” When his eyes finally focused on hers, Rebekah swallowed a tiny lump of guilt. There was accusation practically shooting from their blue depths. “Were you even planning to tell me?”
“Of course I planned to tell you.” Eventually. After she’d figured out what she was going to do. She twisted her lower lip between her teeth.
She waited for the next question to come—the one about whether the baby was his—but he only studied her intently before slowly nodding.
Grant slid his smartphone out of his pocket and she remembered when the device had been sitting out on the table that evening while they were closing down happy hour. She’d commented on the battered cover and the cracked screen and he’d told her the story of how he’d been testing out one of his company’s waterproof cases when he’d wiped out near a coral reef and cracked his surfboard in half. The still-functional phone was one of his biggest marketing tools when it came to selling his company’s tech products. Not that she had a very clear picture of exactly what it was he did for the company.
This wasn’t good, she thought, giving her head a quick shake to clear it. She might be having this man’s baby, yet she didn’t even know what he did for a living.
“What day is the appointment?” he asked as he swiped at an app on his phone. It was the same online calendar she’d unsuccessfully tried to get her parents to use.
“Um...” Rebekah tilted her head, unsure if she wanted him to know. Unfortunately, he’d practically accused her of keeping the pregnancy from him already and she didn’t want to give him any reason to think that she had something to hide. Besides, it wasn’t like he’d actually stay in town long enough to go with her. Or that he’d even want to go. “It’s next Thursday.”
“Uh-huh,” he said as he tapped something else. “What time?”
“Grant, you aren’t actually planning to go to the doctor’s office with me, are you?”
At this, he lifted his eyes to hers again and she could see that the full force of his earlier suspicion had returned. “Of course I’m planning to be there. You didn’t think I’d leave you to go through this alone, did you?”
There was no polite way to answer that question. Frankly, there wasn’t even an honest way of answering without admitting that not only had she been thinking that exact thing, she was hoping for it. Instead, she opted to remind him of the logistics involved. “But don’t you have to be back in Jacksonville for work or...something?”
His fingers flew over his cracked phone screen, typing as he spoke. “Actually, I’m flying to a digital marketing conference in San Francisco tonight after I check in on my aunts. I’ll just change my return flight so I can swing by here on the way home next week.”
Rebekah heard him speaking, but the only word her brain seized on was aunts. A rush of unease shot to her stomach. “You can’t tell your aunts about this.”
“About what?” he asked, his attention seemingly focused fully on the electronic device in his hands and—luckily—not on the beads of sweat breaking out across Rebekah’s forehead. She resisted the urge to grab one of the vet reports off her desk and fan her heated face.
“About me. About us.” Her finger pointed back and forth at each of them, before her hand dropped to her still-flat belly. “And especially not about the baby.”
He lifted his head finally, his eyes zeroing in on her. Not in the suspicious way that she was accustomed to from him, but in a sexy, hungry sort of way. All that tension in her tummy doubled and a sudden warmth spread under her skin.
Lord help her, but even as she faced the very man who now had the power to redirect her entire future, she was still hopelessly attracted to him.
Stiffening her shoulders, Rebekah commanded her body to get itself together. This reaction must be some sort of pregnancy-induced hormonal imbalance.
Not that she was exactly mother material herself, but Grant was the complete opposite of the type of guy she would choose to father her baby. What made things even more unbearable was the way his elderly aunts doted on him and acted as if he’d hung the moon, making his job down in Jacksonville sound like the most important career in the world. In reality, he worked for a tech company that encouraged beach days and flexible hours and spontaneous yoga sessions in their cubicle-free environment. While some might describe him as easygoing and charming, to Rebekah, Grant seemed like one of those men who’d never really grown up. Maybe it was because she’d yet to see him dressed in a shirt with a collar.
Or a shirt that didn’t highlight his strong, broad shoulders.
As she stared at the faded logo on the soft cotton tee stretched across his muscular chest, she ignored the desire curling inside her and wondered for the hundredth time this morning how she’d ended up in this situation with this man, of all people.
Because he was sexy as hell. That’s how.
“Rebekah.” Grant fi
nally rose to his feet before walking over to stand in front of her. When she ducked her head to avoid those piercing eyes, he softly placed a finger under her chin and lifted her face to meet his gaze. “I won’t say a word to anyone until we get the green light from the doctor.”
All she could manage was a slight nod and a slow release of air from her too-tight lungs. She didn’t want to talk about green lights or anything else with him until she had a concrete plan in place.
A plan that most likely wouldn’t involve her spending any more time with Grant Whitaker.
* * *
Standing face-to-face, Grant didn’t immediately remove his hand from the curve of Rebekah’s cheek as he studied her resigned expression.
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her. Despite the fact that he doubted she would’ve told him about the pregnancy quite so soon if she hadn’t nervously knocked over that bag, he did believe she was honest and honorable. But there was something about the woman that always threw him off-balance. Something that she kept locked up tight behind the professional clothes and the detailed financial reports and the organized meeting notes she always passed off to his aunts, who would inadvertently leave the meticulously typed documents behind in the kennel of a sick Labrador or under a pallet of kitty-litter bags. In fact, while he’d been waiting for Rebekah in the parking lot this morning, he’d wandered over to the stables and found one of the llamas eating the cell tower proposal that Rebekah had drafted for a city council meeting.
Rebekah was nothing if not thorough. Which made it difficult for him to believe that she hadn’t already formulated a specific course of action.
It Started with a Pregnancy Page 2