by Diana Palmer
Wrapped in her own misery, Denise didn't even notice when he came to a sudden stop.
"This pregnancy changes things," he said.
She opened one eye to look at him. "What things?" she muttered. "Besides the obvious, I mean?"
"Things between us."
There it was. It hadn't taken him long to recover fully enough to let her know he wanted their friendship to end. Well, she had known the moment she had agreed to go out with him that their time together would be short.
She was hardly the sort of woman he usually spent time with. And as for her, a man in black was so far removed from the usual ambitious, driven business-suit types she normally dated, it would have been laughable. If it all wasn't so damn sad.
Why had she fallen in love with him? Why hadn't she stopped this relationship before it started? She knew what could happen if a woman fell in love with the wrong man. Her own mother had been miserable.
The woman had loved Richard Torrance to distraction. And Richard had had time only for his business. He was a man who should never have married.
A man like Mike.
Oh, not that the two men were really alike in any way except one. Neither of them were interested in marriage. Somehow her mother had convinced Richard to take a chance. Denise wasn't going to make the same mistake.
"Don't worry about it, Mike," she said and pushed herself up onto one elbow. Pausing, she waited a moment to see if her stomach was going to rebel. When she was sure she was safe, she went on, forcing herself to look at him calmly. "I don't expect anything from you. I'll take care of—everything myself."
"Oh, thanks so much." Sarcasm dripped from every word.
She blinked. He sounded angry.
Furious, Mike simply stared at her. Did she really think so little of him? Did she just assume that he would do a quick fade-out the minute they found out she was pregnant? With his baby?
Of course she did. What else could she think? He had told her himself that he wasn't interested in love and marriage. He shoved one hand through his hair, then viciously rubbed the back of his neck. Looking at her again, he stared into wide blue eyes filled with confusion, and he knew what had to be done.
"There's no reason for you to take care of anything all by yourself."
"Mike…"
"Marry me."
"What?" She sat bolt upright on the bed.
He inhaled sharply, cleared his throat and forced the words out again. Barely. "Marry me, Denise."
"You're out of your mind."
"No, I'm not. I'm trying to find a way out of this for both— all three of us," he corrected himself.
"That's not a way out Mike," she said, with a slow shake of her head. "That's the way in. To deeper trouble."
"No, it's not." Talking fast now, he sat down on the end of the mattress and held her gaze. "It could work. We get along well. Neither one of us is a kid, we'd be able to work together. And you have to admit that two parents are better than one."
"Not if they don't want to be together."
"Fine, I admit that I never thought I'd get married."
Two blond eyebrows lifted.
"But I didn't have a reason before."
"You don't now, either."
"There's the baby."
"Mike, this is the twenty-first century. There are all sorts of solutions to this kind of problem besides the one you're suggesting."
"Problem?" he repeated. "This isn't a problem, Denise. It's a baby. My baby."
She looked at him for a long moment, then scooted to the edge of the bed and stood up. "It's my baby too, Ryan. And I'm not going to be pushed into doing something I think is wrong just because you've decided to play storybook hero."
"What?"
"This knight in shining armor thing." Color flushed her pale cheeks. "I don't need to be rescued, Mike. I'm a big girl and I can take care of myself."
She turned quickly and started for the hall. He caught her in two steps. Grabbing her arm, he turned her around to look at him. "You're not going to shut me out of this, Denise. It's my child and I deserve a say in what happens to him."
"We didn't even know about her until fifteen minutes ago," she said quietly, but firmly. "I think she deserves better than her parents making a decision without even bothering to think about it."
"Now isn't the time to think," he snapped. "It's a time to feel. Sometimes you have to go with your gut, Denise. You can't think everything to death."
"Feelings are exactly what brought us to this point, Mike. If we had stopped to think two weeks ago, neither of us would be standing here having this conversation."
She was right. He didn't like it, but she was right. Oh, not about two weeks ago. Nothing could make him regret that night with her. Not even this surprise pregnancy. But she did deserve a little more time to come to the conclusion that his was the only possible solution.
So maybe he wouldn't have proposed if there hadn't been a baby. But there is a baby. And that tiny life meant the rules had just changed on the game they had been playing. She could take all the time she wanted, but Mike wasn't going anywhere.
"All right," he said and released her. The battle gleam in her eyes faded a bit as she took a step back. "Take some time. Do some thinking. So will I."
"Good."
"I'll come by your place tonight and we'll talk again."
"Tonight?"
"Yeah. We can talk this whole thing out then."
She stepped into the hall, keeping her gaze locked with his. "Not tonight. I need a few days to myself, Mike. I'll call you, okay?"
"You're not planning on doing something and telling me about it later, are you?" he muttered thickly.
Realization dawned in her eyes and she shook her head. "No. No, I promise I won't do anything until I've told you what my decision is."
"Your decision?"
"It's your baby too, Mike, but it's inside me. The final decision will be mine."
Chapter 9
Five days later, she was no closer to a decision. True to his word, Mike had kept his distance. But now, Denise couldn't help wondering if he was staying away because she had asked him to—or because he had realized that his marriage proposal was a mistake.
She was still rational enough to know that she wasn't being fair. But emotional enough not to care.
And Lord, how she missed him.
"Denise?" Richard Torrance walked into his daughter's office, a sheaf of papers clenched tightly in one hand.
"Hmmm?" She turned her back on the view of the ocean to face the man's slowly purpling features. "Father, what's wrong?"
"Wrong?" he echoed. "Oh nothing, except that I almost had heart failure a moment ago."
"What are you talking about?"
"These figures, Denise," he said and waved the papers in his fist. "On the Steenberg account? According to your calculations, their company lost several hundred thousand dollars last month."
"I don't under—"
"You transposed the numbers, Denise. If I hadn't caught your error, Mr. Steenberg probably would have had a heart attack!"
"I'm sorry," she said and sat back in her chair. Propping her elbows on the polished wooden arms, she briefly cupped her face in her hands. There went her last safety net. She couldn't even count on numbers anymore.
"You've been sorry for nearly a week." He dropped the papers onto her desk, flattened his palms on the maroon leather blotter and demanded, "Where has your mind gone, girl?"
She lifted her head to stare at him. "I'm not a girl, Father."
"You're certainly behaving like one," he countered hotly. "Canceling appointments, coming in late, leaving early. If you weren't my own flesh and blood, I would have fired you days ago."
She jumped to her feet, waited for the now familiar touch of dizziness to pass, then met her father's glare with one of her own. If he had been more interested in his daughter's welfare rather than his employee's performance, he would know what the problem was. She would have been able to talk
to him. Ask his advice.
Instead, they were further apart than ever, whether he knew it or not. And today, she was too tired to put up with it. Too exhausted to worry about saying just the right thing, she said flatly, "Fine. Fire me."
Richard jerked his head back, clearly as surprised as he would have been to have a lamp jump off the desk and bite him.
Reaching down into her bottom desk drawer, Denise pulled her huge purse out and slung the strap over her shoulder. Digging into the bag, she pulled out her bottle of antacids and shook two of them into the center of her palm. Before she popped them into her mouth though, she stopped and wondered if antacids were safe for the baby. She didn't know. Lately, she felt as though she didn't know anything. Carefully, she scooped the tablets back into the bottle, then dropped the container into her purse. Better to be safe than sorry.
"What do you mean, fire you?" Richard asked, his tone demanding an answer. "What has gotten into you?"
Briefly, she considered blurting out, "A baby." But thought better of it. One thing she didn't need at the moment was her father's opinion on her impending motherhood.
Instead, she said, "I mean, Father, if you're that unhappy with my work, fire me as you would any other employee. I won't have trouble finding a job. Any accounting firm in this town would be glad to hire me."
"I didn't say—"
"Yes, you did, Father. And you know what? I don't care." As she said the words, she realized the truth in them and felt her tension level drop just a little. Inhaling sharply, she came out from behind her desk and marched past him, toward the door. Before she left though, she looked over her shoulder at him. "I'll probably be late again tomorrow. I haven't been feeling well."
He opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off cleanly.
"If I'm not working here any longer, leave word with my secretary. I'll pack up my things and be out by tomorrow afternoon." She turned on her heel and stormed past the secretaries in the main room, each of them staring at her as if she had sprouted another head.
Denise rode the wave of her anger all the way to the bank of elevators on the far wall. She stabbed the Down button with her index finger and tried to calm the roiling in her stomach while she waited what seemed forever for the car to arrive.
Finally, a bell chimed and the doors soundlessly slid open. As she stepped into the elevator, she saw her father striding out of her office. Every secretary in the room stared at him, but he didn't even notice their curiosity.
Looking after her, he shouted, "Denise!"
But the elevator doors closed before she was forced to acknowledge him.
"It's the accountant again, isn't it?" Bob Dolan asked as he watched Mike storm around the service bay. The other two mechanics on duty had opted for an early lunch, not that Bob blamed them any. In the space of a few weeks, their easygoing boss had turned into Godzilla. The last few days had been especially rough.
Mike's angry strides slowed long enough for him to throw an icy glare at his friend. "Stay out of it, Bob."
"Love to, Ryan," the other man said and leaned one beefy forearm on a workbench. "But you keep draggin' it in to work every day. You know your mechanics are set to quit?"
Mike gritted his teeth to keep from shouting.
Bob went on. "Even Tina's about ready to run you down with one of your own bikes."
He knew he had been making everyone around him miserable. But he was just too mad to care at the moment.
"Let 'em quit," Mike snapped. "As for Tina, if she can put up with you for twenty some years, she can damn sure put up with me."
"Maybe, but you're not as good lookin' as me, either."
Mike snorted a laugh, despite his foul temper.
"What's goin' on, buddy?"
He pulled a deep breath into his lungs, exhaled on a rush and shook his head. "I really loused things up this time."
"The accountant?"
"Denise."
"Right." Bob nodded. "What about her?"
Mike looked at him. "She's pregnant."
A few seconds ticked by before Bob pushed away from the bench and grinned. "That's great, Ryan."
Mike scowled.
"Isn't it?" Bob asked.
"I don't know," he admitted, disgusted with himself, Denise, the situation, everything. He had done as she asked. He had stayed away. Given her time to think. But it had been five long days and there still was no word from her.
Was he supposed to just stand on the sidelines forever while she decided what she was going to do with his kid?
He didn't even sleep anymore. Every night, he ended up lying in a bed where he could still feel her presence, staring at a silent phone. Nothing was being solved this way, couldn't she see that?
"She won't talk to me, Bob. Says she needs time to think. Well dammit, how much time?"
"Have you been thinking?"
He snorted again. Hard to think when you're so exhausted you can barely see straight. "Trying to."
"Come up with anything yet?"
"I asked her to marry me."
A long, low whistle was Bob's only comment.
"She said no," Mike added, surprised that he could admit that humiliating fact even to his best friend.
Bob ducked his head to hide a small smile, but Mike saw it anyway.
"There's nothin' funny about any of this."
"I guess not," the other man conceded. "But I seem to remember a fella standing in the hot desert sand, swearing to anybody who would listen that he was never getting married."
Mike smiled briefly and shook his head. "Yeah, I remember him too. But that fella didn't have a baby coming. And that fella hadn't met Denise Torrance yet, either."
"So, did you tell her you love her?"
He shot a wild look at his friend. Love? Who the hell said anything about love? Love didn't have to come into any of this. It hadn't been love that had created that baby. It had been pure, old-fashioned, need. "I never said I loved her."
"So you don't love her?"
Instantly, images of Denise filled his mind. They were each so clear, he could almost smell her perfume, feel her hand in his. He recalled the feel of her sitting behind him on the bike, her thighs aligned with his. He saw her again as she had been that night in his kitchen, before they went to the beach. She had looked so right there. It had all felt so natural, talking to her there in his house where usually the silence was enough to drive him out onto the highway for a fast ride on his Harley. In memory, he heard her sighs, tasted her lips and felt her arms slide around his waist as they set off on an adventure. His breathing quickened and his throat was suddenly dry and tight. Was that love?
"I didn't say I don't love her, either."
"Hell, Ryan, what are you saying?"
"I'm saying…" Mike paused and searched for the right words. Words he could live with. Words to describe the only truth he really knew so far. "I'm saying I want her. And I want that baby. Isn't that enough?"
Bob scratched his beard and squinted at him. "I'm not the one you should be asking."
Mike kicked at a stack of tires, smiling grimly when the black rubber tower swayed unsteadily. "Aren't you listening? I can't ask her anything. She won't talk to me."
Just like always, Bob ignored Mike's temper and asked thoughtfully, "Since when do you take no for an answer?"
"Lately, I guess." This being fair and gentlemanly was for the birds. What he should have done was pushed his way into her house and demanded that she listen to him. He reached up to yank the rubber band from his ponytail. When his hair fell free, he stabbed his fingers through the mass and rubbed his skull, in an effort to stop the pounding going on inside.
"Mike," Bob said softly, "I never thought you were a stupid man, until now."
Mike's head snapped up. His gaze locked with Bob's. "Back off," he grumbled.
"Not this time," his friend said. "Now, I know you decided a few years back that you weren't going to love anybody."
"Dammit, Bob."
"Yo
u can't make those kinds of rules for yourself, man. They don't work. Hell, they can't work. Life happens, Mike." Bob looked at him long and hard. "Somehow, this woman got past that wall you built around yourself and there's no getting her out now."
He could argue with him, but what would be the point? The man was right, whether Mike wanted to admit it or not. Denise had sneaked up on him. She had slipped beneath all of his defenses until she had reached the heart of him. The heart he would have bet money hadn't existed anymore.
He shifted his gaze to stare blankly out the open end of the service bay. "How do I make her see that?" he whispered.
"How?" Bob snorted and turned back to the workbench, his duty to his friend done. "Man, you were a marine. Storm her beaches, buddy."
Mike nodded to himself. Enough of this waiting around. She'd had it her way for five long days. Now, they were going to play by his rules. Blast it, he wasn't about to lose this war. Not when winning it meant the difference between a lifetime with Denise and a lifetime of loneliness.
The battle was about to begin.
Sitting on the floor in the middle of her living room, Denise reached for the closest stack of books and picked up the one on top.
"The Perfect Baby Through Visualization," she read out loud, then set the book down with a muffled chuckle. How had she ended up with that one?
Easy, she told herself. Go into a bookstore and ask for every book they have on pregnancy. One of the clerks had had to carry the bags to her car for her and it had taken her three trips to drag them all into the house.
"What Every Expecting Mother Should Know," she muttered, then flipped through the rest of the first pile. "The ABC's of Babies, Pregnancy 101." She shook her head and reached for the glass of milk she had set on the coffee table.
Glancing down at her flat stomach, Denise slid one palm across it protectively. "I'm even willing to drink milk for you, kiddo. I hope you appreciate it."
She took a long sip and smiled to herself. Somehow, after that fight with her father, some things had become clear to her. Oh, not everything. She still didn't know what to do about Mike and the feelings she had for him. But she had accepted one very important fact.