But Lucy’s full lips quivered as if she was trying to figure out what to say to him. For a split second, all he wanted to do was lean in and kiss her so they didn’t have to talk anymore. He wanted to lose himself in the taste of her, bury his face in her silky brown hair and keep going until he forgot about everything else that was going on in his life.
He cursed under his breath and balled up the soggy napkins he’d been using to blot the spilled drink a few moments ago. He tossed it aside before pushing to his feet and walking over to the window, where he could give himself some space to get his head on straight and stuff this damn sentimentality back into the box where it belonged.
“Are you okay?” she asked from behind him. His awareness of her had his body responding.
He didn’t turn around. “Yeah, I—”
He needed to forget he’d ever wanted to do the things he was thinking about to Lucy. What the hell was wrong with him? “I need some space, Lucy. I think it might be best if you left.”
Because putting physical space between them—moving away from her—wasn’t helping him shake it off. No matter how far away he moved, he couldn’t unsee those lips or the way she was looking at him with those eyes... Worst of all, he couldn’t unfeel the way his body was reacting to her.
As he stood at the window, he listened to the DVD playing in the background, but it was just noise because he hadn’t been paying attention to it before now. He tried to think of anything else besides Lucy: his job, the part he needed to buy for his truck, baseball.
Strike one had been the thought of his mom never getting to celebrate that elusive special occasion that would’ve allowed her to use those f-ing fancy glasses. Strike two was the realization that the first ping of the damn crystal was marking her passing. Strike three was even though the first two strikes hadn’t made him lose it, the way Lucy was looking at him was going to finish the job. Or make him do something he knew they’d both regret later.
He was a mess.
And it wasn’t her fault. That was why she needed to just leave him alone.
“Zane?”
A violent clap of thunder had the sullen clouds bursting open and spilling rain in angry splats.
“Lucy, you shouldn’t be here.”
“Why?”
Why? He couldn’t answer her, because if he did, he knew she would see right through him.
Thunder sounded again, this time it was like a fist pounding something hard.
“Surely you’re not going to send me out in this weather,” she said. “Not after all that bourbon.”
He turned to face her. She was standing so close to him now, much too close, and he could feel the heat of her—of them—radiating in waves. “You’re right. I’ll go.”
“No.” She put a flat hand on his shoulder as if to stop him, and their gazes locked. “It’s okay, Zane.”
He wanted to ask her how she could think this was okay. Nothing about this was okay. He turned back to the window. The rain was falling harder now, punishing everything it touched.
“I’m sorry Dorothy didn’t get to use the glasses,” she said.
Her words hung in the air between them. He didn’t have words of his own.
“Life is too short to wait for special occasions, or until the time is right—” She paused as a shard of lightning ripped through the sky. It was punctuated by another explosive clap of thunder.
“Life is too short to put off doing the things you want to do,” she continued. “Don’t you think so, Zane?”
Yes.
No!
Ah, hell.
She gently caressed his shoulders. He knew he should stop her, but instead he sank into it, his body needing her touch. She slid her hands down his arms, past the sleeves of his T-shirt. Goose flesh prickled in the wake of her touch, at the feel of skin on skin—her hands on his bare skin.
As she slid her hands around his waist and pressed her body to his, he closed his eyes and leaned his head back, letting her warmth soothe him, allowing it to melt his better judgment.
He wasn’t drunk, though he might have been lightly lubricated. He knew what he was doing by letting her touch him like this. But did she?
“Lucy—”
“Shhhh.” She leaned in and the heat of her sweet breath on his neck made him forget what he was going to say.
“Zane, we can’t wait for someday. All those things we’ve always wanted to do...” Those lips were kissing his neck now and every inch of his body was responding. “We need to do them. Right now.”
Somehow, she’d smoothly maneuvered so that she was standing in front of him, her back to the window, her arms around his waist. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but her eyes looked as clear and alert as they had when she’d first arrived. She’d had only one shot of bourbon and had spilled most of the second one he’d poured for her.
“Zane, I won’t break if you touch me.”
When he hesitated, she whispered, “I want you to touch me.”
He put his arms around her and she slid her hands down to his butt, pulling him in so that his body aligned with hers. There was no way she wasn’t feeling how much he wanted her.
His lips were a fraction of an inch from hers. He rested his forehead on hers.
“Lucy, I don’t want you to regret this. I don’t want you to think I got you drunk and took advantage of you.”
“You didn’t. I know exactly what I’m doing, exactly what we’re about to do. I’ve wanted this for so long. I think you want me, too, Zane. Don’t you?”
If you only knew.
His mouth found hers and he showed her exactly how much he wanted her.
Chapter Two
Six weeks later
Peeing on a stick was not supposed to be this complicated, but Lucy had found nothing easy about the task—especially when it kept giving her the result she did not want to see.
Her hand shook as she tossed aside the seventh stick that showed a positive result.
No! No! No! This was not happening. This couldn’t be right. She could not be pregnant. But a little voice inside her told her that the odds of seven wrong results were slim to none. Her hands shook even more as she pressed the pump on the top of the liquid soap and turned on the warm water to wash up.
She stared at herself in the mirror as she rubbed her hands together under the warm running water.
She was pregnant.
What was she going to do?
She and Zane had spent one night together. One night. Six weeks ago. While she was well aware that it took only one time to get pregnant, they had used a condom.
How could this happen?
What was she going to say to him?
Lucy turned off the tap and dried her hands on the fluffy pink towel hanging on the rack behind her. The color looked astonishingly bright in contrast to the bathroom’s white tile walls. Then again, all of her senses seemed to be amplified right now. She’d finally bitten the bullet and taken a pregnancy test after living in denial, chalking up what she now knew was morning sickness to food poisoning and the flu—a very, very long bout of the flu. Never mind she was usually as regular as the Fourth of July falling on July 4 every year.
She was certain the only reason she was late was because she’d been under a lot of stress lately. The Campbell Wedding Barn had been booked solid since Southern Living had featured the venue as one of “The Most Beautiful Wedding Barns in the South.” She couldn’t have purchased better advertising. So she had to admit her work stress was good stress. Too bad she couldn’t say the same about her relationship with Zane.
While the air between them since that night wasn’t exactly bad—in fact, they were sickeningly polite to each other—they had agreed that it would never happen again. Zane had been racked with guilt. “It’s not you,
Luce, it’s me,” he’d said. “It was wonderful, but I care about you too much for it to happen again. I don’t want sex to ruin our friendship.”
Umm...okay.
Not quite the morning-after talk she’d been dreaming of writing in her diary all these years. It was confusing and hurtful. At first, Lucy wasn’t sure if it was his polite way of giving her the brush-off, but then he’d told her he was seriously pursuing job opportunities outside of Celebration. Rumor had it that a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity at a ranch in Ocala, Florida, was about to become available soon—literally, people stayed in those positions for life. So they were rare. He’d already sent in his résumé. There and to several other ranches that weren’t in Florida. Because of that, he’d decided it was in their best interests if they just remained friends.
After she had gotten past the first few stinging moments of him dropping the it’s-not-you-it’s-me bombshell, he had reverted to acting like his old self again. Lucy had too much pride to let him know that their one night together had been simultaneously the best and worst thing that had ever happened to her. Although, for one insane moment, she had seriously considered countering with a friends-with-benefits offer—because even though her sexual experience wasn’t vast—OMG—she knew a good thing when she, umm...experienced it. And that night with Zane had been that good. Out-of-this-world good. Ruin-you-for-others good. Total justification for a friends-with-bennies relationship, because now that she’d had a taste of Zane, she was starving for more.
But then hard, cold reality set in. Lucy knew herself well enough to realize she’d never be content with something so casual when she was in love with him.
Yep. She loved him.
But he didn’t love her.
It was hard to wrap her mind around his saying that he cared about her too much for it to happen again. He promised he had enjoyed it. He’d even gone so far as to say it was his best ever and that was why they needed to keep things platonic.
Umm... It sounded like an oxymoron if she’d ever heard one. It was so good; I never want to sleep with you again.
That did not make one bit of sense.
Of course, she’d been upset and that was when he’d told her that he was one-hundred-percent certain that he was leaving Celebration and he would never ask her to give up her business to follow him and there was something about long-distance relationships not making sense. So they needed to be friends.
Now it had gone from friends-with-benefits to friends-with-a-baby.
How in the world was she going to tell him she was pregnant?
She’d been in love with Zane Phillips for as long as she could remember. And, yes, she might have had a daydream or two about having his babies, but she never would’ve gotten pregnant on purpose.
She covered her face with her hands and hoped that he wouldn’t think she’d tried to trap him. When her hands fell, she stared at her pale face in the mirror.
He was going to think it was history repeating itself. And not in a good way.
It was no secret that there was no love lost between Zane and his father. Everyone in the community knew that Nathaniel Phillips was a bad husband and an even worse father—that was, when he’d bothered to come home. Before he’d served Dorothy with divorce papers, he’d been gone more than he’d been at home, leaving Dorothy to basically single-parent their two boys. When Nathaniel Phillips got remarried, it came to light that he had children with another woman who lived in Dallas. The one he claimed was the love of his life. Once Zane had confided in her that his dad resented Dorothy and him because Nathaniel thought Dorothy got pregnant on purpose, to trap him. He never loved her, and that was why he divorced her and married the woman he did love.
As far as Lucy knew, he was still married to her.
Lucy swallowed the lump that was forming in her throat. She would give Zane credit for being more evolved than that. She knew without even a second’s hesitation that he wouldn’t blame her or accuse her of trying to manipulate him. Of course, she had to prepare herself for the fact that this news was going to blindside him. She also had to accept the very real fact that he loved her about as much as Nathaniel Phillips had loved Dorothy. Although she wouldn’t insult him by comparing him to his father.
“Zane does not love me,” she said to her reflection, thinking if she said it out loud her heart would hear it and wake up to reality.
She said it again and listened hard.
The words echoed off the bathroom tile as she said them again. Reinforcement. She needed to make sure the words sank in, that she fully understood the reality of the situation. He might care for her as a friend, and they might be darn good together in bed, but he did not love her.
But of course, he was an equal partner in this, too.
Even if she had started it, because she had been the one who had gotten the love train rolling, because she knew Zane well enough to be certain that if she hadn’t spelled it out, if she hadn’t made it clear that not only was it okay for him to cross that line but she’d wanted him to make love to her, he never would have touched her.
Once the train was out of the station, so to speak, they had both been equally willing participants. She put her hand on her flat belly.
This baby was nobody’s fault. The pregnancy was unplanned and not ideal, and Lucy was still reeling from the shock of it, but none of that changed the fact that next March, she was going to have Zane Phillips’s baby.
In the meantime, she needed to figure out how to tell him.
Chapter Three
Even if Zane hadn’t readily admitted it to himself, on some subconscious level he’d known from the moment he’d picked up the call from Lucy that she was upset. He’d known by the tone of her voice that something was off, but she said she was simply having one of those days and didn’t want to talk about it over the phone. She’d insisted that she was fine, but she needed to talk to him today and asked him if she could come over. He should’ve told her about the interview and asked if it could wait until he got back, but he didn’t. Instead, he’d told her to come over.
She’d promised she wouldn’t stay long. He certainly wasn’t bringing out any bourbon and he wouldn’t let himself be seduced by kung pao beef.
He used the word seduced lightly, though. It wasn’t as if he was blameless when it came to their night together. He’d been weak, and he’d given in to his basest urges. He was perfectly willing to take full responsibility for what had happened between them. And along with that, he was fully prepared to make sure it never happened again. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt Lucy, or toy with her emotions. Even though he hadn’t been cognizant of that the night of the bourbon, he was well aware now and it wouldn’t happen again.
He knew he couldn’t change the past and beating himself up over things he couldn’t change was pointless. However, he could help them move forward.
In the past, if Lucy had called saying she needed to talk, he’d always made time. Now was no different.
And when he heard her arrive, he thought he was being authentic to their friendship when he answered the door, got a good look at Lucy and said, “You look like hell.”
He instantly regretted it when she glowered at him.
“Gee, thanks.”
“I mean, you’re always beautiful,” he countered. “You just don’t look like yourself. Are you okay?”
She made a sound that was somewhere between a squeak and a harrumph. When she didn’t come back with one of her usual quick-witted responses, he knew something wasn’t right. Then again, telling a woman, whether she was a friend or lover—or both—that she looked like hell was a boneheaded thing to do. He never had been good with words. He should just shut up before he dug himself in deeper.
“Come in. It’s hot out there.” He stepped back and held open the door, letting her pass into the living room.
They hadn’t been alone like this in weeks—since that night. It hadn’t been a conscious decision not to be alone together, at least not something they’d discussed. It was as if they’d mutually decided to stay in safe territory.
They’d seen each other in the company of others and had gone on as if nothing had changed. And it hadn’t...had it? Or had he been so damn determined to make things normal again that he hadn’t let himself see it any other way?
As Lucy stepped inside and he closed the door behind her, memories of the last time they’d been alone flooded back and his body responded.
He was leaving within the half hour. His bags were packed and waiting by the door. He could exercise enough self-control to be alone with her. But judging from the look on her face, that wasn’t going to be a problem. Though she’d said she was fine when she’d called and asked if she could come over and talk to him, it was clear as the summer sky now that something was very wrong.
“Are you going somewhere?” Her face had softened to a look of concern, but the characteristic sparkle was still absent from her brown eyes.
“I am.” It was all he could manage to say before a look of dawning replaced her look of apprehension.
“Did you get the Ocala job?”
He shook his head.
“It’s just an interview.”
Over the past six weeks, he’d had several interviews at various ranches in the South—he’d even had a couple of offers that he’d turned down because they weren’t exactly right. There was always something amiss—either the salary had been less than what he was making now or some aspect of the job wasn’t right. Actually, he’d been holding out for the job at Hidden Rock in Ocala, Florida. It was the real deal. The one he’d been waiting for. A chance to work with champion horses; potential for great salary; opportunity to do the kind of work he’d been itching to do. While he’d mentioned the Ocala prospect to Lucy in passing—that the ranch was looking for a general manager—he hadn’t told her that he’d finally gotten a call for an interview. The stakes seemed so high and he was enough of a realist to know he shouldn’t get his hopes up. It was a coveted position. He hadn’t wanted to say anything to anyone, especially not to Lucy, until he had something more substantial to report.
A Bride, a Barn, and a Baby Page 3