Throughout the short journey, her mind was so preoccupied with other things that she’d almost forgotten they weren’t heading back to Rust Creek Falls. She knew that Trey would take her home if she asked, but she also knew that running away was a cowardly thing to do. They had to figure out their plans for the baby together so they could tell both of their families.
But back in their room at the inn, her gaze kept being drawn to the big bed at its center—the bed she’d hoped to share with Trey. The bed she still wanted to share with Trey, because apparently her active pregnancy hormones didn’t care that there were unresolved issues so much as they remembered how much fun it had been to make a baby with this man and wanted to do the deed again.
She moved past the bed to the sitting area and lowered herself onto the edge of the sofa.
“Do you need anything?” Trey asked. “Are you hungry? You didn’t eat very much at dinner.”
She shook her head. “Eden got me some fries and gravy from the hospital cafeteria before you arrived.”
“French fries and gravy?”
“Pregnant women have some strange cravings,” she said, a little defensively.
“Anything else you’ve been wanting? Pickles? Ice cream? Pickles and ice cream?”
“No—at least, not at the same time,” she assured him. “But if you’re hungry, maybe Eden will let you sneak into the kitchen to make a sandwich.”
She’d no sooner finished speaking when there was a knock on the door. Trey went to answer it and returned with a silver tray in his hands.
“Apparently Eden thought we might both be hungry,” he said, setting down the tray set with a plate of cheeses and crackers, another of crudités and dip and a bowl of fresh fruit.
“They’re both lovely people,” Kayla said. “And this house is spectacular. How did you find it?”
He nodded. “Gage Christensen recommended it.”
“You haven’t stayed here before?”
“No.” He selected a grape from the bowl, popped it into his mouth. “Did you think this was my usual rendezvous spot in Kalispell?”
She lifted a shoulder.
“I know I had a reputation in high school—and maybe for some years afterward—but I’m not that same guy anymore. And I didn’t bring you here because there was a bed and none of our family within spitting distance. I brought you here because I wanted to give us a chance to reconnect without all the other craziness of our lives interfering.”
“And the bed?” she prompted.
“I might have had hopes,” he admitted. “But no expectations.”
He plucked another grape from the bowl, offered it to her. She took the fruit from his fingertips, bit into it. The skin was crisp, the juice sweet. “Oh!”
“What is it?” Trey dropped the strawberry he’d selected. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” She took his hand and laid it on the curve of her belly.
His brows drew together. “What...oh.”
She knew then that he’d felt it, too, the subtle nudges against his palm that were evidence of their baby moving around inside her.
His lips curved and he shifted his hand to one side to make room for the other, splaying both of his palms against her belly. “Now I know why Shane’s always touching Gianna’s stomach.”
The baby indulged him with a few moments of activity before settling again.
“It’s fascinating,” he said. “To know there’s a tiny human being inside there. A baby. Our baby.”
She smiled at the wonderment in his tone. “Our baby boy,” she reminded him.
His hands moved from her belly to link with hers. “Do you know why I came back?”
“Hopefully because you didn’t plan on returning to Rust Creek Falls with me stranded here.”
“I didn’t,” he assured her. “But I meant why I came back when I did.”
She shook her head. “Why did you come back when you did?”
“Because I realized that I love you.”
For a moment, her heart actually stopped beating. Then it started racing. “You...what?”
“It kind of snuck up and surprised me, too,” he admitted. “Maybe because I didn’t ever expect to feel this way again. But it’s true, Kayla. I love you.”
She looked at their intertwined fingers and willed her heart to stop acting crazy for a minute so that she could think.
“This would be a great place to say that you love me, too,” he prompted.
And she did love him. Maybe she always had. But she wasn’t yet ready to put her heart on the line simply because he’d said the three little words she’d often dreamed he might one day say to her. Especially when she couldn’t help but question the timing and his motives.
“I’m not sure that you’re feeling what you think you’re feeling,” she said gently.
He scowled. “You don’t believe I’m in love with you?”
“I think you want to believe you’re in love with me because that would make the situation more acceptable to you.”
“Kayla, there is nothing about this situation that is the least bit unacceptable to me.”
“Six hours ago, the idea of being a husband and father totally freaked you out, and I understand that—”
“I’m not freaked out,” he told her.
She lifted her brows.
“Okay, I was freaked out,” he admitted. “Because the possibility that the one night we spent together might have created a baby never crossed my mind, and finding out not only that you were pregnant but more than five months pregnant was a little bit of a shock.
“But once I had some time to think about it—once my brain got past the holy-crap-I’m-going-to-be-a-father part and began to focus on the I’m-having-a-baby-with-Kayla part—I realized that I was okay with this.”
“You’re okay with it?” she echoed dubiously.
“I’m not explaining myself very well, am I?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But if you’re trying to reassure me, I’m not feeling very reassured.”
“I wouldn’t have planned for you to get pregnant that night,” he said. “As I’m sure it wasn’t in your plans, either.”
“Definitely not,” she agreed.
“But then I realized that if this had to happen—if a condom had to fail—I’m glad it was with you.”
“That sounded...almost poetic,” she decided, touched by the sincerity in his tone even more than his words.
“I want to be a father to our baby. I really do.”
“I want that, too.”
He was tempted to show her the ring right then and there, to prove how serious he was about wanting to be with her, but he suspected it was too soon to ask her again to marry him. If she needed some time to be sure of him and his feelings, he would give her that time.
Because the next time he proposed, he wasn’t going to accept any answer but yes.
* * *
It wasn’t really late, but it had been a long and emotionally draining day, and when Trey caught Kayla attempting to stifle a yawn, he said, “Why don’t you go get changed and crawl into bed?”
“I don’t have anything to change into,” she realized.
“Your sister packed you a bag. I brought it up to the bedroom when I checked in before I went to the theater.”
“I’m not sure I want to know what she packed for me,” Kayla admitted, but she went into the other room to find out.
She was right to be suspicious. The silky short nightshirt and matching wrap certainly weren’t from Kayla’s closet, but since they were all she had, she put them on, then brushed her hair and cleaned her teeth.
When she was finished, she heard the television from the sitting area and saw that Trey was stretched out
with his feet on the table and his eyes half-closed. She hesitated inside the doorway, and his eyes slowly opened and slid over her with a heated intensity that felt like a physical caress.
“I like what your sister packed,” he murmured.
“This isn’t mine,” she blurted out.
“It looks good on you.”
She tightened the belt around her waist, not realizing how the movement emphasized the curve of her belly until she saw his gaze drop and linger there.
“I think I understand your sudden affinity for shapeless clothing.”
“I’ve gained ten and a half pounds already,” she admitted.
“You’re growing our baby.”
“You didn’t stumble over the words that time.”
“I’m going to stumble,” he told her. “This is all new territory for me.”
“Me, too.”
“But you’ve had a little bit more time to get used to the idea than me.”
She didn’t know if he’d intended the words as an accusation, but she couldn’t help but interpret them as such, and she nodded in acknowledgment. “And more time to panic.”
He’d been so shocked about the news of her pregnancy—and then so angry at her for keeping it from him—that he hadn’t really considered how she’d felt, the gamut of emotions she must have experienced when she first suspected and then confirmed that she was going to have a baby. “Were you scared?”
“Terrified,” she admitted without hesitation.
And she’d been alone.
But that had been her choice. She could have contacted him—could have shared her worries and her fears. Instead, she’d chosen to keep her pregnancy from everyone, including her baby’s father.
“I didn’t want to believe it was even possible,” she said to him now. “I’d always thought I was so smart, that there really wasn’t any such thing as an unplanned pregnancy anymore.”
An understandable assumption considering that they’d taken precautions—and the reason for his own initial disbelief.
“I was so sure that my period was only late, but I went to a drugstore in Kalispell and bought a pregnancy test that I took into a public restroom. And I cried,” she admitted softly. “I was so scared and confused. I couldn’t do anything but cry.”
He hated knowing that she’d been afraid and alone. Maybe she could have called him—should have called him—but he’d been three hundred miles away.
And maybe he should have shown some initiative and called her. Even if he’d had no reason to suspect there were any repercussions from the night they’d spent together, he should have kept in touch with her. By not doing so, he’d relegated their lovemaking to the status of a one-night stand.
“I’m sorry.”
“I think we both need to stop saying that.”
“I don’t think I can say it enough,” he said. “I totally screwed up. I should have—”
Determined to silence his self-recrimination, Kayla leaned forward and touched her lips to his.
Her kiss had the intended effect of halting his words, and the added benefit of clouding her own brain. Especially when he drew her closer and deepened the kiss, sliding his tongue between her lips to parry with her own.
Her hormones kicked into overdrive. She didn’t know if it was a side effect of the pregnancy or just being with Trey, but she couldn’t deny that she wanted him.
She slid her hands beneath his shirt, over the smooth skin and taut muscles. She felt his abs quiver beneath her touch. She wanted to feel his skin against hers, his body inside hers. She reached for the button of his jeans and was surprised—and disappointed—when he caught her wrist.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” he told her.
“I disagree.” She pressed her lips to his throat, just below his jaw, where his pulse was racing.
His hands gripped her hips. “You were just released from the hospital two hours ago.”
“And when the doctor released me, she assured both of us that there were absolutely no restrictions on any physical activities.”
“I’m sure she wasn’t referring to...”
“To?” she prompted, amused by his inability to say the word sex aloud to her.
“Intimacy,” he decided.
“I’m pretty sure she was,” she countered. “Did you know that some women experience an increased sexual desire during pregnancy?”
“No, I...um...can’t say that I did.”
“And there are some women who become so hypersensitive they can’t stand to be touched.”
“I didn’t...um...know that...either,” he said, looking everywhere but at her.
“Of course, men have different responses to pregnancy, too. Some find their partners even more attractive and appealing...while others are completely turned off by the changes to her body,” she said, attempting to withdraw from his embrace when he pointedly kept his gaze averted.
He let her pull back but not away. “And you think I’m turned off,” he realized.
She shrugged. “You’re not touching me.”
“Only because I don’t want to hurt you...or our baby.”
“You won’t,” she assured him.
He drew her close again, so she couldn’t possibly miss the evidence of his desire for her.
“I want you, Kayla. More than you could probably imagine.”
“I don’t know about that—I have a pretty good imagination,” she told him. “And I want you, too.”
“We were only naked together once before,” he noted. “And as I recall, we were both fumbling around in the dark.”
“I think we managed okay.”
“This time, I want the lights on. I want to see you. And I want to take my time exploring every single inch of your sexy pregnant body,” he told her.
“That sounds...promising.”
“It is a promise.”
Chapter Thirteen
He guided her through the doorway into the bedroom, over to the bed. He unfastened the knot at the front of her robe, parted the sides and then slid his hands over her belly and up. “Your breasts are fuller.”
“I should have figured you’d notice that.”
He grinned, unapologetic, as he brushed his thumbs over her nipples, through the silky fabric. She moaned softly.
“And more sensitive,” he realized.
“Yes, but in a good way. You don’t have to worry about touching me—I want you to touch me.”
“I want to touch you.” He pushed the robe off her shoulders, stroked his fingertips down her arms. “I am touching you.”
Then he lifted the hem of her nightshirt and lowered his head so that he was kissing her. First one breast, then the other, softly, almost reverently. After he kissed the hollow between them, his mouth moved lower, to the swell of her belly.
He pulled back the covers on the bed and eased her down onto the mattress, stripping her nightshirt away in the process. She was completely naked now, and suddenly very self-conscious.
She wasn’t sure how he would respond to her belly unveiled. It was one thing to look at the curve beneath the fabric of the clothes she was wearing and quite another to see the skin stretched taut and all kinds of tiny blue veins visible beneath the surface. But he didn’t seem put off at all.
He stripped away his own clothes and set a small square packet on the table beside the bed.
“That’s a little like closing the barn door after the horse has escaped, don’t you think?” she asked.
His brow furrowed. “I guess it is,” he acknowledged. “I wasn’t thinking. It’s just a habit.”
She nodded. “I’m relieved to know it is.”
“But since we’re not worried about you getting pregnant, there’s nothing else you
need to worry about, either. I have a clean bill of health and I haven’t been with anyone else since we were together.”
“You haven’t been with anyone else in six months?”
“I didn’t want to be with anyone else—because I couldn’t stop thinking about you,” he told her, trailing his fingertips along the insides of her thighs, upward from her knees, silently urging her legs to part.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you, either,” she admitted.
“I’m happy to hear it.”
The first time they’d made love, there hadn’t been much foreplay. There hadn’t been any need. They’d both wanted the same thing, and she had no regrets about what happened between them that night. But she had to admit their lovemaking had been a little...she wouldn’t say disappointing so much as quick.
Trey made up for it now. He took his time learning his way around her body, exploring with his hands and his lips, touching and teasing until she was so aroused she could hardly stand it. Her heart was pounding, her blood was pulsing and her body was aching, desperately straining toward the ultimate pinnacle of pleasure.
She was already close, so close, but she wanted him there with her. She wanted to feel his hard length driving into her. She shifted restlessly, lifting her hips off the bed, wordlessly seeking the fulfillment she knew he could give her. When he eased back and pushed her knees farther apart, she thought, Yes—finally, yes.
But apparently he wasn’t as eager as she was for their bodies to join together. Instead, he lowered his head and pressed his lips to the inside of one thigh, then the other. A whimper—a tangle of frustration and need—caught in her throat as his thumbs brushed the curls at the apex of her legs.
“Is this okay?” he asked.
“Only if you’re trying to make me crazy.”
“I’m trying to satisfy that raging sexual desire you were telling me about.”
“I didn’t say it was raging,” she denied, just a little primly.
He chuckled softly, then his lips were on her, nibbling and teasing, his tongue gently probing her feminine core.
“Okay...now it’s raging,” she admitted breathlessly.
Merry Christmas, Baby Maverick! Page 16