EXPECTING HIS CHILD

by Leanne Banks

  She must have sensed his presence because she looked up and saw him in the doorway. She shredded another piece of stuffing. "Go away."

  "Like hell I will," he said, walking into the room. "What do you think you're doing taking off and not telling anyone where you're going? You're pregnant. You can't do that."

  "Addie would have helped me handle any emergency. She still will." Martina frowned. "I can't believe she let you in," she said, shooting him a look of disdain.

  "If this is about Wendy…" he began.

  "Ah, yes." She smiled sweetly. Too sweetly. "Wendy, Wendy, Wendy. She sounded like she very much enjoyed the dinner you two shared a few months ago—"

  "Nothing happened," he interjected.

  "—while I was spending every morning hugging the porcelain bowl," she continued as if he hadn't spoken, "and you were apparently sowing your seed all over Texas."

  Noah narrowed his eyes and moved closer, crowding her. "You just hold on to that knife you call a tongue. The only thing I was sowing with Wendy was the possibility that her travel agency might promote my fencing camps and roundup weekends. You may have forgotten the fact that I just learned I was fathering a child a month ago, but I haven't. You haven't given a tinker's damn what I've been doing by myself, let alone with another woman, for the last seven months, so why do you care now?"

  He held her laser-sharp blue gaze. "You walked out on me with no warning. If you expect me to live like a monk just because you made love with me, then left me like yesterday's garbage, then…" He took a deep breath. "Then you'd be right."

  She blinked, her eyes shiny with tears. "Oh, I can't believe you lived like a monk."

  "Believe it." His heart swelled with such confusing emotions that he looked away to gather his wits. His gaze landed on a portrait of a woman who looked exactly like Martina. "Is it you? Is that—"

  "My mother," she said, sniffing. "I'm told I look a lot like her."

  Blinking, he stared at the picture and shook his head. "The resemblance is incredible." When he realized she had been talking to the portrait when he'd first seen her, his chest grew tight.

  Martina hugged the shredded pillow to her chest. "That's what everyone says. That's why he couldn't stand to look at me," she said, nodding toward the portrait beside her mother's.

  Martina's father. He had been a hard man, Noah concluded from the picture and what he'd heard of the man's reputation. Losing his wife hadn't softened him.

  Noah gazed at Martina and saw the look of an orphan in her blue eyes. He put an arm around her shoulders. "Why'd you come here?"

  "I needed to go somewhere that I belonged," she said.

  Noah gritted his teeth at the surprising stab of pain her words caused. "Haven't you learned you belong with me?"

  She drew in a deep breath and sighed. "I'm not sure about that."

  Impatience tore at him. "What's not to be sure? I'm the father of your child. I will be good to you and the baby. You can count on that."

  She stepped away from him. "I want more than that."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean, I spent my whole childhood trying to get my father to love me. I don't want to spend my whole adult life trying to get a husband to love me."

  Noah felt caught between a rock and a hard place. "You mean a lot to me," he said, but the words sounded insubstantial to his own ears. He tried again. "I want you more than any woman. You know I care about you."

  "But you don't love me."

  He shoved his hands in his pockets. "I've always thought love was unpredictable at best, not something a man with any sense bets much of his gold on. Other things like family and commitment are more important." He could tell he wasn't getting through to her. Frustration raked across him. "There are some things too important to let emotions mess up. You are one of them."

  Her eyebrows furrowed in confusion and indecision. Although Noah firmly believed in allowing each individual his or her freedom to choose, at this moment, he wished he could choose for Martina.

  "You don't believe in love?"

  "I didn't say that," he asserted. "I just don't bank on it. Here's an example. What if I had decided I'd fallen in love with you when we met in Chicago? After you left me, what was I supposed to think?"

  Quiet for a long thoughtful moment, she seemed to have stepped outside herself. "Did it hurt you when I left?"

  Noah immediately felt a barrier go up inside him. He looked away and struggled to answer her question honestly. "Yeah," he finally said. "It did. And it hurt even more to find out you were pregnant and hadn't gotten around to telling me."

  "How much did it hurt?" Martina asked, shredding the stuffing of the pillow again.

  He remembered the pain that had dulled only when he'd lost himself in his work. At night, however, he'd been unable to escape it. "I couldn't sleep," he reluctantly revealed.

  She bit her lip. "This is a mess," she said in a broken voice.

  "Yeah, you've mutilated that pillow."

  Martina glanced down at the pillow and made a sound somewhere between a sob and a chuckle. "I wasn't talking about the pillow. I was talking about us and our situation. I don't see how it can work."

  The hopelessness in her eyes cut like one of his swords. "Let me take care of it. I'm known for my innovative solutions."

  "This is going to take a miracle."

  "I've never let that stop me before. What are you afraid of, Martina?"

  "That I'll never know what it feels like to have a husband who loves me. That I'll disappoint my brothers if I stay with you. That the Logan curse will cause a lot of heartbreak."

  "You don't really believe in that curse, do you?"

  "It's hard not to believe when I heard about it all the time from my father. There's a lot at stake here, Noah."

  "I know, Martina. You can count on me."

  Doubt shimmered in her eyes. He longed for her unswerving confidence, but understood he had yet to earn it. He had time, he told himself. Not as much as he'd like, but he had time.

  She walked toward the baby grand in the center of the room. "My mother played this piano. She taught my brothers, but I never learned."

  "You're still carrying on her tradition," he told her.

  "How?" she asked skeptically. "I can't even play 'Chopsticks'."

  "You play a different kind of keys," he said. "Computer keys."

  A slow smile lifted her lips and subsequently his heart at the same time. "I never thought of it that way."

  He crossed to her and pulled her into his arms. "Come home with me. You want to hear chapter two of The Hobbit."

  She looked torn. "I can't stay with you much longer," she said. "My brother Brock and his family will return from New York, and I don't like concealing my whereabouts from him or Tyler. I owe them that much."

  "What do you owe them, Martina?" he asked. "Now that you're a grown woman ready to give birth to our first child, what do you owe your brothers?"

  She bit her lip and shredded more pillow stuffing. "I don't know, but I do know I hate feeling disloyal to them." She shook her head as if she wanted to shake off the discussion. "Addie has homegrown tomatoes for me. And I crave homegrown tomatoes so much I would probably trade my body for them."

  Noah tucked that vivid image-inducing comment in the back of his mind and took the pitiful-looking pillow from her arms. "Is surgery possible, or should we go ahead and dig the grave?"

  "We can always send it to Wendy," she said in that too-sweet voice again as she turned and walked from the room.

  Watching her, Noah wasn't offended by the dig. If Martina was the tiniest bit possessive, then perhaps she could be possessed.

  Martina listened to the second chapter of The Hobbit and fought the lulling seductiveness of Noah's voice. She remembered the way he'd touched her the night before. She remembered how right it had felt, so right to be possessed by him, to possess him. But she was fooling herself because although she might have a piece of Noah's heart, she would never have all of i
t. Would that be enough to last her the rest of her life?

  Her stomach twisted and desperation tightened the back of her throat. The whole situation felt like a no-win for everyone involved, even the baby. That thought tore at her.

  She needed to go back to her condo in Dallas. She needed to think clearly. This was too important. Noah was right about that. In the meantime, she wished Noah would stop going shirtless and get laryngitis.

  Her heart and body softened just hearing him read. Which showed how insane he was making her. She bit back a sigh of disgust at her reaction to him. Looking at him in the glow of the lamplight, she knew he would make it so easy to fall into his arms and bed, but she'd learned making love with him would just confuse her further.

  As he finished the last words of the second chapter and closed the book, Martina sprang from the bed. "Well, I'm beat and I'm sure you are, too. Good ni—"

  Noah stood and took her hand. "No need to rush," he said, pulling her to him.

  Oh, yes, there is, she thought. "I need to go to bed," she said, trying very hard to ignore the way her heart raced and the fact that he stood before her nearly naked. "Without you."

  He toyed with her hair. "Why?"

  "Because making love with you isn't a good idea," she said.

  "You didn't like it?"

  His gaze wrapped around her with a combination of warmth and seduction. "I didn't say that. You told me that you didn't want emotions getting in the way of your thinking, that this situation is too important. I think you're right, so we shouldn't make love."

  "How do you know that making love with me doesn't make you see everything more clearly?"

  Because my brain turns to mush when you are within five feet of me. His fingers in her hair had a drugging effect on her. It was all she could do not to lean into him and put her hands on his bare shoulders. She could easily drown in his eyes.

  "I just know," she said. "So I'll go."

  "Just one moment," he said, and eased his hand under her shirt to her bare belly at the same time that he lowered his mouth to hers. "I want to say good-night to both of you," he murmured, and kissed her and caressed her abdomen.

  Martina willed herself not to melt, but his hands were both soothing and arousing, his mouth both gentle and seductive. His clean, musky smell and the promise of all the sensation and emotion he stirred in her drew her. Noah made her feel everything in 3-D Technicolor. She could have kissed him and let him touch her all night.

  And if she didn't move away, she was going to dissolve into a puddle on this very spot.

  Her heart and body protesting, she moved backward unsteadily. Noah's arms shot out to stabilize her, sending her emotions into another tailspin. She lifted her hands and took another step backward. G'night, Noah.

  When Martina awoke the next morning, she opened her eyes to a bowl of fully ripe homegrown tomatoes on her dresser. On them perched a note in Noah's bold handwriting. "Tomatoes for you every morning. You with me every evening. Fair trade? Yours, Noah."

  Martina didn't know whether to laugh or cry. She had no intention of telling Noah he left homegrown tomatoes in the dust even if it was an absolute fact. If he wasn't so nearly perfect, she'd kick him. She had to leave soon or she would give in to him.

  That evening, Noah was edgy as hell. He was getting better and he couldn't fake it, and Martina was going to leave. He could feel it in his bones. Why couldn't he get through to her?

  After dinner, he reviewed some stock charts, then returned downstairs. He heard Martina and Jonathan laughing in the living room. The sound drew him. He walked closer and heard her voice.

  "One, two, three. One, two, three," she said. "See? You can do it. Who told you that you can't dance?"

  "My leg isn't helping much, but it's not as bad as it would be if it were raining. This is the waltz? Damn, I never thought I'd see the day I'd be waltzing."

  "With a very pregnant lady, no less," she said with another chuckle that made Noah's nerve endings crinkle.

  "We're some kind of pair. The limping horse whisperer and…"

  "The pregnant porcupine?" she suggested.

  "I wasn't gonna say that."

  "No." Martina's voice bubbled with amusement. "You were just thinking it."

  Noah felt his gut twist with an emotion he couldn't immediately name. If Martina was going to pair with anyone, it was going to be him. Jealousy? Shock raced through him. He was jealous of his brother? He must be losing his mind, he thought, but the feeling didn't fade as he heard their continuing banter. Why was it so easy for Martina and Jonathan? Why did she smile and laugh with Jonathan when she avoided Noah as if he were the evil dragon from The Hobbit? Why? he wondered as he listened.

  "Let me know if you get tired," Jonathan said. "Are you sure pregnant women are supposed to dance?"

  "Pregnant women can do anything their doctors tell them they can do."

  "You're sure about that?" Jonathan said.

  "I'm sure. Are you afraid I'm going to have the baby in the middle of the living room just because I waltzed with you?"

  Jonathan blanched and stopped midstep. "You wouldn't do that, would you?"

  Martina shook her head and laughed. She had learned that Jonathan was the most easygoing of the Coltrane brothers. He provided a welcome break from all the tension she felt with the other brothers, including Noah. "I imagine it's going to take more than a waltz to pry this one out of me. You have to remember this baby has inherited stubbornness genes from both Noah and me."

  "You and Noah are gonna have your hands full," Jonathan warned her.

  "I didn't know dance lessons were on the schedule," Noah said, entering the room. "Where do I sign up?"

  Martina stiffened and stepped on Jonathan's foot.

  He winced.

  "Oh, I'm sorry. Maybe I'm not the best teacher."

  "The best I ever had," he said.

  From the corner of her eye, Martina saw Noah's frown deepen.

  "The best you ever had," Noah echoed in a deceptively mild voice.

  Jonathan did a double take. "Best dance teacher," he said to his brother, and slowly stepped away from Martina. "Thanks for the dance lesson." He shook his head at Noah. "I think I'll get a beer."

  He left and an uneasy silence descended. "Would you like to go out on the porch?" Noah asked.

  Confused and uneasy, Martina shrugged. "Okay."

  She followed him outside, not standing too close. It was a warm, cloudless night, but the breeze made it more bearable. She drew in a deep breath and gazed up at the big Texas sky. "I like being able to order pizza and Chinese food and have them delivered in Dallas, but I sure do miss the stars. The city lights detract. Every now and then it's nice to look at a sky full of stars."

  "Are you a city girl or country girl, Martina?"

  "Both," she said. "I enjoy the conveniences of city life, but I need the quietness of the country at times."

  Noah was in an odd mood. She could sense it, and it made her tense and uncomfortable.

  After a long silence, Noah finally spoke again. "You and Jonathan seemed to get along well."

  "He talks to me."

  "What do you mean?" Noah asked, studying her.

  "Your other brothers don't speak to me. I know they wish I wasn't here. Especially Adam. I can't say I blame them, but Jonathan doesn't mind talking to me, and he doesn't really expect anything of me."

  "I saw you laughing in his arms when I came downstairs," Noah said.

  Realization and surprise raced through her. "You can't think there's anything going on between Jonathan and me. Not if you have half a brain."

  He leaned against a railing. "Maybe I don't where you're concerned," he muttered. "He's just a man. He could fall for you."

  Martina stared at Noah in disbelief. "Do you have a screw loose? Look at me," she said. "Really look at me and tell me, what do you see?"

  He looked at her for a long time. He looked at her so long Martina resisted the urge to squirm. "I see a beautiful woman pr
egnant with my child," he said quietly.

  Martina groaned. "I appreciate the beautiful part. That's very nice, but the truth of the matter is, I have a lot in common with the Titanic at the moment. I am not gently pregnant. Most men who look at me are either filled with horrified curiosity or fear that I'm going to give birth any minute. I can tell you they are not looking at me with lust. And the only reason you might have any lust is because you are the fa—" She cut herself off, not wanting to say the words, not wanting to reinforce the connection between them.

  "Because I am the what, Martina? Finish what you were going to say." Noah moved closer to her.

  Her heart jumped. "I … I was just going to say something about you donating genetic material."

  "No, you weren't," he said, gently backing her against the wall. "You were going to say something else. Tell me, Martina."

  "I … I…" She swallowed at the fierce expression on his face.

  "What were you going to say?"

  Trapped, she glared at him. "Okay, I was going to say you're the father. It doesn't change anything for me to say it. I'm still leaving tomorrow."

  * * *

  Chapter 11

  «^»

  "This cigar sucks," Noah said, tossing the stub of one of Gideon's cigars over the porch railing.

  "I coulda told you that," Jonathan said, strolling onto the front porch. "Gideon could see you were miserable as hell and in his ignorance he thought a cigar would make you feel better."

  Noah knew Jonathan and Gideon were holding an ongoing battle over Gideon's cigar usage. Ever since Jonathan had permanently hurt his leg in the rodeo, he'd become a different man, leading a cleaner life and taking more pleasure in simple things. More than ever, he was the peacemaker among Noah and his brothers. In fact his battle with Gideon was conducted with a more mild, verbal reproach, rather than stinging insults.

  Noah longed for the easy, reassuring relationship he'd always shared with Jonathan, but at the moment, he wasn't sure if his brother was carrying a mile-high crush on Martina.