She gave the night sky one last glance before she braved the lion’s den. A bright light streaked across the sky. Logic told her it had probably been a satellite or an aircraft, but logic wasn’t what she needed right now. What she needed was divine intervention. If the light in the sky could offer even a tiny morsel of help, she’d take it with open arms.
Closing her eyes, she made a wish and hoped someone was listening.
Erin pulled her jacket close as the cold night air seeped into her bones. After the hustle and bustle of downtown Bozeman, Jake’s suburban street was incredibly quiet. The security light over his front door beckoned her forward.
She felt like she’d stepped onto a movie set. All she needed now was a director shouting, ‘lights, camera, action’. Except there was no script, no chance to replay a messy scene, and no happy ending in sight.
Her hand hovered over the doorbell. As soon as she pushed the tiny red button there’d be no going back. She looked up at the night sky, biting her bottom lip.
“Oh, for cripes’ sake,” she muttered to herself. “Push the damn thing.”
Reaching out, she pushed the button. And waited.
***
Jake stood in his foyer holding the door handle until his knuckles turned white. He looked as shocked as Erin felt. Lines of exhaustion creased his face as he stared at his uninvited visitor.
“What are you doing here?”
It was almost enough to make her turn and run for cover, but she stood her ground. She had a few things to say and she was determined to tell him everything before she left.
“If you hadn’t already guessed, Matthew is the man I was engaged to. His job in Seattle fell through and he’s back in Bozeman. He came around to my place a few times. I thought he just wanted to apologize for what happened last year, but he wanted more than that.” She sucked in a great lungful of air. Fear squeezed what little courage she had left out of her body. Jake’s gaze sharpened. He looked as though he might close the door any second so she hurried on. “Just before you arrived tonight, I told him I didn’t love him anymore.”
He stood perfectly still.
What was wrong with the man? Surely he could say something, anything, to make this easier. She gave him one last look. “Well. That’s all I came to say.”
She stuffed her hands in her pockets and turned to leave. She’d just made a huge mistake coming here. So much for shooting stars. Even divine intervention couldn’t melt the ice running through Jake’s veins. Maybe she was better off without him.
He took a step toward her. “Wait, Erin.”
She hesitated.
Moving another step closer, he said, “I’m sorry. You just surprised me turning up like this. I thought you’d be out all night.” With a scowl he added, “I wasn’t in a good frame of mind. Have you had dinner? I was just about to heat up some soup.”
She looked into Jake’s troubled eyes. As far as peace offerings went, it wasn’t a bad one. “Thanks. Soup would be nice.”
She followed Jake up the stairs, wincing as the memories of her first visit to his home came back in multicolored clarity.
Jake started rummaging around in the pantry. She took her jacket off and walked toward the kitchen. His apartment looked the same, all polished chrome and glass. A showcase of modern living. A home for a bachelor.
She took a deep breath wondering if this had been such a good idea after all. “What did you think of the movie you went to with Ethan?”
“It was okay.” He opened some more cupboard doors. A half-opened packet of sugar ended up on the counter and a tin of something landed on the wooden floor.
Erin moved closer to the kitchen. “Can I give you a hand to find whatever you’ve lost?”
“What? Oh.” Jake turned toward her, running a hand through his hair. “I can’t seem to find any soup. How about spaghetti?”
“That’d be fine. I can set the table for you if you like?”
Jake took a deep breath, his face relaxing under the pendant lights. He pointed to a row of drawers. “Knives and forks are in the top drawer.”
She took out what she thought they’d need, then reached for the placemats that Jake handed her. Their hands collided and heat sizzled up her arm. Jumping back, she nearly dropped the forks on the floor. “Thanks.”
The night had gone from bad to worse. If the slightest touch from him caused a major meltdown, she’d never survive the rest of the evening. At this rate, she’d need a straight jacket to keep him safe from her needy body. Images of a padded van arriving outside his front door danced through her mind.
“Something funny?”
The smile fell from her lips. Heat rushed to her face. “Umm. I was just thinking about men in white jackets taking me away.”
Her voice petered out at the look in his eyes. He was laughing at her. At least it was a step in the right direction. Maybe a little bit of divine intervention had been at work after all. She smiled back. “What?”
“You,” he said with a smile on his face. “You’d have to be the wackiest librarian this side of the equator.” He reached for a bottle of pasta sauce, adding it to another saucepan on the stove.
“No way.” A weight lifted from her shoulders. At least they were talking to each other with words that didn’t leave her stomach twisted in tight knots. “Libraries are full of whacky people. That’s why they’re such great places to work.”
Leaning his hip against the kitchen counter, he stirred the spaghetti simmering on the stove. “So what’s with the padded van?”
Heat skimmed her face. She wouldn’t explain the reason for her loopy sense of humor to a man who inspired loopy thoughts. “Just a warped imagination.” Clearing her throat, she asked, “Is there anything else I can do?”
“Could you get the white wine out of the fridge?” He walked over to some cupboards on the other side of the kitchen and grabbed two glasses. “Talking about warped imaginations, how’s your first choice Superman going? Did he fully recover from the tummy bug?”
“He did. Although he got a bit of an inferiority complex after all the female staff raved about your physical attributes.” Another heated blush hit her face as she remembered the feel of those attributes under her hands. “He consoled himself with the fact that he probably has an intellectual advantage over you.”
Jake’s eyebrows shot up. “And how does he figure that?”
“He said anyone who was daft enough to parade around in front of forty-odd kids and their parents wearing next to nothing, deserves to be fawned over by hormonally deprived females.”
He laughed out loud. “I bet that went down really well in the staffroom.”
“We all booed him out the door and he wasn’t allowed back until he had a huge chocolate cake under his arm.” Erin laughed. “We may be hormonal, but we’re not stupid. He won’t make that mistake again. He reckons his wallet still hasn’t recovered from the dent we made in it.”
The smile on Jake’s face made Erin’s heartbeat stutter.
“Are you okay?” He frowned, staring at her with a puzzled look in his blue eyes.
“I’m…I’m fine.”
Moving to the counter, he drained the spaghetti and tipped it onto two plates. He added hot pasta sauce and headed over to the dining table. Erin followed with two cold glasses of white wine.
“I hope you’re hungry. There’s enough spaghetti here to feed an army. It’s not cordon bleu, but it’s made with love.” He stopped in the middle of the room.
Erin collided with his back.
Spaghetti and white wine flew everywhere.
“I’m so sorry, Jake. Did you get burned?”
He looked stunned. “I don’t think so.”
“Here, let me take a look at your hands.” She put the empty wine glasses on a side table and moved in front of him. She held both his hands in hers. Turning them over, she checked for burns. “It’s just as well you’ve got wooden…”
He leaned forward and kissed her lips. Not a gentle,
inquiring kind of kiss, but a deep and dirty kind of kiss that left her breathless and aching for more.
“…floors.” She gulped a breath of air into her lungs. At the look in his eyes, a tremor ran through her body. Reaching up on tippy toes, she pulled his head back to hers, devouring every inch of his mouth with her tongue.
Jake pulled her into his body and flinched. He shot backward, nearly falling over the edge of the rug.
Erin reached out to steady him, frowning as he peeled his cotton shirt away from his stomach. Hot spaghetti dripped down his pants and onto the floor.
She looked down at her own t-shirt. It was smeared with his secondhand sauce. She giggled as another noodle splattered on the floor.
Breathing heavily, Jake looked like he had a lot of other things on his mind apart from a spaghetti covered apartment.
“I’ll umm, get a cloth to clean up the floor if you like?” she hiccuped, trying to stop the overwhelming need to burst into laughter.
“Don’t worry about the mess. I’ll clean it up later. I need to ask you something.”
His hand reached out and gently held her arm. His fingers stroked her skin and the look in his eyes made her laughter disappear in a puff of hormones.
He moved toward her and grimaced. Looking down at the orange stains on his shirt, he groaned. “Hang on a minute, this spaghetti’s hot. Don’t move. I’ll be back in a minute.” Racing across the living room, he disappeared down the hallway.
While she was waiting, Erin used a cloth from the kitchen to wipe the noodles off the floor. When that was done, she found some paper towels to dab the squished sauce off her top. Her phone chirped in her jacket pocket.
“Hi, Nicky.” She twisted the phone against her ear so that she could reach a stubborn spot on her t-shirt.
She frowned into the phone. “What did you just say? I missed the last bit.”
Nicky yelled, “I’m pregnant! Did you hear me? Sam and I are going to have a baby.”
CHAPTER NINE
Erin heard Jake run back down the hall. She vaguely realized he’d dressed in a clean shirt and jeans, but everything else was a little hazy around the edges. As soon as he saw her, he stopped. She must have looked as shocked as she felt. Jake’s gaze rested on her white knuckles, clutching her cell phone to her chest.
He strode across the room, putting his hands on each of her arms. “Is everything okay?”
She nodded her head. “Nicky called. She’s three months pregnant.”
Jake relaxed his hold. “That’s good news, isn’t it?”
His eyes held an equal measure of concern and confusion. Erin came to a decision really fast. She wouldn’t show him just how upset she felt. He already had massive anti-baby issues. He didn’t need her insecurities clouding their newfound truce. She was happy for her best friend and knew Nicky and Sam would make wonderful parents. She just wished the baby bug would come her way too.
Plastering a smile on her face, she slid the phone back in her pocket. Of course she was happy. Just a happy, happy, joy germ. “Nicky’s invited us to their place for an orange juice celebration. Do you want to go?” She half expected, half hoped, he’d run a mile. Erin figured celebrating someone else’s pregnancy would seem like self-inflicted torture to a baby-phobic male.
He rolled his shoulders. “Sure. Why not?”
She nearly fell down in shock. Was she speaking to the same man who had squashed a bag of cornflakes into annihilation when Nicky got engaged? And the same man who, after hearing her former fiancé had left because she wanted children and he didn’t, turned around and did almost the same thing?
He must have burned more than his stomach to change his attitude toward pregnancy so quickly. “You don’t have to come. I’m quite happy to go on my own if you’re not comfortable around…you know.”
A confused scowl crossed his face. “You don’t want me to come with you?”
“No. I’d like you to come. If you want to, that is.”
He jammed his hands in his pockets. “I’ve got some juice in the fridge, so we can take that.”
Erin didn’t know what to think. Maybe he didn’t feel uneasy because it was someone else’s sperm and egg colliding to create a new life.
He moved toward the kitchen, then turned around and came back. “I’ve got an apology to make. You were right about me being selfish.”
Erin shook her head. “I was wrong. I shouldn’t have said that because it isn’t true.”
“You weren’t wrong. I used Scott as an excuse for being a self-centered bastard. All he’s ever wanted from me is my love and support. Scott’s the one who had to deal with people putting limitations on his life when there weren’t any in the first place. Mom and dad had their own issues. It was easier to blame myself for their problems as well.”
He looked down at her t-shirt and sighed. “I could have made more of an effort to be part of my family, but I’m trying to make up for lost time now.”
Erin sunk into the nearest sofa.
“I’m still not convinced I’d make a good father, but I want to be a special person in your life.”
Her heart thumped in her chest. She’d come to his house hoping they could still be friends. She hadn’t expected anything more, didn’t know what to say to the man looking at her like she was the most important person in the world.
He sat beside her. Reaching forward, he gently held her hands. “I’ve been thinking about what you said about marriage and children. I know you’re worried about leaving it too long to start trying for a baby, so I’ve got a deal to offer you.”
Erin blinked. Had she heard him correctly? “What have you got to offer me?”
“A deal. A contract. Kind of.” He looked uncomfortable.
She felt confused. “I thought you were going to…you know.” Good grief. She’d just about made a total fool of herself. She had no idea what marriage, babies, and her tight biological time frame had to do with a contract. Unless he wanted her to sign a prenup before they got married.
But he hadn’t asked her to marry him. And his truck was worth more than her entire life savings. She sat back, finally realizing what he was worried about. “I’m not interested in how much money you have. I’ll sign whatever you want me to.”
“What are you talking about?”
Erin took a deep breath. Wrong again. “I don’t know,” she groaned. She needed to take ten steps back and try and work out what he’d been talking about. “What contract did you want to talk to me about?”
“A baby contract.” He sat back on the sofa with a satisfied gleam in his eye. As if those three little words should make complete sense to her.
She looked at him again, waiting for the punch line in an awful joke. He didn’t say a word. He kept looking at her as if he’d discovered another solar system circling in the night sky. “You want to help me adopt a baby?”
He frowned. “Adopt a baby? Why would you want to do that when I’m offering you my sperm?”
He was? Oh, Lord. “I’m really confused. What has a contract and your sperm got to do with adopting a baby?”
“Nothing!” He stood up and started pacing backward and forward. “Forget the adoption thing. I’m going to write a contract that gives us a certain amount of time to get to know each other. If either of us doesn’t want to continue the relationship after that time, then I’ll guarantee the use of my sperm so you can get pregnant. If we stay together, you get my sperm anyway. Free of charge.”
Erin’s lips clamped together. “And what kind of timeline were you thinking about?” He stopped pacing and sat back down beside her. If he wasn’t careful, she’d find the rest of the spaghetti and dump the whole lot over his thick head.
“We could negotiate that. I thought maybe a year. That would give you time to get pregnant before your eggs totally dry up.”
She choked on her spit. “I’ve got time! I’m only twenty-eight-years-old.”
He raised his eyebrows.
She glared back. “All
right, I’m nearly twenty-nine. But my eggs won’t reach maturity until I’m in my mid-thirties.”
Jake rolled his eyes as if a few years made that much difference to his argument.
Damn straight they did. That time made a huge difference to her options. Limited as they were. “And how were you planning on getting me pregnant, on the off chance we ended up hating each other after twelve months?”
“Turkey baster.”
Erin’s mouth dropped open.
“It’s true. I read about it on the internet. It’s almost as good as the real thing.”
She stared at his crotch.
He crossed his legs. “It won’t come to that anyway,” he muttered.
Visions of a similar conversation she’d had with Nicky played over in her mind like a rerun of a bad movie. Only she hadn’t been able to work out how to combine her two passions in life. Jake and babies. Now she knew. She took a deep breath, trying to ignore visions of plastic turkey basters getting anywhere near her body.
“What do you think?” he asked.
She stared at him. He wanted an answer now? Right at this very moment? She couldn’t even work out if either of them were sane enough to enter into such a harebrained contract.
She cleared her throat. “Well…the idea’s got merit.” It was just a pity she hadn’t thought of it a few months ago. “I can see how the contract would benefit me. But what do you get out of it?”
Heat rushed to his face, and his gaze shot across the room. He slipped into lawyer mode, trying to look mature and sophisticated. But the dull blush skimming his face gave him away. “Well…there’d be certain benefits that would make the sacrifice of a few sperm acceptable.”
There was only one benefit she could think of that might inspire a baby-phobic male to provide his sperm to an estrogen starved female. “Like what?”
On a rush of air, he said, “Sex. Lots of it. Anytime, anywhere, anyhow.”
Her eyes widened until she felt like she had two saucers stuck to her face. Heat swept through her body, wiping every scrap of common sense away in a rush of hormones.
Forever Wishes (Montana Brides, Book 4) Page 13
