One Night, So Pregnant!

by Heidi Rice

  ‘She came to see me, last week.’ He paused, the niggling suspicion that had been digging away at the back of his mind ever since their meeting making him feel uneasy. ‘She says she’s pregnant.’

  Zane’s eyebrows rose a fraction and his smile died. ‘That’s a complication.’

  ‘It’s not mine,’ Nate replied flatly, but the certainty he’d had a week ago failed to materialise. Why couldn’t he get that look of anguish in her face out of his head? Why hadn’t she argued? Why hadn’t she even attempted to persuade him? It didn’t add up.

  ‘You sure about that?’ Zane asked.

  Nate thrust a hand through his hair, not liking the flat note in Zane’s voice. ‘I used a condom.’

  ‘Condoms fail,’ Zane replied, placing his beer down on the table with steely calm. ‘If a woman I slept with got knocked up, I’d want to know for sure it wasn’t mine.’

  Nate realised he should have expected this response. Had probably wanted it on some level. The circumstances of Zane’s birth and his childhood meant that he took a hard line when it came to fathering children without taking responsibility. And who could blame him?

  ‘Which is where you come in,’ Nate replied. ‘I want you to get one of your guys to check it out. Find out if she’s actually pregnant. And whether I’m the father or not. I’ll pay the going rate.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘What? Why not?’ Nate growled, annoyed. He might have expected this reaction, but getting Zane involved was the obvious solution.

  Zane owned and ran the most prestigious private detective agency on the West Coast. Based in a huge glass office overlooking Big Sur, Montoya Investigations had a well-earned reputation for being classy, efficient, discreet and painstakingly thorough. And Graystone Enterprises had helped with the start-up finance four years ago, right after Zane had quit the LAPD. They were friends. Surely that should stand for something?

  He and Zane had a history. They had grown up together in the huge coastal mansion his great-grandfather had built. They were as good as brothers. The familiar agony flickered through his consciousness as he ruthlessly cut off the wayward thought. Right now, he needed a friend, damn it, not another critic.

  Zane scowled, not looking very friendly. ‘Montoya doesn’t take that kind of domestic work if we can help it. And getting your girlfriend investigated is a bit cold, don’t you think?’

  Nate felt the headache that had been brewing most of the week pound against his temple. ‘She’s not my girlfriend,’ he clarified. But the accusation still stung.

  He wasn’t cold. He was cautious. He’d been burned once before. No way in hell was he going to get burned again.

  ‘And this isn’t just dirty laundry,’ he snapped back. ‘This is about whether Tess Tremaine is telling the truth or not.’

  He wanted a conclusive answer. Proof that she had been lying to him. Then he could stop thinking about the reproach in her eyes. What was so wrong about that?

  ‘Damn it, Nate, if you want to know the truth, you need to get out of your ivory tower and go have a conversation with the woman, like any regular guy.’

  Nate flinched, the accusation slicing right through his composure and his control. ‘I’m not my father.’ He rubbed a clammy palm on the denim of his jeans, acknowledged the vicious stab of guilt at the mention of the man they both despised.

  Zane’s face hardened, his crystal blue eyes glittering with enmity in the shadowy booth. ‘Yeah?’ He ground out the single word, then reached into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet, and flicked a ten-dollar bill on the table.

  Nate’s fingers fisted under the table. ‘What the hell makes you think she’d tell me the truth anyway?’ he said, still determined to get Zane on side. Tess Tremaine had an unpredictable effect on him that he wasn’t sure he could control. She’d proved that twice already. And until he knew he could control it, he didn’t want to go anywhere near the woman.

  Zane stood, his eyes softening. ‘Look, man, not every woman’s Marlena.’

  Nate stiffened.

  Zane tucked his hands into his back pockets. ‘And you’re not your old man. I wouldn’t give a damn about you if you were.’ Zane’s voice sobered. ‘But that’s exactly why you’ve gotta clean up your own mess. You don’t need a private investigator. Go talk to her. It’s that simple.’ He cursed under his breath. ‘If you’re still stuck after you’ve spoken to her, I’ll make a few calls. But you’ll need a DNA test to find out for sure if you’re the father. I’m a detective, not a doctor.’ A mocking smile edged the corners of his mouth. ‘Then again, you could always find a convenient closet and seduce the truth out of her.’

  ‘Good thinking, Batman,’ Nate muttered, annoyed by the familiar surge of heat. ‘That’s what got me into this fix in the first place, remember.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Zane drawled before taking one last slug of his beer. ‘Good luck, Kemosabe—and stay the hell away from janitors’ closets.’

  Nate watched as his friend sauntered over to the waitress’s station and whispered something into the young woman’s ear. The girl laughed flirtatiously and gave Zane a playful punch on the arm, then gazed dreamily at his retreating back as he strolled out of the door.

  The band around Nate’s temples tightened into a vice.

  Sure it was simple for Zane. Zane understood women as well as any mortal man could. He actually seemed to enjoy uncovering those dark secrets that most men couldn’t even begin to fathom.

  But even a guy like Zane would have trouble handling someone as unpredictable as Tess Tremaine.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  NATE clicked on his smart phone to double-check the address Zane had texted as he sat in his Jeep on the tree-lined street in Parnassus. Then stared at the duplex opposite.

  Four-Five-Six Carl, Apartment Two. The address listed on a Miss Theresa Tremaine’s driver’s licence.

  He contemplated the building’s pale yellow frontage, the row of buzzers on the door panel, and the shutters covering the second-floor window. Then glanced down the street at the Japanese café on the corner.

  This was nuts. How could he possibly have fathered a child with someone whose apartment he’d never even been inside of?

  Because you’ve been inside her, you dumbass.

  He shifted in his seat, disconcerted by the inevitable swell of heat that accompanied the thought. The possibility she had been telling the truth might be slight, but it was there.

  She hadn’t contacted him since that one brief meeting in his office, which kind of confirmed his suspicions. She’d been there to ask him for money and, when she’d realised he wasn’t playing ball, she’d decided not to push her luck.

  But that image of her face, the distress in her eyes, still refused to go away, so he’d speak to her one last time—to make sure.

  He straightened, catching sight of the slim young woman who jogged round the corner and waved to someone in the café. Baggy sweats hung low on her hips, allowing a strip of taut creamy skin to peak beneath the tank top that hugged her breasts. She moved with an easy comfortable grace as she leapt up the steps of the apartment block and then checked what he guessed had to be a pedometer on her wrist. Her dark blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail, her bangs covered by a wide purple sweatband, and her face cast into shadow by the branch of an overhanging maple tree, but recognition burned through his system and the swell of heat started to pound.

  She went through a series of stretches as he recalled the feel of slender, sleekly muscled thighs wrapped round his waist. She stopped to key in a door code, then shouldered open the apartment door with a hard thud. The sound reminded him of the soft thud as her back had hit the locked door of the janitor’s closet.

  He gave his head a swift shake, forcing himself back to reality. Grabbing the keys from the ignition, he jumped out of the car and jogged across the street.

  There were going to be no more closet interludes for him and Tess Tremaine. Letting his libido torpedo his common sense once had
been enough. What he needed now was to concentrate on his goal. No matter how damn sexy she was.

  ‘Tess,’ he shouted. ‘Wait up.’

  She swung round as he took the steps two at a time to join her on the stoop.

  The sheen of sweat glowing on her cleavage above the scooped neck of her tank top drew his eyes and brought with it another hot jolt of memory.

  ‘What do you want?’ she snapped.

  His gaze lifted to her face, and he had the uncomfortable thought that even without a lick of make-up on, and the wisps of hair framing her face matted with sweat from her morning run, she had to be the most extraordinarily beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on. Her impossibly high cheekbones and those sultry green eyes and full kissable lips were only accentuated by the rosy flush of exertion on her cheeks.

  He cleared his throat. ‘I want to talk to you,’ he managed at last.

  The sultry green flashed molten fire and her bee-stung lips pursed into a thin line. ‘Well, I don’t want to talk to you,’ she shot back, slapping a hand on her hip. The antagonistic stance made her full breasts flatten against the thin cotton of the tank top and his eyes nearly bugged right out of his head. Had her breasts got a size larger in the last ten days?

  ‘Now go away.’

  The hurled words startled him and she was almost in the door before he managed to claw his mind back out of his pants. He wedged his palm against the door just in the nick of time.

  She shoved her shoulder against it, so he leaned in harder. She was tall, the top of her head almost level with his chin as she struggled to close the door, but she couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. He waited patiently, easily holding the door ajar.

  ‘Either we talk out here, and let the whole neighbourhood know our business, or we talk in your apartment, and keep this private,’ he said, his voice hoarse as he kept his gaze riveted to her flushed angry face, and off that mind-boggling cleavage. ‘Your choice.’

  ‘Oh, for Pete’s sake!’ she muttered, but finally surrendered the door. ‘Fine. Come in.’ She stomped off up the stairs, pointedly turning her back on him. ‘You’ve already ruined my morning.’

  He followed her up the stairs, and judiciously kept his gaze off her moist cleavage as she yanked on a thin gold chain round her neck, and lifted out a key. She opened the apartment door on the second floor, leaving him to grab it before it shut in his face as she waltzed inside. He took in the light, airy and compact apartment, glad that her attitude had changed since their last meeting. Hostility was a lot easier to handle than fake fragility.

  Hardwood flooring complemented the plain white walls of the living room, but apart from a stack of boxes on the floor there wasn’t a single piece of furniture in the whole room. He heard the sound of running water, then looked across to see her walk out of the galley kitchen, which was also bare except for another large box resting on the countertop.

  She took a deep swallow of the water, then lifted her tank top to wipe her face. He ignored the throb of heat at the quick glimpse of a white cotton sports bra, and the smooth translucent skin stretched taut across her narrow waist.

  Strike one to him: there was no visible sign of a baby there. Her belly was as flat as he remembered it. Plus what sort of woman went jogging when they were pregnant? His spirits lifted a little.

  ‘What could we possibly have to talk about?’ she said as her tank dropped back into place covering up that incriminatingly flat belly. ‘I think we covered just about everything the last time we met, don’t you?’

  Despite being hacked off by her snippy tone, and the instant effect she had on his libido, he held off launching into his newest suspicion about her condition. One of them was going to have to be a grown-up about this. And it looked as if that person would have to be him.

  ‘Where’s your furniture?’ he asked, keeping his tone admirably civil.

  ‘I’m just about to move out, not that it’s any of your business,’ she said in a sing-song voice that was obviously meant to be a dig. She straightened away from the door frame and rested a palm on her hip, the stance doing that weird optical illusion thing to her breasts again. ‘And by the way, how did you get my address?’

  ‘You can lose the hostility,’ he said, losing his own civility as the heat resolutely refused to die. ‘If you didn’t want to have anything to do with me, you wouldn’t have contacted me last week.’

  * * *

  Tess glared at the man standing in the centre of her empty living room—his imposing build filling up most of the available space and taking up all the oxygen too. She’d hardly pushed herself this morning, settling on a very leisurely four-mile run, so why the heck couldn’t she breathe?

  ‘That was then.’ She glared harder. ‘This is now, and I don’t want to have anything to do with you any more.’

  ‘Tough,’ he countered, actually having the gall to sound self-righteous. ‘Because I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ She placed a finger on her chin. ‘I wonder why? Have you come to accuse me of lying again?’

  The crease on his brow became a fissure. ‘I never accused you of anything.’ The statement was clear, precise and so smug it made her want to slap him. Men like him never even thought to apologise for their actions.

  ‘Terrific, well, I’m glad we got that settled.’ She waved her hand dismissively. ‘You can go now.’ She walked back into the kitchenette, and concentrated on keeping her glare in place.

  She heard him step into the kitchenette behind her and turned, more than a little disconcerted to find him within a foot of her. She plopped the glass on the counter, the narrow space way too vivid a reminder of the close confines of a certain utility cupboard.

  ‘If you insist on staying, why don’t you tell me what you want to talk about?’ she asked, annoyed that he was doing that oxygen-sucking thing again and all she could smell was the piney scent of his soap, which had to be the reason for her breathing difficulties. ‘That way we can get it over with and never have to lay eyes on each other again.’

  Which was what she wanted. Fervently.

  ‘If you were really pregnant with my child, what I want to talk about would be pretty damn obvious.’ His gaze raked over her—and her sweaty running gear became a cast-iron corset, pressing into her breasts.

  If.

  The word was loaded with as much doubt and accusation as she remembered from his office over a week ago. But instead of leaving her feeling shocked and vulnerable, this time all his low opinion did was make her temper ignite. She concentrated on the flare of anger, and tried to ignore the tightening around her ribcage.

  ‘All right, then.’ She crossed her arms, annoyed when her swollen breasts began to throb under his gaze for no apparent reasons. ‘If you’re so convinced I’m not pregnant with your child, what exactly are you doing here?’

  Before she could react, she saw the sheen of lust dilate his pupils and his hand clasped the back of her neck. Her arms released instinctively as he pulled her flush against him, his lips millimetres from hers, her heavy breasts not just throbbing now, but aching. She arched into him instinctively, pressing the swollen tips against the solid wall of his chest like a hungry cat.

  ‘You know what I’m doing here,’ he growled, the words guttural with desperation. ‘It’s the same reason you let me into the apartment. I can’t get you out of my head.’

  And then his lips were on hers. And all pretence of sense, or even sensibility, burned away in a fireball of need.

  Her fingers sank into the glossy strands of hair at the base of his skull, massaged his scalp as he devoured her mouth, bit into her lower lip. She thrust her tongue into the hot recesses of his mouth, kissing him back with an instinctive need to taste, to take, to torture him the way he was torturing her.

  He dragged his mouth away. His harsh breathing rasping against her ear as he fumbled for her running vest, yanked it over her head, then pressed his palms against her sports bra, lifting the weight of her heavy breasts. Her t
hin cry of need reverberated in her ears.

  ‘How can I still want you this much?’ he groaned, his words echoing her thoughts.

  He released the hook on her bra and scooped up her tender flesh with his rough palms. Then his mouth—hot and wet—closed over the straining nipple. He suckled hard then transferred to the other nipple, tugged on the newly sensitive peak and made a pistol shot of need explode inside her.

  She sucked in a shuddering breath, sobbed as he continued to torment first one breast then the other, and the firestorm rushed towards her. She screamed, the clench and rush of fulfilment sudden and shockingly intense.

  ‘Did you just come?’

  All she could manage was a weak nod, as stunned by the staggering speed and intensity of her orgasm as he was.

  His brows rose up his forehead then he swore, grasping her hips and lifting her easily onto the countertop. She clung to him, her body limp, sated, despite the pressure now burning like an inferno between her thighs. The Formica felt cold on her bottom as he yanked down her sweats, pulled them off and ripped the purple silk of her knickers. She listened in a trance to the sound of clothing being struggled out of, ripping foil, the ragged pants of their breathing.

  And then he was there, huge and solid, the blunt head of his erection probing her entrance.

  He stopped abruptly, his chest heaving as the deep blue gaze connected with hers. ‘I want to be inside you.’

  She watched his jaw clench, rigid with the effort to hold back, and somewhere her dazed mind registered that he was asking her for permission before he took that final plunge. She lifted her arms around his neck, wrapped her legs around his hips and pressed her burning centre against the brutal pressure, letting instinct take over and damning the consequences.

  ‘Don’t stop,’ she demanded.

  He groaned, gripped her bottom and impaled her in one glorious, all-consuming stroke. He pulled out briefly, then thrust back, harder, faster and further—filling every part of her. His fingers dug into her buttocks, anchoring her for the brutal possession, his movements not smooth or controlled, but basic, elemental, just like their first time. He adjusted her hips, his pelvis caressing her swollen clitoris with each powerful inward thrust, and the pleasure built in an unstoppable rush, rolling through her. Forcing her up, dragging her back, and hurling her over again.