That's My Baby! Read online

  “Got you there, haven’t I?” he said.

  She met his gaze. “I think, within reason, you have to let them be stupid.”

  He snorted in derision. “Yeah, so they can get themselves killed, and maybe somebody else in the process.” He said the words so automatically he seemed to be reciting a memorized lesson.

  “Is that how your father justified beating you to a bloody pulp? That he was keeping you from killing yourself?”

  “Sometimes.” He glanced at her. “Sometimes I think it was for the pure enjoyment of it.”

  Talk about monsters, she thought. “You have to know you’re nothing like him.”

  He didn’t reply as he continued to hold her gaze.

  “Nat, you’re not like him! I’m sure of it.”

  “Better go take your shower.”

  She recognized the wall he’d just put up between them. She’d seen him construct it often enough in the year they’d been seeing each other. Once that wall went up, she had no hope of breaking through to him. But he hadn’t seen Elizabeth yet. Jessica clung to the hope that the baby, his baby, might be the one thing that could breach that wall.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “I’ll call and arrange for a rental car, and I don’t want to hear about you paying for it.”

  She hesitated. Letting him pay for things seemed almost as if she’d be giving him the easy way out. She didn’t want his money. She wanted his participation in raising Elizabeth, or she wanted nothing.

  “Please, Jess.” His mask slipped a little. “It’s what I can do for now. Can you accept that?”

  She took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay. For now.”

  “Good. I’ll call and get us a car.”

  As he walked over to the phone, she went into the bathroom and started the shower.

  Nat was liable to break her heart all over again, she thought as she slipped out of the robe, tied her hair into a knot on top of her head and stepped under the hot spray. She wanted to believe that he would see Elizabeth and fall in love with the baby, so deeply in love that he’d be willing to rethink his position about marriage and children.

  But that might not happen. He’d walked away once, and if the baby scared him enough, he would walk away again.

  With that possibility hanging over her head, she probably shouldn’t continue to make love to him. She was only setting herself up for a worse fall if she became accustomed to his sweet loving on a regular basis. If he couldn’t cherish Elizabeth as she did, then she’d have to tell him goodbye.

  But she’d better let him know they wouldn’t be making love. She needed to tell him before they started on their trip to Colorado. Considering her behavior up to this point, he would be justified in expecting to continue their physical relationship. After all, she hadn’t made sleeping with him contingent on anything. She’d simply fallen into his arms at the first opportunity.

  She didn’t want to set up contingencies for when they would make love again, as if he had to agree to marry her before he could enjoy her body. That was too much like blackmail. But she had to create some distance between them. Surely he’d understand that she was only protecting both of them from worse heartache.

  She turned off the shower, fumbled for a towel on the rack nearby and dried herself while standing in the warmth of the leftover steam. That’s when she heard the steady snip of a pair of scissors.

  Wrapping the towel securely around herself, she stepped out of the shower to find Nat standing there wearing nothing but his low-slung jeans. He’d propped a wastebasket up on the counter to catch the hair from his beard as he clipped it very short.

  Apparently he’d just finished that part, because he set the wastebasket on the floor, lathered up the remaining stubble and picked up his razor. The spicy scent of his shaving cream brought back vivid memories of all the times she’d watched him do this little chore. Often he’d capped off a shaving session by making love to her and rubbing his baby-soft chin all over her body.

  Yet she missed that beard already. Then she remembered the vow of abstinence she’d just taken in the shower. Whether he had a beard or not meant nothing to her now. “I see you’re shaving it off,” she said.

  “Yep. I want to go out of here looking different from the way I came in, in case your friend saw us together.”

  “That’s a good idea.” And it was, but she still struggled with disappointment as he stroked the razor over his chin. On the other hand, she liked seeing his strong jaw emerge from under the lather. And his skin would be very smooth after this first shave. He’d be heaven to kiss, all spicy scented and silky to the touch.

  As he paused to meet her gaze in the mirror, his eyes seemed bluer than ever before. “If you stand there much longer with that look on your face, you won’t be wearing that towel anymore,” he said.

  A familiar tingle of desire settled between her thighs. Keeping her vow wouldn’t be easy. “We need to talk about that.”

  He continued to watch her as he shaved. “I wasn’t thinking of having a conversation.”

  A deep, trembling need seized her. “All things considered, maybe it would be better if we didn’t make love anymore.”

  He paused and narrowed his eyes. “Ever?”

  “Well, at least not until…we know where we stand with…with each other, and the baby, and everything.” That sounded like a contingency, after all, but she really didn’t mean it that way.

  “Mmm.” He continued shaving, but his hand didn’t seem perfectly steady. “Are you trying to bribe me?”

  “Absolutely not!”

  “Might work.” He shifted his weight and stopped leaning against the sink. “I want you pretty damn bad.”

  “I don’t operate that way.” Heat sizzled through her veins as she realized he’d moved back from the sink because the edge of the counter was pressing into his erection. She swallowed. “I’m trying to think of both of us. Maybe we should protect ourselves.”

  “It might have been better if you hadn’t made that speech while you’re standing there wrapped only in a towel. Funny how when someone says you can’t have something, that’s the only thing in the world you want.”

  So did she. Right this minute. “I think it’s for the best, don’t you?”

  “Jess, guys never think going without sex is for the best. But if that’s the way you want it, that’s the way it’ll be.”

  Her glance took in the fit of his jeans from behind. She’d forgotten what a fabulous view that was. She licked dry lips. “That’s the way I want it,” she said.

  “Then quit checking me out,” he said in a low voice, “and go get dressed.”

  “Right.” Heart pounding, she left the bathroom.

  STEVEN DAMN NEAR MISSED Jessica leave the hotel. He’d known she’d have on another one of her crazy wigs. It was blond this time. He got a real high out of knowing she was going through all this trouble hoping to fool him, especially when he knew she’d lose in the end. The fact that he was playing with her gave him a buzz that was almost sexual.

  Once he had her and got the money from Russell P., the challenge of the thing would be over. Maybe he’d be too rich to care about challenges at that point, but he wasn’t altogether sure about that.

  Her boyfriend might present some real obstacles, though, and the prospect of a new player in the game got his blood pumping. The boyfriend was obviously sharper than Steven had given him credit for.

  Steven had been keeping an eye out for a scruffy guy with a beard. He’d noticed the tall, clean-shaven man who’d come out to claim a rental car, but he hadn’t made the connection because everything was smooth about this character. His suit and hat were technically western in style, but the look was far more polished than Steven had ever seen on a cowboy. Even the longish hair looked avant-garde. He hadn’t realized it was Jessica’s boyfriend until she hurried out and hopped in the car with him.

  In the past six months Steven had become an excellent carjacker. He had an instinct that allowed
him to spot a car with the passenger door unlocked, and he found one now. No one on the busy street noticed when he got into the green sedan and quietly put a toy gun against the driver’s ribs.

  Once he’d explained to the gasping, quaking man that all he wanted was for him to follow the white rental car, the guy complied with Steven’s request, as everyone so far had had the good sense to do. Once they were on the open road, he launched into his well-rehearsed covert-operations speech and showed the driver that the gun wasn’t real. His altered press card looked official enough for most people. In all his carjackings, he’d never had to pull the .32 out of his boot.

  He always made the drivers feel as if they were part of something really big, something top secret and connected with national security. When Jessica and her boyfriend stopped for gas, he let both driver and car go back home and he located another chauffeur. The routine worked like a charm, as it had for the last six months. So far no one had ever been hurt. Steven took pride in that.

  NAT DROVE ALL DAY and into the night, ready to get this trip over with. Jess offered to take the wheel, but he knew once she did that, he’d fall asleep. Jet lag was playing havoc with his system, but he didn’t want to sleep while she was driving and allow her to be at the mercy of whatever dangers were out there.

  At a diner where they’d stopped for dinner, she’d said she thought the guy was around. She hadn’t seen him, but she’d claimed to have developed a sixth sense about him, and Nat was willing to believe that. He’d kept his eyes open, but the man would be hard to spot. Jess had described him as average build with brown hair. He could look like a million other guys.

  The best plan seemed to be to keep driving. They didn’t talk much, for which Nat was glad. Even the sound of her voice got him hot. Her every movement was like the flick of a match against the dry tinder of his need. He wasn’t sure how he’d travel with her all the way to Colorado without making love to her again. Exhaustion would help, he decided, so he pushed himself until he was afraid he was a hazard on the road. “We need to stop,” he said about two in the morning as he took the exit to a motel right near the highway.

  “Of course.” She stretched her arms over her head and yawned. “I was beginning to think you’d decided to drive nonstop from New York to Colorado.”

  He pulled up in front of the motel lobby. “I didn’t trust myself to stop for the night until I was totally wiped out.”

  “Oh.”

  He could see from her expression that he didn’t have to explain himself any further. “We’re getting one room, for the safety factor, but you don’t have to worry about me attacking you. I’m too beat.”

  “I’ve never worried about you attacking me.”

  He glanced at her. “Maybe you should.” He wasn’t crazy about the blond wig and the elaborate makeup she’d included as part of her disguise, but in another way it was a turn-on. He’d never made love to her as a heavily made-up blonde, and it might be kind of fun. Her stretchy zebra-print dress was too tight to be fashionable, but it sure fueled the imagination. “Come on in with me. I don’t want to leave you alone in the car.”

  “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t stay behind.” As they started toward the lobby’s front entrance, she chuckled. “You know what they’re going to think, when we come in at this time of the night, with me looking like a—”

  “Hooker?” he finished for her.

  “I was going to say high-class call girl,” she said primly.

  “Hooker,” he said, and opened the door for her. Damned if his libido wasn’t kicking in now that he was out of the car and moving around. He wasn’t tired enough. Maybe there was no such thing as too tired where Jess was concerned, especially when she was decked out like this.

  But he didn’t think he could drive another mile, so he was stuck with this frustrating situation. He approached the reception desk, where a sleepy-looking young man gave Jess the once-over as she crossed the lobby to glance through a rack of travel brochures. She’d slipped on her coat over the stretchy dress, but hadn’t bothered to button it. She was dynamite.

  Nat restrained the impulse to challenge the clerk’s obvious assumption. He’d be wasting his breath, anyway. No matter what he said, the clerk would think he knew exactly what was going on.

  Sure enough, the guy turned a coconspirator’s gaze on Nat, as if congratulating him man to man on his score. “You folks need a room?” he asked, barely controlling a smirk.

  “Two double beds,” Nat said. As if that would make a difference.

  “Oo-kay.” The clerk typed a few things into his computer and took Nat’s credit card. “Need help with luggage?” he asked as he slid the keys across the counter. He looked as if he didn’t expect luggage was part of this deal.

  “No, thanks,” Nat said. “We can handle it.”

  “Okay. Have a nice night.” The clerk stopped short of licking his lips when he gazed at Jess.

  Once again Nat bit back a reprimand. Given the look of things, the clerk couldn’t be blamed for his behavior. “We’re all set,” Nat said to Jess. “It’s in the back. We’ll drive around.”

  “Fine.”

  He held the door for her, and as she went through it looking for all the world like his playmate for the night, his temper began to fray. Then when he held the car door for her she managed to show quite a bit of leg getting in. She’d better not be teasing him. He closed the door with a little more force than was necessary.

  “You slammed that door. Is anything wrong?” she asked as he got in and started the engine.

  “Nope.” He backed out and pulled around to a parking spot near their room on the second floor.

  “Your face is all scrunched up, like you’re upset about something.”

  “Just tired.” He’d be damned if he’d admit that he felt randier than a teenager paging through a smuggled porn magazine. He was supposed to be more in control of himself than that, but damn it, she hadn’t made life easy for him, wearing that getup of hers.

  “I can understand you being tired. I wish you’d let me drive some of the time.”

  “It’s better if I do it.” He got out of the car and opened the back door so he could haul out their two backpacks.

  She was beside him instantly. “Nat, let me carry my—”

  “I’ve got it.” He knew he sounded unfriendly. But he was too tired to be friendly and still keep his hands off of her.

  “Okay.” She lifted both hands and backed off.

  He slung a backpack over each shoulder and they trudged up a set of outside stairs to the second floor of the motel. All the while, Nat was picturing that cozy room with two very available beds in it. He handed a key to Jess and she opened the door and flicked on the wall switch.

  Moving into the plain but serviceable room, she glanced around. “It might not be the Waldorf, but it’s nicer than some of the places I’ve stayed in recently.” She took off her coat and laid it on a chair. Then she walked over to the window and reached for the cord on the drapes.

  He shoved the door closed with his foot and stood there holding the backpacks and watching those zebra stripes wiggle as she moved. Damn, but she was hot stuff. He slung the backpacks on the floor and when he spoke, his voice was razor-sharp. “Quit fiddling around and pick your bed. We need to get some sleep.”

  Surprise lifted her eyebrows as she turned toward him. “You are upset.”

  He laid his hat brim side up on the dresser and stripped off his suit coat. “I don’t suppose you could have organized a different disguise for today,” he said, an edge of sarcasm in his voice. He wanted the words back. He hated sarcasm. His father had used it all the time. Stress brought out those traits in him, which was why he worried about what he’d be like around a kid of his own.

  She finished pulling the drapes closed. “What do you mean?”

  He threw his suit coat on the nearest bed. “When you climbed into the taxi last night, you looked like a bag lady. Under the circumstances, couldn’t you have come up with s
omething more like that for this trip?”

  “Circumstances? Oh! Those circumstances.”

  He allowed his anger to build. Maybe blowing off steam this way would keep him from doing something crude and unforgivable. “I mean, first of all you announce that we’re not having sex, and then you put on a dress that looks like it came from Frederick’s of Hollywood. Don’t you think that’s a little unfair?”

  “For your information, I consider your outfit equally unfair.”

  “Mine?” He held out both arms and looked down at the pearl buttons on his black western shirt. “What’s wrong with mine?”

  “When you said this morning that you had to go out and pick up a few things, I had no idea you were planning to buy that suit.”

  He’d been proud of the fact he’d found something decent to wear, given the short time he had to look for some clothes. He’d left all his spare shirts and jeans with the refugees, keeping only the sheepskin vest that belonged to Travis and the clothes on his back. On his quick shopping expedition that morning, he’d been glad to find something on short notice that he could actually wear once he started dealing with clients again. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “The cut of those western pants is so…blatant.”

  “They fit. What’s the crime in buying pants that fit?”

  “They fit like a glove, you mean! I’ve been watching you all day in those pants, and all I want to do is…” She paused, her color high. “Never mind what I want to do.”

  Oh, yeah. If she cracked first, then she couldn’t blame him, could she? He began unsnapping his shirt. “You’re the one who made the rules, darlin’,” he said softly.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  BOONE CONNOR HEARD the clock chime two-thirty in the morning as he lay staring into the darkness thinking about all that Sebastian and Travis had told him today. On the one hand, he was glad Elizabeth’s father wasn’t some stranger. On the other, it hurt to think that Nat hadn’t seen fit to tell them that he was involved with Jessica for an entire year.