Page 19 of The Workaholic Down the Hall

He grinned. The expression widened his face and lightened his eyes, making him look younger and less severe. Had I ever seen him smile like that before? Noah and I'd never had deep heart-to-hearts or talked about anything remotely serious other than work. We'd worked together and we'd gotten together to watch the occasional college ball game. Go Yellow Jackets! We'd helped each other out when one or the other needed a favor. I'd even crashed at his place for a week to deter one of his overzealous exes. Surely we'd laughed together, right? But thinking back, I didn't remember much laughing. I didn't even remember much smiling. I'd crushed on Noah from the first time I saw him, but if he'd grinned at me like that, I'd have been head over heels for him long before we'd slept together.

“Aubrey?” I snapped back to the present to see Noah with an amused glint in his eyes. “Are you all right?”

“Yep,” I said. “Just lost in a daydream. Baby stuff.” I looked down at the table as I spoke so I wasn't technically lying to his face.

“Right.” The amusement in his tone dimmed and I looked up to see his smile was gone, his frown in place. I hated that frown. He should smile all the time. He deserved to be happy all the damn time. “That's what I was saying. I'd like to see those plans. Are you thinking of living here? Have you chosen a name?”

My heart dropped and I bit my lip not to sigh. He spoke like he wasn't going to be a part of those sorts of decisions. I'd hoped he'd want to be more involved than that. His eyes dropped to my lips and I realized I'd bitten the bottom one hard enough to draw blood. I hated feeling like this, I hated not knowing what to expect, how to handle it all. “I change my mind every day about her name,” I said. “Yesterday, it was Rachel. Today, it's Penelope…Or Sophie. I have no idea.”

He didn't look at me with shock and horror, he didn't even look at me like I was an amusing crazy woman, he looked at me like what I was saying made perfect sense. “Maybe you need to see her to know the right name.”

“Maybe. I'll get those plans, though they'll probably be deadly boring for you.”

He laced his fingers together on the table and leaned forward. “Why don't you just tell me about them?”

I swallowed. He was leaning forward, his look intense, and all I could think about was that night when he'd leaned in and pressed his lips to mine, the way he'd tasted, the way every circuit and cell of my body had flamed at his touch. I didn't want to talk about plans for the future or worry about how I was going to raise this child and what part he was going to play. I wanted his hands on me, I wanted him to take me away from my own thoughts. Pregnancy hormones were insane and making it even harder to make the right choices. I needed some space. “How about a walk?” I said. “It's a nice day out and I haven't explored the property at all.”

Something like disappointment flashed across his face. His shoulders sagged and he dropped his gaze to the table for a long moment. When he looked up, he was smiling, but it seemed forced, tight. That was the smile I was used to seeing from him. “Sure,” he said. “That sounds great.”

We pulled on shoes and coats and headed out into the bright October sun. It would be November in just a couple days and I'd be that much closer to giving birth, to welcoming a new person into my life. My chest tightened and my breath quickened. I stalked toward the forest, seeing what looked like a trail in the undergrowth.

Noah followed silently. “You want to go for a hike?” he asked. “I thought you just wanted to walk the property.”

“I need some real exercise. You can go back to the house if you want.”

“I'll go with you.”

He didn't sound happy about it, but I couldn't concern myself with his happiness at the moment. I needed to move, to get away from myself. To do something.

Unfortunately, the trail didn't go far. Only about two hundred feet into the forest before the underbrush took over. We could have kept going, but I wasn't stupid enough to wander around the woods when I was eight months pregnant with no trail to follow. “Some hunters,” I muttered.

“What?” Noah asked from behind me.

I turned to face him. “Nora called this place an old hunting cabin.” I wasn't ready to tell him that his mother had bought the house, that I was thinking of living there permanently. I didn't want him to feel like his mother and I were ganging up on him. “I figured there'd be easier access to the trails.”

Noah looked around, then back toward the cabin. “Pretty nice set-up for a hunting cabin.”

I followed his gaze. “It probably wouldn't be too hard to make my own trails, though, right?”

“Sure,” he said. “When you aren't pregnant, hopefully?”

I shrugged, frustrated and annoyed. I needed to do something and the world wasn't cooperating. “That would be the smart thing to do.”

“We'll get a map of the area,” he said. “And plan our trail before we make it.”

And there he was sayingwelike he'd be around, like he'd help me. I couldn't let myself get my hopes up, though, couldn't let myself expect more than he was able or willing to give. “Sounds like a plan,” I said. “I guess we should head back.”

He studied my face for a long moment and I waited because it looked like he had something to say. He shook his head, like he'd decided to keep the thought to himself and turned back toward the house.

Once we reached the yard, I expected him to go straight back to the house, an option I dreaded. Instead, he bent at the edge of the forest and dug at the ground. “What are you doing?”

“Checking the soil,” he said, looking up at me with a smile. “It's clay mostly. We'd have to put down some topsoil to get a garden going.”

“I'm no good at keeping plants alive.” I'd been a city girl all my life, so I didn't have any experience with outdoor gardening, but all my indoor plants had died swift, sad deaths. I hoped that didn't bode poorly for my daughter.

“We could put in some easy maintenance plants,” he said. “You'll want something to keep the yard from washing down the side of the mountain. Maybe terraced gardens.”

The yard was kind of steep back there, but terraced gardens sounded like a lot of work. “I didn't know you liked to garden.”

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