Page 96 of Nobodys Baby But Mine (Chicago Stars 3)

She got a faraway look on her face, almost dreamy. “You know what I wish? I wish we could start all over. I wish we could meet each other again with no past history, just two strangers getting acquainted. Then, if we didn’t like what we found, we could walk away. And if we did like what we found…” Her voice grew thick with emotion. “The playing field would be level. There’d be a—a balance of power.”

“Power?” Fear churned inside him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She regarded him with a look of pity that cut right through him. “You really don’t, do you? For thirty-seven years you’ve had all the power in our relationship, and I’ve had none. For thirty-seven years I’ve had to live with the fact that I was a second-class citizen in our marriage. But I can’t live that way anymore.”

She spoke so patiently, like an adult explaining something to a child, and it enraged him.

“Fine!” He lost his ability to think clearly and acted on raw emotion. “You can have your divorce. And I hope you choke on it.”

He threw down a wad of bills he didn’t bother to count, shot up from his chair, and stalked from the dining room without a backward look. As he hit the hallway, he realized he was sweating. She’d turned his life upside down from the day he’d met her.

She wanted to talk about power! From the time she was fifteen years old, she’d had the power to twist his life out of shape. If he hadn’t met her, everything might have been different. He wouldn’t have come back to Salvation and been a family doctor, that’s for sure. He’d have gone into research, or maybe he’d have hooked up with one of the big international outfits and traveled around the world to do the work on infectious diseases he’d always dreamed about. A million possibilities would have been open to him if he hadn’t been forced to marry her, but because of her, he hadn’t explored any of them. He’d had a wife and children to support, so he’d gone back to his hometown with his tail between his legs and taken over his father’s practice.

Resentment seethed inside him. He’d had the course of his life irrevocably changed when he was still too young to understand what was happening. She’d done that to him, the same woman who’d sat in that dining room and told him she had no power. She’d fucked up his life forever, and now she blamed him.

He stopped in his track as all the blood rushed from his head. Jesus. She was right.

He sagged down on one of the couches that sat along the wall and dropped his head into his hands. Seconds lapsed, turning into minutes as all the mental barriers he’d erected against the truth grew transparent.

She’d been right when she’d said he’d always resented her, but his bitterness had become such an old, familiar companion he hadn’t recognized it for what it was. She was right. After all this time, he still blamed her.

The many ways he’d punished her over the years came flying back in his face: the fault-finding and subtle put-downs, his blind stubbornness and refusal to acknowledge her needs. All those little punishments he’d inflicted against this woman who was the closest thing he had to a soul.

He pushed his fingertips into his eye sockets and shook his head. She was right about everything.

Chapter Seventeen

J ane’s hands trembled as she stroked almond-scented lotion over every inch of her thirty-four-year-old body, including her rounding belly. Sunlight streamed through her bedroom window, and in the next room Cal’s suitcase lay open on his bed, ready for his late afternoon flight to Austin. She’d made up her mind this morning, and now she wanted to do it before she lost her nerve.

She brushed her hair until it shone, then stared at her naked body in the mirrored wall behind the whirlpool. She tried to imagine how it would look to Cal, but all she could think about was how it wouldn’t look. It wouldn’t look like it belonged to a twenty-year-old centerfold.

With an exclamation of disgust, she stalked back into her bedroom, snatched up her prettiest robe, an apricot silk with a border of deep green laurel leaves at the hem and sleeves, and jabbed her arms into it. She was a physicist, for goodness sakes! A successful professional woman! Since when did she decide to measure her self-worth in terms of her hip size?

And since when could she respect a man who viewed her as only a body? If her measurements didn’t meet Cal’s standards, then it was long past time she found that out. They couldn’t have a lasting relationship if the only thing that kept him interested in her was the mystery of what she looked like naked.

She wanted a real relationship more than she’d ever wanted anything. It hurt too much to be afraid all the caring was one-sided. She needed to stop procrastinating and find out if anything lasting existed between them, or if she were merely another touchdown for Cal Bonner to score.

She heard the faint whir of the garage door sliding open, and her heart jumped into her throat. He was home. Misgivings shot through her. She should have picked a more convenient time, a day when he wasn’t getting ready to fly halfway across the country to a golf tournament. She should have waited until she was calmer, more sure of herself. She should have—

Her cowardice disgusted her and she resisted a nearly irresistible urge to grab every article of clothing in her closet and stuff herself into all of them until she was the size of a polar bear. Today she would begin the process of discovering whether she’d given her heart away in vain.

Taking a deep breath, she secured the robe’s sash in a bow and padded barefoot into the hallway.

“Jane?”

“I’m up here.” As she stopped at the top of the stairs, the thudding of her heart made her feel light-headed.

He appeared in the foyer below. “Guess who I—” He broke off as he looked up and saw her standing above him at one o’clock in the afternoon wearing nothing but a slinky silk robe.

He smiled and tucked the fingers of one hand in the pocket of his jeans. “You sure do know how to welcome a guy home.”

She couldn’t have spoken if she wanted to. Heart pounding, she lifted her hands to the robe’s sash while her heart whispered a silent prayer. Please let him want me for myself and not just because I’m a challenge. Please let him love me just a little bit. Her clumsy fingers tugged on the robe’s sash, and her gaze locked with his as the frail garment parted. With a shrug of her shoulders, she let it slide down her body and fall in a puddle at her feet.

Warm sunlight washed her body, revealing everything: her small breasts and rounding belly, her huge hips and very ordinary legs.

Cal looked dazed. She rested one hand lightly on the banister and moved slowly down the steps, wearing nothing

but a fragile veil of almond-scented lotion.

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