Page 6 of Suddenly Pregnant

Though listening had never been so hard.

He hadn’t dated ever since the break-up. Maybe this inappropriate attraction was the way he’d come to realize he was ready again—not to love, certainly. But to have sex. Why not? He wasn’t dead, and this had been the longest stretch he’d gone without it.

“Do you eat takeout a lot?” she asked.

“I had a housekeeper before, but I had to let her go,” he said, thinking back to when the scandal happened and he just wasn’t sure in who he could trust. Could he trust Billie? He shouldn’t. Though, there was something endearingly earnest about her… a quality he couldn’t quite pinpoint.

Or maybe it was his dick talking.

Those one-sided conversations never ended well.

“Your sister mentioned you spent some time in the Outback,” she said. “Was it work?”

He tilted his head to the side, finding himself regarding her intently. He almost drowned in the green sea of her eyes, what a lovely way to go it would have been. A realization tugged at his sense of judgment, his heart beating wildly in his chest. She didn’t know.

She didn’t know that the entire continent had seen his dick, or that those nasty texts he’d exchanged with his ex had made the gossip folk happy. What would she say when she found out? He’d been a bad boyfriend. He’d stayed in a toxic relationship, first because of sheer naiveté, then because of his own selfish reasons. He’d needed to be around Cressida and internally chastise all her flaws. That gave him a sense of not being the biggest fuckup he knew. A shiver raced down his spine. Was he still that same person?

The fuck up.

His father had been a cheater all his life. His mother stayed in the marriage for her own reasons.

How could Jack had turned out any differently?

“Hey,” she said in a small voice, yanking him from his intrusive thoughts.

He glanced down at her plate, now empty. “Want another?” he asked.

“Maybe later,” she said. “Thank you for being such a good host.”

If she only knew the type of sinful things this host wanted to do with her… “Welcome. Not bad for an old man, huh?” he said, hoping this time his attempt at lightening the mood wouldn’t darken it instead.

“I was talking to my cousin Poppy. If I had told her you were an attractive man she’d get all kinds of ideas.”

He chuckled, unsure about what to say. I’m also having these ideas. This was the time to reassure her she was in a safe environment and she had nothing to worry about… but the words got trapped in his throat. Was he being a hypocrite to himself, or to her? “I understand,” he said. “It’s good to have a support system.”

“Your sister seems to be yours. Do you have any other siblings?”

“No.” None that he knew of, anyway. With his father’s extracurricular activities, he wouldn’t have been surprised if children had come forward and demanded a paternity test. So far, though, that hadn’t been the case. “You?”

“No. My mom died when I was born and my dad never remarried,” she said, and he detected a sadness in her voice.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, and reached across the table to tap her hand. The impulsive gestured had been nothing more than a quick way to console her, to offer some comfort. Yet the brief contact sent shivers of awareness through him, from his scalp to his toes.

A warm energy passed between them, lingering like an invisible entity. She gazed at him, and layers of emotions he couldn’t quite detect flashed in her eyes. “Thank you,” she said in a small voice. Then, she cleared her throat, and asked, “How about some alcohol?”

A bad idea.

A very bad idea.

Still, he couldn’t say no. Something deep in his gut told him right now, he wouldn’t say no to almost anything she asked of him.

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