Читать книгу It Started With A Pregnancy - Christy Jeffries - Страница 11

Chapter Two

Rebekah bit her lip, trying to resist the urge to hide the bottle behind her back. She’d already flung herself on the ground in front of him as though she were a combat soldier jumping onto a live grenade. At this point, there was no way to pretend the emotional explosion hadn’t already detonated around them.

Still.

How had he read the label so quickly?

She didn’t realize she’d spoken the question out loud until Grant replied, “I won the national speed-reading championships for my high school four years in a row.”

“You’re a speed reader?” she asked as she rose to her feet, seizing on the opportunity to redirect the conversation.

“I was also the Duval County Spelling Bee champion in eighth grade,” he added. “But I don’t especially feel a need to discuss my academic accomplishments right this second. Is there something you want to tell me, Rebekah?”

She watched his soft lips move, yet his question sounded so formal, as did the way he said her name. Her parents were the only ones who called her Dimples, and she hated it when people used the common nicknames Becky or Bekah, or even Beck. So it wasn’t as though Grant should be calling her anything other than Rebekah. Still, his question felt like a chastisement all the same.

Straightening her spine, she forced herself to look him directly in those ocean-blue eyes and said, “I might be pregnant.”

“Whoa.” He sank into the paisley upholstered chair right in front of her, swiping the sun-bleached blond hair off his forehead. “I mean...whoa.”

Yep, that was the response she’d been anticipating.

And now that he was acting as she’d initially expected, Rebekah felt her own role fall back into place as she took charge of the situation. “I took a test this morning, but I’m waiting for the doctor to confirm it.”

“How...” he started, then scrubbed a hand over the golden stubble on his jaw. “I mean...”

“How did this happen?” she offered. “I’m sure the usual way.”

“I was actually going to ask how far along you are.” He used his tan forearms to push himself up a little straighter and Rebekah wondered if he was already calculating the date in his mind.

“I’m four weeks late, so that would put me at eight weeks.” She held up a warning finger. “If I am, in fact, pregnant. Like I said, there’s no need to get all worked up over a store-bought test.”

Or two tests, if anyone was counting.

Grant sucked in a deep breath, his nostrils flaring slightly as he exhaled. “So when do we go to the doctor to confirm it?”

We. The skin on the back of her neck tingled. “Well, I have an appointment next week. If you want, I can send you a text afterward and let you know if there’s any news.”

There was no point in mentioning that she’d need to ask for his cell phone number again.

“A text? If there’s any news?” When his eyes finally focused on hers, Rebekah swallowed a tiny lump of guilt. There was accusation practically shooting from their blue depths. “Were you even planning to tell me?”

“Of course I planned to tell you.” Eventually. After she’d figured out what she was going to do. She twisted her lower lip between her teeth.

She waited for the next question to come—the one about whether the baby was his—but he only studied her intently before slowly nodding.

Grant slid his smartphone out of his pocket and she remembered when the device had been sitting out on the table that evening while they were closing down happy hour. She’d commented on the battered cover and the cracked screen and he’d told her the story of how he’d been testing out one of his company’s waterproof cases when he’d wiped out near a coral reef and cracked his surfboard in half. The still-functional phone was one of his biggest marketing tools when it came to selling his company’s tech products. Not that she had a very clear picture of exactly what it was he did for the company.

This wasn’t good, she thought, giving her head a quick shake to clear it. She might be having this man’s baby, yet she didn’t even know what he did for a living.

“What day is the appointment?” he asked as he swiped at an app on his phone. It was the same online calendar she’d unsuccessfully tried to get her parents to use.

“Um...” Rebekah tilted her head, unsure if she wanted him to know. Unfortunately, he’d practically accused her of keeping the pregnancy from him already and she didn’t want to give him any reason to think that she had something to hide. Besides, it wasn’t like he’d actually stay in town long enough to go with her. Or that he’d even want to go. “It’s next Thursday.”

“Uh-huh,” he said as he tapped something else. “What time?”

“Grant, you aren’t actually planning to go to the doctor’s office with me, are you?”

At this, he lifted his eyes to hers again and she could see that the full force of his earlier suspicion had returned. “Of course I’m planning to be there. You didn’t think I’d leave you to go through this alone, did you?”

There was no polite way to answer that question. Frankly, there wasn’t even an honest way of answering without admitting that not only had she been thinking that exact thing, she was hoping for it. Instead, she opted to remind him of the logistics involved. “But don’t you have to be back in Jacksonville for work or...something?”

His fingers flew over his cracked phone screen, typing as he spoke. “Actually, I’m flying to a digital marketing conference in San Francisco tonight after I check in on my aunts. I’ll just change my return flight so I can swing by here on the way home next week.”

Rebekah heard him speaking, but the only word her brain seized on was aunts. A rush of unease shot to her stomach. “You can’t tell your aunts about this.”

“About what?” he asked, his attention seemingly focused fully on the electronic device in his hands and—luckily—not on the beads of sweat breaking out across Rebekah’s forehead. She resisted the urge to grab one of the vet reports off her desk and fan her heated face.

“About me. About us.” Her finger pointed back and forth at each of them, before her hand dropped to her still-flat belly. “And especially not about the baby.”

He lifted his head finally, his eyes zeroing in on her. Not in the suspicious way that she was accustomed to from him, but in a sexy, hungry sort of way. All that tension in her tummy doubled and a sudden warmth spread under her skin.

Lord help her, but even as she faced the very man who now had the power to redirect her entire future, she was still hopelessly attracted to him.

Stiffening her shoulders, Rebekah commanded her body to get itself together. This reaction must be some sort of pregnancy-induced hormonal imbalance.

Not that she was exactly mother material herself, but Grant was the complete opposite of the type of guy she would choose to father her baby. What made things even more unbearable was the way his elderly aunts doted on him and acted as if he’d hung the moon, making his job down in Jacksonville sound like the most important career in the world. In reality, he worked for a tech company that encouraged beach days and flexible hours and spontaneous yoga sessions in their cubicle-free environment. While some might describe him as easygoing and charming, to Rebekah, Grant seemed like one of those men who’d never really grown up. Maybe it was because she’d yet to see him dressed in a shirt with a collar.

Or a shirt that didn’t highlight his strong, broad shoulders.

As she stared at the faded logo on the soft cotton tee stretched across his muscular chest, she ignored the desire curling inside her and wondered for the hundredth time this morning how she’d ended up in this situation with this man, of all people.

Because he was sexy as hell. That’s how.

“Rebekah.” Grant finally rose to his feet before walking over to stand in front of her. When she ducked her head to avoid those piercing eyes, he softly placed a finger under her chin and lifted her face to meet his gaze. “I won’t say a word to anyone until we get the green light from the doctor.”

All she could manage was a slight nod and a slow release of air from her too-tight lungs. She didn’t want to talk about green lights or anything else with him until she had a concrete plan in place.

A plan that most likely wouldn’t involve her spending any more time with Grant Whitaker.

* * *

Standing face-to-face, Grant didn’t immediately remove his hand from the curve of Rebekah’s cheek as he studied her resigned expression.

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her. Despite the fact that he doubted she would’ve told him about the pregnancy quite so soon if she hadn’t nervously knocked over that bag, he did believe she was honest and honorable. But there was something about the woman that always threw him off-balance. Something that she kept locked up tight behind the professional clothes and the detailed financial reports and the organized meeting notes she always passed off to his aunts, who would inadvertently leave the meticulously typed documents behind in the kennel of a sick Labrador or under a pallet of kitty-litter bags. In fact, while he’d been waiting for Rebekah in the parking lot this morning, he’d wandered over to the stables and found one of the llamas eating the cell tower proposal that Rebekah had drafted for a city council meeting.

Rebekah was nothing if not thorough. Which made it difficult for him to believe that she hadn’t already formulated a specific course of action.

Eventually, she took a step back, forcing his hand to drop as she pivoted to rearrange some papers on her desk. Without making eye contact, she began to speak. “Well, I appreciate you stopping by and...you know...”

“Bringing you your keys?” he suggested, not about to let her simply dismiss him without some sort of confirmation that she would be in contact with him soon. “Oh, and for offering my unflagging support at the doctor’s appointment as well as with any decisions that need to be made?”

“Are you hoping for a certain decision, Grant?” Even from this side view, he could see her shoulders square off as though she was preparing for battle. So it was no surprise when she fully faced him with the dimples in her cheeks completely hidden as she forced out a heavy breath. “Perhaps one that lets you off the hook?”

For the first time in his life, he felt completely unequipped to handle the situation before him. Grant was the problem solver in his family, the one who dropped everything to help those who needed him. However, the determined line of Rebekah’s clenched jaw suggested that she didn’t want his assistance in solving this problem.

Not that her being pregnant was a problem, he corrected himself as he rolled his shoulders backward to loosen the tense muscles.

He carefully thought about his next words. “Actually, if the decision were up to me, I’d have a house full of kids.”

Her perfectly arched brows shot nearly to her hairline, and before she could open her mouth, he already knew what she was thinking.

“Not that I would have purposely gotten you pregnant!” The words tumbled out of his mouth defensively and his right hand lifted as though he were swearing a solemn oath.

“Shhh!” Her eyes darted right past him and toward the reception desk. From outside the office, he could hear a door opening and what sounded like a couple of volunteers discussing last night’s episode of Top Chef.

He lowered his voice. “I’m just stating for the record that none of this was my intent. In fact, I even used that hot-pink condom that left glitter all over my...”

She immediately clapped her hand to his mouth.

He mumbled more words behind her palm, but she didn’t remove it. So he did what any man would do when presented with a beautiful woman’s skin so close to his lips. He kissed the sensitive spot right between her thumb and forefinger.

Rebekah yanked her palm back and her eyes narrowed into a warning glance. Her voice came out in a fierce whisper. “Well, at least I had...protection.”

Her implication hung in the air between them.

“Listen, I’m sorry for not being better prepared.” It was an odd feeling, being on the defensive like this, and for a moment it was difficult for him to get the words out. “As much as you might want to think otherwise, I usually don’t go home with—”

“Grant,” Aunt Bunny interrupted as she swept into the office. Rebekah jumped away from him so quickly, he heard a thunk against her desk. The sweet older woman glanced down at his preferred beach attire. “I wasn’t expecting you this early. Were the waves too small to hold your interest this morning?”

“You know me too well, Aunt Bunny.” Grant lifted his arms and shrugged his shoulders. “When I saw that the surf was under two feet, I caught an earlier flight into Raleigh–Durham and figured I’d rent a car and swing by to go over the marketing plans for the upcoming adoption events.”

Bunny’s attention turned to Rebekah, who was holding herself so rigidly she could’ve been one of his surfboards. Except with many more curves. Did it make him a bad person to want to pull the sexy and stiff woman close to him and run his hands along her waist and over her full hips until she relaxed and melted in his arms?

His normally absentminded aunt might tend to pay more attention to animals of the four-legged variety than she did to humans, but her eyes were uncharacteristically sharp as her glance bounced back and forth between Grant and Rebekah. Finally, Bunny asked, “Where are they?”

“Where are what?” Grant sidestepped around the upholstered chair, pivoting his body in the hopes of blocking Bunny’s view of the empty pharmacy bag threatening to fall off Rebekah’s desk again. He had to command his own eyes not to scan the room for the prenatal vitamins.

“Your marketing plans?” His aunt lifted a thin gray brow.

“Oh. On my laptop,” Grant replied, hoping she wouldn’t ask why he’d left his computer in the rental car. He didn’t want to admit that he’d been in such a hurry to follow Rebekah inside the building this morning, he hadn’t given his initial excuse for flying into town a second thought.

“All that will have to wait.” Bunny waved a work-roughened hand at him. “Since I have both of you together, come outside and see our new sign. The old one was destroyed with all that tornado damage, and we wanted to install an extra one at the edge of the parking lot so people can now see it from the road.”

“Oh, they’re early.” Rebekah jumped at the excuse to get out of the office and away from the conversation they’d been having. Literally. Her knee-length skirt fluttered open at the slit as she made a little hop to skip past him.

As he followed her and Bunny past the reception desk and through the lobby, Grant had to restrain himself from hurrying to catch up with them. Now that Rebekah was no longer watching him so intently, waiting to see if he’d give the wrong reaction, he could take a moment to let her words sink in.

She was possibly pregnant. With his child.

What he’d told her about wanting a house full of children was true. However, he hadn’t expected to become a father quite so soon. Rebekah’s earlier revelation had landed like a sucker punch to the gut. The blow had been swift and unexpected and heavy, dropping him into the chair as he attempted to wrap his mind around what had just happened. Then, just as quickly, Rebekah had pulled back emotionally, that initial hit leaving a hollow, empty feeling in his stomach.

He was used to being needed and usually relished his role as the guy who came in and solved things. It was what made him so good at his job. It was why his mom and his sisters often relied on him to keep his family’s surf shop on top of the latest trends. It was why he was currently in Spring Forest to oversee his elderly aunts’ troubled financial situation.

But Rebekah didn’t seem to want anything from him. At least, not yet. Maybe she would change her mind after the appointment next week.

Either way, the woman would need to get used to Grant being around. If she was, in fact, having his child, she would soon learn that he always put his family first.