Читать книгу The Pregnancy Pact - Kandy Shepherd, Cara Colter - Страница 21
ОглавлениеPERHAPS, KADE THOUGHT, he was not the man he had wished to be or hoped to be, but still, he was better than he had been. Because of her, and because of the love they had shared.
Was there a way to honor that before they said goodbye? What if tomorrow, Sunday, he wasn’t going to go to work after all?
Kade could tell something had shifted. Her head fell against his chest heavily, and he heard her breathing change.
And he knew he should get up and move, but there was something about this moment, this unexpected gift of his wife trusting him and being with him, that felt like one of those best moments ever, a moment just like sitting on the front step with her watching thunderstorms.
And so he accepted that he was reluctant to leave it. And eventually he fell asleep, sitting up, with Jessica’s sweet weight nestled into him and the feel of the silk of her hair beneath his fingers.
* * *
Jessica woke to the most luxurious feeling of having slept well. The sun was spilling in her bedroom window. When she sat up and stretched, she saw that through the enormous windows of the bedroom, she had a view of the river and people jogging down the paths beside it.
Had she dreamed Kade had come into her room and they had talked about thunderstorms? It seemed as if she must have, because things had not been that easy between them for a long, long time.
And yet, when she looked, she was pretty sure the bedding beside her had been crushed from the weight of another person.
Far off in that big apartment, she heard a familiar sound.
Kade was whistling.
She realized she was surprised he was still here in the apartment. She glanced at the bedside clock. It was after nine. Sunday was just another workday for Kade. Usually he was in the office by seven. But not only was he here, he sounded happy.
Like the Kade of old.
There was a light tap on the door, and it swung open. Jessica pulled the covers up around her chin as if she was shy of him.
“I brought you a coffee.”
She was shy of him. She realized she had not dreamed last night, because she had a sudden and rather mouthwatering picture of him in his underwear. Thankfully, he was fully dressed now, though he was still off the sexiness scale this morning.
It was obvious that Kade was fresh out of the shower, his dark hair towel roughened, a single beautiful bead of water sliding down his cheek to his jaw. Dressed in jeans, he had a thick white towel looped around his neck, and his chest and feet were deliciously bare.
She could look at that particular sight all day: the deepness of his chest, the chiseled perfection of his muscles, the ridged abs narrowing and disappearing into the waistband of jeans that hung low on slender hips. Her mouth actually went dry looking at him standing there.
He came in and handed her the coffee. It smelled wonderful—though not as wonderful as his fresh-from-the-shower scent—and she reached out for it. Their fingers touched, and the intensity sizzled in the air between them.
She knew that no part of last night had been a dream. He had slipped onto the bed beside her, and they had talked of thunderstorms, and she had fallen asleep with his big shoulder under her head.
She took a steadying sip of the coffee. It was one of those unexpectedly perfect moments. Kade had always made the best coffee. He delighted in good coffee and was always experimenting with different beans, which he ground himself. It had just the right amount of cream and no sugar.
He remembered. Silly to feel so wonderful that he remembered how she liked her coffee. The luxury of the bed, the sun spilling in the window, the coffee, him delivering it bare chested—yes, an unexpectedly perfect moment.
“I just talked to Jake,” he said, taking a sip of his own coffee, and eyeing her over the rim of it.
“Who?”
“Jake. The contractor who fixed the door at your shop. He’s over at your house.”
“He’s at my house at, what is it, seven o’clock on Sunday morning? How do you get a contractor, especially a good one, to do that?”
“I used my substantial charm.”
“And your substantial checkbook?” she asked sweetly.
He pretended to be offended. “He’s going to do the list of all the things that need fixing—the leak in the roof and the toilet handle and the floors, which really need refinishing now. And he’ll fix the new smoke damage on the ceiling, too. That’s the good news.”
“Uh-oh, there’s bad news.”
“Yeah. There always is, isn’t there? It’s going to take him the better part of a week to get everything done. And he says it will go a lot smoother if you aren’t there.”
She concentrated hard on her coffee. “Oh,” she finally squeaked out. A week of this? Coffee delivered by a gorgeous man whom she happened to know intimately? Who had joined her last night in bed in his underwear? She’d be a basket case. “Look, obviously I can’t stay here. I’ll call a friend. Or get a hotel.”
“Why is it obvious you can’t stay here?” he asked.
“Kade, we’re getting a divorce. We’re supposed to be fighting, not setting up as roommates.” Certainly she should not be feeling this way about the near nudity of a man she was about to divorce!
“‘From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever,’” he said softly.
“I hate it when you quote Chief Joseph.” No, she didn’t. She loved it. She loved it as much as she loved that he had made her coffee exactly as she liked it, without even having to ask.
She loved that he remembered she had once bought a piece of art—that they couldn’t afford—with a part of that quote as its name. She remembered that he hadn’t been mad. He’d turned the piece over in his hands—a shard of gourd, burned with an Appaloosa galloping across it toward the sun—and he’d smiled and said, “Worth starving for a few weeks.”
And, of course, they hadn’t starved.
But of course, that had been at the beginning, when her staying home and having a house of her own and a husband to look after had been so novel. Later, it seemed as if Kade was nothing but annoyed when she bought things for the house. She thought of reminding him of that.
But it seemed too petty. She slid him a look now. Was he quoting that because they were turning over a new leaf? Because they were not going to squabble anymore?
Everybody squabbled when they got divorced.
“You want to do something fun today?” he asked. “Since fixing the house has been removed from our list?”
No, she did not want to do something fun! She wanted to get a divorce. She wanted to sell the house they had shared. She wanted to cut ties with him. She wanted to adopt a baby and get on with her life, without him. Fun? Who had fun in the middle of a divorce?
“I thought I took the fun out of everything,” she said. She put the coffee down and folded her arms over the largeness of his shirt, which she suddenly wished was at least a little sexy. She recognized the treachery of her thoughts.
He looked bewildered. “You took the fun out of everything?”
“That’s what you said. The day you left.”
Kade looked genuinely shocked. “I didn’t say that.”
“Yes, you did.” The words, in fact, felt burned into her, as if they had become part of who she was.
“Are you sure?”
“Oh, yeah.”
He looked genuinely distressed, but she found she couldn’t let it go.
“So,” she said, trying for a bright, light note, “what do you do for fun? You’re probably an expert at it, now that the dead weight isn’t around your neck anymore.”
“Jessica, I don’t remember saying that. It must have been one of those mean, in-the-heat-of-the-moment things. I’m sorry.”
She shrugged, as if it didn’t matter one little bit, as if she had not mulled over those words every single day for a year.
“So if we were going to do something fun today—and I’m not saying that we are—what would you suggest?” Did it sound as if she was forgiving him? Was she forgiving him? “Remember, I have one arm out of commission. Skydiving is out. Ditto for rock climbing. And bull riding.”
“I said that? That you took the fun out of everything?”
“Yes! And then you packed your bag, and you left, and you never looked back.”
“I thought you’d call, Jessica.”
“Why would I call? You were the one who left.” She hesitated. She tried to strip any hurt from her voice. “I thought you’d call.”
“I didn’t know what to say.”
“Neither did I. I wasn’t going to beg you to come back.”
“Why would you beg me to come back?” he asked wearily. “And I guess that’s why I didn’t call, either. We had reached a complete impasse. We were utterly and exhaustingly miserable. We just seemed to go in endless circles. You wanted a baby. I’d had enough.”
She could see the very real pain in his face. For the first time? Had she really been so wrapped up in herself and what she wanted that she could not see what it was doing to him? She’d accused him of being insensitive to her, but she saw now it had been a two-way street. She felt an odd little shiver of awareness go up her spine.
“So,” Jessica said carefully, trying to navigate the minefield between them without getting blown up, “answer the question. What do you do with a one-armed woman for fun?”
His eyes fastened on her lips.
“Stop it,” she said.
“Stop what?” he asked innocently.
“Looking at me like that. I think that would be quite a challenge one armed.”
“What?” he asked innocently.
“You know.”
He smiled wickedly. “I think that could be quite a lot of fun.
“I think it would be darn near impossible.”
“I don’t. I like a challenge. I like figuring things out.”
Good grief, she could not stay here for days with this kind of delicious sensual tension in the air between them.
“I could start by offering to help you shower,” he said, his voice a low growl.
She threw the pillow at him. It was a clean miss, but he dodged anyway, managing to save his coffee. He laughed and made a face at her. “So are we agreed? We’ll do something fun today?”
“I suppose, if you promise to be good,” she said warningly, reaching for the other pillow.
“Do I have to? Okay, okay.” And then he backed away from her, closed the door and was gone.
She freshened up in the bathroom and put on the maternity dress. When she saw her reflection in the full-length mirror of his opulent guest bathroom, she felt she had succeeded just a little too well in her goals.
She had wanted to look as if she didn’t care! She was not sure she had wanted to look quite this bad! She looked like a waif abandoned outside an orphanage. Still, defiantly, refusing to give in to the temptation to win his approval in any way, least of all by trying to make herself attractive to him, she stepped out of the bathroom.
The truth was she hadn’t brought anything else anyway. She had thought her stay here was going to be brief. Given the shakiness of her resolve, looking pathetic seemed as if it could only be a good thing.
He was behind the kitchen counter putting croissants—obviously freshly delivered—on a plate.
“Wow. Excuse me while I pluck out my eyes. I’d forgotten the full ugliness of that dress. Or maybe I blocked it. Trauma.”
“It is not that bad.” He still had not put on a shirt. In the “life was unfair” department, this seemed to rate quite high: that he wanted to pluck out his eyes and she wanted to gaze at him endlessly.
“It is. That bad. Believe me. At least its awfulness helps me figure out the agenda for the day. We need to go shopping first.”
“I am not going shopping. I love this dress.” She didn’t actually. She thought it was quite hideous. “I’m sorry you’ll be embarrassed by me, but that’s the way it is.”
“I’m not embarrassed by you. But in the ‘find something to be grateful for’ department—”
She squinted at him suspiciously. He was not a “find something to be grateful for” kind of guy.
“I’m just glad you didn’t bring the camo one. If we end up in the woods today, I don’t want to misplace you.”
“What are the chances we’ll end up in the woods?”
“Anything can happen when you just let the day unfold.”
She should not feel nearly as thrilled by that as she did! But spontaneity had not been part of her world for a long time, and Jessica suddenly felt eager for it.
