The Pregnancy Pact: The Pregnancy Secret / The CEO's Baby Surprise / From Paradise...to Pregnant!

Good grief, she had wanted to just throw herself against him this morning, feel his heart beating beneath her cheek, feel his arms close around her.

The robbery had left her far more rattled than she ever could have believed. Her sleep was troubled. She started at the least sound. Her mind drifted back to that morning if she let down her guard for even a second. And she felt dreadfully alone with the stress of it.

It was making her weak. The fact that he knew how she would react made her lonely for him, even though the sane part of her knew wanting to lean on Kade was an insane form of weakness. She had already tried that once, and he wasn’t good at comforting her. Probably what had stopped her from throwing herself at him this morning was uncertainty. Would he have gathered her to him, rested his chin on the top of her head, folded his arms around her? Or would he, after an uncomfortable moment of tolerating her embrace, have stepped away?

She did not think it would be a good idea to make herself vulnerable to Kade again.

But even with that resolve strong within her, Jessica arrived at work feeling rattled.

Her stomach was in knots.

“Good grief,” said Macy, her part-time staffer, stopping in her tracks. “Where’d you get that dress?”

“You know perfectly well I got it from the rack of Poppy Puppins at the back.”

“It looks horrible on you.”

Jessica didn’t want to look horrible. She hated it that Kade had seen her looking horrible, even though she had deliberately worn the outfit to let him know she did not care one whit what he thought of her.

Sleep deprivation, obviously, was kicking in, plus it was some kind of reaction to being the victim of a crime, just as Kade had said, because Jessica felt as if she was fighting not to burst into tears.

“It has buttons on the front!” Jessica exclaimed for the second time that day. Ignoring the pitying look from Macy, she headed to office and slammed the door behind her.

She could not focus, even before she had the thought. The thought made her stomach feel as if it had become the lead car on the world’s biggest roller coaster. It plunged downward and then did a crazy double loop. She bolted out of her office and into the store.

“Jessica? What’s wrong?”

Jessica stared at Macy, not really seeing her. This was the thought that was tormenting her: Had she told Kade to put the furniture in the guest room? But she used that room as an office! And if she was not mistaken, she had the names of adoption agencies and lawyers who specialized in that field strewn all over the desk.

“Are you okay?” Macy asked. She dropped a tiny stuffed football and rushed to Jessica’s side. “Are you going to faint?”

Jessica looked down at the bill of lading she still had clutched in her hand. She did feel terribly wobbly. “I think I’m okay,” she said doubtfully.

“I was supposed to babysit for my sister at noon, but if you want, I’ll see if my mom can do it instead.”

Jessica was ashamed that her distress, her weakness, was that obvious to her employee. But her soon-to-be ex-husband had always had a gift for rattling her world, in one way or another.

What did it matter if he knew she was contemplating adoption? But at some deep, deep level, she did not want him to know.

So though usually Jessica would have said a vehement no to an offer like Macy had just made, she didn’t. Usually, she would have pulled herself together. She could just phone and tell Kade to put Behemoth in her bedroom instead of the office.

She looked at her watch. He’d been there, in her house, for an hour and a half. It was possible he was already in the office, poring over her personal papers, uncovering her secrets.

“Oh, Macy, could you? I’d be so grateful.” She shoved the bill of lading into Macy’s hand.

And it wasn’t until Jessica was halfway home that she realized she had not even waited for Macy’s answer, but had bolted out the door as if her house was on fire.

Which, in less than half an hour, it would be.

CHAPTER NINE (#u3e8dc4ab-89bf-5f1e-8782-ac9193400ecf)

JESSICA PULLED UP to the front of her house. She usually parked in the back, but such was her sense of urgency, she had decided to cut seconds by parking out front instead.

Her sense of her life spiraling out of her control deepened at what awaited her. All the living room furniture was on the front lawn, with the exception of Behemoth, which, as she already knew, could not fit through the front door. At least she hoped the furniture on the front lawn indicated there had been no invasion of her office.

Gathering herself, Jessica went up the steps. The front door to her house was open. She peered in. Her living room was emptied of furniture.

Kade was glaring down at some instructions in his hand. There was a machine there that looked like a huge floor polisher, only it had a bag attached to it, like a lawn mower. Though it felt like further weakness, she stood there for a minute regarding him, loving the look of him.

He looked big and broad and strong. He looked like the kind of man every woman dreamed of leaning on. But that was what Jessica needed to remember.

When she had needed someone to lean on, and when that person should have been her husband? Kade had not been there. At first he had just been emotionally absent, but then he had begun working longer and longer hours, until he was physically absent, too.

By the time Kade had made it official and moved out, her abandonment by her husband had already been complete.

Remembering all that as a defense against how glorious he looked right now, Jessica cleared her throat.

“It’s not for sale,” he said, without looking up.

“What?”

He did look up then. “What are you doing back?” he asked with a frown.

“What’s not for sale?”

“The furniture. People keep stopping and asking if there’s a yard sale. The coffee table is generating quite a lot of interest.”

“I always told you it was a good piece.”

He was silent for a moment. She knew she had left herself wide-open for him to tease her about what a good piece meant to him as opposed to what it meant to her. When he didn’t follow that thread—once he had found teasing her irresistible—she was not sure how she felt. But it was not relieved.

“If Behemoth was out there,” Kade said, “people would be throwing their money at me. I’d be at the center of a bidding war. The newspaper would probably be here by now to find out what all the fuss on Twenty-Ninth Avenue was about.”

“Which brings me to my next question,” Jessica said. “Why exactly is everything out on the lawn?”

He lifted a shoulder. “Faster to toss it out there than move it all down the hall.”

“Toss?” she said.

“I meant gently move.”

Despite the fact it meant he had been careless with her possessions, no matter what he said—and what was to stop anyone from taking whatever they wanted?—she felt relief that he had obviously not been anywhere near the spare bedroom that served as her office. She would know by looking at him if he had seen that adoption stuff, but obviously he was preoccupied with the machine in front of him.

It didn’t surprise her that he would throw her things out on the lawn if that was faster than maneuvering them down the hallway. He had always had intensity of focus. When he wanted something, he simply removed the obstacles to getting it. It had made him a tremendous success in business.

It was how he had wooed her. She had been bowled over by him. But then that same attitude had become a toxin in their relationship.

A baby wasn’t going to happen? Cut your losses and move on.