Covert Conception

He looked at her as if her ears were on backwards. “You’re damn right that’s what I’m saying.”

And he was adamant about it, too.

Natalie suddenly felt even more desperate, and it was desperation that made her toss the next question at him. “Why should I believe you?”

“Because I’m telling you the truth, that’s why.” Rick opened his mouth. Closed it. Shook his head. Cursed. “Hell’s bells, Natalie, do you really believe I’d drug you so I could sleep with you?”

She’d already asked herself that. At least a dozen times. And during none of that personal questioning had she convinced herself that Rick would do something like this. He wasn’t the sort of man who required drugging or any coercion to get a woman into bed.

“I’m pregnant,” she restated. “I don’t know how it happened, and my only clue is that surveillance video. I need answers, and that’s why I’m here.”

He shook his head. “What you need is to have the pregnancy test repeated.”

“I’ve already done that.” She was up to a dozen times of watching for minus signs on little urine-soaked white plastic sticks. She’d try a dozen more if necessary, praying for one negative result. “They’ve all been positive.”

“Then, you need to see a doctor right away,” Rick quickly suggested.

“I did that a few hours ago. I had an ultrasound and a thorough examination. There’s definitely a baby.”

He cursed again, made his way to the chair, gripped the armrest and dropped down onto the seat. “This can’t be happening. The tests, the doctor, the ultrasound and the video are all wrong. They have to be.”

She’d had that reaction, too. Denial. It’d taken hours to get past just the tip of it. But she couldn’t afford Rick that same amount of time to work through his issues. She had an eerie feeling that time wasn’t on their side. “I need you to think back through—”

“Something happened that night,” he interrupted. But he didn’t say anything else.

Natalie froze. Waited. She forced herself to stay calm. “Obviously something happened,” she said when Rick just sat there.

He glanced at her stomach. “I didn’t mean that. I mean I blacked out.”

Her heart had been racing before that, but she could have sworn it stopped mid-beat. Natalie shook her head. “When? How?”

But before he could answer, the phone rang. He waved it off, but the ringing continued and when he perused his shop and apparently realized his employees were all busy, he reached across the desk and answered the phone.

Natalie actually welcomed the interlude. Yes, they needed to get to the bottom of this. Yes, she desperately needed to know what’d happened to her. To them. But she also needed a moment to compose herself. Right now, a thin thread of composure was the only thing that prevented her from screaming. And she didn’t want to lose it in front of Rick.

What was going on?

What?

Natalie had been asking herself that for a day and a half and was afraid she wasn’t any closer to the truth than she had been when Kitt had first dropped this bombshell.

She was pregnant.

Pregnant!

With a child she couldn’t even remember conceiving.

Unplanned motherhood alone would have been more than enough to deal with, but motherhood under these circumstances was terrifying.

“I’ll get that work order,” she heard Rick say at the end of a heavy, frustrated sigh.

He stood, brushed past her. He was so close that she had no trouble catching his scent. With the nonexistent A/C, the steamy claustrophobic office and the fact that he’d obviously just finished a long day of manual labor, his body odor should have been offensive.

It wasn’t.

Far from it.

Oh, there was sweat all right. His white cotton T-shirt was practically soaked, and the snug fabric strained across his toned pecs and arms. His hair was wet as well. His slightly too-long coffee-colored hair fell, permanently disheveled, almost to his shoulders. But he didn’t smell sweaty. He somehow managed to smell, well, manly.

He snatched one of the forms from the top of the filing cabinet and read off some figures. Because her energy seemed sapped and her pulse had turned thick and syrupy, Natalie simply sat on the edge of his desk, watching and listening. Waiting for him to finish—without a clue what they would say to each other once he was done. None of her life experiences had prepared her for this.

Rick’s movements were jerky. Stiff. Angry. And he kept casting glances her way. Natalie was casting some his way as well.

Sweet heaven, if she thought for one minute that he’d had any voluntary part in this, she would have had him arrested. Except an arrest wouldn’t really have given her answers.

Nor would it change what had happened.

She slid her hand over her stomach. A baby. Even though she’d seen the ultrasound, it didn’t seem real. Maybe once she understood the circumstances, once she’d heard a plausible explanation—any explanation—maybe then she could come to terms with this. It wasn’t logical, but at the moment, she needed that hope.

Rick said an abrupt goodbye to the caller and slammed down the phone as if he’d declared war on it. In the same motion, he waved off one of his employees who was trying to get his attention through the small window.

“What exactly do you remember about that night?” Rick demanded.

The answer was readily available on the tip of her tongue—mainly because she’d already asked herself the same question again and again. “I was on prescription meds, and I was exhausted. So, most of the party is a little blurry.”

“How could we not remember that?” He pointed to the frozen image of them on the screen.

“I don’t know.”

He made a sound of agreement. It blended with his jagged huffs of breaths. “How do we know it really happened? Those people could be actors.”

“They aren’t. Kitt had the images enhanced, and if they’re actors, then they’re exact replicas of us, right down to my freckles and that little scar on the left side of your neck that you got fly-fishing when you were a kid.”

He threw his hands in the air before dropping them to his hips. “Then, maybe that’s what they are—actors with very authentic makeup.”

She gave a weary been-there-done-that sigh. “I would love it if that were true. But it wouldn’t explain the bruise on my arm. Or the bruise on your shoulder. And it certainly wouldn’t explain this pregnancy.”

“Maybe the pregnancy happened some other time,” he fired back.

For some reason, a reason Natalie didn’t want to explore, that stung. Yet, Rick certainly had a right to ask that. If their positions had been reversed, she would certainly want to know.

“I haven’t had sex in over a year,” Natalie explained. Not easily. Discussing her love life—or lack thereof—with Rick Gravari wasn’t tops on her list of favorite things to do. “At least, I haven’t had sex that I know about.”

He cocked his head to the side and gave her a flat look. “And you think you unknowingly had sex with me?”

Weary of the questions and the verbal battle between them, she tipped her head back to the screen. “It’s you in that video, Rick. But if you’re looking for definitive proof, I don’t have it. The video can’t be further enhanced. There’s no footage from a different angle that might give us a clearer image. And it’s too early to do a DNA test to prove paternity. I asked,” she added when his flat look was no longer so flat.

That caused a slight lift of his eyebrow. Natalie responded by lifting an eyebrow of her own. And by asking one very important question. “You said you blacked out at the party. What happened?”