A Baby For Christmas

“Hmm?”

“Did you just fall asleep?”

After a long pause. “No.”

“Yes, you did!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!” she snapped. Typical Luke behavior! Once again, she had given him more credit than he deserved. She had opened her heart, revealed something very personal to her, and he was snoring!

She would have thought at this point the man would have the decency to open his eyes. He didn’t. Luke didn’t move, but Ranger did. The kitten used his back leg to scratch an itch underneath his chin before he moved over to sit on Luke’s chest. Ranger plopped down and curled up into a tight ball. Luke didn’t bother to move.

“Luke!” she said forcefully.

“What?” Now he sounded irritated.

“You fell asleep!”

After a few ticks of the grandfather clock and a few loud Ranger purrs, Luke cracked an eye open and looked at her. “Then, why’d you wake me up?”

Her mouth dropped open. “Are you serious?”

“You bet.”

He used that abrasive tone that always rubbed her the wrong way, and she felt her blood pressure soar. She wasn’t here to play naughty “recruit” to his bad boy “drill sergeant”! She felt like punching him and she wished, at the moment, that she had a violent streak.

Was this some sort of bizarre pregnancy rage, or was Luke just that infuriating to her?

“Luke.” Her tone was snappy and she didn’t try to curb it. “We were in the middle of a conversation.”

Luke stretched, yawned and then stretched again. Finally, his eyes were open. He turned his full attention to Sophia, examined her through heavy-lidded eyes.

“We were?”

Sophia lifted up both her hands and splayed out her fingers. “Yes! We were! I said that your face bothered me.” When she repeated the phrase out loud, it sounded comical to her own ears, but she didn’t laugh as she continued. “Didn’t you hear me?”

“I heard you.” He had the audacity to sound irritated with her. She wasn’t the one who had fallen asleep in the middle of an important conversation.

She found herself glaring at him. “And?”

“And what?”

“And... What do you have to say about it?”

Luke rubbed his hands over his face, sighed heavily and finally turned his intense gaze back to her. “What do you want me to say? Oh, wait... How ’bout this. You’re the therapist. Why don’t you tell me what I should have said, since you obviously have my response all planned out for me.”

“No.” Her words were clipped and articulated with precision. “I didn’t have your response planned out for you, thank you kindly. I was waiting for you to add something constructive to the conversation. A temporary lapse of reason, quite obviously!”

“That was a conversation?”

“Luke! Now you’re just being thickheaded! Do you have anything to say or not?”

“No.”

“Nothing at all?” Her tone was incredulous; her eyebrows were lifted in disbelief. She told the man that his face bothered her and he had nothing to say?

“What’s your problem?” she demanded.

Finally, Luke was paying full attention to her. He held on to Ranger as he sat upright. The features of his handsome face hardened; his lips were downturned into a frown. His eyes were dark and unreadable.

“I’m not the one with the problem.” His tone was sharp, controlled. Slightly mocking. “Your face doesn’t bother me all that much.”

Sophia was silent; her mind raced to craft the perfect sarcastic retort. She stared at him; he stared back at her. Finally, she let out an exasperated noise and tried to push herself into a standing position. She wanted to stomp out of the room in a flurry of righteous indignation, but her belly was in the way, so it just wasn’t happening for her. Instead, she held out her hand with an irritated sigh.

“For crying out loud, Luke!” She waved her hand at him. “Help me up!”

Luke stood, clasped her hand in his and pulled her out of the overstuffed couch.

They were standing close together, too close. She could smell that intoxicating almond scent on his skin. It made her heart race even faster, and she couldn’t understand why he wasn’t budging. She pushed on his chest.

“Move it, Luke!”

She needed to find something to do, anything, to take her mind off Daniel’s arrogant, sarcastic, pain-in-the-ass brother. The farther away from Luke she could get, the better off she’d be.

Luke didn’t budge.

“Move!” She reached out and pushed him again. She was being rude and she didn’t care. For some reason, no matter what, Luke always brought out the worst in her. Just when she would start to think they had found some common ground, he went and screwed it all up.

This time, Luke turned to the side and let her by. She sent him a slit-eyed look before she lifted up her chin and breezed by him.

Luke watched as Sophia disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. He stood in the same spot for several seconds and felt as if he’d just been mugged. One minute he was enjoying the fire with Sophia, and the next thing he knew she was picking a fight with him. Why did that woman always have to make everything so damned complicated?

Luke looked at Ranger sitting on the edge of the couch cushion. “What the hell just happened here? Can you tell me that?”

Luke sat back down on the couch to contemplate his next move. One option was to not move at all. Normally, with any woman in his life, that’s the only option that would have been on the table. He would have stayed put and let them come back to him. They always did come back.

But there wasn’t anything normal about his situation, and he wasn’t dealing with just any woman. He was dealing with Sophia, and she definitely had to be handled with care.

What would Dan do in this situation?

He’d follow after her and eat crow! That’s what he’d do. Dan knew how to keep Sophia happy. And now, that was his new mission. Keep Sophia happy.

Luke dropped his head into his hands; that woman was giving him a massive headache. “So, go eat crow, marine.”

He dropped Ranger off in the bathroom and popped a pain pill into his mouth before he went to find Sophia in the kitchen. She was sitting at the table, writing in a determined fashion. She didn’t bother to acknowledge his presence.

She obviously still wanted to wring his neck.