For Their Baby

“No, really. Thanks, but I’m fine.” She pushed a curl out of her forehead with a tense hand.

Had a hint of chill returned to her voice? Had she taken “that part of town” as an insult? He hadn’t meant it as one. Her hotel had obviously been chosen to get maximum clean-and-respectable points for minimum price, which seemed like common sense to him.

He wasn’t a silver-spoon snob; but of course she didn’t know that. All she knew of him was the luxury cottage at the Bahamas, the overdecorated office in Union Square and maybe a glimpse of the Victorian house he’d just bought in the Marina district, which looked okay from the outside but was crumbling to bits on the inside, like a facade for a film set. That moldering interior was partly why his housekeeper stone-walled anyone who came knocking at the door.

Someday, he’d have to tell Kitty about the two-job, Ramen noodle years of law school. And the loans that had crippled him financially for a decade. And how, now that he’d been fool enough to buy that fading lady of a house, he would have to restore it, plank by plank, with his own time and sweat.

Someday. Yeah. If the test came back with his name on it, and they actually had a someday.

Right now, though, he had to get her into the car and back to her hotel so that she could rest. She had dark circles under her eyes that hadn’t been there ten minutes ago.

“Kitty, I—”

She shook her head firmly. “I’m not going straight back to the hotel, anyhow. I have an errand to run first. I’m fine with the bus.”

The bus? A half-hour standing in the cold, waiting for it to rumble by, followed by two hours of bumping and jostling, hanging onto a ceiling strap and nosing the next guy’s armpit?

“Can’t the errand wait? You really should take it easy and—” But she was already shaking her head again, so he tried another tack. “Tell you what. I’ll take you to do the errand, whatever it is, then drop you back at the hotel. I guarantee we’ll get it all done before the right bus even shows up.”

He almost had her. Though she probably didn’t know it, a tiny worry line had formed between her eyebrows. He could practically see her willpower fading as she glanced uncertainly toward the front doors. He knew very little about her, but he knew, from the quick bar-side chitchat, customer to bartender, that she was from Virginia.

He would have known, even if she hadn’t told him. Her accent, with its soft I’s and almost inaudible G’s, spoke of a childhood spent playing under the magnolia trees of the Deep South, not on the foggy hillsides of northern California.

Besides, even natives occasionally found the public transit system daunting.

“Kitty.” He put his hand on her shoulder—and almost pulled it away again, shocked to find that his palm instantly recognized the exact shape of the curve, the exact feel of the warm, satiny, sun-bronzed skin. “Let me help. You look done in, and that can’t be good for you—or the baby.”

He wondered whether she’d say something snarky, something about how charming it was that he suddenly gave a damn about the baby, but she didn’t. Maybe she was too tired.

She nodded slowly. “All right,” she said. She took a deep breath. “Thank you.”

She stood somberly by his side, without chitchat, as he gave his ticket to the medical complex valet. When the car came, she settled herself gingerly, and leaned her forehead against the window for a few seconds, with her eyes closed.

As he pulled out onto the street, she finally spoke.

“The errand is…well, I have to go buy and pick up the uniform for my new job. It’s near my hotel, though, so it’s not far out of the way.”

She had taken a job? Here, in San Francisco? Thank God he was accustomed to controlling his face in court, so he didn’t let his shock show. But…surely she wasn’t planning to stay here long enough to need a job!

And that’s when he realized that, despite everything, he had continued to believe that this whole mess might go away soon.

That she might go away soon.

He tried to relax his hands on the wheel. “Where’s the job?”

“At the Bull’s Eye,” she said. Her chin tilted up maybe an eighth of an inch. “Weekend bartender.”

The silence that followed the statement was loaded, like a gun. A hundred incredulous phrases leapt to the tip of his tongue, and though he somehow bit them back, she obviously guessed at every one. She didn’t look at him, but the muscles in her body seemed coiled, ready to strike if he dared to criticize.

But a bartender? Damn it, a bartender? On her feet, in the middle of the night, in that neighborhood? As fragile as she looked? She’d lost ten pounds since the Bahamas—ten pounds she didn’t have to spare. Did she really think the Bull’s Eye was any place for a pregnant woman? Hadn’t she had enough of groping drunks to last her a lifetime?

Something hot and tight moved through his chest, and he found his fingers clenching the wheel in spite of his best efforts.

He knew how any of those questions would sound. Controlling. Patronizing. Snobbish. The mother of my child, a bartender?

He could hear her comeback now. Guess you should have thought of that, jackass, before you slept with a bartender.

He turned right onto Market, his tires complaining as he took the corner a little sharply. He eased back on the gas and forced himself to take a breath. Regroup, he ordered himself. This wasn’t about snobbery, but he’d be damned if he knew what it was about.

He had no say over where she worked. And whose fault was that? His own. He was the one who had dictated the rules here. He had rejected any official investment in Kitty, her life or her unborn child, until and unless the tests proved the baby was his.

So what was this sudden overprotective reaction all about? Why did he care what she did to earn a few bucks while she waited for the test results?

Because—

Because the whole thing was impossible, that was why. Insane. She was nothing to him today, but tomorrow they might be as intimately connected as two people could be. Nothing in between. Either she was a lying nutjob who would vanish like a bad smell, or she was the mother of his child, who would change his world forever.

And he couldn’t do anything but wait to see which way the coin fell.

This shouldn’t have happened. They’d had one sexy, rather sweet night together, the way millions of people the world over did all the time. They’d both been trying to drown some sorrows, forget some ghosts. Neither of them had dreamed they might be stepping into this kind of trap.

So what the hell was he supposed to say? What the hell was he supposed to feel?

The silence stretched on, but eventually grew less tense as she seemed to realize he wasn’t going to lecture her. She gave him directions as needed, and by the time they reached the Bull’s Eye, David felt back in at least some semblance of control.

He parked near the door—it was far too early for a crowd, even in this neighborhood. He turned off the engine and swiveled toward her. She looked pale, as if the wordless emotional standoff that had just passed between them had taken its own kind of toll.

He offered a smile as a truce. “Would you like me to come in with you?”

She shook her head. “I won’t be a minute.”

She was as good as her word. Less than sixty seconds later, she emerged from the small, dark, brown-planked building, hugging a white plastic sack to her chest. Her face was bent over the sack, and she walked so quickly he wondered if she was running from someone.

Had her new boss given her a hard time?

She pulled open the door and lurched in.

“Is everything okay?” He couldn’t see her expression. Ducked down like this, her face was hidden by a cascade of springy green curls. “Did you get your uniform?”

“Yes.” Her voice sounded odd. Was she crying?

“Kitty—”

“Please,” she said in that same muffled strangeness. “Could you take me home now?”

“Of course.” He started the car and pulled back onto the main drag. She still hugged that bag, wrapping her arms around it as if it were a life raft.

He tried to think of something to say, but failed. He had an insane urge to tell her that if she hated the idea of taking that bartending job, she didn’t have to do it. He’d help out, financially. Hell, even if the baby wasn’t his, he would help. He didn’t want her to have to serve drinks in that greasy, half-rotted dump.