Pregnancy Countdown

“You treat injured people for a living. Some of them must cry,” she sniffed. Her face crumbled with fresh tears.

“Yeah, but I don’t know them.” He reached out and pulled her into his arms. He bestowed awkward pats on her back while looking as if he was ready to run at any minute.

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed into his jacket. “Maybe I’m just tired. It’s been a traumatic week.”

“Hey,” he said gently, now softly rubbing her back. “You’ve had a lot going on. Ginna told me she wanted to go with you and you told her no. Maybe you should have let her so you wouldn’t have been alone.”

“And have her postpone her wedding? No, I wanted her to go ahead. There was nothing she could have done in Seattle. Besides, think of the commute from Newport Beach. She had a wedding to attend, since she was the guest of honor.” She tried for a bit of humor, but the stark look of misery in her eyes belied it. The last thing she would have done was ruin her best friend’s wedding.

“There is definitely something she could have done. She would have been with you,” Mark pointed out.

Nora shook her head but said nothing. She wrapped her arms around his waist. It had been a long time since she’d been in a man’s arms. She’d forgotten how good it felt. All week she’d run on sheer nerves and coffee. She’d sat there and watched her grandmother’s spirit leave her. Now she felt as if a big piece of herself had gone missing. Growing up, she’d only had her grandmother to count on when her father left her and her mother. Then her own mother had mentally abandoned her daughter. With her grandmother gone, Nora was now truly alone.

All of a sudden she knew just what she needed.

“Please stay, Mark. I don’t want to be alone tonight,” she whispered against his shirtfront. When she felt his body tense, she started to pull back. “I’m sorry. I’m tired. I don’t know why—” Her words were cut off by the swift descent of his mouth on hers.

NORA’S DREAM involved lying in front of a cozy fire. She felt so comfortable that she thought about stretching out under her lovely soft blanket to keep this comfy feeling.

She smiled as the heat wrapped itself around her. Then her sleepy mind realized something touching her wasn’t all soft and fluffy and comfy. In fact, it felt pretty firm. And male.

Her eyes flew open.

She wasn’t lying in front of a fire. Yes, there was a soft fluffy blanket, but it was draped down around her ankles. The warmth she was experiencing had to do with something more than any flames. A gentle rumble resembling a snore sounded in her ear while a hand settled in a warm possessive position over her breast. She didn’t miss that she hadn’t bothered putting on a nightgown last night. An equally naked male body was lying spoon-fashion against her back. Then she noticed the male body was definitely aroused, and that had her memory replaying everything in living color.

Oh my God! What have I done?

Nora’s first instinct was to jump out of bed and put as much distance between her and temptation as she could. Her second instinct was to snuggle back against the human furnace that was keeping her so warm and toasty. Perhaps give a couple of wiggles to wake the rest of him up. Or maybe she’d just try to breathe, because she was positive all the air had left her lungs.

For now she settled for holding her breath. She stealthily made her way out of bed without waking her companion. She crept into the bathroom and carefully closed the door behind her.

She flipped the light switch and winced as the bright light poured down on her. Perhaps checking herself in the mirror wasn’t such a good idea. She moaned softly as she leaned across the counter to get a closer look at herself.

Her hair looked as if it had been through a wind tunnel, while her cheeks were much too rosy for someone who must have had maybe a good half hour’s sleep for what remained of last night.

This wasn’t the mirrored reflection of a woman who was on the verge of a full-blown panic attack. Her eyes sparkled with brilliant emerald lights, her normally pale skin was flushed with color and, if she wasn’t mistaken, there was the slightest hint of a satisfied smile curving her lips.

“Oh my God,” she moaned again. “I look like a woman who spent last night making the kind of wild incredible love that you only read about in books.” She noted how languid her movements were as she stretched her arms over her head. She stared at her reflection again, leaning over the counter until her nose almost touched the glass.

“It’s not as if I picked up a stranger in a bar and brought him back home for incredible sex. It’s not as if I’ve just had a one-night stand,” she whispered to her image. “All right, it was a one-night stand because this can’t happen again.” A whimper escaped her lips. “Oh my God, I had sex with my best friend’s brother,” she whispered to her image. “I had heart-stopping, mind-blowing, wild, crazy lovemaking that deserved nothing less than a triple-X rating.”

More strangled whimpers left Nora’s lips. She braced her hands against the sink edge, feeling light-headed as she tried to concentrate on regulating her labored breathing.

She straightened up and pushed her hair away from her face. Nothing but an application of shampoo and conditioner would help her tangled tresses.

She took the quickest shower in history, all the while praying Mark wouldn’t wake up and decide to join her. After last night, she wasn’t sure she could resist him.

Last night.

A heated tingling started way down in the pit of her stomach at a memory that was sending some very real pictures to her mind. All in incredibly living color complete with sound effects.

She moaned and quickly twisted the knob to cold. It took a lot of willpower not to shriek as the icy water rained down on her head.

“It was temporary insanity. It was temporary insanity.” She turned the four words into her personal mantra.

By the time her body temperature equaled that of the South Pole, Nora felt prepared to face the day.

And Mark.

MARK WOKE UP feeling as if he’d conquered the world, and it had nothing to do with the comfortable bed he was lying in.

He rolled over hoping to find a warm and willing Nora lying beside him, but no such luck.

He settled for lying back and thinking about the previous night.

He’d only planned on picking Nora up at the airport and depositing her safely at home. He was lucky enough to still have both sets of grandparents, so the idea of losing a loved one was foreign to him. But he’d figured that Nora would be feeling pretty low when she got back. The least he could do was make sure she didn’t have to go home alone.

What he hadn’t expected was to have her in his arms and later find himself in her bed.

When they had dated, their relationship hadn’t moved to the intimate stage. Not that he hadn’t tried. But instead of charming his way into her bed, he had found himself out in the cold.

To this day he still wasn’t sure why Nora had broken up with him. If that hadn’t been bad enough, she had tripled the action by doing it on Valentine’s Day.

Since that day, Nora had treated him as if he were a carrier of the worst kind of plague. At one point he’d even gone so far as to ask Ginna why Nora had broken up with him. All his sister had done was give him one of those haughty sniffs she did so well and inform him that if he wanted to know that badly, he’d have to ask Nora directly. Since she hadn’t been returning his phone calls, that hadn’t been an option for him.

That had been two years ago and he still hadn’t found the nerve to ask Nora what caused the breakup.

He’d been stunned when she told him she didn’t want to be alone last night. At first he’d kissed her as an attempt to comfort her. The last thing he would have done was take advantage of a woman who was vulnerable, but dammit, she’d felt so good and so right in his arms. Then when she’d asked him to make love to her, he couldn’t think of anything else but banishing the shadows from her eyes. Calling what they’d shared mind-blowing was an understatement. If he hadn’t woken up in Nora’s bed, he would have been convinced it had been nothing more than a hot fantasy dream.

He was in the midst of remembering every incredible minute, when the door opened and Nora breezed in.

She looked more animated than she had when he’d picked her up at the airport. Her copper-penny hair was piled up into one of those complicated twists secured by a tortoiseshell clip. He was disappointed that she was covered up by a deep emerald-green plush robe that fell to her toes. He preferred seeing her bare skin flushed with desire. But he’d settle for the coffee cup she held in her hands.

“Good morning,” she greeted him with a bright smile and a light kiss on the mouth. She stepped back before he could deepen it. She handed him the cup. The rich aroma of coffee tempted his nostrils. “There’s a razor and clean towels in the bathroom,” she informed him. “I’ll have breakfast ready by the time you’re done.” She smiled at him again before she exited the room.

“I would have been willing to sacrifice myself as the main course,” he told the closed door. Since she didn’t return, he settled for climbing out of bed and walking into the bathroom, where he found his tuxedo hanging neatly on the back of the door. The last he remembered, his jacket had been abandoned somewhere in the hallway and the pants tossed on the floor just before they fell onto the bed.

Mark turned on the shower and tested the temperature before stepping into the cubicle. He surveyed the array of shower-gel bottles lining the shelf.

“I can either smell like a sugar cookie, fudge brownie or key lime pie,” he murmured. “Whatever happened to plain old vanilla?” He finally settled on key lime pie, thinking it would be similar to the lime-scented shaving foam he used. He soon discovered it wasn’t even close.

It wasn’t Mark’s first time in a woman’s bathroom, but it was the first time he’d been in Nora’s. Deciding he had the time, he did a little exploring. A closet revealed a colorful supply of towels in tangerine, turquoise, lime and lemon colors. The bath towels were oversize, the dimensions perfect for a man. He wondered how many men had showered in her bathroom. He quickly decided it wasn’t something he wanted to think about.

Once he finished, he towel dried his hair and worked to make himself as presentable as a morning-after visitor could be.

Mark left his jacket in the bathroom as he followed his nose to the kitchen. The homey aroma of food cooking sent his appetite level up several notches.

Damn, if he didn’t feel like the man of the house going in to have breakfast with the woman of the house. He stopped abruptly. Now where had that come from?