Accidentally Expecting

“Actually, it is.” She lowered her eyes, toying with the hem of her shirt. “While I had no plan to get pregnant, I walked into that bar with every intention of seducing you.”

The corner of his mouth quirked up. Is that what she thought happened? She seduced him? “Is that so?”

She wouldn’t meet his eye. “It’s dumb really, but I was so mad at you after that interview, I wanted revenge. I wanted a way to prove you wrong. There was obvious chemistry, so I used it to my advantage. I guess the joke was on me.”

Maybe he should have been offended; instead, he felt sorry for her. She was beating herself up over something that wasn’t her fault. “Miranda, you can’t seduce someone who doesn’t want to be seduced. You could have danced naked on the table, but unless I was interested, it wouldn’t have gotten me into bed with you. And maybe you’re forgetting, but I made the first move.” He crossed the kitchen to her, cupping her chin in his hand and lifting her face to him. “Let’s forget about whose fault this is and figure out what we’re going to do.”

She nodded, gratitude in her eyes.

Touching her face brought back the memory of that night in the hotel, right before he kissed her. And since he was this close to doing it again, he let his hand drop and backed away.

“How long have you known?”

“A while. I wanted to give myself a couple of weeks to let it sink in before I told you.”

“And you’re happy?”

“I’ve always wanted children. It was just unexpected.”

He could sympathize.

“How about you?” she asked.

He wasn’t sure what he felt yet. He was still having a hard time wrapping his mind around the concept. He’d always planned on a family, too, just not like this. Looks like now he didn’t have a choice.

“When?” he asked.

“Right around Christmas.”

A Christmas baby.

He was going to be a father.

“Then I guess there’s only one thing we can do,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“We have to get married.”

Miranda had had her share of surprises in the past couple of weeks. The first was when she’d looked at her day planner and realized her period was a week late. The second had been when she’d counted back the days to her night with Zack and realized they’d slept together on what was likely her most fertile time of the month. Her third, and she thought final, surprise came when the doctor called, delivering the results of her blood test.

And none of them came close to the whopper he’d just laid on her.

“If that was a joke, it wasn’t funny,” she told him. Only, he didn’t look as if he were joking. She’d never seen him look so dead serious. Of course, she’d never seen him in anything but a suit and tie, either.

Well, that and naked.

“Do you really think I would joke about something like that?” he asked.

“I don’t know what to think. I don’t really know you, Zack. Which, if you weren’t joking, is a pretty good argument why we shouldn’t get married. I have no objections to you being a part of this baby’s life. I’m relieved that you want to be. I know that if we try we can work out a plan we both can be comfortable with.”

“I don’t think you’re looking at the big picture,” he said, in an infuriatingly patient tone. As though he were addressing a child. Or a moron. Yet somehow he managed not to sound condescending, which was even more frustrating. He was so damned sure of himself. So reasonable.

“That is all I’ve been doing for the past week,” she told him. “I’ve weighed my options. We live in the twenty-first century, where single parenthood is readily accepted.”

“Not for me it isn’t. It’s against everything I believe. I’ve built my career around family values.”

“And I’ve built mine around being a modern, independent woman. Am I just supposed to marry you and throw that all away?”

“A child should grow up with both parents.”

“And our baby will. Just in separate households.”

“If you’re worried about money, I’ll see that you’re always taken care of, no matter what.”

“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head and narrowing her eyes at him. He was stepping on very dangerous ground. “Don’t even go there. Don’t think for a minute that you’re going to turn me into Suzie Homemaker. I’ve played that game before and I lost big-time. The only person taking care of me is me.”

“So this is all about your career?” he asked, and she could see his patience slipping. He was getting frustrated. But he still hadn’t so much as raised his voice.

Would he be like her ex-husband? Would he change after they were married? Would he start calling her stupid and useless? Would he compare her to wives of his friends? Things like, “Dave’s wife keeps their house spotless. Why can’t you be more like her?” or “Look how thin Mike’s wife is. Why don’t you lose some weight?”

“Well, isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black,” she told Zack. “Tell me you’re not thinking about the jump in book sales when everyone hears you’ve reformed a man-hating feminist she-cat.”

The corners of his mouth quirked up. “Someone actually called you a man-hating feminist she-cat?”

She shot him a warning look and he wiped the smile from his face. “Saving your career is a lousy reason to get married.”

“And it’s a lousy reason not to.”

“You want a reason why we shouldn’t get married? You don’t love me and I don’t love you. We hardly know each other!”

“How about this for a reason.” He cupped a hand behind her head, threading his fingers through her hair and tilted her face up to his. The same aggressive yet gentle approach he’d used that night in the hotel. She knew what he was going to do, and she knew she should stop him. But as his head lowered, as if she were under some sort of spell, her eyes slipped closed instead. And when his lips touched hers, she went weak all over.

Talk about a pushover. Where was her sense of empowerment? The one she talked about in her book. The one every woman was supposed to have. The God-given right, not to mention responsibility, to speak up and say no.

Or maybe you had to want to say no for that to work.

The kiss went from sweet to passionate in the span of a heartbeat. He tasted like coffee and something sweet, and she was thankful for the breath mint she’d popped in her mouth on the way over from the airport.

He slid one big hand over her backside, pulling her intimately against him, and her brain nearly shut down altogether. She fisted her hands at her sides to keep from touching him.

When he finally pulled away he did it reluctantly, his lips lingering over hers for several seconds, his hands sliding up to her shoulders, then down her arms before he let go and backed away.

“Reason enough?” he asked, his tone deep and lusty.

She attempted a reply, but her voice cracked, so she cleared her throat and tried again. “You know as well as I do that animal attraction isn’t enough to make a marriage work.”

He gave her that grin, the one that managed to be cocky without actually being cocky. “We connected. You can’t deny that.”