About the Baby

“Don’t go.” The words came out before he knew he was going to say them, interrupting her in the middle of a sentence about something or other.

“Lucas.”

He spun around and stalked across the room toward her, feeling like a crazy man. Feeling like he was going to jump out of his skin any second.

“Please,” he begged, barely recognizing himself. “I have a bad feeling about this trip and I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you, Kara. Please don’t go.”

He grabbed on to her shoulders and pulled her into his arms so that her heart beat steadily against his. Then he buried his face in her hair and just breathed, inhaling the sweet strawberry-and-magnolia scent deep into his lungs. He was acting like a maniac—he knew he was—but he couldn’t seem to do anything to stop it. From the second he’d heard the word Ebola, his whole world had spun out of control.

“I’m going to be fine, Lucas.” She murmured the words against his neck because she couldn’t move. Couldn’t pull back. He was holding her too tightly but he couldn’t seem to ease up. “You know I’m careful.”

“There’s careful and then there’s insane, Kara. This is insane.”

“No. It’s my job.” She shoved against his chest but he wasn’t budging. At that moment, he thought he could hold her forever if she’d let him. “You think I don’t worry about you?” she asked. “Every day you go to work in the closest thing to a war zone that the U.S. has to offer. Less than a year ago you had a shooting in the lobby of your clinic and you ran straight into it.”

“That was different. My patients—”

“I know. Your patients were out there and there was no way you were going to leave them at the hands of some coked-up teenager with a gun. But those people in Eritrea, they’re my patients. If I can help them, Lucas, then I have to go.”

Kara struggled against him, managing to pull back just enough to lift her soft, delicate hands to his face. As she held him, she looked deeply into his eyes and said, “I need to go.”

He knew it, had known it all along. And still, “You’re my best friend. I don’t want to lose you.”

“You won’t.”

“Promise me,” he told her, knowing he sounded desperate but not giving a damn. He was desperate. She meant more to him than he ever could have imagined.

“Lucas—”

“Promise me!”

“I promise.” She looked him straight in the eye, her green eyes shining with sincerity and compassion and something else he couldn’t quite define. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

He shuddered, nodded. Dropped his head so that his forehead rested against hers. Then closed his eyes and just breathed.

He didn’t know how long they stayed like that, locked in their own little world. Not long enough, because when she finally stepped back he was still not ready to let her go. Wrapping a hand around her long, slender neck, he pulled her face back to his and, for the second time that night, captured her lips with his own.

If he was going to have to let her go, going to have to spend the next weeks and months racked with

terror that she was going to die in Africa, he was not letting her leave without having something to hang on to. He’d broken off the kiss in the park when her phone rang, and he’d regretted it ever since. No matter what happened, no matter how it shifted things between them, he was going to have this kiss untainted by fear or sorrow or regret. They owed each other that much.

But he wasn’t counting on the way they both lit up the second their mouths touched. Like the Fourth of July and New Year’s Eve all at the same time. It was as though her mouth had been made for his.

That was the first thought that ran through his mind as he deepened the kiss.

The second was that she tasted like she smelled. Like strawberries and caramel and rich, sweet cream.

The third was that he wouldn’t mind staying right here, kissing her, for the next decade or so. He had a lot of time to make up for, after all.

But just because he was acting like an idiot didn’t mean he really was one. So, despite the fact that every instinct he had was pushing at him to stay exactly where he was, he reluctantly pulled away.

Though every cell in his body screamed for another, longer taste of her, he figured he should check with Kara first. Make sure she was okay with this—or at the very least, not planning to smash her fist into the side of his head for overstepping his boundaries.

“What…” Her voice trailed off as she pressed shaky fingers to her mouth. When he didn’t answer—he couldn’t because he had no idea what to say—she tried again. “What was that?”

Any hope that she felt the same way he did dissipated under the shocked weight of her question. “I’m sorry,” he said, stepping away from her. “Maybe we can chalk this up to too much champagne?”

“Neither of us has had a drink in hours.”

“The stars?” He pointed toward the skylight above her bed.

“We already discussed the fact that there aren’t any.”

“Could you at least work with me here?” he finally asked her. “I’m grasping at straws.”

“I can tell.” She inched closer to him, pressing forward so that her chest brushed lightly against his. Heat streaked through him all over again. “The question is why you feel the need to?”

“I already apologized. I’m not sure what else to say.” He looked down at her, tried to gauge her mood. She was looking up at him so that her full lips were a scant few inches from his own. As she exhaled, he could feel her warm breath brush over him.

His entire body tightened at the sensation, until the simple act of breathing hurt. He wanted another sample of her, wanted to delve inside her mouth and explore the taste and scent and touch of her until he’d satisfied the craving that had been years in the making.

He tightened his hands into fists, fought the desire back. His temper tantrum about her leaving for Eritrea had already put them on shaky ground. Kissing her had made things even less stable. Doing it again might send her running. After all, she’d done her level best to ignore the kiss they’d shared in the park. For her to run from him was the absolute last thing he wanted. He’d rather have Kara’s friendship than nothing at all.

“Who says you have to say anything? It was just a kiss, right?”

“Yeah.” He forced the words out between clenched teeth. “Just a kiss.”

“I mean, it’s not like you really laid one on me or anything.” She leaned in even closer.

He couldn’t help wondering what kind of kisses she was used to if she qualified what had passed between them as just a kiss. Maybe he’d underestimated old Mike.

The thought of Mike made him angry and he stepped back from her. Tried to turn away. The last thing he needed right now was to hear about other, better kisses she’d received from men she was more sexually attracted to than him.

She moved with him, though, as he retreated one step, two, until his back was—literally—against her bedroom wall. The warning bells he’d heard in the park had returned and they were clanging at top volume. But the fact that all the blood in his body had rushed about three feet south of his head made it impossible to pay any attention to them at all.

“It’s not,” she continued her earlier train of thought, “like you did this.”

And then she was kissing him, her lips soft and warm and open against his own.

For a full five seconds, he did nothing, just stood there like a total loser as her lips moved slowly against his. And then reality dawned and he caught fire. Slipping a hand behind her head, he tangled his fingers in her heavy curls and pressed her mouth more firmly against him. Then he pulled her lower lip into his mouth and nibbled softly.

She gasped, laughed a little, then wrapped her arms around his neck and returned the kiss with an exuberance that delighted him.

He ran his tongue over her lips, exploring the bow-shaped indention in her upper lip that had driven him crazy for more years than he wanted to admit. Then he moved on to the full curve of her lower lip and the tender corners of her mouth. She tasted so good, felt so good, that he wanted to go on kissing her forever.