“Of course there is,” she said.
He took the stairs to the second floor two at a time. Five minutes later, when he was coming out of the shower, his phone vibrated on the bathroom counter.
Annabelle. Not right now. Not happening. He let it go to voicemail.
When he came down again, Jennifer was standing near the kitchen, in the two stories of glass-and-steel-and-stone expanse that was the main living area. She’d dropped her purse onto a barstool and was standing with her arms wrapped around herself, looking out of the floor-to-ceiling windows that ran the full length of the house. At not much, because it was raining. He said, “There’s a good view of Mount Hood on a clear day,” and she jumped again.
If she was here to seduce him, fling-wise or otherwise, she wasn’t doing a great job of it. She proved it by saying, “Actually, I need you to point me to a bathroom. It’s all this rain. Too suggestive. I looked around for one, but all I found was the biggest, emptiest pantry I’ve ever seen, like it was built for preppers who fell down on the job, a laundry room that’s about the size of my apartment, and an elevator. I got exhausted from opening doors. Why does your house have an elevator?”
“Don’t know,” he said. “Here you go.” He showed her the way, then came back into the center of the room, ran his hands over the legs of his jeans, and thought, Now what?
He’d been the one in charge, before. No question. Rescuing her. Buying her dinner. Flying her around, which she’d liked. Taking care of her foot. Taking her to bed. And she was in his house now. She’d come to him. So why wasn’t it feeling like that?
Because of the way she’d left, that was why. Even though he’d been the one setting those limits. The emotional ones, not the sexual ones. The sexual ones had been fine. The emotional ones had … backfired.
This was why being honest was such a bad idea, especially when you were dealing with women who didn’t understand the rules and didn’t play the game. It was also why she needed that regular guy with the steady job. She needed to do the cookie thing, to put all that warmth and sweetness and humor someplace where it would pay off. He’d tell her so, as soon as she came out. That he didn’t know why she was here, but she should know that he still wasn’t that guy, and whatever she had in mind, it probably wasn’t going to work out.
Right. Plan.
She came back, running her hands through her mass of ringlets, shaking off the rain, showing off all that body, and he said, “Let’s get a drink and sit by the fire.”
So, not exactly according to plan.
She’d almost turned around so many times today.
Driving the hour and a half to the Spokane Airport. Standing in the security line. Waiting for her rental car. Sitting outside that seriously sleek, high-tech gate, buzzing the house, and nobody answering. For an hour. And most of all, when she’d been waiting for him in a house that had to be well over ten thousand square feet, with more hard surfaces and echoing space than you could imagine any house in the world possessing, unable to find a bathroom and having to pee so badly that she nearly ran outside to do it.
She could ask him on the phone, she’d told herself. Where she didn’t have to see his face. She had his number now along with his address, thanks to Owen. She could have done that instead of spending her whole weekend and too much money on this. What was she trying to achieve?
She couldn’t even have said, and now that she was here, she really couldn’t say. Also, surely no man had ever filled out a T-shirt and jeans with quite that much lean, sculpted muscle. His shoulder-length hair lay damply around his square-jawed face, and even knowing he’d done hair extensions couldn’t wreck it. The man just couldn’t help giving off testosterone rays.
Which was not her problem. And it was too late now to second-guess this. She said, “I don’t need anything to drink. That’s not what I’m here for. I need to ask you to take a DNA test.”
He stared at her. She thought, Lift your chin. Look him in the eye. And did it. Instead of running screaming.
“Exactly … why?” he asked slowly.
“The usual reason. Because I’m pregnant, and I slept with two guys in the same week.” It didn’t sound any better than she’d imagined it would.
He said, “You went back to that boyfriend?” Which was not the question she’d figured would come next.
“What? No. Of course not.”
“Oh.” Something in his face changed. “Somebody else.”
“Seriously? I went back to Wild Horse with my stitches and my crutches and hooked up with some guy I met in a bar, because I was convinced said random guy would also provide me with mind-blowing orgasms, as had happened in my previous life precisely never? No. At least—no. I broke up with my boyfriend two days before I met you, though, remember? And even though our date matches with what the sonogram showed, I need to be sure. You need to be sure, before I ask you for anything.”
“Wow.” He ran a hand through his hair and blew out a breath. “You know what? Let’s get something to drink. I need a second here.”
He was only breathing because it was an autonomic function that didn’t require conscious effort. He thought, Drink, headed to the kitchen, grabbed a plastic bottle out of the fridge, and asked, “Do you want one?”
“Chocolate milk?” she asked, with a funny look on her face.
“Yeah. Recovery drink. Probably good for … for pregnancy, too. It’s organic.”
Pregnancy.
“Or tea,” he said. “Not sure I have tea, though.” He rooted through the fridge. “Kombucha. I’ve got that. That’s close, right?”
“I’ve never known what that is,” she said.
“Fermented green tea. Sort of a yeasty thing. You telling me Dyma isn’t lecturing you on the benefits of kombucha yet? Wait until she goes to college. It’s pretty disgusting, but some people like it. I’ve got a buddy who drinks it. That’s why it’s here.”
“Harlan,” she said, “I’m pregnant. Do not say ‘yeasty fermented green tea’ to me. It’s not going to end well. I’ll take the chocolate milk, please.”
He handed her a bottle. This still felt surreal, like it was happening to somebody else, but she was still Jennifer. That part felt the same.
“Come on,” he said. “We’ll sit by the fire.”
Another walk across the stone floor, past the twelve-person, iron-and-glass-and-leather dining set, sitting like an island in an endless sea of limestone, and she said, “This is a different house. I said I wouldn’t comment, and here I am, commenting.”
“Yep.” He pressed a button on the remote, turned on the gas fire, and sat on the enormous semicircular pale-brown leather couch, or whatever you called it, because it didn’t really have enough cushions to be called a couch. Another item of furniture that could probably seat twelve. “This part is sort of the living room, I guess. A friend’s wife told me this place has all the homey appeal of a modern-art museum. I don’t think it was a compliment.”
She sat down beside him, but not too close, and twisted the top off her chocolate milk. “On the other hand, it probably has a great echo, if you want to practice your yodeling.”