shook her head. “Actually, I’ve been thinking of calling off the search. Living by myself for a while.”
He gave her a look. “Because you think she’ll come running back,” he said, and they both knew he meant Anita.
“Honestly? Yes.”
“What if she doesn’t?”
“Then I’ll live alone.” She gave a half smile, just a slight quirk of the lips. “Maybe it’ll be good for me.”
“You know how I feel about that.” It would be great for her. He’d been telling her so for years. She needed to live for herself awhile, instead of for others.
“Then why are you eyeing me as if I’ve done something wrong?” she said.
Okay, they weren’t going to have a lighthearted conversation tonight. This would be one of their serious ones, instead. That was fine, he told himself. As long as it didn’t pertain to the two of them. “You’re not planning to live alone. You’re planning for your poor, weak, flighty sister to have a dramatic breakup with her boyfriend, just like she always does, and then come running back to you. You’re counting on it. She probably knows it.”
“Am I supposed to expect their relationship to last? Expect her and Ty—”
“Troy,” he corrected.
“Troy.” She paused. “I’m supposed to expect them to live happily ever after? That’s never happened before.”
“How many times has your sister moved in with a guy?” He knew the answer, but he wanted her to say it.
“Never. But she’s talked this way about plenty of guys. I can always recognize it. She gets the same tone in her voice, the same look in her eyes. You want to know what it says? ‘It’s real this time. He’s my knight in shining armor. He’s the one who’s going to sweep me off my feet and make everything all right.’ But it never lasts.”
“Maybe this time is different.”
“It’s not.” She spoke with absolute certainty.
Kyle considered her. “Okay. Say it isn’t. Say the relationship goes up in smoke. You really think it’s good for her to come running back to you?”
“Who else can she turn to?”
She didn’t say, Not my father. I’m the only strong one in the family. She didn’t have to. He’d heard her say it in so many ways a hundred times before.
“Mel, what about her standing on her own two feet? Not needing to depend on anyone?”
“You sound like such a guy, Kyle. All that independent, rugged-individualist stuff.” She stood up. Grabbed his beer bottle and her water glass and the gingersnaps. “In my family,” she said, “we support one another when times are tough.”
Melissa carried her load to the kitchen. She returned with a cloth and wiped up the three microscopic cookie crumbs she’d gotten on the coffee table. Her hair clasp, which she’d set on the arm of the couch, went neatly into her pocket.
He knew she didn’t realize how revealing her actions were. She’d spoken so calmly, but that obviously wasn’t how she felt.
She always cleaned things when she was agitated. Tidied a pile of papers. Dusted a picture frame. Suddenly remembered a load of laundry that needed to be folded.
She bunched up the cloth in her hand, spotted a coffee mug he’d left on the end table yesterday and walked over to get it. When she turned around, the most direct route to the kitchen was between the couch and the coffee table. She took a few steps forward.
He didn’t think. He just raised a leg, resting his foot on the side of the coffee table, barring her path.
“Kyle—”
She faced him. Their gazes locked. Something hot and electric and impossible passed between them.
“Kyle, move.” She didn’t step over his leg. His bent knee reached the level of her thighs; she would have had to straddle him. But she didn’t pivot and go the other way, either.
He ached to tumble her onto the couch, on top of him. To kiss her again. He ignored the urge. He looked up at her and said, “What about you, Melissa? Who do you lean on when times are tough?”
Her gaze wavered, sliding sideways. She towered over him, spine straight, the cloth in one hand and the mug in the other, and didn’t give him an answer.
“Come on, tell me. I want to know. Who takes care of you? Who do you turn to?”
She shook her head. “Stop it.”
He couldn’t. Suddenly he couldn’t stop himself. It had been building in him for two and a half months, he finally acknowledged. This restless, edgy energy. This urge to push against her emotionally, to shake things up and break things down, even though he knew he shouldn’t. Even though it could screw up their friendship.
“Or is that just for other people?” he demanded. “For the weak ones?”
“Don’t.”
“I need to know the answer.”
“You already know it.”
“I do? Because it doesn’t seem that way to me.”
“Damn it, Kyle.” She glared down at him.
He blinked. Hell, it looked as if she had tears in her eyes. Oh, God. He’d made her cry. He was being a jerk and he wasn’t even sure what he was saying.
Remorse and shame flooded through him. He dropped his foot to the floor. He raised his hands and pressed them to his forehead, a weary gesture.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be such an ass. I’m not myself right now.”
He heard Melissa sit down next to him and sensed the couch shifting beneath her weight.
For a moment she was silent. Then, “Me, neither.” The words came out as a whisper.
Kyle wanted to take her in his arms right then. He wanted to comfort her, even though he didn’t know all the reasons she might need comforting.
But he held himself back. She had her boundaries. He had to respect them. And she did accept his support in other ways. She did turn to him when times were tough.
He wasn’t prepared when she spoke again. He hadn’t expected anymore from her. But she gave it to him, and it was more than he’d ever imagined.
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
CHAPTER TWO
MELISSA HAD NEVER felt an earthquake before. Now she knew what it would be like.
It would begin as a distant rumble; you couldn’t be sure it was real. Just a slight, subtle hum. But then you would
