shrugged. “No catch.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m supposed to believe that you’re willing to move across the country to be closer to me and you expect nothing in return?”
“Let me guess. Your ex-husband wasn’t so willing to compromise? Or was it an overbearing father?”
Both, actually, but that was none of his business.
She shot him a look. “Don’t shrink me.”
He reciprocated with one of those cocky, but not really cocky, looks. How did he do that? “I promise not to shrink you, if you promise not to make assumptions based on experiences you’ve had with men who aren’t me.”
Touché. She had to hand it to him, if nothing else he was direct. And fair.
“All I’m asking for, Miranda, is your time. I’d like us to get to know each other. You may be surprised to find that I’m not such a bad guy.”
Maybe that was what she was worried about. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to be tempted. Her husband had seemed like a nice guy, too, and look what a disaster that had turned out to be.
But it would be incredibly unfair to deny him the opportunity to be a part of her pregnancy due to her own feelings of insecurity and self-doubt.
Oh, great, now she was shrinking herself. And she was a lawyer for heaven’s sake!
“Where would you stay?” she asked.
“I’ll find a rental. Preferably one close to your place.”
Her practical side, the one that had lived for five years with a husband who kept her on a strict monthly allowance despite a lucrative law practice, cringed. “Won’t that be expensive?”
He shrugged, as if it didn’t matter either way. And why would it? The guy was an empire. He had produced a library of DVDs, written half a dozen books that had become instant bestsellers, and she could just imagine what he made on the lecture circuit filling countless auditoriums to capacity.
The area where she lived was comfortable, but not exactly upscale, which would probably be what he was looking for, but there were developments not far from her that would probably suit him. Complexes with penthouse apartments and luxury condos. And she was only a twenty-minute drive from downtown Dallas. He would definitely find something cushy enough there.
“I’m sure you could find something close by,” she said.
He reached behind him for the pad of paper and pen sitting next to the phone and handed them to her. “Write down your address and I’ll have my assistant look into it. I guess you should probably include your phone number while you’re at it. So I can reach you.”
She was having his baby, and he didn’t even know her phone number. This was too weird. The kind of thing she read about in books or saw on television dramas. This kind of thing wasn’t supposed to happen in real life. Especially not to her.
As she jotted the information down she wondered what the heck she was getting herself into. Everything was moving so fast, and felt so…final. She had been hoping he would want to be involved with the baby. Weekend visitation at best. But he wanted to be involved.
She didn’t know if she was ready for this.
She had considered not telling him about the baby, but she didn’t doubt her pregnancy would eventually reach the media. Zack was a smart guy. It would take only a very simple equation for him to determine the baby was his.
And for all her talk of being modern and independent, she still knew right from wrong.
Sure, she could raise the baby alone. She had the financial means. But to deny the child a relationship with its father, and vice versa, wouldn’t be right.
It was a moot point now. She was here and it was a done deal.
She handed the paper back to him. “What are we going to do about the media? I’m assuming you would prefer this not get out.”
“How do you feel about that?” he asked, sounding an awful lot like a shrink.
“I understand. I don’t expect you to jeopardize your reputation for the sake of my feelings. And I’m not exactly looking forward to the media attention, either. I won’t say anything if you don’t.”
“Deal,” he agreed.
“So, when are we talking? I’m guessing soon.”
“As soon as I’m able. When is your next doctor appointment?”
“Three weeks.”
He cursed under his breath. “I’ll be in California for ten days.”
“This early, you won’t be missing much.”
“Then I guess I’ll take the next couple of weeks to tie up some loose ends, and be in Texas after my California trip. That would be, what? Fourth week in June?”
A month seemed so far away, and at the same time it wasn’t long enough. A precious month left of her privacy. Her freedom. “This is all so… surreal. I mean, we hardly know each other. We’re strangers.”
And if that was true, why did she feel as though she knew him somehow?
“So this will give us plenty of time to get acquainted.”
Maybe that was what she was worried about. She’d learned from one too many disastrous relationships not to trust her own judgment when it came to finding the wrong kind of man. Because the wrong kind of man for her, unfortunately, was the kind of man she was usually attracted to.
Chapter Four
“Another furniture store truck just pulled up,” Lianne, Miranda’s next-door neighbor, called from her perch on the couch by the front-room window. She had been sitting there for the past twenty minutes giving Miranda a blow-by-blow of the activity going on at the condo across the street.
Miranda stood around the corner in the kitchen, fixing herself a cup of tea and a plate of saltines, hoping it might ease the nausea brewing in her stomach. This was the third morning in a row that she’d woken feeling sick.
She knew that technically, morning sickness was a good thing. It meant her body was producing enough hormones to sustain a healthy pregnancy. That didn’t make her feel any better when she was kneeling to the porcelain gods, yacking up her breakfast. From now on it was tea and crackers every morning until her stomach settled.
“They’re unloading the furniture!” Lianne squealed. She was like this whenever someone new moved into the complex. Fresh meat, she liked to say.
Like Miranda, she was divorced. Bitterly divorced. But always in the market for a temporary distraction. She’d divorced her most recent temporary distraction three months ago.
“So far so good,” she reported. “Nothing kid related. No toys or baby furniture. Nothing too feminine, either. Could be a single man.”
The kettle
