heaven’s sake, how could she even be looking at another man when she wasn’t over the last one yet?
Besides, she was pregnant. She was fat. She didn’t even really walk anymore, she waddled. Just like with the cookies, the only person she was fooling was herself if she thought a gorgeous man like Ben Crowe would find her attractive in this condition!
Ben couldn’t have disagreed more. Driving Nathan home that night he realized that the thing that struck him about her was how happy she was. She seemed to blossom around Nathan, which proved she would be a wonderful mother. But even before Nathan entered the picture Ben had noticed that Gwen…well, glowed. Yesterday it was so obvious he couldn’t miss it. And tonight she virtually radiated light and energy.
He would have berated himself for staring at her all evening like some lovesick teenager, except when he saw her staring at him through the sliding glass doors, he realized she found him attractive, too. At first that had been nothing but good for his ego, then Ben reminded himself of his thoughts from the day before. Being attracted to an already pregnant woman wasn’t something to play around with.
The next morning, bundled in denim and shielding his eyes from the sun with a Stetson as he rode the fence to spend some time outdoors—since he’d wasted the previous day in offices with lawyers, accountants and brokers—Ben decided that Gwen’s pregnancy was the bottom line to everything. Since he hadn’t been overwhelmingly attracted to a woman like this in years, and the biggest difference between Gwen and all the other women he met was her pregnancy, he figured that silly glow of hers was the real culprit, not an actual attraction.
He even felt fortified enough to knock on her door and walk right into her house that evening when he arrived to pick up Nathan. But when he saw her lying on the sofa, looking exhausted—completely without glow—and still thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world, he knew he was going to have to rethink this whole deal.
“What’s up?” he asked, sitting on the edge of the sofa beside her tummy, so he could get a better look at her face.
“I’m fine,” she said, obviously exasperated. “I told you before, I’m pregnant, not sick.”
“Where’s Nathan?”
“He’s making dinner.”
“He is?” Ben asked, his voice resonating with fear at the combination of a nine-year-old, boiling water and fire.
“Relax,” she said. “It’s only cold cereal from a box, but at this point that’s all I have the energy to eat. He told me he can get something at home with his foster parents.”
“I’ll see that he gets dinner,” Ben said, then rose from the couch. “And you’re eating something more than cold cereal.”
“Cold cereal is fine.”
He snorted a laugh. “Not hardly. Have you ever read one of those labels? You’re eating sugarcoated sugar.”
The words were barely out of Ben’s mouth before Gwen gasped as if in pain. He fell to the sofa again. “What’s wrong?” he asked urgently.
She gritted her teeth from the discomfort, but said, “It’s nothing.”
“Oh, yeah, right,” Ben said, rising from the couch. “Nathan, give me a hand here. I’m taking Mrs. Parker to the doctor.”
With surprising strength, Gwen caught his hand and tugged him down to the sofa again. “You are not taking me to the doctor.”
Leaning over so that he nearly pressed his nose to her nose, he disagreed. “Guess again.”
“The baby is moving. That’s all. Sometimes when he does it I get heartburn. Other times, like now, it just hurts like the dickens. It all depends on what he sits on.”
She said the words quietly, softly, and very, very slowly and with every puff of breath that came from her mouth he realized how close they were. If he thought he’d been on the verge of kissing her the night before, he was in even worse shape tonight. First, she looked tired and alone. That right there deserved a kiss. Add her natural beauty to that and Ben found himself losing the battle.
“I still think I should take you to the doctor,” he whispered, his voice shivery and hoarse because he realized he was bending closer and closer, so near her mouth now that his lips were almost touching hers.
He’d never felt so drawn to kiss anyone. Not because she was attractive, not because he was attracted to her, but because it felt right. She wasn’t merely beautiful, she was sweet, and he wanted to taste some of that sweetness. He could feel himself being pulled toward her, confirmation, almost, that this was something he couldn’t control.
But in the last second before their mouths would have touched, she said, “No.”
Chapter Three
“No.”
“No?” He didn’t know if she’d said no to the kiss or no to going to the doctor. But he did know that he couldn’t remember the last time anyone argued with him, and he nearly tripped himself when he bounced off the couch. “What do you mean, no?”
“Ben,” she said patiently. “I gained twenty pounds in seven months…actually more like five months because I didn’t gain anything the first two months. Picture my small frame suddenly getting twenty pounds, most of it in my middle.”
He could. Clearly. He could see her standing in front of a mirror, wearing something soft and filmy, looking feminine and motherly and absolutely gorgeous. That’s what bothered him. He could easily envision how she would do anything, from the simple to the sublime, as if he’d known her for years instead of weeks.
“I’m not sick. I’m tired. I do not need to see a doctor. I need a few minutes of rest, that’s all.”
When she put it like that, Ben believed her. But she wasn’t completely out of the woods with him yet. “All right, you’re not sick,” he conceded gruffly, trying like hell to stifle the image she’d unwittingly forced him to create in his head. “But what you told me proves you need a good dinner.”
She sighed. “I’m too tired to make a good dinner.”
“No problem. Nathan and I will make one for you,” he said, and turned toward her kitchen. “What would you like?”
“Steak and french fries,” she said with a laugh. “But you don’t have to make me dinner.”
Walking to the door, he said, “You’re not eating cold cereal. If you want steak, I’ll make steak.”
“I was teasing,” she called after him. “If you insist on cooking, you don’t have to go to that much trouble.”
He stopped, faced her and skewered her with a look. “Let’s get one thing straight. I never do anything I don’t want to do, so if I volunteer to do something it’s not trouble.”
With that he left the living room, crossed the small entryway at the foot of the steps and went into her kitchen. “Nate, we need to make steak and french fries for supper. Do you have any idea where we can find those things?”
He
