his hips, his eyes distant.
Hannah did a whole bunch more swallowing, reining in her hormone-fueled emotional fireworks as she studied his profile. He really was a stunning specimen of a man—his face perfection with those masculine cheekbones and that fit cowboy’s body that had brought her so much wicked pleasure that night. He kept his light brown hair disheveled just so, adding a rakish quality to his charm. No wonder he turned the head of every woman in Tulsa when he walked down the street.
He deserved better than to find out he was going to be a father on the side of the road outside a Laundromat, not with a woman he loved, but with a virtual stranger.
When she was sure she could speak calmly, she said, “I’m not trying to get at your family’s money, Brett.”
He jerked his face in her direction, his face a stone mask now. Gone was any trace of the smile he’d wooed her with nineteen weeks ago at the Tulsa club where she’d decided to let her hair down after her college graduation.
“You still need to pay your bill, hon,” called a female voice.
Hannah and Brett both turned to see Janice standing at the Armadillo’s door, waving a slip of paper.
“I’ll be right there,” Brett called to Janice, his voice tight with harnessed emotion. To Hannah, he added, “I need to take care of this, and then we’re going to go somewhere private to talk.”
Hannah nodded, even as her stomach ached, empty. She’d been counting on the interviewer’s promise in his email to buy her breakfast. She wrapped her arms around her ribs and battled a fresh round of pathetic tears. “I’ll wait here.”
He huffed, his hardened, distant expression not really seeing her when he looked her way and took her arm. “I don’t think so. You’re coming inside with me while I pay the bill. I don’t want you disappearing on me before I get some answers. I don’t even know your last name.” He swept his hand in front of him. “After you.”
Brett was pretty sure he’d never been so blindsided by anything as seeing the woman he’d slept with a few months earlier appear at the diner where he was waiting to interview a temporary accountant—and learning that she was pregnant with his child.
His child. Good God, what had he done?
He’d already come to think of that bender of a weekend as life-changing because he’d nearly gotten himself killed, not because he’d knocked up the girl he slept with, the one whose last name or phone number he hadn’t even bothered to ask, he was so drunk and self-destructive. He was lucky he remembered her face at all, given the state he’d been in, but she held the dubious honor of being his last conquest before he’d gotten right with himself and had given up partying, drinking and women cold turkey.
He held the diner door open for Hannah, who marched past him, her feathers clearly ruffled. “I know you’re upset, but you don’t get to treat me like a criminal.”
He wasn’t trying to, but he also wasn’t taking a chance on her sneaking away before he got some answers. All he had was the email address she’d contacted him with about the job, and he doubted that was anything but a shell account. He didn’t even know her last name, and hadn’t even recalled her first name correctly. Didn’t that just say it all about how severely he’d screwed up his life?
At the hostess desk, he paid for his coffee and left a generous tip. That’s when he heard it. Hannah’s stomach growled. Loudly.
He froze, his change halfway in his wallet.
“Shoot,” she muttered. “You didn’t hear that.”
In his periphery, he watched her arms wrap around her middle, protective and proud. His attention slid to the scuffed black flats she wore. They were old, worn. The edges of the material fraying. Yet she’d worn them to the job interview so they had to be the best pair she owned. She’d lost her job, her car and her apartment. Where was she living now? Was she getting the medical care she and the baby needed?
That’s when it hit him that the answers to those questions didn’t matter yet. All that mattered at that moment was that she was clearly hungry. She was also too thin, now that he thought about it. Hungry. Jobless. Homeless—and she was having his baby. Damn.
“Change of plans.” His words came out as a croak. He cleared his throat, then met the waitress’s confused gaze. “Could you seat us again? Turns out I’m hungry for breakfast after all.”
Hannah stiffened. “I don’t need your charity.”
Judging by her growling stomach, she did, but she was far too proud to accept it. She hadn’t come to him for help when she first found out she was pregnant or when she’d lost her job. She’d made of point of telling him that she wasn’t after his money. Other than her dancing skills—both of the club variety and the horizontally-in-bed variety—her sense of pride and honor were just about all he knew about her. That, and the fact that she was an accountant, which he would have never pegged her as.
Proud, dancing Hannah the accountant didn’t follow the waitress, but stood stock-still, giving him a stink-eye that even his mother would admire. She didn’t want help or charity and didn’t seem to trust his breakfast offer, but Brett did have one thing he could offer her that he bet she wouldn’t refuse.
“You came here today to interview for a job and I need an accountant, so I say we get on with the reason for our appointment.”
She held him with a searching gaze as though testing his intentions, then gave a terse nod.
He fought against letting his relief show on his face as he ushered her ahead of him to follow the waitress to a booth.
The waitress handed them menus. “I’m glad you came back for some food, darlin’. I was worried that your morning sickness got the better of you.”
Hannah offered the woman a warm, genuine smile that held Brett riveted, his memory jogged. He remembered that smile from the night they’d hooked up and what it felt like to have it directed at him.
“Wait,” he said as the waitress turned to leave. “Janice, I’m really hungry. I think we’d better get that food on order right now. Hannah, you ready?”
“I’ll have the oatmeal and a fruit cup.”
That wasn’t enough. Not nearly. When his brother’s now ex-wife had been pregnant, she ate her weight in food every day. “I’ll have the Paul Bunyan flapjack stack, the sausage omelet with the cheese grits, and a side of bacon.” He winked at Hannah, whose eyebrows were pinched as though she were onto his plan. “Working on the ranch builds up quite an appetite.”
When the waitress left, he folded his hands on the table. “Let’s get right to this interview. Lucky C—that’s the name of my family’s ranch—needs a new accountant.”
“I know what your family’s ranch is named. Everybody round these parts knows the Coltons, which is why it doesn’t make any sense for you to post the help wanted ad the way you did, anonymously, discretion required.”
On top of everything else, she was smart as a whip. Smart, proud, stubborn and a great dancer. Her list of attributes was getting unwieldy.
