okay,” Issa finally said. Her voice was groggy and small. She was embarrassed to be caught sleeping in the middle of a Sunday afternoon. “Come in.”
That was as much invitation as the little boy needed—he promptly left Hutch Kincaid’s side and came back to the sofa as Issa pivoted to put her feet on the floor.
Her intention had been to stand to greet her guests and hopefully regain some of her dignity.
But it didn’t take more than that pivot to make her so dizzy that she couldn’t get up as the room seemed to spin around her.
“Just a minute…” she muttered, further embarrassed and feeling as if she were making a spectacle of herself. “I’m really light-headed all of a sudden…”
“Take your time,” Hutch Kincaid urged as his jeans-clad legs came into her wobbly view in the center of the room, on the opposite side of the coffee table.
The coffee table where she had a number of illustrated pamphlets in plain sight, all titled things like Pregnancy and You, So You’re Going to Have a Baby and What to Do Now that You’re Pregnant….
Dead giveaways.
Of the biggest secret Issa had ever kept and the one most important to her not to let out.
Any hope she might have had of Hutch Kincaid not becoming aware of the pamphlets evaporated when the little boy pointed them out with a chubby index finger and said, “Bay-bees.”
“Why don’t you come over here with me, buddy,” Hutch Kincaid suggested.
“No. Pit-tee.”
The little boy couldn’t possibly know that she was pregnant, that she was horrified by that fact and that the father of her baby had run like a rabbit from parenthood, so she was facing it all alone. But that was the second time he’d said he pitied her….
“He feels sorry for me?”
Hutch Kincaid chuckled. “He thinks you’re pretty.”
The dizziness finally passed and Issa could see straight again. She cast a glance at the little boy who, despite his undefined features, resembled the man too much not to be closely related to him, and said an uncertain, “Thank you?”
“Wilcome.”
“That’s you’re welcome,” her landlord translated. “And this is Asher, by the way. My son. He’s two and a half, with a mind of his own. And he’s apparently developing a taste in women…” Hutch Kincaid added somewhat under his breath, sounding amused.
Issa got to her feet then and was rewarded with a closer view of her hubba-hubba-handsome landlord.
And oh, but he was hubba-hubba-handsome, more so now that he was smiling slightly, a smile that drew lines from the corners of his nose to bracket his nimble-looking mouth.
But she was in absolutely no position to be paying any attention whatsoever to how handsome he was, she reminded herself.
“I’m sorry, I don’t usually sleep in the daytime, but I was really out of it…” she lied. The truth was that lately sleeping was all she wanted to do night and day, and napping had become nothing unusual for her.
“It’s okay,” Hutch Kincaid assured her in an understanding tone, his gaze dropping for a split second to the pamphlets, making it clear that he’d seen them and put two and two together.
And that was when something else occurred to Issa.
While she hadn’t met Hutch Kincaid before this, she’d learned through her brother and half sister that he was connected to her family through his own family and friends.
And this was Northbridge where word could travel like wildfire….
All of which made her think she’d better address the subject right away.
“Yes, I’m pregnant. And unmarried, unattached—” Why was she telling him that?
Oh, she was just never, ever at her best meeting new people. She always made blunders, and now, when she was already thrown off-kilter by her overall situation, when it was all too fresh for her to have become comfortable with, she supposed she shouldn’t be shocked that she was particularly bumbling.
She shook her head as if that would erase her awkwardness and tried to make enough sense of what she was saying to get her point across. “No one here—no one—knows, so please—”
Hutch Kincaid held up one hand, palm out. “It’s okay. It won’t come from me,” he said.
But still feeling exposed, Issa scooped up the pamphlets and shoved them under the couch cushion to get them out of sight.
Then, desperate to regain some sense of normalcy, she said, “Can I have just a minute to splash some water on my face? Maybe you could look at the lock while I do…”
“Sure,” the big man agreed.
And Issa made a beeline to the bathroom.
For a moment after she reached it, she merely leaned her back against the door she’d shut firmly behind herself. Closing her eyes, she dropped her head forward and again shook it—this time cursing the shyness that she’d always suffered, that had once again made her act like a ninny. Why couldn’t she just be smooth?
But it was too late for that with her landlord. He probably already thought she was an idiot. An unmarried, pregnant idiot.
Nothing like making a good first impression….
Oh, no, and she hadn’t even introduced herself! He’d introduced himself. And his son. But she’d overlooked that simple civility, too.
I really am a ninny. A socially inept ninny….
Disgusted with herself, Issa sighed and pushed away from the door. To her right was the sink, to her left was the linen closet that was hidden when the bathroom door was open.
She turned and rummaged in the linen closet.
The apartment was small—a single bedroom, a single bath, with the living room, kitchen and dining area all in the one open space she’d just fled. She liked the place, though. She’d been told that the remodel that had turned it into a duplex had only recently been completed, and that everything was new, including all the furnishings. She’d needed only her own towels, linens and kitchenware, so unpacking had been easily accomplished in the two days she’d been living there.
She took a washcloth and a hand towel from the closet and rotated to face the sink.
Wetting the washcloth, she buried her face in it and hoped for a surge of the energy and oomph that pregnancy seemed to have robbed her of. But still she just wanted to sleep.
Maybe it was some kind of psychological need to escape the situation she’d found herself in.
Except that the pamphlets said to expect to feel fatigued and to need some extra rest as her body adjusted.
Hurry
