Elizabeth Bevarly - The Pregnancy Affair

She listened to the cicadas, reveled in the warm breeze and inhaled another big gulp of pine forest, releasing it slowly. Then she drew in another and let it go, too. Then another. And another. Bit by bit, the tension left her body, and something else took its place. Not quite serenity, but something that at least kept her panic at bay. She loved being outdoors. The farther from civilization, the better.

She felt a raindrop on her forehead, followed by a few more; then the sky opened up and the rain fell in earnest. Renny didn’t mind. Rain was hydrotherapy. The warm droplets cooled her heated skin and tap-tap-tapped on the leaves of the trees and the hood of the SUV, their gentle percussion calming her even more.

With one final breath, she opened her eyes. Tate stood inside the door of the cottage looking out at her, his expression inscrutable. He was probably wondering what kind of madwoman he was going to be stuck with for the rest of the day—maybe longer. Renny supposed that was only fair, since she was wondering a lot of things about him at the moment, too.

Like, for instance, if he enjoyed fishing.

* * *

As Tate gazed at Renata, so much of what had happened today became clear. The woman didn’t even have enough sense to come in out of the rain.

He must have been nuts to have thought her professional, capable and no-nonsense. Then again, he’d also been thinking she didn’t seem to want to be any of those things. Now he had his proof. Even when the rain soaked her clothing, she still didn’t seem inclined to come inside.

On the other hand, her saturated state wasn’t entirely off-putting. Her white shirt clung to her like a second skin, delineating every hill and valley on her torso. Just because those hills weren’t exactly the Rockies—or even the Grassy Knoll—didn’t make her any less undesirable. No, it was the fact that she’d disrupted his life and gotten him into a mess—then made a literal federal case out of it—that did that.

Actually, that wasn’t quite true. She was still desirable. He just didn’t like her very much.

He heard Grady in the cabin behind him opening and closing drawers, cabinets and closets, and muttering to himself. But the activity still couldn’t pull his gaze from Renata in the rain.

Renata in the rain. It sounded like something by a French watercolorist hanging in the Musée d’Orsay. But there she was, a study in pale shades, and if he were an artist, he would be setting up his easel right now.

She really was very pretty. Not in the flashy, showy, don’t-you-wish-you-were-hot-like-me way that the women he dated were. Her beauty was the kind that crept up on a man, then crawled under his skin and into his brain, until he could think of little else. A quiet, singular, unrelenting kind of beauty. When he first saw her standing at his front door that morning, he’d thought she was cute. Once they started talking, and he’d heard her breathless, whiskey-rough voice, he’d even thought she was kind of hot—in a sexy-librarian way. But now she seemed remarkably pretty. In a quiet, unrelenting, French-watercolorist kind of way.

“Mr. Hawthorne?” he heard Grady call out from behind him, raising his voice to be heard over the rain pelting the roof.

Yet still Tate couldn’t look away from Renata. Because she started making her way to the door where he stood. She stopped long enough to remove her wet shoes, then continued barefoot. The dark hair that had been so severe was sodden and bedraggled now, bits of it clinging to her neck and forehead, and the suit that had been so efficient looking was rumpled and puckered. Somehow, though, that just made her more attractive.

“Mr. Hawthorne?” Grady said again, louder this time.

“What?” Tate replied over his shoulder. Because now Renata was only a few steps away from him.

“Sir, I’m going to have to go into town for some supplies. This place hasn’t been used for a while, and I didn’t have any notice that we’d be needing it. I did turn on the hot-water heater, so there should be hot water in a few hours. But the place is kind of light on fresh food. I shouldn’t be gone long.”

Renata was nearly on top of Tate now—figuratively, not literally, though the literal thought was starting to have some merit. So he stepped just far enough out of the doorway for her to get by him, but not far enough that she could do it without touching him. She seemed to realize that, because she hesitated before entering, lifting her head to meet his gaze.

As he studied her, a drop of rainwater slid from behind her ear to glide down the column of her neck, settling in the divot at the base of her throat. He was so caught up in watching it, to see if it would stay there or roll down into the collar of her shirt, that he almost forgot she wasn’t the kind of woman he found fascinating. It wasn’t Renata that fascinated him at the moment, he assured himself. It was that drop of rainwater. On her unbelievably creamy, flawless, beautiful skin.

When he didn’t move out of her way, she arched a dark eyebrow questioningly. In response, he feigned bewilderment. She took another small step forward. He stood pat.

“Do you mind?” she finally asked.

“Mind what?”

“Moving out of the way?”

Well, if she was going to speak frankly—another trait he disliked in women—there wasn’t much he could do but move out of the way.

“Of course,” he said. And moved a step as small as hers to the side.

She strode forward at the same time, but she moved farther and faster than he did so her shoulder hit him in the chest, and they both lost their footing. When Tate circled her upper arm with one hand, he discovered Renata Twigg had some decent definition in her biceps and triceps.

Muscles were another thing he wasn’t crazy about finding on a woman. So why did finding them on Renata send a thrill of...something...shooting through his system?

“Sorry,” he said.

“No problem,” she replied. In a breathless, whiskey-rough voice that made him start thinking about sexy librarians again.

She kept moving, but even after she was free of him, his palm was still damp from her clothing, and there was a wet spot on his shirt where her shoulder had made contact. Those would eventually dry up and be gone. What wouldn’t leave as quickly were the thoughts circling in his brain that were anything but dry.

He watched her as she continued into the cabin, noting how the rain had soaked her skirt, too. The skirt whose length barely passed muster for proper office attire. The dampness made it seem even shorter—though it could just be Tate’s overactive imagination making it do that—and it, too, clung to her body with much affection. Whatever Renata lacked in the front—and, really, no woman ever lacked anything up front—she more than made up for behind. The gods might have made her small, but they’d packed more into her little package than a lot of women twice her size.

“Mr. Hawthorne?”

Reluctantly, he returned his attention to Grady. The marshal was looking at him in a way that indicated he knew exactly where Tate’s gaze had been, and if he were Renata’s father, he’d be hauling Tate out to the woodshed.

“Did you hear what I said?” he asked.

“You have to go into town for some supplies,” Tate replied. See? He could multitask just fine, listening to Grady with the left side of his brain while ogling Renata with the right.

“And I won’t be gone long,” Grady added as he made his way to the front door. “There’s a phone in the bedroom, but if either of you uses it to call anyone other than me, this is going to turn into a much longer stay than any of us wants. Get it?”

“Got it.”

“Good.” Without another word, Grady exited.