Harper Allen - Covert Cowboy

“Sorry, hormone overload. It’s gotten so bad lately I have to keep a box of tissues by the television in case a heartwarming advertisement comes on. What were you saying?”

“I’m making my special moussaka tonight. I thought if you didn’t feel like cooking—” He stopped as Marilyn hastily tried to erase the moue of instant nausea that had shown on her face. “Vine leaves and ground lamb not on the menu these days?”

“I’m finally over the morning sickness, thank goodness,” she said as the elevator lurched to a stop at her floor and the doors began to open. “But certain foods still seem to flick the queasiness switch with me. I’ll take a rain check on that moussaka for about six months from now, if that’s all right with you.”

Jim and Dan were good neighbors, she thought as she sped through her open-concept living area and clattered up the metal stairs. That was important, especially in an unconventional building like this. The former warehouse was divided into only three spacious loft apartments, one of which was vacant at the moment, its owners being away in Europe.

“And the best thing about them is that right from the first they were happy for me when I told them I was expecting,” she said out loud a few minutes later as she descended the staircase and bent with difficulty to pick up the shopping bags she’d dropped on her frantic way in. “Which is a whole lot more than I got from either the Langworthy or the Van Buren side of my family.”

She felt suddenly too weary even to unpack her purchases. Tossing the bags onto the sofa and dropping into an oversize velvet-upholstered club chair, she closed her eyes.

Immediately he was there, the way he always was when she let down her guard.

Sometimes she could almost persuade herself that that whole night three months ago had been a dream—an erotic, sex-charged dream, in which she’d acted with an abandon that was totally unlike her waking self. And Connor Ducharme fit the profile of a dream lover perfectly, right down to his lazy sensuality, his tall, leanly muscled build, his New Orleans drawl. If that night really had been only a dream she would have been able to handle it, Marilyn thought bleakly. But it had happened. She’d slept with a stranger—not once, but three times that night. And she’d loved it.

That was the part she found hardest to live with.

She opened her eyes. From the soaring ceiling twenty-odd feet above her swooped a perfectly balanced wire and metal mobile, its impressive span in keeping with the spaciousness of the loft but its delicate construction a counterpoint to the exposed brick and heavy wooden beams that were an indication of the building’s original function as a turn-of-the-century warehouse. A current of air caught the mobile and it swirled lightly, like a swallow changing direction in midflight.

She’d actually phoned the New Orleans police department a week later and asked for him. It had taken seven sleepless nights for her to come to that decision, and when she had she’d felt like the weakest of weak-willed females. She was well aware she’d sent him away, had told him she wanted to pretend the previous few hours had never happened, but illogically, that hadn’t mattered. She’d wanted to hear his voice. She’d found herself needing his touch. She’d craved him.

So she’d set aside her pride and phoned, and at first she’d had the terrible suspicion that he’d duped her. The desk sergeant had asked her to repeat the name of the detective she was inquiring about, and had put her on hold for what seemed an eternity. At long last he’d come back on the line, only to inform her that Ducharme wasn’t in the precinct building at the moment.

But by then she’d lost what little courage she’d had. She’d hung up without leaving her name.

She’d never attempted to contact him again, not even when she’d found out she was pregnant.

Connor Ducharme was a dangerous man. He’d seemed to know instinctively what she’d wanted that night and he’d let her believe he could give it to her. But although he’d made her melt, although his mouth, his hands, his whole body had brought her to mind-shattering ecstasy, what made Detective Ducharme so very, very dangerous was that he’d known just how much more she’d needed. He’d pretended to give her that, too.

For a few delirious hours he’d made her believe she was loved.

Marilyn closed her eyes again. Her right hand slid unconsciously to the swell of her belly, and despite the confusing ache in her heart and the problems she knew she was facing at Mills & Grommett, the beatific smile she’d once so envied on Holly’s face crept over her own.

And immediately faded.

“I thought I knew what she was going through, but before now I had no idea,” she whispered. “Sky was her whole world, and he’s still missing. I’d die if anyone tried to take my baby—”

A loud clanking, the signal that another arduous ascent had begun for the freight elevator, drowned out the rest of her words. Almost grateful for the interruption, with an effort she pushed herself out of the chair and began gathering up her shopping bags for the second time.

A visitor for Jim and Dan, she surmised as the clanking continued. She couldn’t remember the last time the elevator had stopped at her floor with a guest, and as far as she knew the Dickenson’s apartment above hadn’t yet been sublet.

She put her idle speculations aside as her gaze lit upon a fuchsia sleeve dangling from one of the bags. Heart sinking, she pulled the garment out. It was a blouse, made of some silky blend and with ruffles spilling down the low-cut front. The black pants that went with it were what the salesgirl had called a yoga style—stretchy and form-fitting, with a very slight flare at the bottom. The low-rise waistband was meant to sit below the swell of her belly.

What was I thinking? These aren’t me at all, for heaven’s sake, she thought in exasperation. For starters, I could hardly have chosen a more attention-getting top. And those pants don’t hide a thing. I might as well hang a big Baby on Board sign around my neck.

She was going to have to return them. Sighing, she began to cram them back into the bag, but then she paused.

This pregnancy, unplanned as it might have been, was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to her. The baby she was carrying was that most precious of all miracles, an evolving little human being. Why would she want to hide it?

“And those pants were a whole lot more comfortable than the ones I’ve got on.” She glanced down in sudden distaste at the navy suit she’d worn to the office that day. Just as suddenly, she began unbuttoning the jacket.

Moments later she was padding barefoot across the carpet to the full-length mirror by the door. She stood in front of it and took a deep breath.

The navy suit’s boxiness had made her look bulky rather than pregnant. But the clinging fabrics of the fuchsia top and the yoga pants hugged her curves—all of her curves, she realized. The ruffled V-neck of the blouse skimmed silkily over breasts that were fuller than she’d ever known them to be, and then stretched even more over her stomach. The low-rider style of the black pants made no apology for the roundness of her belly, but the lean cut also accentuated the length of her legs.

She looked pregnant…and in what she was wearing, pregnant looked sexy. In the mirror she saw faint heat touch her cheeks, and hastily she turned away.

The elevator clanged to a halt outside her apartment.

“Oh, no,” she muttered, aghast. She whirled back to the mirror and her reflection, but even as she fluffed the petal-like ruffles toward the vee of the blouse’s neckline the door buzzer sounded.

The ruffles fell back into place. Exasperated, she gave it up as a bad job, and jabbed the intercom button with her thumb.