Kristin Morgan - Having Gabriel's Baby

Joelle swallowed. “Uh…And what circumstances might that be?” she asked hesitantly, her eyes flicking back up to his handsome face after lingering far too long on a lower, more private part of his anatomy. Thank goodness he still had that towel on. As much as some wanton part of her liked looking at every follicle inch of him, she wished that she could’ve just snapped her fingers and have him disappear from her hotel room.

His grin widened. “Don’t you remember?”

Joelle blinked. Twice. “Remember what?”

“What we did?”

Joelle’s heart hammered against her breastbone. “What did we do?”

His eyes narrowed. “You don’t remember, do you?”

Joelle gripped the ends of the sheet covering her breasts and pulled it up to the base of her throat. “O-of course, I do. W-we had dinner together.”

“And…”

“And…uh…we stopped in at some lively little cantina for a nightcap.” Joelle felt quite pleased with herself for having been able to recall that much. At least he wasn’t going to think her a complete idiot.

“And then…” he said.

She stared at him blankly.

He stared back. A moment later he said, “See, it’s like I thought. You don’t remember, do you?”

Hesitating with her answer, Joelle continued to hold the ends of the sheet in a death grip while trying to force her memory from last night to come forward. But the only result was some additional pounding in her already throbbing head. “No, I don’t.”

“Well, don’t feel so bad. ’Cause I don’t, either.”

Her eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

“Well…I mean, I think it’s pretty obvious that we came back here and spent the night together.” He paused then, long enough to give the impression that he was waiting on her to make a comment.

But Joelle had no comment at this point. As it was, having her mistake said out loud made her feel sick to her stomach, all over again.

Staring down at her, Gabriel Lafleur used his fingers to comb back his damp hair from his forehead. “Look, to be perfectly frank with you,” he continued, “my memory of what we did from the time we left the cantina until I awakened this morning in your bed is a bit hazy. I can only assume that neither of us recognized the numbing effect of the tequila we were drinking, and it just slipped up on us.”

“In other words, you’re saying we both got drunk.”

“Yeah,” he said with a slow shake of his head. “That pretty much sums it up.”

Once again, Joelle squeezed her eyes closed. “Oh, God, how could I have done something so foolish?”

“Look,” Gabriel said, “I just need to know one thing.”

Opening her eyes, Joelle exhaled deeply. “Like I just said, Lafleur, I don’t remember anything. And, quite frankly, I’d prefer to leave it that way.”

His gaze was challenging. “Yeah, well, that’s fine with me, Ames, except for one thing.”

Once more, Joelle exhaled deeply. Leave it to a man, she thought, to want to recall every nitty-gritty detail of their night spent in bed together. “What’s that?”

“Did we get married first?”

Clutching the sheet against her breasts, Joelle sat straight up in bed. “What?”

He looked her square in the face. “Did we get married last night before coming back to the hotel?”

“Are you crazy? Why on earth would we have done something like that?”

Gabriel Lafleur scratched the side of his head. “Hell if I know. But we’re both wearing dime-store wedding rings this morning. I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t wearing one yesterday.” Stunned, Joelle stared at him in awe as he suddenly tried to pull something from around his finger, but he seemed to be having a bit of difficulty getting it over his knuckle. “And,” he said, as he continued his efforts, “if I remember correctly, at some point last night you said that you wouldn’t sleep with a guy unless you were ready to have some kind of a permanent commitment with him.”

Dazed, Joelle lifted her left hand in midair and gazed at her ring finger as if it was a lighted firecracker ready to explode. But a moment later, she regained her equilibrium and simply slipped off the cheap-looking ring that she knew was sold by any street vendor in any vacation hot spot in the world. She placed it on the bedside table next to her as if it was no big deal. Which it wasn’t, of course. Still, her heart raced ahead like mad. As if she had just discovered herself running in a marathon and knew her life depended on her winning it.

Taking a deep, steadying breath, Joelle looked back at him and tilted her chin a fraction higher. “Yeah— well, I can tell you right now, if you had the nerve last night to suggest that we sleep together, you can bet I said something like that to you. Look, I know what you must be thinking of me right now, but the truth is, I don’t happen to get drunk with men I hardly know. Nor do I sleep around.”

“Hey, you don’t have to prove anything to me,” he said. “But, regardless of what you say, it doesn’t change the fact that I remember us leaving the cantina together last night with the dumb idea in mind of finding someone to marry us. Hell, I just want to know if we succeeded.”

Squeezing her eyes shut, Joelle grimaced. She, too, now vaguely recalled having done something of similar nature last night. But in the cold light of day, it was simply too farfetched an idea for her to actually believe it possible. Her memory was undoubtedly playing tricks on her. Or…or, maybe, Gabriel Lafleur had somehow set her up to make her believe what he wanted.

With renewed determination, she opened her eyes and glared at him.

“That’s ridiculous. I would never do such an inconceivable thing,” Joelle replied, stubbornly, butin spite of her efforts to convince herself otherwise— her heart was beginning to palpitate uncontrollably, because somewhere deep, down inside, the memory was growing stronger. “You’re making that part up.”

“’Fraid not.”

Her eyes widened. “Are you trying to tell me that we might’ve gotten married last night for the sole purpose of sleeping together?”

“’Fraid so. Or—so it would seem.”

“No way.”

“Lady, if I remember correctly, you were the one setting up the rules, not me.”

“Hey, now, look here. I can assure you, I didn’t coerce you into anything,” Joelle stammered.

“Well, neither did I,” he replied.

“I certainly didn’t come to Acapulco to find a husband.”

Gabriel’s hands went to his hips. “Well, I certainly didn’t come here to find myself a wife, that’s for sure, and I don’t like having to deal with this any more than you do. I’m only praying that we couldn’t find anyone to do the job and ended up just crawling into the sack together. It certainly would make things a whole lot less complicated this morning.”

Indeed, it would, Joelle thought. But, in spite of her initial reaction, a moment later she felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach at the distinct thought of her having just crawled into bed with him. She had morals that she lived by, after all. Morals that had been pounded into her head since she was a child by a strict, disciplinarian father. But she didn’t owe this man a quick briefing of her character upbringing. Besides, what good would it do at this point?

Therefore, in order to hide her growing anxiety, Joelle continued to glare at him and said, “How can you not remember what we did last night?”

He shrugged. “The same as you, I guess. Too much tequila.”

“Oh, God,” Joelle said, making sure that the sheet she held against her continued to cover her nakedness as she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and planted her feet on the floor. She hung her pounding head in the palm of one hand. After all that had gone wrong in her life lately, she couldn’t believe that this, too, was happening to her. “This is awful,” she groaned.