The Pregnancy Secret (Harlequin Romance Large Print) (7 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

J
ESSICA
DID
SEEM
to be able to feel all those things he had never been able to say, because instead of slapping his hand away, she leaned into it, and then covered it with her own, and closed her eyes. She sighed, and then opened her eyes, and it seemed to him it was with reluctance she put his hand away from her.

And so they went into the house together and paused in the doorway.

“Wow, does that stink,” Jessica said. She went and grabbed a couple of dish towels off the oven handle. “We need these over our faces, not that I can tie them.”

Kade took the towels from her and tied one over the bottom half of her face and one over his.

“Is mine manly?” he asked. “Or did I get the one with the flowers on it?”

He saw her eyes smile from under her mask. Now Jessica was in an ugly dress
and
had her face covered up. But the laughter still twinkled around the edges of her eyes, and it made her so beautiful it threatened to take his breath away far more than the toxic cloud of odor in the room.

Firmly, Kade made himself turn from her, and aware he looked ridiculous, like an old-time bandito, surveyed the damage to the living room.

All that was left of the sander bag was ribbons of charred fabric. They were still smoking, so he went over and picked up the sander and threw it out the front door, possibly with a little more force than was necessary. It hit the concrete walkway and pieces shot off it and scattered.

“That gave me a manly sense of satisfaction,” Kade said, his voice muffled from under the dish towel. He turned back into the room.

The smile deepened around her eyes. How was this that they had narrowly averted disaster, and yet it felt good to be with her? It was as if a wall that had been erected between them was showing signs of stress, a brick or two falling out of it.

There was a large scorch mark on the floor where the sander had been, and a black ugly film shining with some oily substance coated the floor where he had thrown the water. The smoke had belched up and stained the ceiling.

“I think the worst damage is the smell,” Kade said. “It’s awful, like a potent chemical soup. I don’t think you’re going to be able to stay here until it airs out a bit.”

“It’s okay. I’ll get a hotel.”

“You’re probably going to have to call your insurance company. The smell is probably through the whole house. Your clothes have probably absorbed it.”

“Oh, boy,” she said, “two claims in one week. What do you suppose that will do to my premiums?” And then she giggled. “It’s a good thing the furniture is on the lawn. It won’t have this smell in it. Do you think I’m going to have to repaint?”

“You don’t have to go to a hotel,” he said. “I’ve got lots of room.”

Son, I say, son, what are you doing?

She hesitated. There was a knock at the door.

“Pizza,” they said together.

* * *

Jessica contemplated what she was feeling as Kade looked after the pizza delivery. He cocked his head slightly at her, a signal to look at the delivery boy, who was oblivious, earbuds in, head bobbing. He didn’t seem to even notice that he was stepping over a smoldering piece of machinery on the front walkway to get to the door. If he noticed the smell rolling out of the house, it did not affect his rhythm in any way.

As they watched the pizza boy depart, she felt like laughing again. That was impossible! She’d had two disasters in one week. She should be crying, not feeling as if an effervescent bubble of joy was rising in her.

Shock
, she told herself. She was reacting to the pure shock of life delivering the unexpected. Wasn’t there something just a little bit delightful about being surprised?

“Of course I can’t stay with you, Kade,” she said, coming to her senses, despite the shock of being surprised. “I’ll get a hotel room. Or I can stay with friends.”

“Why don’t we go to my place and eat the pizza? You don’t make your best decisions on an empty stomach. We’ll figure it out from there.”

Other than the fact it, once again, felt good to be
known
, that sounded so reasonable. She was hungry, and it would be better to look for a place to live for the next few days on a full tummy. What would it hurt to go to his place to have the pizza? She had to admit that she was curious about where Kade lived.

And so she found herself heading for the borrowed truck, laughing at the irony of him carefully locking the door when all her furniture was still on the lawn. Except for her precious bench, which at the last moment, she made him load into the box of the truck, they just left everything there.

She suspected leaving her furniture on the lawn was not nearly as dangerous as getting into that truck with him and heading toward a peek at his life.

His condo building sat in the middle of a parklike setting in a curve in the Bow River. Everything about the building, including its prime nearly downtown location, whispered class, wealth and arrival. There was a waterfall feature in the center of the circular flagstone driveway. The building was faced in black granite and black tinted glass, and yet was saved from the coldness of pure modern design by the seamless blending of more rustic elements such as stone and wood in the very impressive facade.

A uniformed doorman came out when Kade pulled up in front of the posh entryway to the building.

“Hey, Samuel, can you park this in the secured visitor area for me?”

Kade came and helped her out of the truck, and she was aware of the gurgle of the waterfall sliding over rocks. Something in the plantings around it smelled wonderful. Honeysuckle?

If the doorman was surprised to have a pickup truck to park among the expensive sports cars and luxury vehicles, it certainly didn’t show in his smooth features.

“It’s underground,” Kade said to Jessica, when the truck had pulled away. “You don’t have to worry about your bench.”

The truth was she was so bowled over by her surroundings, the bench had slipped her mind.

Though the incredible landscape outside should have prepared her for the lobby, she felt unprepared. The entryway to the building was gorgeous, with soaring ceilings, a huge chandelier and deep distressed-leather sofas grouped around a fireplace.

No wonder he had never come home.

“Wow,” Jessica said, gulping. “Our little place must seem pretty humble after this. I can see why you were just going to give it to me.”

Kade looked around, as if he was puzzled. “I actually didn’t pick the place,” he said. “The company owns several units in here that we use for visiting executives. One was available. I needed a place to go and we had one vacant. I rent it from the company.”

She cast him a glance as they took a quiet elevator up to the top floor. He really did seem oblivious to the sumptuous surroundings he found himself in. Once off the elevator, Kade put a code into the keyless entry.

“It’s 1121,” he said, “in case you ever need it.”

She ducked her head at the trust he had in her—gosh, what if she barged in when he was entertaining a girlfriend?—and because it felt sad that she knew she would never need it. Well, unless she did stay for a couple of days until the disaster at her place was sorted.

Already, she realized with wry self-knowledge, her vehement no to his invitation was wavering.

Maybe that wasn’t so surprising. Kade was charming, and he could be lethally so. She needed to remember charm was not something you could take to the bank in a relationship.

He opened the door and stood back.

“Oh, my gosh,” Jessica said, stepping by him. The sense of being seduced, somehow, increased. She found herself standing in a wide entryway, floored in huge marble tiles. That area flowed seamlessly into the open-space living area, where floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the park and pathways that surrounded the Bow River.

The views were breathtaking and exquisite, and she had a sense of being intensely curious and not knowing where to look first, because the interior of the apartment was also breathtaking. The furnishings and finishes were ultramodern and high-end. The kitchen, on the back wall of the huge open space, was a masterpiece of granite and stainless steel. A huge island had the cooktop in it, and a space-age stainless-steel fan over that.

“Let’s eat,” Kade said. He’d obviously gotten used to all this luxury. The fabulous interior of his apartment didn’t create even a ripple in him. “Maybe on the deck? It’s a nice night. I’ll just get some plates.”

Jessica, as if in a dream, moved out fold-back glass doors onto the covered terrace. It was so big it easily contained a sitting area with six deeply cushioned dark rattan chairs grouped together. On the other side of it sat a huge rustic plank table with dining chairs around it. It looked as if it could sit eight people with ease.

Huge planters contained everything from full-size trees to bashful groups of purple pansies. She took a seat at the table and wondered about all the parties that had been hosted here that she had not been invited to. She looked out over the river.

She felt as if she was going to cry. The apartment screamed to her that he had moved on. That he had a life she knew nothing about. After all their closeness this afternoon, she suddenly felt unbearably lonely.

Kade came out, juggling dishes and the pizza.

“What?” he said, sliding her a look as he put everything down.

“Your apartment is beautiful,” she said, and could hear the stiffness in her own voice.

“Yeah, it’s okay,” he said. She cast him a look. Was he deliberately understating it?

“The kitchen is like something out of a magazine layout.”

He shrugged, took a slice of pizza out of the box and laid it on her plate, from the pepperoni half, just as if they had ordered pizza together yesterday instead of a long, long time ago.

“I think I’ll look for open concept in my next place,” she said. She bit into the pizza and tried not to swoon. Not just because the pizza was so good, but because of the memories that swarmed in with the flavor.

“Don’t,” he said.

Swoon over pizza?

“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, open concept.”

“Oh,” she said, relieved. “You don’t like it?”

“You can’t be messy. Everything’s out in the open all the time. Where do you hide from your dirty dishes?”

“That would be hard on you,” Jessica said. She remembered painful words between them over things that now seemed so ridiculous: toothpaste smears on the sink, the toilet paper roll put on the “wrong” way. “But I didn’t see any dirty dishes.”

“Oh, the condo offers a service. They send someone in to clean and make the beds and stuff. You don’t think I’m keeping all those plants alive, do you?”

“Very swanky,” she said. “Kind of like living at a hotel.”

“Exactly. That is probably why this place,” Kade said, “has never felt like home.”

Jessica felt the shock of that ripple through her. This beautiful, perfect space did not feel like home to him?

“I’ve missed this pizza,” he said.

“Me, too,” she said. But she knew neither of them was talking about pizza. They sat out on his deck and watched the light change on the river as the sun went down behind them. The silence was comfortable between them.

“I should go,” she finally said. “I have to make some phone calls. It’s probably getting late to call a friend for tonight. I’ll go to a hotel and arrange something for the rest of the week.”

“You shouldn’t bother. It sounds as if it’s going to be a lot of hassle. There is lots of room here. There’s a guest room.”

Logically, Jessica knew she could not stay. But it felt so good to be here. It felt oddly like home to her, even if it didn’t to Kade. Maybe it was because she was aware that, for the very first time since she had been attacked in her business, she felt safe.

And so tired. And relaxed.

Maybe for her, home was where Kade was, which was all the more reason to go, really.

“Okay,” she heard herself saying, without nearly enough fight. “Maybe just for one night.”

The logical part of her tried to kick in. “I should have packed a bag. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it.”

“I told you,” Kade said with an indulgent smile, “you don’t think well when you’re hungry. I thought of it, but then I wondered if your stuff was going to smell like that burning sander. Don’t worry. Like I said, the place is set up for visiting execs. The bathrooms are all stocked up with toothbrushes and toothpaste and shampoo and stuff. And you don’t need pajamas.”

She could feel her eyebrows shoot up into her hairline.

He laughed. “The guest bedroom has its own en suite, not that I was suggesting you sleep naked. You can borrow one of my shirts.”

Good grief, he was her husband. Why would she blush like a schoolgirl when the word
naked
fell, with such aggravating ease, from his gorgeous lips?

CHAPTER TWELVE

“A
ND
WHAT
SHOULD
I do for clothes tomorrow?” Jessica asked. Her voice felt stiff with tension.

But Kade did not seem tense at all. He just shrugged, and then said, his tone teasing, “We will figure something out. It’s not as though we could do worse than what you have on.”

We.

She ordered herself not to give in to this. It was a weakness to let him look after her. It was an illusion to feel safe with him.

But she did. And she was suddenly aware she had not really slept or even eaten properly since the break-in. Exhaustion settled over her.

“One night,” she decided. “My place will probably be aired out by tomorrow.”

“Probably,” he said insincerely.

“I think I have to go to bed now.”

“All right. I’ll show you the way, and find you a shirt to wear for pajamas.”

“I’ll put away the dishes.”

“No, I’ll do it. I’ve gotten better at picking up behind myself.”

Was that true, or would the maid come and pick up after them tomorrow? She found she just didn’t care. She was giving herself over to the luxurious feeling of being looked after. Just for one night, though!

And then she found herself led down a wide hallway and tucked inside a bedroom that was an opulent symphony of grays. She went into the attached bathroom. Her mouth fell open. There was a beautiful bathtub shaped like an egg in here. And double sinks and granite, and a walk-in shower. And this was the guest room.

Why did she feel such comfort that he didn’t feel as at home here as he had in the humble little wreck of a house they had shared?

Just tired
, she told herself. As promised, there was everything she needed there, from toothbrushes to fresh towels.

When she went out of the bathroom, she saw he had left a shirt on the bed for her. Unable to stop herself, she buried her face in it, and inhaled the deep and wonderful scent of her husband. She managed to get the oversize buttons undone on the dress and get it off.

She pulled his shirt on. His buttons weren’t quite so easy to do up, but she managed. When she noticed they were done up crooked, she didn’t have the energy to change them. She tumbled into the deep luxury of that bed, looked out the window at the lights of the city reflecting in the dark waters of the river and felt her eyes grow heavy.

She realized, for the first time since her shop had been broken into and she had been injured in her ill-advised scuffle with the perpetrator, she was going to get to sleep easily. She suspected she would sleep deeply.

Only it wasn’t really the first time in a week.

It was the first time in a year.

* * *

Kade was so aware that Jessica was right down the hallway from him. He wished he would not have made that crack about her sleeping naked.

Because a man did not want to be having naked thoughts about the wife he still missed and mourned.

But he had developed ways of getting by all these painful feelings. He looked at his watch. Despite the fact Jessica was in bed—she had always handled stress poorly, and he suspected she was exhausted—it was still early.

And he had his balm.

He had work. Plus, he had nearly wrecked her house today. He needed to look after that. He liked the sense of having a mission. This time, though, he decided to call the guy who had fixed her shop door, at least for the floors.

Jake, like all good carpenters and handymen in the supercharged economy of Calgary, was busy.

But willing to put a different project on hold when he heard Jessica’s situation, and that Jessica’s furniture was currently residing on the lawn.

His attitude inspired confidence, and Kade found himself sharing the whole repair list with him. Jake promised to look at it first thing in the morning, even though it was Sunday, and get back to him with a cost estimate and a time frame.

“Can she stay out of the house for a couple of days? The floor sanding and refinishing causes a real mess. It’s actually kind of a hazardous environment. Even the best floor sander can’t contain all the dust, and it’s full of chemicals. Plus it’ll be easier for me to work if she’s not there.”

“Oh, sure,” Kade said, thinking of Jessica staying here a few days. She probably wouldn’t. She would probably insist on getting a hotel.

But for a little while longer, anyway, he was still her husband. And he liked having her here, under his roof. He liked how protective he felt of her, and how he felt as if he could fix her world.

So he gave Jake the go-ahead.

As he disconnected his phone, Kade realized he needed to remember, when it came to larger issues, there was a lot he could not fix. This sense of having her under his protection was largely an illusion. They had tried it over the fire of real life, and they had been scorched.

Tomorrow, he would get up superearly and be gone before she even opened her eyes. He would solve all the helpless ambivalence she made him feel in the way he always had.

He would go to work.

He would, a little voice inside him said, abandon his wife. The same as always.

But it didn’t quite work out that way. Because in the night, he was awakened to the sound of screaming.

Kade bolted from his bed and down the hall to her door. He paused outside it for a minute, aware, suddenly, he was in his underwear.

He heard a strangled sob, and the hesitation was over. He opened her door, and raced to her side. The bedside lamp was a touch lamp, and he brushed it with his hand.

Jessica was illuminated in the soft light. She was thrashing around, her hair a sweaty tangle, her eyes clenched tightly shut. When the light came on, she sat up abruptly, and the jolt to her arm woke her up.

She looked up at him, terrified, and then the terror melted into a look he could have lived for.

Had lived for, once upon a time, when he still believed in once upon a time.

“Are you okay?” he asked softly.

“Just a dream,” she said, her voice hoarse.

He went into the adjoining bathroom and found a glass wrapped in plastic that crinkled when he stripped it off. Again, he was reminded this place was more like a hotel and not a home. He filled the glass and brought it to her.

She was sitting up now, with her back against the headboard, her eyes shut. “Sorry,” she said.

“No, no, it’s okay.” He handed her the water. “How long have you been having the nightmares?”

“Since the break-in.” She took a long drink of water. “I dream that someone is breaking into my house. My bedroom. That I wake up and—” She shuddered.

Kade felt a helpless anger at the burglar who had caused all this.

“Are you in your underwear?” she whispered.

“Yeah.” He wanted to say it was nothing she had never seen before, but she looked suddenly shy, and it was adorable.

“You know I don’t own a pair of pajamas,” he reminded her.

He sat down on the bed beside her. Everything about her was adorable. She looked cute and very vulnerable in his too-large shirt with the buttons done up crooked. Her hair was sticking up on one side, and he had to resist the temptation to smooth it down with his hand. He noticed her eyes skittered everywhere but to his bare legs.

Sheesh. How long had they been married?

She seemed as if she might protest him getting in the bed, but instead, after a moment’s thought, she scooted over, and he slid his legs up on the mattress beside her. He felt the soft familiar curve of her shoulder touching his, let the scent of her fill up his nose.

“I’m sorry about the nightmares,” he said.

“It’s silly,” she said. “I think I’m getting post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s shameful to get it for a very minor event.”

“Hey, stop that. You were the victim here. The person who should be ashamed is whoever did this. Jessica, do these people not have any kind of conscience? Decency? Can they not know how these stupid things they do for piddling sums of money reverberate outward in a circle of pain and distress for their victims?”

He felt her relax, snuggle against him. “I feel sorry for him.”

He snorted. “You would.”

“I don’t think you or I have ever known that kind of desperation, Kade.”

Except that was not true. When she had wanted to have that baby, he had been desperate to make her happy. Desperate. And her own desperation had filled him with the most horrifying sense of helplessness.

He reached over and snapped off the light. His hand found her head, and he pulled it onto his shoulder, and stroked her hair.

“Go to sleep,” he said softly. “I’ll just stay with you until you do. You’re safe. I’ll take care of you. Why don’t you lie back down.”

“In a minute,” she said huskily. “You know what this reminds me of, Kade?

“Hmm?”

“Remember when we first met, how I was terrified of thunderstorms?”

“Yeah,” he said gruffly, “I remember.”

“And then that one night, a huge electrical storm was moving over the city, and you came and got me out of the bathroom where I was hiding.”

“Under the sink,” he recalled.

“And you led me outside, and you had the whole front step set up. You had a blanket out there, and a bottle of wine, and two glasses, and we sat on the step.

“At first I was terrified. I was quivering, I was so scared. I wanted to bolt. The clouds were so black. And the lightning was ripping open the heavens. I felt like Dorothy in the
Wizard of Oz
, as if I could be swept away.

“And then you put your hand on my shoulder, as if to hold me to the earth. You told me to count the seconds between the lightning bolt and the thunder hitting and I would know how far away the lightning strike was.”

He remembered it all, especially her body trembling against his as the storm had intensified all around them.

“It kept getting closer and closer. Finally, there was no pause between the lightning strike and the thunder, there was not even time to count to one. The whole house shook. I could feel the rumble of the thunder ripple through you and through me and through the stairs and through the whole world. The tree in the front yard shook.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“The whole night lit up in a flash, and I looked at you, and your face was illuminated by the lightning. You weren’t even a little bit afraid. I could tell you loved it. You loved the fury and intensity of the storm. And suddenly, just like that, I wasn’t afraid anymore. I loved it, too. Sitting out on the front steps with you, we sipped that wine, and cuddled under that blanket, and got soaked when the rain came.”

She was silent for a long time.

“And after that,” he said gently, “every time there was a storm, you were the first one out on that step.”

“It’s funny, isn’t it? It cost nothing to go sit on those steps and storm watch. They came from nowhere. We couldn’t plan it or expect it. And yet those moments?”

“I know, Jessica,” he said softly. “The best. Those moments were the best.”

“And today,” she said, her voice slightly slurred with sleep, “today was a good day, like that.”

“I nearly burned your house down.”

“Our house,” she corrected him. “You made me laugh. That made it worth it.”

It made him realize how much pain was between them, and how much of it he had caused. He had a sense of wanting, somehow, to make it right between them. It bothered him, her casual admittance that she did not laugh much anymore. It bothered him, and he accepted responsibility for it.

So it could be a clean goodbye between him and Jessica. They could get a divorce without acrimony and without regret. So they could remember times like that, sitting in the thunderstorm, and know they had been made better for them. Not temporarily. But permanently.

He was a better man because of her.