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“Yes.” She lifted herself up and off him so she sat on the couch again. She’d lived with him for two weeks and she knew no more about him than what she’d read in the Chicago papers.
“Do you have to know tonight?” His voice was rough with desire and, she was certain, frustration.
He didn’t look at her, but she could see the throb of aggravation in his jawline. He reached out a hand to rest on her thigh, and her body pulsed in response. They were both going to be angry with her for stopping now, but she couldn’t let the night go further.
Her questions had been a flash of sanity. Having sex with this man without thinking had gotten her into this helpless position to begin with. She couldn’t get pregnant again, but she could lose what little independence and self-respect she had. He said this wasn’t an exchange, but what if it became one?
“Yes.”
He made an incoherent growl and pulled his hand away from her leg. When he turned to look at her, the skin around his eyes was tight, but any other irritation had been smoothed out of his face. “We’re not going to do this tonight, are we?”
“No. I’m sorry,” she offered. Now she was a tease, as well as being the suspicious pregnant woman who showed up unannounced on his doorstep. Better a tease than a woman who used sex now for permanence later.
He pushed off the couch. “Not nearly as sorry as I am.” His butt was now directly at her eye level, and she could imagine its hard muscles under her hands when her nails clung to him. She wanted to feel the strength of him between her thighs. It was her own fault for stopping.
“Make some coffee while I shower.” His “please” was an afterthought.
“Coffee?”
“I want you, Vivian. If this—” he gestured to the couch and her still gaping blouse “—won’t happen until you get your questions answered, I’ll answer your questions. All of them.”
“Tonight?” God, she sounded stupid, but of all the reactions she’d expected, this hadn’t been one of them. Anger, maybe, so she could feel justified in denying herself pleasure. As it was, with her breasts exposed to the world through the floor-to-ceiling windows, she just felt awkward.
When he looked at her, Vivian felt stripped to the bone. “Yes, tonight.” He ran his hand over his face—as if he was a normal man who actually felt emotions like exasperation rather than the wax figure she preferred to imagine him to be. “I don’t know what it says about me that I can’t think of a single thing to ask you in return. When I get back from the shower…”
He looked from the door to his bedroom and back to her. “I keep thinking of the baby as a Trojan horse, delivered to ruin my life in a form I can’t resist. But maybe you are my Helen, and my fate is to be brought down by a beautiful woman, instead. Even worse, I can’t make myself care.”
She flinched from the disgust in his voice, even though it was self-directed, because he might be right. She’d left her secrets and her troubles back in Las Vegas, and she was only in his life until she could get back on her feet. She buttoned her shirt, still feeling unprotected. If she didn’t get a job soon, Karl would wonder why she wasn’t applying for any of the dealer jobs at nearby casinos. She could fob off his questions with “I want a change” for only so long.
Maybe she shouldn’t have let her fears get in the way of sex. She could’ve kept his brain clouded with desire, and he wouldn’t have realized he had questions about her still unanswered.
Who would’ve thought she’d rather play the siren than Helen of Troy?
Water started in his bathroom. She swung her legs over the side of the couch and got up to make the coffee before she could think any longer about the sanity of coming to Chicago. She was pregnant, broke and blacklisted in Las Vegas. Along with everything else, Karl provided her with time to find a new job in a new city with a married last name.
He might not see the baby as anything other than the ruin of his life, but he wasn’t the one who had to pee every time he blinked, so what the hell did he have to complain about?
CHAPTER EIGHT
VIVIAN WAS SITTING on the couch, wrapped in flannel pajamas and a blanket, when Karl stepped from his bedroom into the living room. Her face glowed in the light of the full moon coming in through the windows.
