Surrogate and Wife (7 page)

He stroked his chin, seemingly unaware of how insulting this all was. “It's not that there's anything wrong with your appearance per se. It's that you don't look particularly…satisfied.”

Humph. What was that supposed to mean?

She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. “Well, I'll certainly look a lot less dissatisfied if you stop insulting me.”

He pushed away from the countertop and crossed the kitchen to stand before her, all the while sporting one of his arrogant grins. “Oh, I think we can do a lot better than ‘less dissatisfied.'”

With him standing over her as she sat, he had her at a distinct disadvantage. So she bumped her chair back and stood. Unfortunately, that only brought her closer to him.

But she refused to be intimidated by his height. Or his nearness. Or the delectable way he smelled—like coffee and bacon and freshly showered man.

“I'll have you know, I think there's nothing wrong with my appearance.”

His lips twitched in a way she was sure he knew irritated her. “Sure, if we were just going to hang out here all morning by ourselves, but…”

“But?” She arched an eyebrow.

“But the guys from the station are coming over.”

“I've appeared in court like this.” She propped her hands on her hips. “I certainly think this will do for your friends from the station.”

He continued to study her, he scratched the back of his head as if he was trying to solve a very complex puzzle. “Well, there you go. That's the problem. You look like you're going to court.”

“And that's a problem because…”

“Because you should look like you just tumbled out of bed.”

Her heart seemed to skip a beat at his words. She sucked in a deep breath, but the extra oxygen didn't
counteract what had to be some kind of weird prenatal heart arrhythmia.

She opened her mouth to speak, but all that came out was a weak, “I… I…”

“The way I see it, the morning after her wedding night, a woman ought to look thoroughly…”

Before she could stop herself, the words just popped out. “Thoroughly made love to?”

A wicked gleam sparked in his eyes. “I was going to say satisfied.”

“Oh.” She could feel a blush creeping into her cheeks and she floundered for a moment. “I, um…”

There were moments in life when she wished she was a completely different person. Someone witty and quick, instead of smart and serious. This was definitely one of those moments.

Another woman might have thought of something clever to say that would have put Jake in his place. Or shocked him into silence. She merely stood there, gaping like a trout.

In this game of witty repartee, it was Jake one, Kate big fate zero.

“Obviously, we need to start with this,” he said, reaching up and pulling the clip from her elegant knot.

Her hair fell down about her neck as she heard the clip land on the table beside her with a clatter.

“Now it probably looks like I just tumbled out of bed.” She grumbled in protest.

He grinned. “That's the general idea.”

Instantly she brought one hand up to smooth her hair into place and reached for the clip with the other. Before she could repair the damage, he grabbed her arm by the wrist and tugged it away from her hair.

“Let me.”

Let him what?

But before she could demand an answer, he finger combed her hair, gently parting it on the left.

Stop this! she ordered herself. But she didn't listen. His touch simply felt too good. Her eyes drifted closed.

“Your hair is beautiful. You should wear it loose more often.”

“It gets frizzy,” she said weakly. “In the humidity. And it doesn't do what I want it to. Looks uncontrollable.”

“Wild?”

His voice was like a caress. Sensuous and a little rough. It sapped her strength and when she spoke her voice sounded weak.

“Yes.”

“And you don't like that,” he surmised.

“No.”

“Being wild isn't such a bad thing. It's sexy.”

Like Jake. He always seemed so wild. So reckless.

Well, her hair might be wild, but
she
definitely wasn't.

She forced her eyes open. Forced herself to meet his gaze and to suppress the wave of longing she felt rising up inside of her.

There was heat in his gaze, as well. Proof that this crazy awareness she felt wasn't one-sided. But wanting Jake would do no good. And giving in to the want would only cause more problems than she could imagine.

Yet before she could force herself to move away from him, he pulled his hands from her hair, only to lower them to the top button of her shirt.

“This shirt here. That's another problem.” His voice was low and rough and grated against her already-sensitive nerves.

“It is?”

“Definitely.” His fingers slipped first one and then
another button loose from its hole. His knuckles brushed against the sensitive skin of her throat and chest, sending flashes of heat spiraling down through her body.

She felt herself swaying toward him, suddenly unable to control her own body. Even though she knew what a mistake it would be, she found herself mentally urging him to keep unbuttoning. To pull her shirt right off her.

He must have had way more restraint than she did in that instant, because instead of ripping her shirt open, his hands dropped to where she'd knotted the hem of her shirt low on her hips. Patiently he loosened the knot.

She sucked in her breath as the tail of her shirt fell from his hands and his fingers continued unbuttoning.

With every movement of his fingers, she willed him to meet her eyes, desperate to see his expression. But he kept his attention focused on the task he performed with such painstaking gentleness.

By the time he retied the tail of her shirt into a loose knot just under her breasts, she felt light-headed and weak. In undoing the buttons on her shirt, he'd stripped away all of her defenses, as well.

Still, when he stepped back to eye his handiwork, her hands darted to the skin he'd exposed. He grabbed her wrists before she could cover herself.

“Don't.”

“But my stomach is so much rounder than—”

“Leave it.” Finally his gaze met hers and he seemed completely serious for the first time since they'd met. “You look…fantastic.”

The doorbell rang. Jake dropped his hands to his sides. They both stared toward the front door.

She could hardly bear the intrusion. The reminder of how little this encounter must have meant to Jake.
After all, the past few minutes had been little more than skillful manipulation. When he'd said she looked “fantastic,” what he'd really meant was that she looked “satisfied.” Like a woman who'd just been made love to. Like the woman his friends expected to see.

As Jake moved to get the door, she snatched the clip from the table and quickly twisted her hair back into a knot. But of course, it was too late. Before she could repair the damage and redo the buttons on her shirt, Jake's friends were pouring through the front door.

They'd seen her hastily putting herself back together. The way their voices, one by one, dropped, from loud, rambunctious chatter into silence proved at least that much.

A scorching heat crept up her neck into her cheeks, fueled by embarrassment and kindled with more than a little anger. Anger at Jake for manipulating her, but mostly anger at herself for falling so completely under his spell.

She knew better, damn it.

At least, she thought she did.

What was the point of carefully constructing defenses against men, if she cheerfully threw open the gates and allowed in the first man with a charming smile and plateful of breakfast tacos.

Man, she was easy—when she looked at it in that light.

Jake had been in her home less than a day, and she'd melted like an ice cube. And to think, while he'd been plying her with tacos, she'd been telling herself how she could get used to this.

As Jake's friends flooded the kitchen and began fixing plates, pouring coffee and introducing themselves, she felt her determination hardening.

She might not be able to control her physical reaction to Jake, but, by golly, she was going to control her emotions. Make herself less susceptible to him. Which meant no more decaf coffee. No more hot breakfasts. No more morning intimacies. She was not going to “get used to this.” Not if she could help it.

At least Jake's friends were polite enough not to say anything about what they'd seen, but their sideways glances and knowing grins said plenty. They'd inferred exactly what Jake meant for them to.

They assumed she and Jake had spent their wedding night the traditional way. Making passionate love.

Funny, she'd never felt less satisfied.

I
n the month since their marriage, Kate had certainly kept her distance.

She worked long hours, which Jake, of course, had expected. She went to the gym almost every day for prenatal workout and yoga classes. And when she was home, she spent most of her time in her room, “resting,” she claimed, which made sense, because he knew pregnant women needed lots of sleep.

All of that he could put up with. If only she'd let him help her. With anything. But she wasn't letting him.

He'd offered to help with her laundry. She'd refused and started sending it out to be done. He'd tried to cook dinner for her in the evenings. She insisted on eating microwaved frozen meals. Every morning he had a pot of hot decaf brewing by the time she emerged from her bedroom fully dressed. And every morning she walked right past it on her way out the door to Starbucks.

Yes, he'd pushed too hard the morning the guys from that station came over. He knew that now. For the life of him, he couldn't explain why he'd pushed at all. All he knew was that when Kate entered the kitchen dressed so primly, he hadn't been able to resist trying to ruffle her a bit. Maybe because he remembered how good she'd felt in his arms when they'd kissed. Or because he didn't like the thought of her coming to breakfast dressed so formally every morning for the next six months. Or maybe he'd just wanted to kiss her again and couldn't resist finding out whether she wanted that, too.

Frankly, he didn't know what to do anymore.

Which was why, one Thursday night after work, instead of heading home, he stopped by Beth's and Stew's to get their advice.

“We haven't seen you in a while,” Stew said as he flipped a vegetarian hamburger on the grill in the backyard.

“If I'd known you were making burgers, I would have gotten here early enough to claim one.”

Stew laughed. “You're welcome to one. But only one.” With his spatula he gestured to the three burgers sizzling on the grill. “There's no way I'm taking food out of the mouth of a pregnant woman. You know what I mean?”

Jake chuckled and nodded. But the truth was, he didn't know what Stew meant. That was the problem. That was why he'd come here this evening for Stew's advice.

Carrying buttered hamburger buns for Stew to grill, Beth greeted Jake warmly, as she always did. He couldn't help noticing her clothes. Sure, she was a full month farther along than Kate, but Beth was already wearing in long, flowing maternity dresses, designed to
show off her belly. Kate, on the other hand, was still dressing to hide her pregnancy. Something she wouldn't be able to get away with for much longer.

Beth set the buns down by the grill, then shot a pointed look at Stew. Not too subtle.

Especially when Stew cleared his throat a few seconds later and asked, “So how's Kate doing?”

Funny, he'd been about to ask them the same question. But apparently Stew and Beth didn't know any more than he did. “Okay. I think.” He ran his hand down the back of his neck. “Has she always been so…”

He wasn't sure exactly how to finish the thought tactfully.

“Difficult?” Beth piped up.

“Closed off?” Stew supplied.

“I was going to say ‘unwilling to accept help.'”

Beth nodded. “Yep, that's Kate for you. She's always needed to do things her own way. Frankly, it'd be annoying, if she wasn't usually right.”

“She won't let me do anything for her. It's driving me crazy,” he admitted.

Stew chuckled.

“What?” Jake shot an annoyed look at his friend.

“Man, this must be killing you.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Well…you know how you are.”

“No.” He gritted his teeth. “Apparently, I don't know.”

“You need to save people. Be the hero.”

“I need to save people?” Jake repeated. Then he scoffed at the idea. “I don't need to save people. That's ridiculous.”

Stew and Beth gave each other an amused look.

“I don't need to save people.”

Stew used his spatula to transfer the burgers from the grill to the waiting plate. “Sure you do. It's why you
became a firefighter. It's why you agreed to marry Kate. It's—”

“I agreed to marry Kate because it was the right thing to do. She needed a husband and she needed someone to take care of her while she's pregnant.”

“Right,” Stew said. “And you want to be the one who takes care of her, because you need to save people. It's not a bad thing.”

“It does explain why you're having so many problems with Kate,” Beth said. “She doesn't need anyone to save her. She hasn't since she was a little girl. She doesn't need anyone, period.”

And that—Jake realized as he drove home later that night—was the crux of the problem. Kate didn't need anyone's help. Not even his.

Maybe Stew was right and he did need to be a hero, because it drove him crazy that Kate didn't need him.

In some ways, the realization relieved the tension that had been eating away at him the past month. Kate had been getting to him. After all, she was a beautiful woman and they were living together. The physical attraction he felt for her was only natural.

But this was more than purely sexual. He thought about her all the time and had to resist the urge to call her at work. Just to check in.

He thought about ways to tease her. Things he could say just to get a rise out of her.

His growing attachment to her had become quite a problem.

But now…now he had a clue what was really going on. Stew was right. He needed to be a hero.

He'd married Kate so he could help her, and she wasn't letting him. All he had to do was get her to accept his help and—presto—his Kate obsession would disappear.

 

He crept into the house a little after eleven, expecting Kate to be in bed already. So he was pretty damn surprised to find her stretched out on the sofa, remote control in hand, a late-night rerun of a crime drama on TV.

She slept through him turning off the TV and pulling the remote from her hand, but woke when he tried to cover her with the throw from the back of the sofa.

“You're home.” She wiped at her eyes with her fingertips as she sat up. She looked delightfully sleepy, mussed by her nap. She was dressed in baggy pajamas. Pink with fat ladybugs scattered across them. He'd never seen her in her pajamas before, since she always dressed before leaving her bedroom.

For that matter he hadn't seen her barefoot since that first morning. He glanced down at her feet. Sure enough, they were bare. Slim with high arches and red-painted toenails. Ladybug-red.

He never would have guessed her for red toenails.

She must have caught him looking at her feet, because she quickly hid them as she sat cross-legged on the sofa.

He forced his gaze back to her face. “You didn't have to wait up.”

“I wasn't. I just—” She frowned and glanced toward the TV. “What time is it, anyway?”

“About eleven-thirty.”

“That late?”

He wasn't sure if the hint of accusation he heard in her voice was real or a figment of his guilt. Either way, his knee-jerk reaction was defensive. “I called.”

“I know. But you shouldn't feel like you have to report in. You can stay out as late as you want.”

Having apparently said what she'd needed to say, she
unfolded herself from the sofa and stood. Only as she was headed toward the hall did he notice how tired she looked.

“If you weren't waiting up for me, why were you sleeping on the sofa?”

She hesitated in the doorway to the hall, and for a second he thought she'd just ignore his question altogether. Then she turned to face him, propping her shoulder against the door frame. “Insomnia.”

Her arms were crossed over her chest in a defensive posture. Waiting for him to tease her, he supposed. She looked cute, standing there in her ladybug pj's and bare feet. Vulnerable in a way she almost never was. And that appealed to him.

Not that he wanted her to be weak. He just wanted her to let him in occasionally.

“Insomnia, huh?” he prodded, willing her to say more.

“I've had it on and off for years. Mostly on. I can usually cope with it pretty well.”

“And sleeping on the sofa helps?” he asked doubtfully.

“A little. The doctor said I shouldn't sleep on my back. Apparently it restricts the flow of blood to the placenta. So, when I do fall asleep, every time I roll over, I wake up, afraid I've rolled onto my back. At least on the sofa there's nowhere to roll. But it's less comfortable, so I still have trouble falling asleep. Unfortunately, a lot of the things I usually do to relax, you can't do when you're pregnant.”

“Like drinking a glass of wine?”

She smiled. “I was thinking more along the lines of taking a hot bath. That usually helped. But I'm not supposed to raise my body temperature above 102 degrees. So the hot bath is out.”

Into his mind popped an image of her soaking in the bathtub, surrounded by bubbles, hair piled high on her
head, skin silky and moist, gleaming in the flickering light from a nearby candle.

He shoved the image aside and cleared his throat. This was not the time to be fantasizing about Kate. That tended to lead to wanting Kate. And wanting Kate was what had scared her off the last time.

Now that she'd finally started to relax around him again, he didn't want to screw this up. He wanted to do the right thing. To be helpful, damn it.

“There's gotta be something you can do to help you relax enough to sleep. Back when I was fighting fires, I'd come home from the job all keyed up from the adrenaline. I wouldn't be able to sleep.”

Her lips curved into one of her rare smiles. “Well, I did blow out a candle earlier. But that's hardly the same thing.”

He smiled. “You're into the second trimester, right?”

“This is my nineteenth week, so yeah.”

“Isn't that when women are supposed to feel all energetic? Clean a lot or something?”

“Right. Nesting. It's when women are supposed to go through the nesting stage.”

“Exactly. Tonight when I saw Stew, he said Beth was driving him crazy. She'd reorganized every closet in the house and was having him paint everything that stood still.”

She laughed. “I guess that explains why I got a message from her last week wanting to go through some old stuff of our adopted Mom's.”

“So you're probably nesting, too. That's why you have so much extra energy.”

“Right.” Her smile faded. “Except, I have no nest. I mean, sure, I've got a house I could clean and paint and organize, but what's the point, really? I don't have a baby to get ready for.”

Her tone sounded almost wistful, and before he could stop himself, he asked, “Having second thoughts?”

Her gaze darted to his. “About?”

“Do you want to keep the baby?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Absolutely not,” she said a bit too firmly. After a second she looked at him curiously. “You're not…”

“Not what?”

“Thinking
you
want to keep the baby, are you?”

“No. God, no.” But even as he said the words he knew they weren't entirely true. Of course he'd thought about it. But what could a guy like him offer a kid that Beth and Stew couldn't? He took a moment to study Kate and he asked, “You're sure you're not—”

“Definitely sure.”

“Good.”

“Right.” She nodded. But then she tilted her head to the side and studied him. “I know Beth and Stew have said they want us to at least consider it, but as far as I'm concerned, it's not even an option.”

It wasn't any of his business, but he couldn't help saying, “Okay, I know why I'm not even considering it. I know how my own dad struggled to raise me alone. But what about you? Why are you so dead set against it?”

She shrugged. “Some women are mommy material. Some aren't.”

“And you think you aren't?” he asked, because she sounded a little too sure of her answer. Who was she trying to convince? Him or herself?

“Isn't that rather obvious?” She didn't wait for him to answer, but shifted the conversation back to their previous topic. “I see your point about the nesting, though.” Words poured out of her. It was her avoidance technique, he was beginning to recognize. Anything she
didn't want to think about, she just talked through. “Let's face it, sitting on the bench all day isn't exactly a high-energy job. I guess I could use some of that nesting energy to do some reorganizing around here—”

She broke off when he chuckled.

Narrowing her gaze, she demanded, “What?”

He looked pointedly around the living room, gesturing to the perfectly fluffed pillows, the neat fan of this month's magazines and the woven basket that held the TV remotes. “I'm just wondering what exactly you'd organize. Maybe rearrange the DVDs by genre before alphabetizing them? Group the candles on the mantel by height instead of color?”

Her gaze got even squintier and he couldn't tell if she was annoyed with his teasing or trying not to laugh.

“Ah, come on, Katie, even you have to admit there's not a lot around here that needs organization.”

She shrugged, pushed herself away from the doorjamb and moved toward him. “So, back when you were fighting fires, what did you do to relax? Besides get drunk and take bubble baths, I mean.”

“Firefighters don't take bubble baths.”

“That's a shame. You tough guys are really missing out on one of life's great pleasures.”

Kate naked in a bathtub? Oh, man. One of life's great pleasures indeed.

He felt heat beginning to creep up the back of his neck just thinking about it. Man, he needed to change the subject. “I…um…”

Kate let out a bark of laughter. “I've embarrassed you.”