Her hands were gripping her purse hard. The sequins on it sparkled in the light, glittering against her white knuckles. Her eyes were full of anger but beneath it he could sense her shock and panic. And no wonder—a bomb had exploded in their lives.
Luckily, he was good at taking charge of a situation when everyone else was reeling from the damage. He’d had to do that a lot in his business life, and it was part of the reason his company was so successful. He kept his head, stayed in control.
“Sit down,” he ordered. “Take a few deep breaths.”
Marisa blinked. “I’m sorry, but that sounds a lot like you’re telling me to calm down.”
“I am telling you to calm down. Panicking won’t help.”
“Panicking?” Marisa’s eyes went wide. “I’m not panicking! I’m ecstatic! Because what’s not to like about my life? I’m pregnant to a cyborg guy I don’t like. Who’s also my boss. Who I spent money I don’t have on in a dumb auction. Money I was going to use to be artist and get a glass studio and take a glass art course and carpe bloody diem! And now you’re going to have to tell me how I can borrow more stupid money so I can pay the stupid charity because I bought stupid you!” She took a heaving breath. “Oh my freaking God! If this is how royally I can screw up my own life, what the hell kind of mum am I going to be? I’ll probably end up like my bloody mother, a failed beauty queen living out her dreams through her children!”
The flood of words abruptly ended as Marisa took a step back and collapsed onto the chair, covering her face with her hands. She was so small and vulnerable, her shoulders shaking. Which probably meant she was crying.
The mother of your child. And she’s crying.
In the normal scheme of things, he helped people out by making logical decisions and taking action, not by giving out comfort. His parents hadn’t been the touchy-feely type and neither was he. But a weird possessiveness had gripped him. Yes, she was his now. His responsibility. And she was hurting. Which meant he had to do something for her.
Luke moved closer to her and awkwardly patted one shoulder. “There, there.”
After a second, the shaking stopped and Marisa lifted her head. Her mascara was running, her cheeks were shiny with tears, and her eyes were red-rimmed. Pain shifted inside him, a pain he didn’t understand.
“Did you pat me?” she demanded.
From the look on her face perhaps touching her had been wrong. “You were crying,” he said stiffly. “I was trying to offer comfort.”
“By patting me and saying ‘there, there’?”
“What’s wrong with that?” He tried to resist the urge to pull at his jacket. “I was only trying to help.”
She stared at him for a long moment. “You’re not very good with people are you, McNamara?”
It was the truth, but somehow he didn’t much like her pointing that out. “I did tell you that, remember? Numbers are easier to work with, admittedly.”
“So this baby thing doesn’t bother you at all?”
“Of course it bothers me.” But not quite in the way he was expecting.
“It doesn’t seem like it.”
He couldn’t quite explain his feelings to her because he wasn’t sure of them himself. So all he said was, “Because panicking or getting angry or railing against fate won’t help. Or change the situation.”
“You were pretty pissed off about the possibility of pregnancy at the time, if I recall.” Her voice deepened into a pretty fair imitation of his own. “‘There will be no children’ is what you said, I think.”
“I wasn’t pissed off,” he said, uncomfortable with the memory and most especially the part where he’d shoved her up against a door, in an office, and screwed the daylights out of her. “I was merely emphatic. But I fail to see how that’s relevant to what’s happening now.”
“It’s relevant because you’re acting like a bloody robot and, to be honest, it’s freaking me out.”
“So you’d prefer me to scream and shout at you? Demand proof that you were taking the Pill? Demand a list of your lovers and a paternity test so I know it’s my baby?”
She went pale, a flash of something he couldn’t interpret crossing her face. “It’s your baby. And if you demand any of that crap, you’ll get a stiletto somewhere painful.”
Luke’s jaw tightened. This was not going at all well, and he sensed that his logical explanation as to the reasons why having a paternity test was a good idea would not be received in the spirit in which it was intended. In fact, every word he said only seemed to distress her more, and he didn’t want to hurt her. Despite her sassy, bad-girl exterior, there were little flashes of vulnerability there that always seemed to bring him up short. Bunny panties, for example. The sound of surrender she’d made when he’d pushed inside her. The way she’d melted in his arms as if she’d been waiting for him for years and now he was finally here…