Darcy already had the skirt she’d been wearing unzipped and halfway down her hips, a blue streak he wouldn’t have credited her with flying from her lips.
Tread carefully.
He backed to the door and, catching the handle, swung it shut and locked it without ever taking his eyes off Darcy.
Yeah. The gentlemanly thing to do might have been to look away. But instinct was telling him hormones were like the sea. Something he didn’t want to turn his back on.
The skirt was balled up in her hands now, only to be thrown on the floor in spectacular tantrum fashion.
He shouldn’t be registering anything beyond compassion, he knew. But that his being there wasn’t incentive enough for her to shut it down, made him want to puff out his chest like he had something to crow about. Like after all the polite, and nice and thoughtful they had going on for the sake of the little life growing inside her...there was trust between them, too. Enough that she was willing to let him see what she was really feeling.
Which was enraged.
The buttons down the front of her blouse, which were definitely straining under each ragged breath, went next.
“I can’t stand it!” She cried her temper boiling over to next level proportions.
And yeah, he was ready for her.
His hands went to his tie, loosening the knot with a couple tugs. Then the buttons and links at his wrists.
SIXTEEN
Darcy fumbled the slim disk again and that was it. Her hands bunched into the fabric at either side of the row of delicate mother-of-pearl buttons she’d loved so much when she saw them in the store, ready to rip the damn shirt into rags before she’d tolerate one more prickly seam cutting into her chest and stomach.
Two big hands closed gently around her wrists, the warmth of them radiating down her arms as a soft “Shhh,” penetrated the fog of her harried mind.
Her eyes blinked open and—
Jeff was standing in front of her, his tie undone, shirt open to his waist.
“Jeff.” She swallowed past the humiliation-sized knot lodged in her throat and peered up at him. “This isn’t what I—I don’t even know what I was thinking.”
Those earthy hazel eyes met hers as he shrugged first one shoulder and then the other from his suit shirt, dropping it behind him. He tugged the soft cotton of his undershirt free at his waist before pulling it overhead, and Darcy was left staring at the broad bare expanse of Jeff’s hard-cut upper body.
And wow.
“You were thinking you were tired of being uncomfortable,” he started. “That the morning sickness isn’t something you can control but this—clothes rubbing too tight—is. After months of how you’ve been feeling, no one could blame you for having had enough. You’ve been pushed to the edge by circumstances beyond your control. You hit your limit and needed to blow off a bit of steam.”
Her throat tightened as emotion different from the frustration, the bitterness, the humiliation began to work its way to the surface. Blinking back a fresh rush of tears, she nodded unable to voice the gratitude for his simple understanding in any other way.
The seconds ticked past and Jeff stood holding her gaze with his own. Letting her see the compassion in his eyes. The lack of judgment over actions that would have had most men backing away slowly—hands in the air, eyes on the ceiling, too uncomfortable with the messy fallout of emotions gone off the chain to do anything more than leave. But not Jeff.