Waking Up Pregnant(55)
“Welcome,” he answered, sweeping his discarded suit shirt up from the floor as he headed for the door. “See you in the morning, Darcy.”
* * *
Jeff stalked to his room, every muscle in his body working against him, kicking and screaming, and trying to drag him back the way he’d come. To the lush warm woman wrapped up in his T-shirt looking like the kind of Sunday morning fantasy he desperately wanted to get back in his bed.
It wasn’t supposed to be like that with her. She didn’t want it. Hell, he didn’t want it, either. Fine. He wanted it. But he knew there was a good reason he wasn’t supposed to. And still, he’d unwrapped her like the present he’d been waiting for all year.
Yeah, his intentions may have been pure when he’d started. At least as pure as they ever got around Darcy. She was suffering and he hated it. After months of persistent nausea, the complete upset to her life, her loss of autonomy and every other consequence she bore the burden of—the guilt was eating him alive. Because all of it, everything she was going through, could be laid at his feet.
So he’d seen an opportunity to make something better—and he’d charged in like some nut job white-knight-wannabe with delusions of good intentions as he shucked his shirt and went to town on hers.
The only thing he had going for him was the fact that he hadn’t looked once he got her peeled out of a blouse that had definitely been snug in all the right places. The fabric pulling against the swell of her breasts, and fitted to perfection across a belly only just beginning to soften in the most temptingly touchable way.
Not that he’d gotten more than the barest taste of it.
He’d been trying to help, not cop a feel.
Yeah, keep telling yourself that, chump.
Truth, the intentions had started out good. But when he’d rested her delicate hands against his chest—those pure intentions had hopped the express freight straight to hell. The feel of her fingers brushing his bare skin had flipped every switch he had and it was nothing short of divine intervention he’d been able to keep that sudden and intense want from shining like a beacon. But he’d shut down the visual tells. Ruthlessly. With extreme prejudice. Because this was the mother of his child. And aside from the fact that he couldn’t afford to screw it up with her—she damn well deserved better from him.
* * *
Darcy stared out the long-vacated door to her room, a sinking, horrible feeling deep in the pit of her stomach as her actions flashed though her mind like a slideshow of shame.
She’d stripped in front of Jeff.
And then when he’d done the only thing he could think of to help her out—literally giving her the shirt off his back—she’d gone and eyed him like some freaking piece of man candy she couldn’t wait to wrap her lips around.
She wanted to tell herself it couldn’t get worse. But it was about to. Because there was no way they were going to be able to quietly ignore what just happened, chalk it up to hormones and sweep it under the rug to forget.
No way.
She had to apologize. And she had to make sure Jeff knew that brief disconnect with her sanity wasn’t a regular or long sustained thing.
Hands clasped at her chest, she forced one foot in front of the other until she’d made it to Jeff’s door—where she found him stretched out across his floor in a hard plank position, those powerful shoulders and arms working his body in one relentless cycle of up and down after another.