Waking Up Pregnant(85)

                Connor looked down at the offending piece of technology and held out his hand for it.

                “Thank you,” he said as Connor waved him inside.

                “I owed you one, right?”

                Jeff was about to make the usual polite protest—even though it was the absolute truth—when he stopped at the sound of crunching plastic and metal.

                Eyes bugging, he cranked his head around to where Connor was pulling the crushed phone from between the door and the frame, a sleepy half-cocked grin on his face as he handed back what had seconds before been a working phone, painstakingly programmed to accommodate every aspect of his life. At his stunned stare, Connor slapped the bits of phone into his palm and said, “Now we’re even. And you’re welcome.”

                Five minutes later, Connor set five bottles between them, then dropped into the kitchen chair, eyeing Jeff over the table. “Let’s get this out of the way first. What kind of night are we having? Coffee?” he asked, holding a hand over the two bottles of caramel-and-cream flavored iced coffee, before moving to hover over the green glass of his favorite imports. “Beer?”

                Then rubbing a hand over his mouth and the scrub of his jaw, Connor eyed the last bottle warily. “Or if it’s really, really bad...and only for you...” He winced, looking away. “This.”

                A twenty-five-year-old Scotch Jeff was willing to bet Connor hadn’t had a glass of since the night Jeff had had to run out of a meeting to head him off at the airport before Connor showed up drunk at his then-estranged wife’s door.

                “Wow. You really do love me,” Jeff said, and grabbed the hard stuff as he pushed back from the table and set the bottle at the far counter. Looking back at Connor, he turned the bottle so the label wasn’t staring him down like some school yard bully. “But I love you, too, and even if I didn’t—do you honestly think I’m going to get plowed with my pregnant non-girlfriend God only knows where? Doing God only knows what. With God only knows who.”

                “Isn’t she with your mom?”

                “No. She’s at her new house. Probably sleeping. Alone.” Of course alone. Definitely alone. For now.

                And as soon as that thought hit him, the next certainty followed.... If she didn’t want to be alone, she wouldn’t have to be. He saw the way guys looked at her, eight months pregnant or not. Hell, he knew how he looked at her. How he wanted her.

                How he missed her.

                “I’ll pass on the beer, too,” he said, but scowled at the remaining selection of iced coffee. “Caramel?”

                “Megan bought it. The machine is broken, just man up and drink what’s on offer. It’s actually pretty good.”

                Reluctantly, Jeff grabbed his own and tried it. Smacked his lips. “Like liquid candy.”

                Connor gave him an I-told-you-so look and settled back in his chair with a bottle of the iced coffee. “Okay. So now that we’ve got the beverage portion of the evening—err, morning—out of the way. Let’s have it. What’s going on?”

                “I asked Darcy to marry me.” At Connor’s raised brows, he added, “She declined.”

                “Aw hell, I’m sorry, Jeff. I didn’t realize it was like that with you two. Or at least that you’d realized it was—and I’m probably not helping, either. Okay, why’d she say no?”