Worth the Fall(25)

“Relax.” He patted the couch beside him. “You don’t need to play hostess.”

She sat but left a bit of space between them. It’d been easier to give in to the pull of the couch when they were sitting in the dark. She picked at a ball of fuzz beside her leg. “Matt…yesterday when I said…I’m sorry—”

“You already apologized.”

“I know, but— Whoa.” She covered her stomach with both hands.

“You okay?” Matt scooted toward her, instantly on alert.

“Yes, just kicking. But that was the biggest one yet. Guess someone’s feeling left out.”

Matt leaned closer, his thick dark brows furrowed.

She smiled. “Don’t worry. I’m not in labor.”

His eyes remained intent on her belly.

“Do you want to feel?” He didn’t wait for her. His large hand covered her entire belly. With her small hand over his, she adjusted his placement to match the baby’s movements.

At the first strong kick, Matt sucked in a breath. “Amazing.” His voice was just a whisper, like he didn’t want to wake the baby. “It’s hard to imagine there’s really a little person in there. But feeling it…That’s incredible.”

She was suddenly struck by how close they were. How intimate the moment. How special and…rare. His arm around her on the back of the couch, his hand on her body. The two of them experiencing something so incredible, so magical happening inside her. She felt herself being sucked in, as if he were a vacuum and she were a tiny dust bunny, helpless and all too happy to go along for the ride.

But she wanted to be closer, wanted to run her fingers over his smooth-shaven cheek, down his neck, and over his shoulders. To press her nose at the V of his shirt and breathe in the scent of aftershave, put her lips to his hot skin. Even if she couldn’t in her wildest dreams imagine why he was here with her.

The heat emanating from his hand spread and warmed her until she felt him everywhere. The condo was like a refrigerator, but she was hot.

Their eyes met and held. Her heart pounded until she was sure he could hear it. Was his pounding too? “I think she stopped.”

He left his hand another beat before finally sitting back, as if he was reluctant to break the connection. So was she.

“It seems no sooner have I gotten news I’m going to be an uncle than my brothers are sending me pictures. Hundreds of pictures. You’ve never seen such crazy proud fathers.”

His smile when he talked about his family was a beautiful thing. She couldn’t help but smile with him, until his words sank in like dead weight. Who had Josh proudly sent pictures to? No one.

“Abby?”

“Hmm?”

“Why didn’t he know you were pregnant?”

Damn. She should have known Matt wasn’t the type to let something go. Of course at the time she’d said it she hadn’t expected to be sitting alone with him in her condo. Not that it would have mattered where they were. He had a strange effect on her, making her nervous while steadily drawing out her secrets.

And he was still waiting. It shouldn’t matter, but she hated for Matt, more than anyone, to know how little she’d been wanted.

“He died before I got a chance to tell him. That’s the short version, anyway,” she added, trying to make light of it.

“And the long version?”

Well, she’d opened that can of worms all by herself. But she could no more lie to him than she could have gotten up off that couch. And maybe a part of her wanted to tell someone. To tell Matt. So she settled next to him, close but not touching, and tried to focus on her answer instead of the man beside her.

“Josh was an attorney. His firm handled major corporate mergers, acquisitions, that kind of thing. I met him during an interior design internship at his office.” She’d been young and naïve, maybe a little too desperate to belong to someone. He’d been older, mature, and completely taken with her. Or so she’d thought.

“He worked for companies all over the world, so he traveled a lot. More than a lot.” She pulled a throw pillow into her lap and ran her fingers through the tangled fringe.

“At first I didn’t know what to expect.” She’d been twenty-one, just out of college, in love for the first time. “He worked long hours, but he was a new partner so…I didn’t think much about it.”

That wasn’t exactly true. She had thought about it. She’d moved to Raleigh with him a week after the wedding. Quit her new job and not even cared. She was married. She had a legal certificate saying someone couldn’t leave her.

But he could and he had, and then she’d been alone again. And not having someone you expected to be there had turned out to be worse than having no one.