Free ONCE PREGNANT, TWICE SHY by Red Garnier

she could do for the other kind of fever inside her. She’d had to remind herself that this was Garrett, a very stubborn, hardheaded Gage man, and that he wasn’t her lover or a Prince Charming. Garrett had some serious baggage to deal with, and Kate had once loved him—too hard, and for too long, and too painfully—to allow so much as a little flicker of hope to linger.
    Julian might think that Garrett had feelings for Kate, but all he surely felt was the same thing he’d always felt. Guilt and responsibility.
    Beth spoke up from her corner of the island, where she busily worked her artistic skills on a tray of cookies for the shower. “You’re shaking your head at me now, Kate, but now that I think about it, I also suspect Garrett has always had a thing for you.”
    “No, he doesn’t. And I’m sick and tired of chasing after him like some tramp,” Kate countered as she dumped the egg shells in the trash and wiped the granite counter clean.
    Molly laughed. “Kate, you’ve never chased after Garrett, at least not blatantly. Men are sometimes stupid about those things—you need to be frank with them.”
    Frank?
    All right, so let’s be frank.
    Kate had stripped in front of him. She had almost kissed him in her bed when he’d dragged that cool cloth around her body. Hell, she was pretty sure if she hadn’t been sick, she would have thrown herself at him. And she’d done this with her plane ticket to Florida already sitting in her night drawer. That just couldn’t be good. Could it?
    She’d lain there with her eyes closed as he ran that cloth over her, and she’d been shaking in her bones as she’d imagined what it would feel like to be kissed by him. She’d even had dreams about it all during the week. Heat had spread through her at one particularly erotic one, when she’d felt him touch her aching nipples, then kiss them....
    That night in her bed, she’d wanted to dissolve into his strong arms when he’d held her, and when he’d dried her hair, she’d been so affected and felt such desire pool between her thighs, she’d almost released an embarrassing sound that only her raw throat—abused by the strep—had been able to stop.
    No. If she stayed here, she wouldn’t be able to stay away from Garrett, and seeing him while not having him would be torment. It had always been so, but after the night of his birthday, when he’d cradled her face and tried to tell her he’d do anything to fix her “dilemma,” and after he’d nursed her when she was sick, it felt doubly so.
    It.
    Hurt.
    The man might not love her as his mate, but he cared about her, and Kate knew this was exactly why she’d never be able to ever come clean with her feelings. He’d either feel awful about not responding, or feel pity for her and do something gallant like keep on sacrificing himself for her to make up for what he “took.”
    She. Had. To. Leave!
    And start fresh, without Garrett’s shadow tormenting and taunting her.
    She knew it would be difficult. But she still had to leave. She had to give herself the chance, and Garrett his freedom.
    Thinking about him, sick and bedridden today, made her stomach knot as she put on a floral-print oven mitt and bent over to pull the tray of muffins out of the oven. She’d made this particular recipe because it had lately become her favorite. The muffins were healthy and yummy, made of almond flour, with orange zest and black currants and walnuts. She set them on the cooling grill and prepared a small basket while the chicken soup finished.
    “Food. That’s how you guys make love, I swear. Those sounds he makes when he eats your cookies.”
    “Whoa!” Beth said from the corner, where she was now adding the decorations to the pacifier-shaped chocolate lollipops. “You’re getting wicked, Molls!”
    Molly laughed, fairly radiating mischief.
    Beth laughed and shook her head, but then turned sober as she watched Kate stir the chicken soup. “Kate, it’s not a bad idea. If