Free The Pregnant Bride by Catherine Spencer Page A

coming up the drive, yet when she opened her door, she seemed strangely flustered. “Oh…Edmund! You’re here! Already…!”
    “Hello, Jenna. You’re looking better,” he said, putting her manner down to the fact that he’d shown up ten minutes early. “Not nearly as green around the gills as you were last week.”
    In fact, she looked stunning. Not that he pretended to be any fashion expert but he knew what he liked and in his view, too many women were blinded by designer labels, regardless of the clothes attached to them. But she’d got it just right in a light blue sleeveless dress belted at the waist. He liked her shoes, too. Pretty, feminine things, instead of the trench hoppers so may women seemed to go for lately. Made him glad he’d decided to wear a jacket and tie, even though his usual preference ran to something more casual.
    “Do come in,” she said, massaging her ring finger nervously. “It’s such a lovely evening, I thought we might sit on the balcony for a while and…chat.” She indicated a brass tea wagon set up as a bar, with a couple of decanters, bottled water, a bucket of ice and dish of sliced lime, then scurried away from him as if he had a communicable disease. “Help yourself to a drink while I take care of a couple of last-minute things in the kitchen.”
    “May I fix something for you?”
    Her voice floated back down the hall. “I’ll stick with Perrier, thanks.”
    He poured himself a scotch and wandered out to the balcony. She’d grouped antique wicker furniture around little stone urns filled with scarlet geraniums and some sort of blue trailing flower. A wrought iron stand about three feet high held six fat candles. At the far end of the balcony, positioned where it would catch the afternoon sun, was a padded chaise with a small fountain beside it.
    Nice. Very nice—except for the tension which hung in the air like invisible fog. Something wasn’t right about the whole setup, and if he’d had any doubts about it, she put paid to them when she eventually came out to join him.
    Perching gingerly on the edge of her chair like a bird ready to take flight at the first hint of danger, she launched into painful conversation, although he might as well not have been there for all the eye contact they exchanged. “Well, here we are,” she said woodenly, addressing the wall behind him.
    “Indeed.”
    “I made lemon chicken. I hope you like it.”
    “I’m pretty easy to please when it comes to food.”
    “The weather’s been wonderful, hasn’t it?”
    “Wonderful.”
    Her glance skittered past him and settled on the trees lining the street. “Exceptionally dry, even for July.”
    “I guess.”
    She sipped her Perrier, set the glass down on the low table between their chairs, and started drawing imaginary rings on her finger. Again. “They’re forecasting a long, hot summer.”
    Okay, he’d had enough! “When two people can’t find anything else to talk about but the weather, it’s usually an indication that they’re not having a very good time. Are you wishing you hadn’t asked me here tonight, Jenna?”
    That caught her off guard enough that she locked gazes with him and if he hadn’t known better, he’d have said she was on the verge of panic. “N-no!”
    “Then why don’t you just relax and enjoy my company?”
    Like a diver about to plunge into a very deep pool, she drew in a breath which made her breasts heave, and said, “Because I have an ulterior motive for inviting you. I need to ask you something.”
    “So, fire away,” he said. “What do you want to know?”
    He wasn’t sure what he expected—something that needed fixing in the apartment, possibly—and so was completely unprepared when she started quizzing him as if he were running for public office and might have a dirty secret in his past.
    “For a start,” she said, “where do you live?”
    “Near Lost Lagoon.”
    “In an apartment?”
    “Yeah,” he said, “but it’s nothing near