Free For the Babies' Sakes (Expecting) (Harlequin Presents, No. 2280) by Sara Wood

thundering water ceased as if by magic. Pink and tingling from every pore, Helen warily eyed a partlydrenched Dan, whose gaze was slowly raking over her, the T-shirt clinging wetly to his magnificent torso.
    The tips of her breasts jerked into life. Heat curled seductively in a pool somewhere within her body and Dan’s eyes flickered.
    â€˜Get out,’ he muttered, permafrost in his expression. ‘We have things to discuss. You can’t just walk away—’
    â€˜I badly needed a shower. I felt dirty,’ she defended haughtily, collecting her thick, fluffy blue robe and slipping into it.
    The sensuality of her reaction to him had shaken her. Must be some kind of latent memory, she thought crossly, drying her legs with ruthless vigour. It was about time her body came up to speed and recognised him as a danger to her health and sanity.
    The permafrost deepened. ‘You pick your moments,’ he commented.
    Winding a towel around her dripping hair, she saw that water was dripping from him.
    â€˜You’re drenched,’ she said unnecessarily.
    â€˜And you’re avoiding the issue.’
    â€˜There is no issue. It’s ridiculous,’ she scorned, rubbing at her hair and wincing. Her scalp must be scarlet, she thought and struggled back to the argument. ‘I take the pill,’ she declared firmly. ‘We agreed, we didn’t want children for a while. We intended to work hard and provide a solid, stable b-background…’
    Her voice tailed off in a little wobble. So much for that idea. Their plans had been hijacked by Dan’s infidelity.
    â€˜No method is infallible,’ he pointed out with maddening truth. ‘And at the beginning of April you were on antibiotics for a sore throat, remember? Didn’t I read somewhere that they affect the pill?’
    But that couldn’t happen to her. They’d been so careful, made sensible plans…
    â€˜Dan, I can’t be pregnant!’ she insisted in mounting alarm. ‘I’d be…’ She ran back into the bedroom and picked up her diary. With a shaking finger she totted up the weeks. No. It wasn’t possible. Her pulses steadied. ‘Over two months !’ she cried, when he followed her in. ‘How could I not know about that? Women have an intuition about these things—’
    â€˜Have you had any time for intuition?’ he asked quietly.
    She went white in the middle of rough-drying her hair. ‘Not so’s you’d notice,’ she admitted.
    Feeling jittery, she abandoned her hair and stalked into the bedroom to grab some clothes, nervous at being watched so intently by the menacing Dan. He had stripped off his top and was slowly rubbing his chest dry, his eyes unsmiling and unnervingly bleak.
    â€˜It’s been as much as I could do to keep on top of work and the sheer day-to-day survival,’ she mumbled, hopping her way into a pair of white briefs.
    â€˜Well, think about it now,’ he muttered shortly, finding himself a clean shirt and dragging it on with angry, hasty hands. ‘ Intuit. How do you feel?’
    After shooting him a glare, she let her hand rest on her stomach. Was it her imagination, or had it rounded significantly? The skin did seem taut…kind of shiny… Her huge eyes met his.
    â€˜Gungy. Funny—’
    â€˜What sort of funny?’ he pounced.
    â€˜I don’t know, do I? I don’t feel…myself. As if…as if…’
    â€˜As if you’re pregnant,’ he supplied, snapping out the words in contempt of her stupidity at monitoring her own body.
    Hastily she covered herself up with a shirt and heaved on her jeans. ‘There!’ she declared. ‘I can do them up. I can’t be pregnant.’
    â€˜You’ve been sick,’ he pointed out. ‘You’ve hardly eaten anything. The two could have cancelled each other out.’
    â€˜So you’re an instant expert on pregnancy