Free Daughter of the Spellcaster by MAGGIE SHAYNE Page B

back in the seat, closed her eyes and thought about it anyway.
    She’d decided she was going to tell him she was pregnant that night. It was time, she’d thought. She’d cooked dinner at his place, and she hadn’t thought of it as trying to show him how domestic she could be or anything, although she could see where someone else might have thought so. She roasted a small chicken with lots of veggies and dollops of sour cream. It was nice.
    He wasn’t.
    Oh, they were getting along great at first. And then, after they’d eaten, when they were all snuggled up on his sofa and surfing through the pay-per-view channels, she sort of took the cowardly way in. She told him a friend of hers was pregnant, and that she was wondering what the guy she’d been dating was going to say about it, and what did he think about that?
    And it went zoom, right over his head. “If the guy has any brains, he’ll run screaming in the other direction,” he said, and he was dead serious.
    Lena felt like he’d slapped her. “Why’s that?” she managed to ask through her rapidly closing windpipe.
    He was manning the remote, pausing to read the info on anything that looked interesting to him, not looking at her. “Isn’t it obvious? She’s trying to get him to marry her.”
    “That’s not true! She doesn’t want to marry the guy. She just thinks he has a right to know he’s going to be a father.”
    “Right. She doesn’t want to marry him.” There was more sarcasm in his tone than there had been sour cream on their roasted veggies. “Tell me this, does he have money?”
    “Well, yes. Quite a lot of it, actually. But that doesn’t mean—”
    “Yeah, it does.” He set the remote down and looked at her. “No one gets pregnant by accident in this day and age, Lena. And believe me, before I met you, every woman I dated was after one thing and one thing only—my father’s fortune. They’d have done anything. Some of them even tried, but I was too smart. I was careful. I protected myself.”
    “Did you, now?” She focused on her hands in her lap, thinking she needed a manicure, unable to meet his eyes. Mainly because there were hot, angry tears surfacing in her own.
    “I did.” He shook his head. “I pity the guy, but it was his own stupidity. Guys with money need to be more careful than anyone about shit like this. He should have known better. Now he’s doomed.”
    “Doomed?” That brought her head up, and the anger burning a path up the middle of her chest rose with it. “Marrying her would be his doom? ”
    “Marrying a woman who tricked him into it, yeah. Doom.” He smiled at her, still completely oblivious. “You know, this is something I wanted to talk to you about right at the beginning, and I kept getting distracted. Totally your fault, by the way.” His eyes softened, and he pushed her hair behind her ear and kissed the lobe, sending a warm shiver down her spine, despite how pissed off she was at him. She wished she could grab that warm shiver by its neck and choke it to death.
    “Talk to me about it now, then,” she said. She didn’t think she was going to like this discussion, but she figured she needed to hear it.
    “Well, I just...you know...have no intention of...you know...”
    “No, I don’t know. I’m a witch, not a psychic. You have no intention of what? ”
    He sat back, and the lightbulb finally went on in his eyes. “Whoa. You’re pissed.”
    She crossed her arms over her chest. “No, I’m not.” She sighed, then shook her head hard. “Yes, dammit, I am. I thought we had something wonderful happening between us, Ryan.”
    “We do,” he said quickly. “We really do. I mean, it’s been great. I’m enjoying the hell out of being with you.”
    “But you don’t want anything...more?”
    “No.” He looked away. “I mean, certainly not now, anyway. It’s been eight weeks, Lena. Don’t you think it’s way too soon for this particular conversation?”
    “Oh. You think I should