Instead of negotiating and saying, “I’ll eat half an orange,” like he expected her to, Jennie had given him the hell-hath-no-fury-like-a-pregnant-woman-without-her-pastry look and countered, “I’ll eat an orange if you carry the baby for the rest of the pregnancy. How about that? Now get me my damned pastries.”
Yeah. Their negotiation tactics had changed somewhat lately.
Slowly, she began to build up that outer façade of happiness with him again. She joked more, even when her head was in the toilet bowl puking up whatever he got her to eat.
She yelled at him for feeding Zeke table scraps but would laugh when he said he wanted to stay in Zeke’s good graces so the dog would take his side in any arguments with Jennie.
In the afternoons, when her morning sickness had subsided, they went for walks together in the woods. Zeke would run around them off leash and Jennie would laugh and chitchat with Chad, acting much more like the Jennie he had fallen for.
Chad could almost pretend everything was normal and she wasn’t gutted inside.
They were in a holding pattern, waiting for Jack to call with news from Agent Burke. They’d only been able to talk to Jack and Kelly and to Jennie’s parents once when they first arrived.
Jack reported that Jennie’s house had been broken into and trashed. Someone had been there looking for her or for signs of her whereabouts.
Jennie knew the danger she was facing but she still wished she could talk to Kelly and Jill. She hadn’t told any of them about the baby and neither had Chad. It had been a week since they arrived at the cabin and Jennie was getting tired of watching TV, playing card games, and taking walks with Zeke in the woods.
The hardest part, and the thing that Jennie couldn’t understand, was that after all that had happened—including being ten weeks pregnant and having a money-laundering building inspector after her—Jennie was still so turned on by Chad she could barely breathe. Shouldn’t the pregnancy slow down her libido? She’d never been so freaking aroused in her life.
And seeing Chad every day after his morning run with Zeke didn’t help. He came back sweating, with his T-shirt clinging to that godlike chest of his. He’d strip the shirt off and jump into the lake to cool off.
He probably had no idea she watched him through the kitchen window—actually stood there timing herself to his routines every day to be sure she didn’t miss it. Then he’d walk out of the lake dripping wet, with beads of water running over his shoulders and his wet hair looking even darker than it was.
Oh, God.
Jennie curled her feet up under her on the couch as she tried to banish the slide show playing in her mind’s eye. She needed to learn to ignore the way her body reacted to Chad. She needed to get her body in line with what her head and her heart wanted.
As if he could read her mind, Chad chose that very moment to look up from hisWhat toExpectbook.
“Says here some women get really horny when they’re pregnant,” he said, waggling his eyebrows with a shit-eating grin.
“It does not!” Jennie said, feeling two hot spots form on her cheeks.
How does he know?
“Does too. They don’t phrase it that way, but that’s essentially it. Anything you need help with, Jennie? AnycravingsI can take care of for you?” He laughed as he leaned in suggestively.
“Gah!” She stood and stormed off to the shower, not looking back at him as she went into the bathroom.
She gave in to the urge to rearrange his neatly laid out toiletries on the counter by the sink, though. It was an activity she allowed herself to indulge in at least once a week to keep her sanity. Mussing up his ordered tidiness helped her feel a little better about his teasing.
It didn’t do anything to diffuse the insane arousal she was fighting at the moment, though. Chad had her so wound up, she felt like she would burst soon. Her heart raced and she had the sweet achiness of need between her legs almost twenty-four hours a day.
And, no amount of self-indulgence seemed to quell her hunger for Chad. If anything, it seemed to make it worse.
Jennie sighed as she turned Chad’s razor perpendicular to his toothpaste and moved his toothbrush over to the other side of the sink, then stepped into the shower. She knew better than to hope a cold shower would help, and truth be told, she didn’t have it in her to take one.
She needed the comfort of the warm water beating down on her nowadays. Her life had become one long twisted joke lately and she didn’t have any idea when it was going to change.
She put her hand to her belly and tried to imagine the tiny life that was growing there. This poor child was going to come into a mixed-up mess of a situation and Jennie didn’t know how to change that.
She closed her eyes and stepped beneath the spray remembering a shower in Florida that started all of this. She rubbed her hand over her belly again. She couldn’t regret the baby, but she did worry that she wasn’t going to be able to give the little one anything resembling the kind of life she should.
She squeezed her eyes shut.What have I done?
Chapter 28
Chad waited for Jennie to turn off the water in the shower before knocking on the door.