Wedding Rings and Baby Things

He punched some buttons, and the oven began to hum. He turned around. “You look puzzled.”

“There’s a good reason for that. I don’t understand what happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I looked at the apartment, Miss Anderson acted as if the place was already mine, and the background check was merely a formality. Today her manner was definitely cooler. Did she call you?”

“As a matter of fact, she did,” he admitted.

“What did she say?”

“She asked how long you had been my tenant and I told her. She said she knew about the baby.”

Kelly nodded. “I wanted to be up-front about that It didn’t seem to be a problem.”

“You’re taking this too personally. They probably had more than one application. I’d bet the other was from dinks.”

She frowned. “That’s not a very nice thing to say.”

“D.I.N.K.—double income no kids.”

“Oh.” She thought about that for a moment. Someone like that would be a better risk than a Q.I.B.O.W. Questionable income, baby on way. “Maybe you’re right.”

“I’m sure I am. You want something to drink?”

She nodded. “I want a glass of wine.”

He frowned. “No alcohol for pregnant ladies.”

“I know that. I just said I wanted it. What have you got that I can have?”

Mike turned away and looked in the refrigerator. “I have milk, apple juice, soda or water.”

“Juice please,” she said.

Kelly wondered if this was what it would feel like to be married. Eating dinner together, relating the events of the day, not being alone. It was nice. Mike’s concern about her condition touched her, too, and a sense of wistfulness washed over her. To have someone to share things with—the baby’s movement, the results of her monthly doctor visits, heartburn, her fears about the birth, her fears about a roof over her head. But it was a fantasy.

At least for now. Someday she would find a man who would sweep her off her feet, and she would have all the love she’d dreamed about. That goal was merely delayed, not unobtainable.

Mike set a glass of apple juice in front of her. He leaned his forearms on the cream-colored tiles and met her gaze. “You know, Kel, you don’t have to move.”

“Yes, I do. It’s not fair that you be dragged into this situation.”

“Whether you like it or not, I’m in it because I’m your friend.”

She put her hand on his arm. The little jolt she got from the contact with his warm skin surprised her. The slight flicker she saw in Mike’s eyes made her wonder if he’d felt something, too. She glanced down at her fingers on his forearm. Why had she never noticed before how tan he was compared to her? How wide and strong his wrists were? Must be that hormone thing again. Maybe it made a woman’s powers of observation more acute. Whatever the side effects, it would be best to ignore the sensation. She took her hand away and curled her fingers around her glass.

“Mike, I don’t want to argue with you. I’ve made up my mind to move. Can’t we just drop it?”

He nodded. “We can if you’ll promise not to make a hasty decision. You’ve got a home as long as you want one. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Me?” she said, pressing her palm to her chest in mock amazement. “However can you say that? Just because I’m pregnant—”

“That sorry son of a bitch took advantage of you.” Mike stood up straight and his dark eyes smoldered with anger.

“It’s not all his fault.”

“If he was any kind of man, he would never have pressed you under the circumstances. Good God, you’d just buried your mother.”

“Don’t forget I called him,” she said.

“Why are you defending him?”

“I’m not. I’m trying to be fair.” She looked down into the golden liquid in her glass.

“There’s something else, isn’t there? What is it, Kelly?”

She glanced up quickly. “How do you always know?”

“I’ve known you a long time. Tell me what’s going on.

“Doug’s been calling me for the last couple weeks.”

Mike tensed. “What does he want?”

“I haven’t talked to him. He’s just left messages. I got another one today.”

“What did he say?”

“He’s coming over tonight.”

Chapter Three

“For God’s sake, Kelly, why didn’t you say so before?”

The microwave beeped loudly, and Mike took out the dinner. He pulled back the plastic and felt as hot as the steam escaping. He couldn’t believe she had waited this long to tell him that the guy was harassing her.

As his anger grew, adrenaline pumped through him. He hadn’t liked Doug the first time he’d met him. After what he’d done to Kelly, he promised himself if he ever saw the jerk again, he would make him wish he’d never been born.

As if sensing his mood, Kelly shifted on the bar stool. “I didn’t tell you sooner because I hadn’t planned to tell you at all. Forget it I’ll handle Doug.”

“If there’s anything left of him when I get through, you’re welcome to it.”

Kelly’s eyes widened. “When did you develop these Neanderthal tendencies? This is a side of you I’ve never seen before.”

Mike wasn’t sure himself why he felt this way. He hadn’t wanted to deck a guy over a girl since high school. But the fact was Kelly was going through hell because of Doug Hammond and Mike wanted his pound of flesh—or to pound Doug’s flesh. He didn’t much care which. “When will he be here?”

“He didn’t say.” She took a sip of her juice.

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll just hang around and take care of him.”

Kelly put down the glass, and when she looked at him irritation was written all over her face.

“This is my problem, Mike. I appreciate your friendship more than you’ll ever know, but it’s not a license to butt into my life. When he gets here, I’ll listen to what he has to say, then I’ll send him on his way.”

Mike understood her wanting to do this on her own; that was the kind of woman Kelly was. He just couldn’t get over the feeling that it would be like leaving a defenseless lamb to the big bad wolf.

“Can I just be there when you see him?” he asked.

“No.”

“What if I promise not to say anything?”

She snorted. “Fat chance of that.”

“What if—”

“No. You can’t stay. Besides, don’t you have a football meeting tonight?”

He started to shake his head, then stopped when he realized she was right. “Geez, with all this other stuff going on, I forgot. It’s ‘meet the coaches’ night.” He folded his arms across his chest and looked at her. “I’ll just have to miss it.”

“You can’t. This is when you take advantage of parental enthusiasm. Dean can’t pull the volunteers out of the crowd the way you can.”

Dean Thompson, his assistant coach, was a gifted tactician and terrific with the players. But Kelly was right. When it came to the parents, Mike was better at getting them to become involved. The program depended heavily on that. He couldn’t miss the meeting.

“Mike, don’t worry about me. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”

“I don’t like it,” he grumbled, as he put the other dinner in the microwave. “But I guess there’s nothing I can do.”

“You’re sweet to worry about me.”

He turned back to her. “I’ll tell you what’s sweet. Remember that move Jim and I taught you before your very first date?”

She grinned. “Remember it? I got to use it that night. Do you remember who fixed me up with that octopus?”

“Everyone’s entitled to a minor error in judgment.”

“Minor?”

“He was here for the weekend. He was lonely. It was supposed to be dinner and a movie. How did I know he was going to come on to you?” He looked at her. “Just promise me one thing…”

“What?”

“Before the jerk gets here, practice that move.”

“I will,” she said, laughing.

The sound surrounded him and he grinned, surprised at how contagious her laughter was. As ticked off as he’d been a minute before, he was sure no one but Kelly could have made him smile.

When Kelly had first found out about the baby, she’d misplaced her smile for a while. Recently she’d found it, and if Hammond did anything, to make her lose it again, Mike would hunt him down and take his pound of flesh. The man would never hurt Kelly again.

Kelly tensed when she heard the car pull up in front of her house. She knew the sound. It brought back painful memories of all the nights she’d expected to hear it, then waited in vain for Doug to show up. She remembered the flimsy excuses she’d believed because she’d desperately wanted to. She would never forget the disillusionment of learning about his lies, his other women, after she found out she was going to have a baby.

There was nothing he could tell her now that she wanted to hear. She had nothing to say to him. Period. This should be a very short meeting. But she would feel a lot more confident if she could stop the butterflies in her stomach or the trembling in her hands.

She opened the door as he strode up the walkway. He smiled at her. “Hello, Kelly.”

“Doug.” She motioned him inside.

He had the lanky good looks of a male model in a pin-striped suit. The red tie he wore was perfectly knotted at the collar of his crisp white shirt. His sandy hair was slightly mussed, and his hazel eyes held an expression that said he was glad to see her. She didn’t believe it

She frowned at him. “What do you want?”

“That’s pretty cold,” he said, raising an eyebrow.

“The last time we spoke, you made it clear that you wanted nothing to do with the baby or me. I have no reason to think that the situation’s changed. So I’d like to know what you want.”

Doug looked sheepish. “I’m sorry about that, Kel—”

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped.

“All right. I just wanted you to know that I’m sorry about the things I said. The situation caught me off guard and I—I suppose I sort of panicked.”

“You?” Kelly shook her head at his smoothness. He was as cool as they came. She had found out the hard way how he could lie without batting an eye. “Panicked?”

“Believe it or not,” he said in that affable, self-effacing way that had charmed her once. “You don’t know what it’s like to hear that you’re going to be a father.”

“That’s typical, Doug. It’s always about you. Did you stop to think how I felt finding out I was going to be a mother?”

“That’s why I’m here now.”

Her eyes widened and she wanted to laugh in his face, or slap it. “I’m six months pregnant. Took you long enough.” Her chest tightened with anger. “During all that time did you think about what would happen to me? Whether or not this would affect my life, my job?”

“Has it?”

“You bet it has, buster. I don’t have a job as of June.”

His eyebrows pulled together and, if she didn’t know better, she would have thought he was genuinely sorry.

“Then it’s fortunate I’m here.”

“Why?”

“Kelly, I want you to marry me. I want to be a father to our child.”

Kelly’s jaw dropped. She didn’t know what she had expected him to say, but it certainly wasn’t this.

Her reaction was knee-jerk, and she should have put it exactly where Mike and her brother had taught her. Instead, she clasped her shaking hands together and tried to control her astonishment, then the surge of anger that followed.

“I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth.”

There was no reaction on his face, no indication whether her words had hurt him or not. “Think about this carefully. You just said you’ll be out of a job come June. How are you going to support yourself, let alone a kid?”

A kid? The baby was just an impersonal, nuisance kid as far as he was concerned. She didn’t want him anywhere near her child, not to mention raising him. “I’ll work it out. Alone,” she added firmly.

“If you marry me, I can take care of you both. I’m up for a partnership in the law firm—”

“I smell a rat,” she said, her eyes narrowing. With time and distance, she had realized Doug never did anything for anyone else unless there was something in it for him. Besides, he’d never said a word about loving her. If she hadn’t been so upset, it would have been funny. Two proposals in two days. Must be some kind of record for a pregnant lady. She’d been tempted to take Mike up on his offer, but Doug’s left her cold.

He looked down for a moment, then met her suspicious gaze. “You know the firm is very conservative and traditional. I don’t want to say that I’m not concerned about my success. But that’s not the reason I asked you—”

“Stuff a sock in it, Doug. Of course that’s the reason.” She took a deep breath. “Now I want you to listen, because I’m only going to say this once. I should have known that a lawyer who would sleep with his client couldn’t be trusted. You’re a liar and I’d be a fool to ever trust you again. There’s nothing you could say that would persuade me to marry you.”

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