"That’s amazing." His eyes locked with hers, and she saw the same wonder in them that she felt. "I actually felt it."
Tears of joy blurred her vision. "I think I just fell completely in love with my baby."
"Your baby," he repeated softly, before pulling his hand back and rubbing his forehead. "Your baby." He shook his head. "Want to tell me exactly how that is possible?"
Then he quickly held his hand up. "No, wait, that’s not what I mean. I don’t need a detailed description of conception. But… can I ask… who’s the father? Where is he?"
Mandy wiped a tear off her eyelash and knew she needed to explain everything to Damien. This wasn’t a secret she could keep any longer, not when she knew Damien the way she did now. Not when this mutual attraction was undulating between them.
"I was seeing a man for six months. He misused a condom, and when I turned up pregnant, suggested I terminate. When I refused, he offered me five thousand dollars to have my baby and never bother him again. He has two grown sons who are a disappointment to him. He didn’t want to bring up another child, only to have it let him down." Mandy was still horrified by Ben’s reaction. She had thought she’d known him, but clearly she had been completely wrong.
"Asshole," was Damien’s vehement opinion.
"Yes." She nodded. That about summed it up.
Damien took a step to the right, then back. His hands went on his hips. "The flu you had… it was morning sickness, wasn’t it?"
She nodded. It didn’t surprise her he had worked that out already. Damien was an intelligent man, a quick thinker. It was how he was so successful.
"No wonder I didn’t catch any germs from you then. I kept waiting to come down with the flu. I sure in the hell can’t catch what you have." He shook his head and gave an ironic laugh. "Is this why you’ve avoided me? You didn’t want me to know?"
His finger went into his mouth and he chewed on a corner of the nail.
Mandy wanted to explain herself, wanted to take away the harshness that had crept into his face. "I need this job. I need the health insurance and I need the nine-to-five hours so that day care arrangements will be easier. I didn’t think that the Damien Sharpton I’d been told about would hire a pregnant woman." And she hoped like hell Demon Sharpton wouldn’t fire a pregnant woman.
But she didn’t believe he would, despite the tension in his shoulders. She wouldn’t have told him if she had.
"You’re probably right." Damien glanced at his finger and dropped it. "Why the fuck do I keep biting my nails?"
She hoped that was a rhetorical question.
The beach had darkened, and his face was pale against the dark sky. His voice softened. "So why did you tell me now, Mandy?"
"Because I wanted to be honest with you." She took a step closer to him, skirting the bag she’d dropped in the sand. "And because when I felt the baby move, I needed to share it with someone, and I think that you’re a man who can appreciate what I’m experiencing. Was I wrong?"
She didn’t want to be wrong. She didn’t want to think that her impulsiveness in telling him had been a poor choice. She had told herself now that she was going to be a mum, she had to leave impulsiveness behind. But something had told her to tell him, and she just didn’t want to regret it, not now when she was feeling so humbled and in awe of the life growing inside her.
"You should be wrong." Damien looked over her shoulder toward the water. He sighed. "There are reasons why you should be very wrong."
He looked down at her, closed the space between them. Her heart started to pound faster, harder, when his hand cupped her cheek.
"But you’re not wrong."
She closed her eyes, turned her nose and mouth toward his hand. She could smell the salty tang of his flesh, feel the rough callus of his thumb stroking over her. Without thinking, she pressed her lips into the moist hollow of his hand.
"Mandy." His voice was hoarse, quiet. Intense.
"Yes?"
But he didn’t speak, and his hand dropped. Her eyes flew open only to see that he was closing in on her, his nose inches from hers, his mouth a hairbreadth away, his shoulders descending toward hers. She only had time to suck in her breath as anticipation spiked between her thighs, made her breasts tingle.
Then he was kissing her, an honest-to-goodness, lips everywhere, tongue-teasing, knee-wobbling kiss. Excitement exploded throughout her body in little spastic lightning bolts of desire.
Mandy dipped her head back, opening her mouth, marveling at the taste and texture of him, so firm, so wet, so eager, so different, and yet exactly what she should have expected. Damien was in control, but beneath the surface of the kiss, beneath his dominating impatience, skittered an edgy vulnerability that was just as appealing as his confidence and skill.
"Ooohhh," she murmured when his lips moved to her jaw, her neck. Her body felt different, more sensitive, quicker to react, and she wasn’t sure if it was Damien or the pregnancy, or a blissful combination of the two.
His thigh shifted, surrounding her with his heat, and he cut off her moan with another kiss that left her clinging to him like seaweed. Mandy could hear the excited little rush of both their breath, the pants, the moans, the shift from casual exploration to urgent questing.
She ground herself against him, then was shocked that she did. Even more so by the obvious dampness in her knickers and the eager kick of satisfaction at feeling Damien’s thick erection nudging her.
"You taste so good, so damn good," he said in a hot whisper, thumbs rolling her sundress straps toward her shoulders.
"Damien, what the hell are we doing?" Then she yelped when he brushed her nipple. "Bugger it, that feels good."
She was certain her nipples had never been quite so enthusiastic in her whole life. Just what she needed. She was single and pregnant and her nipples had suddenly become supersensitive sluts looking for action.
"We’re kissing each other. We’re touching each other. And we’re going to go back to your room or mine, doesn’t matter, and we’re going to spend the night having hot, wet sex."
Chapter 8
Damien watched Mandy’s eyes shoot up to her bangs, a strangled gasp coming out of her mouth. Okay, so maybe he could have phrased that a little more sensitively. But he hadn’t had sex in three years, and he needed to get to someplace private before he tossed her onto the sand.