Just Around The Corner. Tara Quinn Taylor
lost weight.
Something was wrong.
Not that Matt had any intention of finding out what.
“You busy?”
He glanced up from his desk in the office at the back of the performing-arts center to see who actually had the nerve to interrupt his lunch hour—the one time he could let down his guard and allow free rein to whatever thoughts he felt like having.
Dr. Phyllis Langford was standing there. The psych professor. Matt’s stomach dropped at about the same rate his heart sped up.
The day just kept getting better and better. Not.
“Finishing my lunch,” he said, indicating the empty sandwich wrapper on the desk in front of him. He wadded up the debris, put it and the empty chip bag in the little brown sack he’d brought from home and lobbed the whole package into the trash can beside his desk.
“I knew you had class this afternoon and I wanted to catch you before you went in.”
She hadn’t come any farther into the room. Just stood there, not quite meeting his eyes, but not looking around at anything else, either. An odd mixture of confidence and disinterest. Funny, the month before, he’d only noticed the confidence.
Confidence and passion and… No. They’d forgotten that insane lapse in the production room. They were both going to ignore it, both going to act as though it had never happened.
He studied her through narrowed eyes, hoping they had indeed forgotten. He’d sweated for a couple of days after their tumble that afternoon, afraid she’d come calling with expectations he’d never meet.
And had been honestly, greatly relieved—despite a slightly damaged ego—that she hadn’t. Apparently he’d lost his touch with women; under the circumstances, that was nothing but a blessing.
“You can come in,” he said when she continued to hover. He didn’t want her anywhere near him or his office, but she was making him edgy, just standing there silently full of something to say.
That same sexy scent—the one that had lured him to insanity last month—drifted in with her as she took a seat on the other side of his desk. Phyllis Langford didn’t perch on the edge of her chair as many women did—at least in his office. There was nothing tentative or uncertain in the way she sat, somehow commanding the space around her with her model-slim body. She’d had on black lycra bell-bottom pants the day he’d spent with her. Today she was wearing a circumspect, honey-colored business suit.
He wasn’t sure which he found sexier.
“I’m pregnant.”
Matt blinked. Froze inside. “Pardon?”
“I’m pregnant.”
He waited.
“I just thought you should know.” Dr. Langford, as he preferred to think of her, looked far too calm sitting there, her honey-colored purse, which matched her honey-colored shoes, still slung over her shoulder.
Her hair, a red version of Meg Ryan’s stylishly messy do, distracted him.
“I don’t understand why I’m the one you’re telling,” he said carefully, studying that hair. He knew it wasn’t polite to ask a woman who the father of her child was, but what did a guy say when it wasn’t him? He might have lost a good piece of his mind that Saturday in the theater, but not so much that he hadn’t protected himself, and her, from any and all consequences.
“Because you’re the only man I’ve had sex with since I divorced my husband four years ago.”
He shook his head, not thinking her a liar, just knowing his stuff. “I pulled on that condom before I got anywhere near you.”
“Condoms fail.”
“Not likely.”
“Read the box next time you pick some up,” she said, still appearing far too calm, too undemanding, to be telling him what he thought he was hearing. “They’re ninety-seven percent safe. Which leaves three percent for us to fall into.”
No.
“Added to the fact that, once I thought back on it, I realized the wrapper you took from your wallet didn’t look exactly new.”
It hadn’t been. But the damn things didn’t come with “use by” dates. For a reason.
“How long was it in there?” she asked.
He shrugged, uncomfortable. His private life was off-limits. Period.
Or it had been until last month, when he’d pulled down the zipper on the front of his jeans in the Performing Arts Center. Every swearword he could think of—his time in prison had given him quite a repertoire—passed through his mind. Attached to each one was a barb aimed directly at the guilty part of his anatomy.
“I don’t know,” he finally said. “A year, maybe more.”
Like, maybe three more. It’d been a long, long time since he’d relaxed enough to give in to a sexual urge.
“A year’s worth of being smooshed and sat on could definitely do it,” she said.
Damn, the woman sounded as though they were discussing nothing more earth-shattering than a rained-out game of Little League. Didn’t she get it? They had an untenable situation on their hands.
Matt didn’t even know how to be a friend. There was no way he could be a father.
“I…” He paused, wondering what to say to her, to make her understand.
“Don’t worry.” She jumped into the pause. “I’m not asking anything from you. I don’t want anything. What happened last month was a one-time, no-strings-attached episode. And that hasn’t changed.”
Episode. They’d had some of the most incredible sex of his life. They’d apparently made a baby. And she called it an episode?
Was that all the baby was to her, too? An episode? Easy come, easy go? The thought made him feel a little sick.
He opened his mouth to tell her so.
Whoa. He stopped just in time.
A few minutes ago he’d been looking for a way to bail. He could hardly blame her, a single woman with a prominent position at a prestigious college, for wanting to do the same.
Admittedly, bailing was a little more convenient for him than it would be for her.
“Do you mind if I ask what your plans are?” He’d pay whatever expenses she incurred. Money was the one thing he had to give.
For the first time since taking a seat, she looked down, and he saw the chink in her armor. Was oddly relieved to find it there.
“I haven’t really made any plans yet,” she told him. “I’m still getting used to the idea that I’m going to be a mother.”
Going to be a mother. Why did his mind keep repeating everything she said? You’d think he was dense or something.
“You’re planning to have the baby, then?”
Her head shot back up. “Of course. And before you ask, I’m not even considering the alternative, so you can save your breath.”
“I wasn’t going to ask.”
CHAPTER TWO
IT WAS GOING much better than she’d expected. And worse. She’d prepared herself for anger, denial, blame.
What she hadn’t prepared for was a thoughtful, concerned man. Inexplicably, his humanness made the whole thing so much harder to get through. He was supposed to be little more than a fly at her picnic. She’d swat him away and get on with it.
He wasn’t letting that happen—wasn’t letting her discount him as easily as she’d thought.