The Billionaire Op - Lori Ryan Page 0,49
that usually surrounded Jennie had gone out. She wasn’t happy and laughing like she used to.
Oh, he had always known that there was some sadness in Jennie. But, despite the scars she carried, Jennie had been happy before all this. She’d been the one to joke around. She was a smart ass. She was bold and edgy and impertinent. She never showed him an ounce of respect on the outside as her boss, but he knew she respected him just the same.
It was hard to explain, but it was the way she was. The way they had been, until the Florida job.
Now, there was no lightheartedness in her. By giving in to his enormous need to be close to Jennie, he’d been the one to take all that from her. He should have talked to Jack as soon as he suspected the reason behind the Florida trip. He shouldn’t have let Jennie get on that plane with him.
He should have considered the consequences and said no when she asked him for one night. And, when he didn’t have the strength to say no, he should have made damn sure he had a condom on before he went anywhere near her.
Those few minutes in the shower when he’d slipped up and taken her without protection had cost Jennie so much. His lapse was costing her whatever bit of happiness she’d managed to find after Kyle’s death.
He was also concerned about her pregnancy.
On their first trip to the store, Chad bought a copy of that What to Expect pregnancy book. He read to Jennie from it sometimes when they were sitting and watching television or rocking in the side-by-side rockers on the front porch.
He had to admit, that book turned him into the pregnancy police. He monitored Jennie’s intake of fruits and veggies, even though many days, it was all she could do to keep toast down. Jennie craved pastries so he bought her oranges.
“Where is the logic in that? What do oranges have to do with pastries?” she would ask him.
“Eat an orange and I’ll go get you pastries,” Chad would say to her some days.
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