Evie's Bombshell - By Amy Andrews Page 0,45

nodded. It would be the easiest thing in the world to ask him to stay. He’d actually been acting like a human being for once and he looked tired and stubbly and masculine and it had been so long that she wanted to reach across the gap and sink into his arms. But she didn’t want to mess with what she was trying to establish now.

Sex would just distract them.

Suddenly the baby gave a swift kick that stole her breath and she gasped involuntarily and soothed her hand over the action.

Finn followed the intimate action, struck by the notion that he’d put the baby inside her. That it was his son, his flesh and blood that blossomed in her belly. ‘Baby awake?’ he said, feeling awkward again.

Evie looked up, a grimace on her face, which died quickly. Finn was staring at her belly, or rather at the circular motion of her palm, and he seemed so alone and isolated, so untouchable, so Finn, way over the other side of the cushion, that it almost tore her breath from her lungs.

‘Do you …?’ She hesitated, unsure of how to broach the subject. ‘Would you like to feel him moving?’ she asked.

Finn mentally recoiled from her quiet suggestion even as his fingers tingled at the possibility. His pulse kicked up a notch. His breath thickened in his throat.

Lay his hands on her? Feel his son moving inside her?

He was used to touching women. Used to touching this woman. But as a prelude to something else. Not like this. Not in a way that bound them beyond just a physical need for release.

He would know his son soon enough. He didn’t need to feel his presence to understand his responsibilities.

‘Ah, no,’ he said, standing, gathering his jacket and his tie and taking a pace back for good measure. ‘I’m good.’

Evie tried not to take his rejection personally. They’d taken a big step tonight—she didn’t want to scare him away by going all militant mummy on him. ‘That’s fine,’ she said, plastering a smile on her face as she also stood.

They looked at each other, Finn avoiding her belly, Evie fixing on his collar. Finn cursed the sudden uncomfortable silence. The night had gone well—considering.

He cast around for something to say. It seemed only fair, given that he’d been the one to ruin the atmosphere. ‘Do you want to have dinner with me tomorrow night?’

Evie blinked. She suddenly felt like a teenager being asked on her first date. ‘Ah … yes.’

He nodded. ‘I’ll pick you up at seven.’

And that set the pattern for the next couple of weeks. Going out or staying in, keeping things light, getting used to just being together without arguing or tearing each other’s clothes off. One night Evie pushed a little and asked Finn about his life as a trauma surgeon in the army, and for the longest moment as he hesitated she thought he was going to shut her down, but he didn’t and she found herself asking a bit more about it each night. About the places he’d been and the people he’d met.

He was more close-lipped about the specifics, about the horrors he must have seen, but each time he gave away a little more and a little more, even mentioning Isaac’s name a couple of times before he realised and then stopped awkwardly and changed the subject.

But for every backward step Evie felt as if they were inching forward and they had plenty of time. She was determined not to push him too far too fast.

Evie was almost twenty-eight weeks when Finn called one night to say he’d been delayed at the hospital and would miss their restaurant booking. ‘How does a spot of telly and a takeaway sound?’

Like an old married couple, she almost said, but, already exhausted from her own full-on shift, she readily agreed.

‘I could be a while yet,’ he warned.

‘Whenever you get here will be fine,’ she assured him. She took great delight in kicking off her pregnancy jeans, which she hated, and her bra, which felt like a straitjacket around breasts that seemed to get bigger by the day, and getting into her sloppy pyjamas. The shirt had a tendency to fall off her shoulder and the legs were loose and light. One day soon it wasn’t going to meet in the middle but for the moment the ensemble was holding its own.

That was one of the advantages of their unconventional relationship. There was no need to dress to impress.