Shame the Devil (Portland Devils #3) - Rosalind James Page 0,108

kept on his desk. An Irish Wolfhound, because he’d longed for one, and she knew it. A little black notebook with a loop for a gold pencil, when he been a little older, when there were too many sisters and not enough privacy. “So you can write down your thoughts,” she’d said.

How could he have believed she’d left?

How could he not have looked for her? How could he not even have tried?

He was feeling now. He didn’t want to.

At the house at last, and Jennifer unpacking grocery bags as he brought them in. Purple shadows under her eyes, and her freckles standing out against her white skin.

Too tired. And pregnant.

He told her, “Go take a shower. I’ve got this. I’ll get something delivered for dinner.”

She smiled at him, a weary thing, and said, “I’ve got nothing to change into. I’ll wait for my shower until it’s time for bed.”

“Wait here.” He ran upstairs to the bedroom where he’d dumped his hastily-packed suitcase, and came down with Devils sweatpants and sweatshirt, a T-shirt, a pair of boxer briefs, and socks. She looked at them and laughed, but she took them, and when she came downstairs wearing the sweats, he laughed. First time all day.

“Yeah,” she said, “go on and laugh. Dyma would tell you that this is how I dress all the time. ‘Oversized’ is my look. Maybe I’m transitioning from that idea, though. Other than at home, because I don’t care what you say, oversized is more comfortable.”

He said, “I think that would be a real good plan. Since regular-sized is a great look on you.” He smiled at her, and she smiled back. Another first for today. He hadn’t even smiled when he’d seen her sitting in the car at his gate, had he? He couldn’t remember.

That had just been this morning. It didn’t feel like it.

Dinner was Chinese, Bismarck style, which meant, “Not Chinese enough,” and as soon as they’d eaten and loaded up the dishwasher, Annabelle said, “I’m going to bed.”

He asked, “Want me to come up and talk to you?” With no clue at all what to say.

“No,” she said. “I’m really tired. I just want to go to sleep.” And once again, he wasn’t sure what to do.

Jennifer said, though, when Annabelle had disappeared, “It’s OK. She’s on overload. Sometimes, you need time to process first. Inside, I mean, before you talk about it. Before you even think about it. Don’t you find that?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

“Like the processing isn’t even happening in your brain,” she said. “Like it’s in your body. Tomorrow’s soon enough. I’m feeling a little that way myself, and I’m just the observer, not the one whose life has just been torn open.” Since she had lines of strain around her mouth now to add to the shadows under her eyes, that wasn’t hard for him to imagine. “You should have another beer, though,” she said. “I’m sure there’s a training regimen, but some nights …” She sat back on the couch in his red sweats, her hands between her knees, and sighed. “Sometimes, you just want to drink it all away until you can forget, don’t you? I think you’d be justified.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t drink when I need to. I drink when I don’t.”

She looked at him with plenty of understanding, but with so much fatigue, and he said, “Go to bed. We’ll talk tomorrow. And—Jennifer.”

“Yes?”

He put out a hand and brushed it over her cheek. “Thanks for coming.”

The next day, he wasn’t doing any of the things he ought to be doing.

He wasn’t taking Annabelle to buy another suitcase, and helping Jennifer shop for something better than his sweats to wear. Something that wouldn’t be loose, because she thought she had to wear that, because she was ashamed to enjoy feeling beautiful. Something that would show off what he now realized was a pregnancy-ripened figure. Not much belly yet that he could see, but a whole lot of breast. He wasn’t sitting on the Boyfriend Chair telling her to try the next size down and having her get all sassy at him. Giving Annabelle something to laugh about, too.

He wasn’t thinking about which way he wanted that DNA test to turn out, either, because he couldn’t. That part of his mind was a tangled mess. It was what she’d said, maybe. Nothing had settled down enough for him to think about it.

He wasn’t talking to his sister Alison, after her interview with Detective I’m-not-nearly-as-relaxed-as-I-look Johnson. He