An Act of Persuasion - By Stephanie Doyle Page 0,59
empty walls.
“This is really my house?”
“Yes. When we get to my place I’ll give you the paperwork. You can move in whenever you want. With the mortgage paid, and your salary—assuming Sharpe isn’t a cheap bastard—you will more than be able to cover the utilities and taxes.”
“Move in to my house. Where I’m going to raise my baby.”
Our baby. He didn’t voice the correction because he didn’t want to upset her. Tonight was about her, not about the baby. While he was glad she loved his gift, and satisfied she knew that he had done this before there was even an idea of a baby, it didn’t change his strategy for their future together.
Yes, he’d given her this house. And he couldn’t wait to see her turn it into a home. Then he planned to attack it like a medieval knight, bringing down the barricades and storming the walls until he, too, was safely inside it alongside of her and their child.
“Since learning about the pregnancy I checked into the local school system,” he said. “It’s got an excellent reputation and there are also a number of well-reputed day cares not fifteen minutes in either direction.”
She held up her hand to stop him. “Yes, yes. I’m sure you’ve got a list of the best grocery stores with the highest quality produce and the best dry cleaner and hairdresser and all the rest, too. I just...I just want to take it in for a few minutes.”
“Do you want me to leave?”
“No. I want you to stay.”
Anna left the room and made her way back to the foyer and the wide staircase that led to the second floor. Four bedrooms, he told her continuing his commentary on the house. There was a smaller one next to the master bedroom that could easily be used as a nursery.
She sat on the stairs and he sat next to her feeling slightly awkward. In a way it was like when they had tried to sleep together. Both of them unsure and stiff together, compared to how easy it had been when they were working alongside each other.
Ben still wasn’t sure he understood when the situation between them had changed. He didn’t think it had only been them having sex, or even Anna leaving him. Something else had shifted and made them out of sync. Nearly discordant, and he felt helpless to put it back the way it was. To make them the way they had been before.
But for now, they were together and she had cried because he gave her a house. They had kissed again and it was nice. And she didn’t want him to leave.
It was enough. For now.
* * *
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN I can’t paint?”
Mark walked into his office the next day to find his exasperated assistant talking into her cell phone like she was dealing with a slow child. Or more likely a very stubborn man.
“I’m on Google right now and it says nothing—” She stopped and Mark couldn’t help but look over her shoulder at her computer monitor. The first page contained all kinds of warnings about exposure to paint fumes while pregnant.
“Okay, fine. I can’t paint. Yes, yes, I’ll let you hire painters. But I’m picking the colors.”
Mark chuckled and made his way to his office. She’d left the mail there and the folders of a few cases that he’d recently agreed to take on. One was the death of a teenage girl many believed was a suicide. An anonymous tip, however, indicated differently.
“Hey.”
Mark lifted his head. “So how did date number two go?”
“He bought me a house.”
These two were definitely not on the traditional courting path. A proposal first, then dating, now home buying. Huh. “A little over the top for my taste—I’m more of a flowers guy. But what are you going to do with a guy like Ben.”
Anna smiled and sat in his guest chair, her hands instantly moving toward her belly, which was still barely there but growing every day.
“Can I talk to you?”
“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”
“I mean as a friend. I don’t have many and Maddy is in Detroit right now being fabulously in love with her fiancé. I don’t think I can talk to someone so happy with love right now.”
“Then you’ve come to the right place. I’m nowhere near happy with love right now.”
“What’s your beef?”
“Well, there was this charming redhead I met who I would have liked to get to know better. Sadly, she was already committed...and pregnant.”