our options?”
“I’m wearing your T-shirt and drinking coffee in your home. I think we’re exploring something.”
His gaze drank her in, and his silence had her heartbeat working overtime. “Fifty-five days is too long,” he said under his breath.
“Victor—”
“I have dreamt of your lips, of your touch . . . of you every day since we’ve met. I want to explore.”
Her face started to heat. “I don’t know how to explore, Victor. I haven’t had a casual relationship since before I was married,” she confessed.
“Who said anything about casual?”
“You just jumped out of a—”
“Relationship,” he finished for her. “I know. But it wasn’t right. I can see that now.” He reached over and took her hand in his once again. “I met with Corrie last week. You know what I discovered?”
Did she want to hear this? “What?”
“That we were never right for each other. Her immaturity is the tip of the mountain of everything that was wrong about us. I wanted the next step in my life, and somehow thought I could just order up that bride and everything would be fine.”
A chord struck in her spine. The fact that she was once the “ordered bride” wasn’t lost on her.
“I leaped into that relationship without thinking.”
“You’re jumping again,” she argued.
“No. I’m thinking.”
“I’m not sure you’re thinking with the right side of your brain,” she said.
He grinned. “Admittedly. But it’s more than that. Or at least I think it’s more than that. It needs exploring to find out.”
“Fifty-five days—”
“Is too long.”
Her hand started to shake ever so slightly. Fear? Excitement? She couldn’t name the emotion to save her life. “The timing is off.”
“Why are you so against this? You’re attracted. Don’t try and deny it.”
She removed her hand from under his, pushed back from the table. “I’m an adult,” she said more to herself than him. “I don’t need to deny anything.” I’m not ready. As the words popped into her head, her body called her a liar.
“What’s the worst thing that can happen?” he asked.
I fall in love. You destroy me. The words ran through her head like a ticker tape on the evening news. None of which she could repeat without revealing too much. So she picked the words that would scare any man away. “I’ll get pregnant.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The vulnerability on her face, the fear in her eyes. Where was the strong, confident woman he’d met on the airplane, the force of nature embodied by a woman he thought he knew?
She stood after dropping what he was sure she thought was an epiphany to him, but in fact was old knowledge.
He joined her when she turned her back; the bathrobe he’d placed in the guest room dwarfed her frame. He placed a hand on her shoulder, was surprised she didn’t jump.
Victor realized, on some level, that he was acting a little bit like a high school senior pressuring his prom date to get naked. He wouldn’t, of course. But he did want to push Shannon out of her comfort zone and make her at least consider the possibility.
“Shannon, look at me.”
She didn’t.
He ducked closer, made it impossible for her to look the other way.
With a heavy sigh, she leveled her eyes with his.
“Pregnancy is always a risk—” he said.
“I will. It isn’t a question of risk. I stopped all forms of birth control months ago. One slip, one tear . . .”
He knew the answer to his question before the words formed in his head but wanted to hear it from her first. “Why?”
She studied the floor, looked up. “I’ll be thirty-five next month.”
“And you want a child.”
She didn’t look at him when she nodded. “It’s why I was in Tulum . . . I mean, outside of your wedding.” She rolled her eyes. “Your nonwedding.”
“You were meeting somebody?”
A quick shake of her head dashed away that thought. “No. Not somebody . . . just any . . . I shouldn’t be telling you this.” She turned.
He placed a hand on her arm. Kept her from walking in the opposite direction. “You had a plan.”
“A loose plan.”
“I didn’t fall into it.”
She looked at him as if he were crazy. “No, you didn’t. You crushed it. Not that I had found someone, but you were there and reminding me that maybe there was—” She stopped short, her thoughts unspoken.
“You’re a beautiful woman, I can’t imagine you haven’t been given plenty of opportunities.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Less than you would think.”
“What do your friends think about this plan?”
She hesitated, so he talked over