attention to detail and her conscientiousness. She could not earn him with her staying power and determination and smarts.
Therefore she would not want him. She simply refused to. Refused to set herself up for failure and pain by buying into a ridiculous fantasy that would never come to be.
She climbed into bed and turned off the light. She closed her eyes and instantly she was in her living room, staring into Rhys’s face, feeling the pull of desire, every inch of her skin lighting up in anticipation of his touch.
Her lip curled into a sneer at her own foolishness, but she didn’t force the memory away. Instead, she fixed it in her mind, going over and over it, forcing herself to imagine what Rhys had seen when he’d looked into her face—her neediness, her desire, her hope. Forcing herself to see the scene as it had really played out, and not through the hazy, gauzy filter of wishful thinking.
Heat washed through her—embarrassed, self-conscious heat this time instead of desire.
Thank God she hadn’t obeyed the voice screaming in her head and taken a step forward. Thank. God.
Tugging the covers higher around her shoulders, she rolled onto her side, her hand sliding to cover the barely-there bump of her belly.
After long moments the tight feeling in her chest eased.
The small person growing beneath her hand was what was important right now. Nothing else.
Good to remind herself of that.
CHAPTER TEN
WHAT ARE YOU DOING, MAN?
Rhys asked himself that question all the way home from Charlie’s place.
He’d almost kissed her tonight. If she’d been any other woman, he would have. He would have pulled her into his arms and kissed her and seen where it took them—but there was no “seeing where things go” when a woman was pregnant with your child.
Through some miracle, he and Charlie had formed a friendship over the past month. Out of potential disaster they had discovered a shared sense of humor, common values and, he hoped, mutual respect. On a very basic, human level, he liked her. He liked her a lot.
He liked her calm, no-nonsense, straightforward approach. He liked her honesty and quiet courage. He liked her slow smile and her dry wit. He even liked her quietness. With Charlie, there was no pointless chatter. She said what needed to be said. She listened. And when she did say something, it was always worth hearing.
If they’d met under any other circumstances he would have been intrigued and attracted by her. But they hadn’t. They’d had one fiery night together, and now she was carrying their baby.
All of which meant she was out-of-bounds. Big-time.
The relationship they were forging would be tested in a hundred different ways over the coming months. There would be stress and sleeplessness and a million other doubts and domestic crises—he’d seen what happened when a baby was thrown into the mix with his brothers and sisters. Tempers were short. Sleep was precious. Time was at a premium.
He and Charlie were going to need every scrap of goodwill toward one another that they could muster. What they didn’t need was a failed romance lying between them. Hurt feelings and guilt and anger and sadness. It would be tough enough without making their lives more complicated.
Of course, there was always the chance that a romance might work between them. He’d never embarked on a relationship yet that he hadn’t hoped would lead to marriage—he didn’t know anyone who did. What was the point, after all, if you didn’t think things would go all the way? But as his current single status so eloquently proved, none of those relationships had worked out, for a variety of reasons. And there were no guarantees one would work out between him and Charlie, either.
For starters, he had no idea where her head was at in regard to him. Sometimes she looked at him and he was sure he saw an echo of the intense attraction they’d shared that night. Other times she was unreadable and utterly unknowable. If he’d given in to his instincts tonight and kissed her, in all honesty he had no idea if she would have kissed him back or pushed him away.
She stepped away, remember?
So maybe that was his answer. Which meant that he was mulling over a problem that didn’t even exist. If Charlie wasn’t attracted to him the way he was attracted to her, he was spinning his wheels and giving himself a hard time for nothing.
Except…
There had been something in her eyes tonight. Desire.