Baby's First Christmas

Kate shrugged, aware the aching pressure in her thighs, which had been there all day, was increasing—maybe because of the amount of time she’d spent on her feet, pacing back and forth, as she talked to Michael about their situation. “We’ll see,” she replied cryptically.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded.

Kate stomped closer, not stopping until she and Michael were toe to toe. She angled her head at him, wishing he weren’t so tall, so fit or so unerringly handsome and masculine. “It means once the novelty wears off, you could lose interest in this baby and in me,” she said mildly.

He flashed her a crocodile grin. “I don’t think so.”

His soft voice sent another whisper of sensual awareness spiraling through her. Feeling as though she couldn’t breathe, Kate drew a deep—albeit shaky—breath and continued to study him like a problem she had no choice but to solve immediately. In the meantime, she still had her afternoon deliveries to do, a scheduled dinner with her mother and one last Lamaze class to attend.

“Look,” she said finally, “if you still feel the same way in a couple of weeks, we’ll sit down and talk.” She was being vague, hoping against hope that time would take care of everything.

“And work something out?” Michael pressed.

Kate didn’t want to do anything like that, but she knew—out of fairness—that she had to consider his position, too. “I’ll try to do what’s right for all of us, as soon as I figure out what that is,” she promised sincerely. “Meanwhile, if you’ll excuse me, I have seventeen deliveries to make.”

Michael caught her wrist in his hand and held her in place.

“I still want to help you,” he insisted.

The skin of his palm felt like hot silk around her wrist. “Everyone does,” she replied.

His grip gentled. “What do you mean?”

Kate shrugged. “Since I became pregnant, all sorts of people have seen fit to counsel me on the wisdom of my decision to be a single parent and raise this child alone. People who wouldn’t dream of telling me what brand of mustard to buy have no qualms at all about telling me I need a husband in a hurry.”

Michael smiled in understanding, his hold on her becoming more intimate before he reluctantly released her altogether. “But you don’t see it that way,” he guessed softly.

Kate sighed and—a hand to her aching back—leaned against the edge of her desk. In a continuing effort to get comfortable, she crossed her ankles in front of her and clasped the edge of the desk on either side of her. “It’d be nice if every child in this world could have a mother and a father who loved each other desperately, a ton of siblings and live in a house with a white picket fence. But that doesn’t always happen.”

Michael pushed the edges of his sport coat back and braced his hands on his waist. “Still, whenever possible,” he repeated, his kind brown eyes locking with hers, “I think a baby should have a mommy and a daddy.”

Kate, who’d done an awful lot of thinking about this very subject before becoming pregnant, stubbornly refused to concede the same. She angled her chin at him, determined to let him know, along with everyone else, that she could handle this. “I think every child needs lots of love, security and a sense of family. My child—” not our child “—will have all that and more,” she stated.

“What about my child?” Michael asked, his expression determined.

Kate looked away evasively, and her lips tightened mutinously. “When you plan for a child, then you can also plan the environment in which you will bring him or her up.”

Michael did a double take. “Surely you’re not intending to cut me out of our baby’s life entirely?”

Kate’s shoulders stiffened as she—once again—found herself in the unenviable position of having to defend herself. “I’m sure there will come a time, when our child is much older, that some explanation will be in order,” she asserted.

Michael placed a palm on the desk on either side of her and towered over her, “And until then?”

Kate planted a hand on his chest and pushed him away. Standing, she breezed past him haughtily. “Until then I suggest you think about it as much as you would’ve had your genes merely been guinea pigs in a genetics experiment.”

He caught hold of her shoulders and turned her to face him. “I’m afraid that’s not going to work,” he said tightly, staking his claim on their baby—and, by default, her.

“It will work,” Kate insisted, inhaling the spicy, masculine scent of aftershave clinging to his freshly shaven jaw. “As long as you want it to work.” Wanting it to work was key. She headed for the front of the shop, where she informed Dulcie, Jeff and Lindy she was leaving to do her deliveries.

Michael watched her gather the turquoise duffel packed with her Lamaze stuff, the keys to the van, her cell phone, clipboard of addresses, area street maps and purse. He followed her out the back door to the van.

“I know this child exists,” he said, as Kate—who wished she could do something about the unprecedented aching in her thighs, which seemed to get worse with every passing second—unlocked the driver’s door and tossed in her gear.

“I’m going to want to know he or she is okay,” Michael continued stubbornly as the two of them continued to be buffeted by the brisk November air.

Feeling about as graceful as a whale on roller skates, Kate levered herself up and into the driver’s seat and fit the key in the ignition. “Then I’ll send you progress reports, okay?”

Michael stood between her and the door, preventing her from closing it. “No. It’s not okay.” His voice lowered a notch as his eyes held hers in a manner that let her know he wasn’t about to be dissuaded. “I’m going to need—I’m going to want—a hell of a lot more than that.”

Kate drew an exasperated breath as she reached behind her and drew her seat belt across her chest. “Look, just because I’m carrying your child—by accident, I might add—does not mean you need to be involved in my life, too.”

Michael regarded her grimly. “If we’re going to have a child together—even by accident—we need to get to know each other. The only way for us to do that is for us to spend time together.”

She considered that notion for a moment, finding it oddly—engagingly attractive, then discarded it.

Rolling her eyes, she claimed facetiously, “Next you’ll be proposing marriage—”

Michael shook his head. “Not at this stage.”

Kate breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank heaven for small miracles,” she said dryly, as Michael leaned into the cab of the van.

“Although, now that you bring it up, maybe it’s not such a bad idea,” he replied, unwilling, it seemed, to throw out any possibility whatsoever that would bring him closer to the child she was about to bear, “should we eventually find we can get along.”

He was an attractive man. There was even, it seemed, a purely physical chemistry between them, as evidenced by the way she tingled whenever, wherever, he touched her, but the rest was just plain nuts. She studied his face. “You’re serious,” she whispered, able to feel for the first time how much he wanted this child in his life, in his heart.

“Very.”

Silence fell between them, more awkward than before.

The situation was amazing. Incredible. Unprecedented. And so very complicated. Kate had no idea what to do. She only knew she felt simultaneously threatened and oddly comforted, cossetted, by his presence.

Michael swore softly and ran a hand through his wind-tossed hair. “Look, I don’t want to make your life any harder, but this is my child—the only child I may ever have—and I want to be a part of his or her life, too. A big part.” Noting she was beginning to shiver in the increasingly cool afternoon air, he circled the front of the van and climbed into the passenger’s seat. He swiveled to face her, all the love he felt for their unborn child in his eyes. “If you were in my place, you’d feel the same way.”

True, Kate thought, as they stared at each other in contemplative silence. Suddenly she knew—as much as she might want him to—he wasn’t going to back off. If she didn’t want to end up in court, fighting for custody of her child before he or she was even born, she was going to have to cooperate with Michael Sloane. Or at least put up the pretense of doing so until he realized this was more commitment than he really wanted over the long haul. “What exactly are you suggesting?” she asked calmly as she shut the driver door and switched on the ignition.

“Only what’s fair,” Michael said as she turned on the heater. “That starting now, you let me be a part of our child’s life in every way. Including the birth.”

Kate’s knees turned to jelly as she thought about the implied intimacy of that. “You want to be in the delivery room?” she asked in a low, trembling voice as she splayed a hand across her chest.

“I am a doctor.”

But not my doctor, Kate thought. And the thought of being disrobed in front of him, for any reason, made her heart beat all the harder. Ignoring the tingles of awareness ghosting over her skin, she frowned and glanced at her watch. “I’m going to have to think about this.”

Michael looked as though he had expected that. “It’ll have to be fast,” he warned. “If the guys at the lab were correct about the date of your artificial insemination, you’ve only got a day or so.”

As if she needed reminding about that! Kate shrugged. “The baby could be late.”

“Or early.”