He didn’t let himself notice the snug fit of her cutoff denim shorts or the long, slim legs they left bare. The bright red tips of her toes or the sleeveless white top tied just beneath her breasts to expose her taut midriff.
He didn’t want to see any of that or think about the fact that she looked almost as good in clothes as she did out of them.
Oh, no, not today. He was not going to let his attraction to her get in the way of his fury over her betrayal.
She had her back to him, and it was almost too easy to sneak up on her. When she turned, he was less than a foot away. Her eyes went wide, she shrieked in surprise, and the coffee pot she was holding slipped from her fingers, smashing to the floor in a shower of water and glass.
Gage cursed. He’d meant to intimidate her… and yeah, maybe scare her a bit… but he didn’t want her to hurt herself.
Cupping his wide hands under her elbows, he lifted her straight up off the floor and swung her around, well out of range of the dangerous mess. He set her down on the other side of the kitchen doorway and backed her into the dining room.
Her cheeks were flushed as she gaped at him, her pupils mottled pinpoints of astonishment and wariness. She opened her mouth, but the only sound she emitted was a low, strangled hiss.
“What’s the matter, sweetheart, cat got your tongue? Or maybe you’re just braver when you’ve got me trussed up like a Christmas turkey to your bedframe.”
She swallowed, tongue darting out to wet her lips. “How did you get untied?”
“What?” he asked, his tone sharp. “Did you think you could keep me trapped up there forever? Were you going to fuck me until I was all used up, or just until you were sure you were pregnant?”
If possible, Jenna’s already pale porcelain skin turned even whiter.
“How did you…?”
Her eyes darted toward the hidden stairwell and then to her open handbag, where her cell phone rested on top of everything else she carted around on a daily basis.
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” he charged. Despite his earlier determination not to rattle the daylights out of her, his teeth clicked together and he gave her a tiny shake. “That I wouldn’t stop and do the math when your belly started filling out? That I wouldn’t figure out what you’d done? That you’d used me, lied to me, forced me into fatherhood when you know that’s the last thing I want.”
Where a second ago her expression was cautious and wan, a flare of color now bloomed high on her cheekbones. She yanked her elbow out of his grip and took a step back, putting what she apparently considered a safe distance between them.
“Do you want the truth?” she charged, her voice steady and tinged with accusations of her own. “The truth, Gage, is that I wasn’t thinking about you. I didn’t consider your feelings or wishes. I was thinking about me, and what you stole from me, and how I might-just might-get it back.”
His brow crinkled as he frowned. “What are you talking about? What the hell did I ever steal from you?”
She rolled her eyes in what he recognized as a time-honored gesture that basically implied men were obtuse idiots and he was their king.
“You took everything from me, Gage.” The words were spoken softly enough, but carried an elephant’s weight of emotion. “I thought we were happy. I thought we were going to be together forever, but you took all of that away from me. You woke up one day and decided you didn’t really want a wife or children, and expected the whole world to fall in line accordingly.”
It was his turn to roll his eyes. “We’ve had this discussion before. And it doesn’t change the fact that you drugged me and held me against my will.”
“No, we haven’t discussed this before,” she argued, crossing her arms beneath her breasts and taking a stance that clearly said she was just getting started. “Because every time I tried to talk to you about it, you clammed up. I begged. I pleaded. I screamed and cried and threw pillows at your head. But your mind was made up, and that was the end of the story, as far as you were concerned. You wouldn’t listen to me and refused to understand my point of view.”
“I don’t want kids, Jenna,” he said, standing his ground. “That’s not an opinion that’s going to be swayed by a passionate, well-orchestrated argument.”
“But you did when we got married,” she all but shouted at him, rising on her bare tiptoes in an attempt to meet him eye to eye. “We talked about our future. We talked about having babies and growing old together. You’re the one who changed the rules in the middle of the game and expected me to go along with them.”
She paused only long enough to take a breath, uncross her arms, and poke him hard in the center of his chest with an index finger.
“Well, I do want kids. I wanted them with you in the picture, but you’ve decided to be an asshole, so now I have to switch to Plan B and get them some other way.”
He watched her, and despite what she thought, he was listening. But this was a battle that was never going to end. They could talk, yell, debate, and play Rock-Paper-Scissors until they were blue in the face, but neither of them was ever going to win.
She clearly wanted one thing, and he wanted another. And it wasn’t like they disagreed over what color to paint the guest bathroom; this was big-time, life-altering, mega-important stuff.
“And Plan B was tying me down and raping me?”
She reared back as though he’d struck her. “I’m sorry you feel that way about it,” she said. “That wasn’t my intention, and except for the circumstances, I thought you were as into it as I was.”
For a brief moment, guilt stabbed at him. It hadn’t been that bad, and they both knew it. In fact, part of what had him so ticked off was the knowledge that even if he’d understood what she was up to at the time, he still wouldn’t have stopped. He still wouldn’t have fought hard enough to break free and toss her aside.
“So what do we do now, Jenna?” he asked calmly. “Wait to see if I’ve been strong-armed into fatherhood?”
“No. We don’t have to wait for anything. I did this because I want a baby. You don’t, and I would never force you to be involved in something you didn’t willingly sign on for. I won’t ask anything of you, Gage,” she rushed to reassure him. “If I’m pregnant, I’ll raise the child alone. I’ll tell people I was artificially inseminated or that it’s the result of a one-night stand or something. It won’t affect you at all. No matter what, you can go on with your life and pretend last night never happened.”
Gage wouldn’t have thought it possible to be more furious than he’d been when he’d overheard her conversation with Grace, but that last statement did it. He felt his temperature rising, his lips pulling back from his teeth in a sneer.
Taking the single step that brought them nose-to-nose once again, he leaned in until she was forced to lean back or risk him touching her. As it was, his hot breath bathed her face and feathered through the hair at her temples.
“If you believe that,” he hissed, “then you never really knew me at all.”
And with that, he spun on his heel, crossed the room to grab his leather jacket, and slammed out the front door.
Knit 7
Ronnie wrinkled up the empty Combos bag and tossed it over her shoulder into the back seat. Then she reached into the console and dug around for a stick of gum.
“Dylan is not going to appreciate it when I show up at his door with dragon breath,” she said, as Grace made a right-hand turn into the Marriott parking lot.
“Dylan is going to be so thrilled to see you, he won’t care if your breath smells like Charlotte ’s barn,” Grace reassured her with a chuckle. “And if it’s that bad, he’ll just bend you over the bureau with your face in the other direction.”