LITMIR.BIZ

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a start, as well as those fingers curved around her mug. And what was underneath the robe?

      “It’s so crazy,” she went on. “In the daytime, I can go to sleep on the couch or on top of my comforter like that.” She took a hand from the mug and snapped her fingers. “At night, when I climb between the sheets … not happening.”

      “So sleep on the couch at night.”

      “That’s why I lit the fire. It’s kind of soothing when it crackles. I can watch the flames till my eyes get sleepy. Right now, I think that’s an hour away. Would you like some hot chocolate?”

      She sounded wistful and eager at the same time, as if she really did want the company, and he wondered why this baby didn’t have a father.

      Why had there needed to be that crisp, distancing announcement, the day they first met, about sperm donation and planned pregnancy? Just how impossible was she to live with? Or just how exacting in her standards about men? Had something happened in the past to scare her off?

      Or did she try too hard, like Laura?

      Laura had crammed his house with heart-shaped objects and romantic sayings on fridge magnets. She’d told him, “I love you,” so many times that the words lost all meaning. She’d created elaborate “date nights” after he’d worked eighteen hours straight and then sulked when he didn’t want to take part, and generally poked and prodded at their relationship until it died like an overfed fish.

      Claudia didn’t seem exacting and impossible. Right now, she seemed adorable and sexy without knowing it and more alone than she should be a month from giving birth. He couldn’t say no to her. He should say it, but—

      “Hot chocolate would be great.” He began to follow her to the kitchen, but she shook her head.

      “Sit! I’m going to reheat this one while I’m there, I didn’t give it long enough.” She gestured to the mug in her hand.

      He heard the refrigerator open and shut, and then the microwave. After a couple of minutes she reappeared, walking gracefully but super carefully with the two mugs so that the foamy chocolate didn’t spill. She’d filled them too full.

      The pink tip of her tongue appeared at the corner of her mouth, the way a little girl’s did when she was working on a tricky drawing. Ms. Nelson would not have made a successful waitress if she had this much trouble balancing two drinks. Andy hid a smile, half amused, half captivated by the evidence of imperfection. He was beginning to realize that he couldn’t think straight around this woman, and that there was a lot more to her than the efficiency and the plans.

      They sat and sipped the chocolate. She asked him about his firewood supply. Would he mind if she lit the fire each night until the evenings were warmer? Or was that a nuisance, her using up the wood? Would he prefer her to use the furnace?

      “The fire is fine,” he told her. “I have one on my side, too, use it on snowy weekends mainly, when I’m planning to be home. There weren’t enough of those weekends this past winter, so there’s plenty left.”

      “I love the tiled surround. And the hardwood mantel.” Her voice was lazy. She might not be able to sleep, but she’d lost the efficient edge he had heard in her daytime conversation.

      It was so late.

      So late, and he was beyond tired.

      “They were boarded over when I first bought the house,” he told her, feeling lazy about speech, as well. His voice creaked a little. “There was some hideous death-trap gas thing in this one. I took it out and took a sledgehammer to the boards. That was a great moment, when I saw the tiling and hearth all still intact behind the mess.”

      “Bet it was! I can imagine that hammer, too.” She smiled, and he wasn’t sure what she was thinking. “It was on my wish list, once, renovating an old house, but other things kept getting slotted in higher up.”

      “May still happen. You never know. Life takes curves.”

      He was getting sleepy. Really had been a long night. He’d only just gotten to sleep when the call had come from Gina Wilkins and her husband to say she was in active labor and they were heading to the hospital. Now it must be going on five.

      He’d finished the chocolate. He put down the mug, but didn’t want to jump straight up and leave.

      “Curves,” Claudia was saying. “It does.”

      They both thought about that for a moment.

      A long, sleepy moment, with the flames dancing before their eyes—maybe if he just closed his for a second—and the room so … deliciously … warm …

      And dark.

      And downy, tucked under his chin.

      Soft comforter, felt just like his. He decided fuzzily that he must be in bed …

      He was definitely asleep. Deeply and righteously asleep, not just dozing as Claudia had thought at first.

      Thinking about life’s curves—like her parents’ bitter, drawn-out divorce when she was ten—she’d heard the subtle change in his breathing and in the stillness between them. She’d sat beside him for several minutes, thinking that at any moment he would startle out of sleep and mumble an apology and she would usher him to the door so they could both get to bed. She was starting to feel as if sleep might be a possibility for herself, at last.

      The pine log on the fire had begun to burn too low and the room wasn’t so warm. Or maybe it was just because she’d been sitting so still, not sure whether to disturb Andy with her movement or leave him be. After a few more minutes, she’d eased herself off the couch, turned the lights low and gone to bring the spare comforter from the bed she had ready for Kelly.

      She’d tucked it around her landlord—very important to remember, at that point, that he was her landlord—still expecting that the movement would waken him.

      But no. She crouched uncomfortably beside the couch with her hand still on the puffy fabric she’d just spread across his body and studied his face and his breathing, and he was definitely still fast asleep.

      Look at him, sighing into the comforter with the faintest of smiles on his face, the muscles around his jaw and eyes and cheeks so relaxed and smooth, his lashes all thick and dark on his cheeks!

      He had freckles across that crooked nose.

      She hadn’t noticed them before. They were faint and light and sprinkled like gold dust on his skin, adding to the outdoorsy impression he gave. There was even a freckle on his top lip, right near the corner of his motionless mouth.

      I want to kiss him.

      I want to reach out and shape his face in my hands. I want to put my mouth on to his and take the heat of it until it wakes him up. I want him to reach for me, too, and pull me down, and make room for me on the couch with the whole length of him. And just keep me there. And kiss me. Hold me. Till morning.

      I want the contact. It’s been too long.

      

      I want the connection.

      I just want him.

      A man.

      Him.

      It was her body talking, not her. Or it was her loneliness. Or her hormones. Or something. Something she had no control over. The thoughts didn’t even come in words, they came in a surge of need that seemed more powerful because of all the extra blood in her body.

      Think about that, Claudia.

      Pregnant women had fifty percent more blood. It was one of the reasons she was so warm, most of the time.

      You ‘re pregnant, Claudia.

      You have a baby due in a month.

      The last thing you need is to feel like this.

      About

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