That's My Baby! by Vicki Lewis Thompson

you, too.” But one unplanned baby was enough. She forced herself to choke out the words. “But I’m not on the Pill anymore. We can’t—”
    “Yes, we can.” He nuzzled his way back to her mouth.
    At first she thought he meant that he wouldn’t care if she got pregnant. “We can?”
    “Yes.” He covered her face with a million kisses. “We can. I want to be inside you, Jess.”
    Could he really be telling her that he’d changed his mind about children? Her heart expanded with the possibility. “Why can we?” she asked breathlessly.
    “I had room service bring up condoms. Don’t worry.” He kissed her cheeks, her eyelids, her nose. “I won’t get you pregnant.”
    She went still. “Would that be so terrible?”
    He paused and lifted his head to gaze into her eyes. Although it seemed to take some effort, he gained control of his runaway desire. Then he took a deep breath. “I don’t want to start out with a fight, Jess.”
    A pulse hammered in her throat. “Neither do I. But I need to know. Would it be so terrible if you got me pregnant?”
    “You mean right now, at this very moment?” Without giving her a chance to answer, he barreled on. “Yeah, it would. We have a lot of talking to do, and that’s one of the things we need to talk about, but I wouldn’t want to make a move like that without taking all kinds of thingsinto consideration. I am willing to give it some thought, much more so than when I left. Maybe…I’m not saying positively, but maybe…someday. But not right now.”
    The hope swelling in her heart died. Damn, but he was a pain in the butt. She’d meant to find a gentle way to tell him, but suddenly she didn’t want to be gentle with this incredibly sexy but frustratingly stubborn man. She wanted to hit him between the eyes.
    “It’s too late to talk about it, Nat,” she said. “Eight months ago I gave birth to our daughter.”

CHAPTER FOUR
    N AT STARED down at her as a sick feeling worked its way through his gut. “No,” he whispered.
    “Yes. I’m sorry to spring it on you like this. I hadn’t planned on that, but I’ve carried this secret for so long that I—”
    “No!” He scrambled from the bed, as if eliminating all contact with her would change the message she was trying to deliver. He jabbed an accusing finger at her. “You were on the Pill!”
    Jess sat up, drew her robe around her with great dignity and retied the sash. Sometimes, at moments like this when she adopted an almost royal air, he realized that some of her upbringing had stuck with her, whether she wanted it to or not.
    “Yes, I was, but—”
    “You stopped?” The fear boiling in his stomach erupted into accusations. “You stopped without telling me, didn’t you? You thought if you couldn’t hook me one way, you’d try something else!”
    “How dare you!” She leaped from the bed, rigid with anger.
    “What else am I supposed to think?” Oh, God, he remembered how she’d pleaded with him to commit. Her pleas could have come from the desperate knowledge that she might be carrying his baby.
    Clenching her fists, she faced him, her eyes dark with betrayal. “You could try thinking that it was an accident.”Her voice quivered. “I had a cold that weekend, remember?”
    “Yeah, I remember.” She’d suggested their not seeing each other because she hadn’t wanted to infect him. But he’d talked her into it by saying he had a great immune system. He’d told her they’d spend the weekend in bed. Which they had. Her cold had made their final argument that much more miserable, because she’d been crying and coughing and sneezing through it all. He’d felt like the worst kind of heel, but she’d been the one pressing the point, not him. And he’d run.
    Her tone grew bitter. “I was so worried about you catching whatever I had that I decided to get a prescription for antibiotics, hoping then I’d be less contagious.”
    “I remember that, too. What does that have to do