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He frowned.
“I design and manufacture period clothing—Victorian, Gatsby.” She gestured to her own clothes. “Along with the proper accoutrements,” she added.
She works with her hands, too, he thought, his gaze shifting to her long, carefully manicured fingers, then to the dress again, skimming the delicate grape lace worked with pearls and tiny ribbons. It looked as if air held it together, and it made him think of all those wonderful sexy bits of lingerie women wore to drive men insane. No wonder it suited her so well. He found himself wanting to see her before she was pregnant or after, without the huge tummy. He wanted to see Tessa without anything at all.
Tessa felt his gaze, saw it darken and deepen, sending an unfamiliar heat through her already warm blood. Hot flashes, that’s all, she thought. The waiter came and placed food before them. Tessa, caught in Chase’s gaze, still didn’t realize their lunch had arrived until she nearly dropped the dim sum in her lap.
“Who hurt you?” His words came softly, like a warm caress.
She didn’t like it. “I beg your pardon?”
“Who hurt you so badly that you don’t want a man in your life?”
A lie would have done nicely right now, but Tessa couldn’t get it past her lips. “It’s not that I don’t want one. Rather I’ve found it...unnecessary. I do fine alone, with an occasional date.”
“Why didn’t you just sleep with some poor schmuck and walk away? You’d have exactly what you wanted then.”
“No. I wouldn’t,” she replied tightly. “I wasn’t going to risk a disease or anything else. What should I have done? Ah, excuse me—” she poked the air with her chopsticks “—could you be tested for diseases so I can get pregnant? Hurry though, I’m ovulating.” He smiled at that. “I couldn’t do that anyway, at least not and keep it from him.”
“But you would from me?”
She put down her chopsticks and rubbed her temple. “It’s different. I went into this with the assurance that the donor would never know. Donors sign away their rights.”
“Unless the kid wants to find them.”
She shrugged.
“What were you going to tell my son when he asked about his father?”
Again, her shoulders moved restlessly as she poked at her food. “I’d decide when it was appropriate. And if she was old enough to understand, I’d tell the truth.”
Abruptly he leaned close, hemming in the air, the moment. The man was so close she could see the black flecks in his eyes.
“The truth? That he was made in a doctor’s office and not a bedroom? That his father was some man he’ll never know?”
His tone was intimate, husky, and Tessa swallowed nervously. “That can’t be helped.”
“Yes, it can.”
“How—?” Her eyes widened instantly at the look of intent on his face. “Oh, no!” She shook her head, looking scared. “Don’t—” she wiped her lips “—don’t say it!”
“Many me.”
She stood abruptly, throwing down her napkin. “That never fixes anything, especially this.”
Chase rose slowly. “Tessa, calm down.”
“I am calm,” she insisted. “I said lunch. Talk. Not a damn proposal that isn’t warranted.” She left the table, angry, stomping, then froze, looking down at her stockinged feet. Chase watched her shoulders sag as she turned back. Dropping into the chair, he fought a smile as she stepped into her shoes and grabbed her purse.
He caught her and a tingling sang up his arm. “Tessa, wait. Talk to me.”
“No.” She wiggled free. “Talk is doing—” She gasped suddenly, gripping his shoulder and clutching her belly.
Chase tensed, his gaze shooting between her face and the baby. In a heartbeat he realized she wasn’t in pain, but that his child, his baby, was moving wildly inside her. Without thought, he pulled her onto his lap, his hand covering the rolling pokes and ripples.
The audacity of the man, Tessa thoughts, struggling to get up, but he held her down. Then Tessa went still as glass, watching his expression—awed and happy. Deliriously happy. And she felt it like a sweet fragrance on the breeze, almost tangible.
“Chase,” she whispered, and he lifted his gaze. Her heart nearly broke. His eyes, dark, haunting eyes that could almost pierce through her, were damp and soft and so unbelievably vulnerable she thought she’d drown in them. He looked helpless and his fingers flexed on her belly, following the motion lower. A burning, familiar and sensual and heady, spilled through her body. She shifted on his lap and he dropped his gaze to her tummy.
“That’s incredible,” he whispered, a catch in his voice, and it hit her that he hadn’t understood exactly what he was fighting over. A human being. Genes and syringes aside, there was life inside her and he was just recognizing how very real it all was. That this wasn’t a battle for rights and territory, but a battle over a baby. A tiny, helpless baby.
Tessa was fast losing perspective. The heat of his touch and the savage look in his eyes chiseled at the courage she needed. In the space of a few moments, the man fought with her, proposed to her, then showed her a side of himself she never imagined he possessed. And she felt as if she’d just stepped off a roller coaster—dizzy, unstable. It scared her, this jumble of feelings, and as Chase applied pressure to her back, urging her close, she recognized want and hunger and need in herself. She was pregnant; she wasn’t supposed to feel this way, was she? Yet still she leaned into him, still she let him touch her belly, still she ignored the customers whispering around them.
When Tessa covered his hand with hers, Chase felt emotion stir in him, a thick heaviness in his chest he hadn’t experienced in all his thirty-five years. Unborn life poked at his palm. It was his child, letting him know he was there, involved, yet a separate entity from the mother. This child is a living, breathing part of me too, he thought. Me. And the baby needed him. His gaze moved over Tessa’s belly, then up her body to her face, and she smiled tenderly. God, she was beautiful. And she was doing things to him, intoxicating things, with her buttocks tucked into his lap, the scent of her perfume and her skin, the look in her eyes. For an instant, Chase saw her in his bed, naked and damp and wanting. His hand at her back spread, moving upward, drawing her closer. His breath brushed her warm lips. So sweet.
Her eyes blinked open and she jerked back. “No. No, no, no.” She pushed off his lap, scrambling for her purse, ignoring his help and repeating “no” over and over as she left him and the restaurant as quickly as she could. Chase watched her go, sinking into the chair. She couldn’t have moved any faster if her life depended on it, and he smiled, silly and sappy. Several customers joined him.
“My baby,” he said, gesturing, then leaned forward and braced his arms on the table, catching his breath. She felt it. God, he prayed she had experienced that electricity, because he felt fried down to his socks. And the only reason he didn’t follow her was that the entire restaurant would know exactly what her squirming had done to him.
Three
Tessa slipped the purchase into a bag and handed it over to her customer, forcing her smile to remain in place as Miss Dewberry called out in her singsong voice from the dressing room.
“Coming,” Tessa sang back, her shoulders drooping.
“I’ll take care of her, Miss Lightfoot,” one of her salesgirls, a college student, said.
“Thank you, but Miss Dewberry will only make you miserable, Dana,” Tessa whispered. She’d find fault with everything the girl did, and Tessa didn’t want her best clerk upset enough to leave. She needed her. Dana looked great in Tessa’s designs and had a marvelous eye for window displays.
Dana conceded with a sour glance at the dressing rooms and turned away to assist another customer. Tessa snatched three more outfits off the rack and headed to the back of the store. She soothed the older woman’s complaints and suggested another style. Tessa wouldn’t put up with her moods if she didn’t spend nearly a thousand dollars every time she walked through the door. Besides, being unmarried and childless at fifty must be hard. Though Tessa could understand why the woman was alone. Her aura was brown, as Tessa’s mother would say.
“I think we should try a larger size,” she suggested. “This pattern may run a touch small,” she added, for the woman’s expression was viperous. Tessa handed over the garments and leaned back against the papered wall. She wanted a nap. She wanted to put her feet up. And she almost cried when the door chime sounded again.
Sleep had eluded her last night, her mind constantly slipping to Chase, remembering the look in his eyes when he felt the baby move and the wonderful scent of him just before he kissed her. No, nearly kissed her, she reminded herself.
She couldn’t let him seduce her. Not that she believed for a moment he was attracted to a pregnant woman with swollen ankles. He just wanted his baby. My baby, she corrected, refusing to be lured by his smiles and charm.
When Miss Dewberry popped out of the dressing room, displeasure evident in her pinched expression, Tessa prepared herself for the criticism. Pushing away from the wall, she inspected the fit, adjusting the delicate fabric over the woman’s ample figure.
“It scratches, and this isn’t the French lace I like,” Miss Lila Dewberry sniped.
And the style is for a younger slimmer woman, Tessa thought. Or hadn’t the woman noticed the deep braless-cut back?
“But what do you think of the color?”
Pink dress, red hair? Get a clue, Tessa thought.
“It doesn’t do you justice,” a masculine voice said, and both women turned.
Tessa’s heart did a strange flip at the sight of Chase propped against the wide doorway, arms folded over his flat stomach. His slight smile, so very masculine and seductive, practically simmered in the air. God, he looked good, she thought, even in a simple blue T-shirt and very worn jeans.
“I beg your pardon?” Miss Dewberry said waspishly, and Tessa’s gaze shifted between her source of sleeplessness and her immediate source of a headache.
“The color, I mean.” He leaned back slightly and pulled a darker, more somber shade of the same dress from the rack and handed it to the woman. Tessa noticed it was a larger size. “This was made for you.”
Miss Dewberry smiled, for the first time in centuries Tessa imagined, then swept into the dressing room.
Chase’s gaze shifted to Tessa.
“Thank you,” she said, then lowered her voice. “She was really beginning to wear on me.”
“You look exhausted.”
“I am.” She collected the discarded garments, righting them on the hangers.
“Is that because of me?” he said with a grin.
Her eyes narrowed. “Yes. You and your imagined rights. What do you want, Mr. Madison?”
“For you to take it easy, for one thing.”
“Me and my baby were doing just fine.”
Until you, she was saying. His gaze slipped over her, the dark beige top and cleanly pressed slacks, but it was her face that showed her fatigue. Wisps of hair lay damp at her nape where she’d pulled the dark mass back in a wide bow. Shadows clung beneath her eyes, and a grayish pallor tinted her skin.
“Please leave my shop,” she said, suddenly uncomfortable. She bent to retrieve a box of shoes, yet when she straightened, she staggered. Chase lurched, catching her, taking her weight.
She sagged against him, drawing her breath slowly, blinking, and Chase lifted her in his arms and carried her out of the dressing room area.
“I’m quite capable of walking,” she said, squirming.
“You can hardly stand,” came in a warning tone, and she scowled at him. Her assistant looked up and raced to them, opening the door to her office and letting him inside.
“Can I get a doctor?”
“No.” Tessa was annoyed that Dana addressed Chase, waiting for his command. The interfering man.
“Just water,” Chase said, laying Tessa on the stuffed couch. He tugged off her shoes as Dana filled a glass from the cooler and brought it to him, then left, closing the door.
“I have to see to Miss Dewberry.”
“That crabapple can wait.”
“This is a business, Chase Madison, and I need hers.”
She started to get up, but he pressed her gently back down, handing her the glass before pulling a chair alongside the sofa. He sat. “Drink.” When she looked as if she’d rebel, he tipped the glass to her lips. She drank obediently. “Are you hungry?”
“I never had the chance to eat it,” she said, gesturing to the meal on her desk, her breathing a little fast. Chase stood and scooped up the sandwich and fruit, bringing it back and setting it beside her on the sofa. “Eat.”
“Eat. Drink,” she grunted lowly. “Can’t you do anything but bark at me?”
“Yes.” His gaze swept her leisurely. “But I’ll get to that later,” he said in the sexiest voice God could create, and Tessa had to smile. He really was too handsome.
She bit into the sandwich half, moaning with pleasure, and Chase wanted to hear more of it, when he kissed her someday. The sandwich was gone in seconds, and as she reached for the other half. Chase leaned back in the chair, stretching out his legs. It amazed him how much he enjoyed just watching her. She was totally focused on her food, devouring it in minutes, drinking water, popping bits of fruit into her lovely mouth. He didn’t think she remembered he was there until she frowned at the empty wrappers and looked around as if searching for crumbs. He chuckled and her gaze flew to his, a dull red creeping into her face.
Tessa wiped her mouth with a paper napkin and shrugged. She wasn’t going to make excuses for her appetite.
“Want me to get you more?”
“No, thank you. We’re satisfied.” She patted her stomach.
We. A package deal. Chase had racked his brains for a solution to their problem, but late last night, when only her fiery green eyes filled his mind, he realized that first he had to get to know her. Then they could do something about their child and the opposition they had.
Sitting here with her, taking care of her, felt so natural he wanted it to go on. However, the uncomfortable look on her face said she didn’t want him around, ever. It stung, he admitted, and abruptly stood to refill her glass.
A rap on the door and Dana popped her head around the panel. Chase looked up, glancing between the girl and Tessa.
“I’m sorry, Miss Lightfoot, but Miss Dewberry is asking for you. I tried to explain, but I think she’s going to leave.”
Tessa straightened, swinging her legs off the couch.
“You stay put,” Chase commanded, pointing at her, and Tessa froze. He looked at the salesgirl. “Tell Miss Dewberry to keep her shorts on. I’ll take care of her.”
“You?” both women squeaked, stunned.
“Yes, dammit, me.” He waved Dana on, then turned to Tessa, lifting her legs back onto the couch.
“I have to get back to her.”
His gaze darkened. She looked more ready to sleep than work. “Let her wait.”
“Chase Madison, this is my shop, my livelihood, and that woman—” she pointed to the door “—no matter how finicky she can be, is a very good paying customer.”
He towered over her, forcing her to crane her neck to look up at him. His body blocked the light, blocked any escape, and she felt like a prisoner before an armed Marine.
“Don’t try to tell me what to do,” she warned. “Just because there’s a child between us does not give you rights over my life.”
Chase’s shoulders drooped and he knelt beside the couch, looking her in the eye. “I deal with people like that woman all the time.” Her expression was doubtful. “I can’t tell you how many of my customers have decided what they wanted only to insist my crew rip it out and start over a week later.” When he realized she wasn’t buying the comparison, he tried another route. “You’re tired, Tessa. Your feet are swollen.”
She looked at them, wiggling plump toes. “I’ve learned to live with it.”
Chase sighed and snatched up a pillow, stuffing it beneath her knees, then pushing her back into the cushions. “I’m not trying to take over. God knows, I don’t know squat about women’s clothes.” He flashed her that devastating grin. “Except maybe taking them off.” Her eyes flared. “But,” he warned, “you’re pushing yourself too hard.” She opened her mouth and he put up his hand. “I swear I won’t let that old biddy leave without buying at least one of your creations.”
“She usually buys two, with shoes.”
Chase smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling, and Tessa felt the warmth of his honest feelings down to her sore feet. How had he wiggled his way into playing concerned lover? No, he wasn’t after her, she reminded herself, but his child, and she refused to believe he was interested in her, the woman. His marriage proposal was a path into her baby’s life. The baby obviously meant more to him than she had first imagined. Suddenly, Tessa hated him for trying to get close and she hated herself for getting comfortable.
Chase’s lips thinned as her expression suddenly hardened. He didn’t think someone so soft and lovely could deal such a loathsome look with that much power. He sighed tiredly, took the glass and set it on the desk.
