Daddy to be Determined by Muriel Jensen

Author:Muriel Jensen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Natalie found dancing with Ben filled with contradictions. He held her loosely, yet she found herself pressed tightly against him, every muscled plane of his body fitting comfortably into the soft hollows of hers.

She was prepared to blame it on the tight confines of the dance floor, but looked around and realized that there were only two other couples dancing. She, however, had her arms tightly wrapped around Ben’s neck. So she was to blame.

She felt nervous, yet eager. She wished she’d never suggested this, then wished their paths had crossed before she’d ever tried the sperm bank. Her life would be much simpler now.

Or would it? Nothing seemed simple at the moment. As the band played a smooth romantic arrangement of “Autumn Leaves,” she could feel her heartbeat in her ears. She remembered her insistence that her feelings weren’t involved here, and wondered why she’d thought so.

Because he hadn’t been holding her when she’d said it, that’s why. She’d had this reaction to him when she was injured and he’d lifted her in his arms to move her from place to place. When they simply talked, she could be sensible and steady. When they touched, every nerve ending in her body seemed to come alive.

“You okay?” he asked gently.

She lifted her head from his shoulder to look into his eyes. “Yes. Why?”

The hand splayed against her back pressed gently. “Because you don’t seem to be breathing.”

She admitted with a shallow little breath, “I’m nervous.”

“No need to be,” he assured her quietly. “I’m harmless.”

“Yeah,” she said with a disbelieving purse of her mouth. “Right.”

“You changing your mind?” he asked with a smile. “I know you’ve had your red meat to strengthen you and wine to relax you, but you’re in no way obliged to carry through. There’s tomorrow, or the day after, or never. Everything’s up to you.”

And that was probably what did it, she decided later. So little in her life had ever been up to her. Most of her life had pretty much been up to her mother, and even when Natalie had resisted, her peace of mind had been subject to her mother’s reactions.

In her work, the way in which the news was presented was up to the station management, and her position as anchor of the nightly news was subject to every whim and complaint of the viewing audience.

But this—making her baby—was up to her.

And she was ready. Or, rather, she knew it was do it now or lose her nerve. It was all more complicated than she’d imagined, more…involving that she’d anticipated. She blamed her sudden emotional turmoil on the tension of the moment, on knowing that sometime tonight she would go back to the little cottage on the bluff and she and Ben would, hopefully, create her child.

It was a staggeringly important step in her life, so naturally her body reacted with the drama appropriate to the situation.

She stopped dancing, her hands slipping from around his neck to his shoulders. “I’d like to go back to the cottage,” she whispered, “and…” She stumbled over the right way to put it.

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