Ever Since Eve by Pamela Browning

Author:Pamela Browning [Browning, Pamela]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance, General, Contemporary, Fiction
ISBN: 9780373161409
Google: UcTepRoRZIIC
Amazon: 0373161409
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 1986-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

Derek cast about in his mind for the thing to do next, but for the life of him it wouldn't come to him. There was no plan.

God knows he had tried to make one, but every time he thought he had it figured out, something happened to distract him. Like stumbling upon Eve in the L & D Cafe. Like her dazzling smile when she danced the polka with him. Such events made all plans irrelevant.

This baby. There it was, like it or not. It was amazing, really, to think that the impersonal globe of fullness under Eve's clothing was a living, growing child.

Aunt May made such a fuss over Eve's pregnancy. She was always worrying about whether Eve napped every day or wore her boots with the nonskid soles when she went out on damp days. "I wish she'd eat more," he heard Aunt May say to no one in particular when she was out poking around in the pansy bed one day. "I wish he'd talk about the baby."

Derek, on this occasion, had ducked guiltily beneath the grape arbor, bare of leaves now and affording little concealment, before Aunt May detected his presence. He had little doubt that she was speaking of him and his refusal to even mention the child.

Well, what was he supposed to do? He didn't want the baby now; that was all. He felt responsible for it, and for Eve. He'd sheltered her under his roof, hadn't he? And here she was, a small, bright presence to whom he had become ridiculously attached in so short a time.

Those children at the festival in the park-the little girl who lost her balloon and the kid who'd watched the Corvette for him. Cute. He liked kids. But the responsibility! Their illnesses! Their education, their clothing needs, their table manners, for goodness' sake! PTA meetings. Sewing pink satin ribbons on a girl's toe shoes. Making a pinewood derby race car for Cub Scouts. How could he take all that on by himself? With Kelly it would have been fine. Kelly managed things so well. But a child needed two whole parents, deserved to be brought up by two parents rather than a busy textile executive and an eccentric great-aunt. And Kelly was gone.

Instead, there was Eve, who stared at him with her big brown gazelle eyes and left so much unsaid. He thought about the things she might have said at times when he was away from her, for instance at work, when he should have been concentrating on working up his presentation be fore the governor's task force on textiles.

Eve-she'd stayed out late with that fellow, that friend she went out to dinner with. And at a time when she needed her sleep, too. It angered him when she'd wandered in after midnight. Where had she been all that time? At the guy's apartment? In a bar? Both of those seemed unlikely places for Eve to be.

He'd started working straight through lunch in the days after Kelly died so he wouldn't have to go home, as he always had before at lunchtime.

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