Firefighter's Christmas Baby by Annie Claydon

Author:Annie Claydon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2018-08-14T14:36:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Six months later

BEN HAD THOUGHT he’d caught a glimpse Callie. The woman had been sitting in the passenger seat of a car that had parked across the road to the entrance to his apartment building. He’d cursed himself roundly as he’d thought he’d stopped seeing her face in crowds and catching her scent when no one was there.

Maybe he shouldn’t have ignored the text Callie had sent last month. Maybe he should have agreed to see her again, just once more, to lay the ghosts to rest. But Ben knew that it wasn’t going to work that way. Seeing Callie again would just re-set the clock on the process of trying to forget her. Nothing had changed, and their ending would be exactly the same.

He entered his apartment, slinging his jacket onto the back of the nearest chair and opening a few windows so that a breeze would begin to circulate. It had been a long night, and this morning all he wanted to do was take a shower, then eat something and go to bed.

Ben heard the tap on his door as he walked back downstairs to the kitchen. Wondering who it was, he ran his hand through his wet hair to tidy it a bit and opened the door.

For a moment he wondered whether he was seeing ghosts. Her corn-blonde hair was curling softly around her face now, instead of being blow-dried straight. The image of the woman he’d slept with kicked him hard in the gut, only to be followed a split second later with a blow that almost brought him to his knees. She wasn’t just pregnant. She was very pregnant.

‘Callie...!’

‘Hi. I rang the bell downstairs and someone let me in.’ Her hand fluttered nervously to her stomach.

‘I was in the shower.’ As if it mattered. But the conversation seemed to be continuing under its own steam, while Ben’s mind screamed in disbelief.

‘I’m sorry if this isn’t a convenient time.’ Her gaze was clear-eyed and determined. A stab of guilt accompanied the thought that he really should have answered her text.

‘It’s...it’s fine. I’m off shift now for three days.’

She nodded. ‘I know. I looked up the rota on the fire station’s website.’

Ben hadn’t been aware that the watch rotas were even published on the website. But, then, he never had much occasion to visit it. Callie had obviously carefully picked her time to come here, perhaps reckoning that he might need a couple of days off work to get over the shock.

Shock. That was it. That was why he was standing there gawping at her and thinking about websites when there were far more important things to consider. It was why his limbs felt that they’d lost the power of movement. He needed to pull himself together.

‘Please. Come in.’ He stepped back from the doorway, watching her as she walked inside. She wore leggings and a pair of trainers, with a light summer top that fell loose over her stomach, reaching down to her hips.

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