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She’d never heard her friend’s voice sound so husky before, not even when he was sick with the flu. It was sexy husky, we-just-made-love-all-night-long husky. It made her shiver.
He pulled on her arm, urging her down. His hand encircling her wrist felt warm. “Stay. Stay here, Mel. Come back.”
“I…” She didn’t want to get into this now. She didn’t want a scene. She’d wanted to disappear quietly.
“Stay,” he repeated.
He pulled harder. She went. It happened so smoothly, so seamlessly. He turned her onto her side, facing outward, and curled his big, warm body around hers, spoon style. He clamped an arm around her waist. He buried his face in the back of her neck, nuzzling her there, kissing her nape.
“Your hair…” Kyle inhaled deeply. “Smells like gardenia. Mmm. Melissa. I just want to hold you,” he said drowsily.
The words undid her. Without her conscious volition, her eyelids fluttered shut. And then contentment seeped through her limbs.
She couldn’t help it. She didn’t want to. It felt too good.
But even as she let herself drift back to sleep, part of her knew this was wrong. Terribly.
Kyle. Oh, Kyle. What have we done?
Dear Reader,
Kyle and Melissa, the hero and heroine of this book, have known each other several years when their relationship changes suddenly and irrevocably. I’ve always had a soft spot for stories like theirs, stories about close friends who fall in love—with a little help from external circumstances.
Maybe the two people have been in love all along but for various reasons haven’t been able to admit it. Or maybe an unexpected situation forces them to see each other in a new light. Regardless, the developing romance between longtime friends can be particularly complex.
True, “love at first sight” is very powerful. But there’s also something powerful about really knowing the other person before you fall in love—knowing his or her strengths and weaknesses and having more access to the inner layers of his or her personality. Within that context, a couple’s interactions take on new—and sometimes richer—meanings.
In Melissa and Kyle’s story I’ve tried to capture some of that emotional depth. This book is very different in tone from anything else I’ve written (including my new Harlequin American Romance novel). I hope you enjoy my efforts!
Anne Haven
Because of the Baby
Anne Haven
www.millsandboon.co.uk
To Ruth—with boundless gratitude for your
hard work and support
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
PROLOGUE
Midsummer
MELISSA LOPEZ AWOKE in the unfamiliar bed with the unfamiliar weight of an arm slung over her rib cage. Long white muslin curtains billowed in from an open window nearby. Bright morning sunshine poured into the room, making her squint. She gazed straight above her, blinking as her eyes adjusted.
High ceiling with exposed ductwork and a bumpy, texturized white finish that looked like cottage cheese.
Not her ceiling.
Oh, God. Oh, good God Almighty. Kyle’s ceiling. Kyle’s bed. Kyle’s big, tanned, muscular arm draped over her naked torso.
A crisp white sheet covered them. Melissa felt the warmth from his body all along her right side. His bent knee rested against her leg, the curling hairs tickling her skin. She sensed his head on the pillow beside her, heard the even cadence of his breath and became aware of its caress against her ear and neck.
Slowly she turned her head. Kyle Davenport lay asleep on his side, facing her. His long, dark lashes rested peacefully against his cheeks.
His lips were full and slightly darker than usual and a day’s beard growth shadowed his jaw. He had short hair, a faintly crooked nose, high cheekbones and a strong, attractive chin. He looked like himself—though she wasn’t used to this vantage point.
She swallowed. The vantage point of lying next to him. In bed.
Again she thought, Oh, God.
Images flashed in her mind. His apartment at night. The whisper of clothing as it slid off their skin. Warm, wet, breathless kisses. Hands exploring. His and hers.
She’d never touched him before. Never like last night. She’d only looked—looked and tried not to see his masculine beauty. Tried not to want.
I don’t believe what we did.
She’d needed him last night. After what had happened in the E.R. she’d been desperate. A small child and his mother had come in, fresh from a car accident. The boy had looked so much like Melissa’s brother. Same age. Similar injuries. And this boy had died, too. Melissa hadn’t been able to save him. Informing his mother—
Usually she was able to maintain a doctor’s professional distance. Last night she hadn’t.
So, when her shift at the E.R. had ended, she’d turned to Kyle. She’d needed the solace he could give her and she hadn’t cared about anything else.
But they should not have become lovers. She and Kyle couldn’t be romantically involved. They had a very good, very comfortable friendship—and this was a sure way to mess it up. She valued their relationship too much to let it degenerate into another of Kyle’s light, temporary affairs.
Panic shot through her.
She had to get away.
Her pulse hammering, Melissa raised a hand to his arm. He didn’t stir as she painstakingly eased his arm off her torso and inched away from him, pausing once when the mattress creaked. She lowered a leg over the side of the bed.
Kyle caught her wrist as she started to rise. “Don’t go,” he murmured.
She’d never heard his voice so husky before, not even when he was sick with the flu. It was sexy husky, we-just-made-love-all-night-long husky. It made her shiver.
He pulled on her arm, urging her down. His hand, encircling her wrist, felt warm. “Stay. Stay here, Mel. Come back.”
“I…” She didn’t want to get into this now. She didn’t want a scene. She’d wanted to disappear quietly.
“Stay,” he repeated.
He pulled harder. She went. It happened so smoothly, so seamlessly. He turned her onto her side, facing outward, and curled his big, warm body around hers, spoon style. He clamped an arm around her waist. He buried his face in the back of her neck, nuzzling her there, kissing her nape.
“Your hair…” Kyle inhaled deeply. “Smells like gardenia. Mmm. Melissa. I just want to hold you,” he said drowsily.
The words undid her. Without her conscious volition, her eyelids fluttered shut. And then contentment seeped through her limbs.
She couldn’t help it. She didn’t want to. It felt too good.
But even as she let herself drift back to sleep, part of her knew this was wrong. Terribly.
Kyle. Oh, Kyle. What have we done?
CHAPTER ONE
October
KYLE DAVENPORT STARED at the pasty-faced, middle-aged man in front of him. They sat in the makeshift conference corner of his office, on a pair of scuffed metal folding chairs pulled up to a Formica-topped table salvaged from a diner. Boxes of medical supplies and free samples lined the shelves on the wall beside them.
Kyle clasped his hands on the tabletop. As the clinic’s director he usually spent more time on his administrative duties than he did interacting with patients, but he welcomed the chance to do so. Even when, like today, he had to play the heavy.
“Harry,” he said. “Sounds like we have a problem here. Barbara tells me you haven’t been taking your meds.”
The man gave him a cranky look. He brushed back a chunk of his badly cut gray hair and then inspected the fingerless wool gloves he wore. “Barbara’s a bully.”
“She only wants to help you get better. If you don’t take your meds, Harry, you won’t get better.”
“I hate the meds.”
“I know. I’d hate taking ’em, too. But it’s the only way to make you improve. And if you don’t take ’em you’ll probably get worse. Keep this up and you’ll end up in the hospital.”
They both knew Harry had no health coverage, which was why he came to the free clinic. He couldn’t afford another emergency-room visit like the one last spring. He hadn’t been able to afford that one.
“Harry, help me out here. I know it’s a pain in the ass to take ’em three times a day. But Barbara can’t do anything for you if you ignore everything she says.”
“She says too much. She’s always on my back. I’m going to start calling her Nurse Ratched.”
Kyle tried not to grin, knowing he shouldn’t encourage the guy. But he couldn’t wait to tell Barbara about her new nickname. “I don’t think that’ll increase her level of friendliness, Harry.” He flattened his palms on the table and adopted a serious tone. “Look, buddy, I really need you to take those pills. Why don’t you try it for a week and we’ll take the rest as it comes, okay?”
Harry shot him a defiant glare. “The meds,” he announced, “give me gas.”
Kyle raised his eyebrows. “Oh, do they, now? Well, I can’t say I’d like that, either…It’s bad?”
“You don’t want to know.” And that, apparently, settled the matter. Harry grasped the edge of the table and supported himself as he rose to his feet. He adjusted the ragged old tweed coat he wore 365 days a year, rain or shine, heat or snow. “Well. Guess I’ll be going now.”
Kyle stood, too. “Hey, not so fast. I just had an idea. Hear me out?”
The other man turned back, head tilted, expression doubtful.
“There might be a solution,” Kyle said. “We’d have to talk to Barbara, but it might be possible to change your prescription. We could try to find something that isn’t so hard on your system.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a nurse or doctor. But sometimes more than one med can treat the same problem.”
Harry had his new bottle of meds by the time Melissa arrived for her weekly shift as a volunteer physician at the clinic. Through the doorway of his office Kyle heard Melissa greet Harry by name and the older man give her a cheerful, flirtatious response before leaving the clinic.
Kyle tried to focus on his paperwork. He had plenty this week, and a long list of phone calls to make for the fall fund-raising drive.
But he couldn’t concentrate. Never could on Wednesday afternoons, not since a certain hot summer night in July. He got that familiar, socked-in-the-gut feeling he had whenever he remembered it. Melissa, he thought, would be in to say hello any second.
Right on cue, she stuck her head through the doorway. “Hey, Kyle. How’s it going today?”
She wore her long white coat and a stethoscope looped around her neck. She always pulled her chocolate-brown hair back in a clasp at her nape; a few strands had escaped to graze her jaw. In one hand she held a clipboard; in the other, a half-eaten apple.
He smiled, knowing his face looked just as friendly and calm and unruffled as hers. “Great. Not too busy with the walk-ins. You’ve got some appointments?”
She glanced down at the clipboard. “That’s right.” She raised an eyebrow. “Mmm. I see Zita is scheduled for a visit. That should be colorful.”
Zita, a.k.a. Susan Smith, was a recovering addict with a variety of physical ailments caused by years of hard living. She had an eccentric personality and a loud voice.
“And a couple of new ones…” Melissa crunched on a bite of apple as she skimmed the notes. “Okay.” She swallowed and looked up at him.
“How’s your week going?” Kyle asked.
“Fine.” Her eyes met his and held them, but not for too long. Just long enough to show them both that everything was normal, routine, mundane, unremarkable. As it had been for the past five years. Just long enough to prove they weren’t avoiding eye contact. “My high-school chem teacher turned up in the E.R. last night.”
“Nothing serious, I hope.”
She shook her head. “Only a sprained ankle. Thought it might have been broken, but he was lucky. It was nice to talk to him—I hadn’t seen the man since graduation fifteen years ago.”
Melissa, an exceptionally bright and hardworking student, had finished high school at sixteen. She’d enrolled at Harvard med school three years later. Kyle had always found her intelligence incredibly sexy.
He took a deep breath. It’s none of your business, he told himself, whether she’s sexy or not. You’re just friends. That’s all you’ve ever been.
Except that crazy night in July.
But that had been a mistake. An aberration. They’d each had reasons for letting it happen—fine. But now they’d moved on. Put things back to normal.
A moment later Melissa tossed her apple core into the trash and went off to see to her patients. Kyle forced his attention back to his paperwork and phone calls.
He’d been running the health clinic, designed to serve the homeless and low-income population of Portland, Oregon, since he’d moved out west six years ago. Needing a change of scene. Needing to get away from all the memories of Felicity.
It had taken awhile to adjust. He’d had experience in nonprofits, but twenty-six had been young for this kind of position. Yet he’d thrown himself into the job, welcoming the challenge and the distraction. He’d barely had a personal life that first year, but he hadn’t wanted one—he’d found it almost intolerable to interact with anyone when it wasn’t part of his job.
Kyle remembered all the nights he’d gone home to his empty apartment, unable even to summon the energy to feed himself dinner before collapsing, still clothed, into bed. Welcoming the blankness of sleep.
But things had gotten better. He’d emerged from that brooding, self-pitying year and started to recapture his old self. Back in Boston, before Felicity’s suicide, he’d always been a social, fun-loving guy. He’d made new friends in Portland and begun to date again. Not seriously, of course—Felicity’s death had cured him of any impulse to get serious—but he’d learned to enjoy himself once more. And then Melissa had become a volunteer at the clinic.
Their friendship had evolved. She’d been wary at first, and had quickly made it clear she wouldn’t be one of his conquests. Relationships that involved sex or romance, he’d noticed, scared the devil out of her. She certainly didn’t want a dalliance—which was all he was prepared to offer.
So their acquaintance had taken a different route. They’d respected each other’s differences and limitations and boundaries, and gradually, without any intent, they’d developed the unlikeliest of friendships.
No, they didn’t tell each other everything. But sometimes they didn’t have to. Sometimes they just understood each other.
And sometimes, he suspected, they just kept secrets—from the world and themselves and each other.
SIX O’CLOCK ARRIVED before he could finish his work. It always did. He needed an assistant, but the clinic couldn’t afford one, so he made do with occasional volunteer help. This month they were short on volunteers.
Barbara Purcell, the large, attractive, forty-five-year-old black woman who served as the clinic’s nurse practitioner, walked into the room and snatched the papers from his hands. “That’s it. It’s closing time, boy. I’m hungry, Melissa’s hungry and that perky little college-girl receptionist is hungry.” She tapped the papers on the desktop to straighten them, then laid them down on a corner of the surface. Just out of his reach.
Kyle didn’t bother to protest. Three hungry women—especially these three hungry women, none of whom deprived themselves of daily nourishment to attain an impossible female ideal—were more than he could go up against. Not to mention he was hungry himself.
“Thi’s Pho Shop?” he said.
Barbara gave him a who-stole-your-brain look. “Where else?”
The four of them collected in the waiting area a couple of minutes later. They locked up and headed down the street, laughing and groaning, complaining and elbow-ribbing, a close-knit, animated group.
The restaurant, which served nothing but beef noodle soup, stood at the corner. It was always packed with Vietnamese Americans during the first half of the day, as traditionally pho was eaten for breakfast and lunch.
This evening the shop hummed with a mixed clientele. The proprietor’s daughter, a teenager in combat boots, jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, led them to a table by the window.
“Nice spot,” Melissa commented, taking the seat beside his. “In fact, it’s the nicest spot in the restaurant.” She winked at him. “I think that girl’s got a crush on you, Kyle.”
Whitney, the college student who worked several afternoons as the clinic’s receptionist, rolled her eyes. “Every straight female he meets gets a crush on him.” She reached for some napkins and spoons and chopsticks from the dispenser on the table.
“Hey, I’m straight,” Barbara said.
“Me, too.” Melissa looked at him, tilting her head in feigned sympathy. She patted his shoulder. “Sorry, Kyle. We can’t all join your mass of admirers.”
Everyone laughed, aware of Kyle’s undeniably sexy good looks.
The waitress brought them ice water and took their orders. After she left, Kyle steered the conversation to a different topic. He told himself it wasn’t because he minded Melissa’s teasing. But he felt edgy and a little raw tonight.
Melissa had spoken about his interactions with women the way she always had. She’d been tolerant, amused, occasionally chiding. Nothing had changed. His love life didn’t affect her. Yet he wondered how she could act that way so easily after what they’d done last July.
Damn it, Kyle. You should be grateful she’s handling it like this and not flipping out. Not getting all needy and emotional. Not trying to rope you into a heavy-duty commitment.
Their bowls of pho arrived.
“Oh, yes.” Barbara closed her eyes and inhaled the ambrosial aroma of beef stock rich with onions and ginger and star anise. “Sometimes I dream about this soup.”
“No kidding.” Melissa added bean sprouts and fresh herbs from the condiment plate, then a drizzle of lime. “Mmm. I might just have to have seconds tonight.”
AFTER THE MEAL Barbara drove home to her daughter and son-in-law. Whitney, like Kyle, had taken the bus to the clinic that day, so Melissa gave her a ride to Reed College before heading for his apartment.
Every Wednesday night after Melissa’s volunteer shift and the group dinner, they went to his apartment and watched X-Files reruns. The pattern hadn’t changed since the summer. It hadn’t changed since they’d made love.
They’d gone to bed together, shared a night of mind-blowing sex and then miraculously gone back to business as usual.
With anyone but Melissa it would have been absurd. Unthinkable. But she had a way of making it seem like the natural thing to do.
Pretend it didn’t happen. Ignore it. It doesn’t really exist, this knowledge of what we did together, of the tastes and textures of each other’s bodies; we don’t really know that.
We’re just friends. Best friends, yes. But nothing more.
Melissa parked her car, a safe, dependable white sedan, outside his apartment building. Two years ago she’d moved with her sister into a little house around the corner; she wouldn’t have to drive again until morning.
They entered the lobby and stopped by the bank of metal mailboxes, discussing some clients at the clinic. Just as they usually did. They took the stairs instead of the elevator to his third-floor, one-bedroom apartment, as usual.
Kyle let her in. He tossed his black leather bag onto the dining-room table, thumbed through his mail and tossed it down, too.
The answering machine said he had two messages. He played them back as he opened the fridge and grabbed a beer for himself and filtered water for Melissa. One of the calls was from a professional contact, the other from his mother in Massachusett.
“Haven’t phoned her in two weeks, hmm? Tsk, tsk.” Melissa pulled out a bag of gingersnaps from a kitchen cabinet. “Better shape up, Kyle.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ll give her a ring tomorrow, promise. I’m sure she’s already in bed by now. It’s after ten out there.”
He also ought to talk with his brother soon, but Craig was a little harder to reach. No doubt they would catch each other over the weekend.
He and Melissa carried their drinks into the living room, a contemporary space with simple yet cozy furniture. Melissa had helped him decorate the room, suggesting rusty browns and muted greens—subtle, earthy colors—to go with the pale walls and carpet. A huge ficus tree, which survived only because she remembered to check it regularly, stood in a corner by one of the large windows.
Kyle set her water on the coffee table and sprawled on the couch with his beer.
She sat a couple feet away from him, opening the bag of gingersnaps as she kicked off her shoes. She gave his knee a nudge with her sock-clad foot. “Don’t take your mother for granted, Kyle. She’s the only one you’ve got.”
“I know.”
Melissa had lost hers years ago. When she’d been eight, her mother and five-year-old brother had died in the emergency room following a car accident. She’d been the only other person in the car with them when they’d collided with a truck. Kyle didn’t think she’d ever gotten over the fact that she’d lived and they hadn’t, though it wasn’t something she talked about.
Her sister, who was one year older than she, had been at a baseball game with their father. They’d lived on, just as Melissa had, but not very well. Her father had become depressed and Anita hadn’t fared so well, either. Melissa had tried to take care of them, even though she was the youngest. She still did.
Kyle doubted they still wanted or needed her to, however.
Last July Anita had decided to get an apartment with her boyfriend. It was a big deal. The sisters had lived together for years, ever since Melissa had returned to Portland after med school. Melissa, he knew, had liked sharing a household. But Anita, at thirty-two, had wanted to live away from family members—something she’d never done before. She’d made her announcement right before that crazy, unexpected night in July…
The X-Files came on. Kyle took a swig from his beer bottle and tried to concentrate on the show. In his peripheral vision he saw Melissa tuck her feet up under her on the couch and nibble on her gingersnaps.
The episode was one of their favorites, but it didn’t hold his attention. Melissa did.
Whitney at the clinic had once told him his relationship with Melissa was like the one between the X-Files’ main characters, FBI agents Mulder and Scully. He’d laughed. But the comparison had some validity, he acknowledged to himself. He and Melissa had the same kind of connection, a quiet respect and unwavering loyalty to each other. They trusted each other with their lives, though they rarely discussed their innermost feelings.
And the sexual tension. It was always there in the background, simmering. Neither of them would admit it, but that was how it was.
After the show ended, Melissa picked up the remote from the coffee table and switched off the television. “You okay, Kyle?”