The Pregnancy Secret (Harlequin Romance Large Print) by Cara Colter Page A

After all their closeness this afternoon, she suddenly felt unbearably lonely.
    Kade came out, juggling dishes and the pizza.
    “What?” he said, sliding her a look as he put everything down.
    “Your apartment is beautiful,” she said, and could hear the stiffness in her own voice.
    “Yeah, it’s okay,” he said. She cast him a look. Was he deliberately understating it?
    “The kitchen is like something out of a magazine layout.”
    He shrugged, took a slice of pizza out of the box and laid it on her plate, from the pepperoni half, just as if they had ordered pizza together yesterday instead of a long, long time ago.
    “I think I’ll look for open concept in my next place,” she said. She bit into the pizza and tried not to swoon. Not just because the pizza was so good, but because of the memories that swarmed in with the flavor.
    “Don’t,” he said.
    Swoon over pizza?
    “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, open concept.”
    “Oh,” she said, relieved. “You don’t like it?”
    “You can’t be messy. Everything’s out in the open all the time. Where do you hide from your dirty dishes?”
    “That would be hard on you,” Jessica said. She remembered painful words between them over things that now seemed so ridiculous: toothpaste smears on the sink, the toilet paper roll put on the “wrong” way. “But I didn’t see any dirty dishes.”
    “Oh, the condo offers a service. They send someone in to clean and make the beds and stuff. You don’t think I’m keeping all those plants alive, do you?”
    “Very swanky,” she said. “Kind of like living at a hotel.”
    “Exactly. That is probably why this place,” Kade said, “has never felt like home.”
    Jessica felt the shock of that ripple through her. This beautiful, perfect space did not feel like home to him?
    “I’ve missed this pizza,” he said.
    “Me, too,” she said. But she knew neither of them was talking about pizza. They sat out on his deck and watched the light change on the river as the sun went down behind them. The silence was comfortable between them.
    “I should go,” she finally said. “I have to make some phone calls. It’s probably getting late to call a friend for tonight. I’ll go to a hotel and arrange something for the rest of the week.”
    “You shouldn’t bother. It sounds as if it’s going to be a lot of hassle. There is lots of room here. There’s a guest room.”
    Logically, Jessica knew she could not stay. But it felt so good to be here. It felt oddly like home to her, even if it didn’t to Kade. Maybe it was because she was aware that, for the very first time since she had been attacked in her business, she felt safe.
    And so tired. And relaxed.
    Maybe for her, home was where Kade was, which was all the more reason to go, really.
    “Okay,” she heard herself saying, without nearly enough fight. “Maybe just for one night.”
    The logical part of her tried to kick in. “I should have packed a bag. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it.”
    “I told you,” Kade said with an indulgent smile, “you don’t think well when you’re hungry. I thought of it, but then I wondered if your stuff was going to smell like that burning sander. Don’t worry. Like I said, the place is set up for visiting execs. The bathrooms are all stocked up with toothbrushes and toothpaste and shampoo and stuff. And you don’t need pajamas.”
    She could feel her eyebrows shoot up into her hairline.
    He laughed. “The guest bedroom has its own en suite, not that I was suggesting you sleep naked. You can borrow one of my shirts.”
    Good grief, he was her husband. Why would she blush like a schoolgirl when the word
naked
fell, with such aggravating ease, from his gorgeous lips?

CHAPTER TWELVE
    “A ND WHAT SHOULD I do for clothes tomorrow?” Jessica asked. Her voice felt stiff with tension.
    But Kade did not seem tense at all. He just shrugged, and then said, his tone teasing, “We will figure something out. It’s