Nameless Series Boxed Set by Claire Kent Read Free Book Online

see.
    She couldn’t
help but wonder why he’d been so quick to ask for involvement. He’d never had a
real family himself. He’d never really had anyone—except Mac, whom he’d pushed
away. She knew there might be lonely, wounded parts to his soul that he never
revealed to anyone.
    But there was
no use in worrying too much about it. Seth was his own person, and he made his
own decisions. As long as they didn’t interfere unduly with Erin’s decisions,
she was happy for him to decide whatever he wanted.
    They could work
out some sort of system to make his involvement as simple and non-threatening
as possible.
    She put a hand
on her belly as she made her way out of his office and over to the elevator.
    Still couldn’t
believe she was having a baby.
    ***
    Two weeks later, Erin pushed
open her door and kind of fell into her apartment. She was dead on her feet and
wondered why no one had ever told her before how utterly exhausting it was to
be pregnant.
    She didn’t have
to even do anything to get tired—just being awake drained her completely.
    And today had
been a particularly long day.
    Her job was
pretty decent. She liked Judge Hargrove. Although he was a lot more
conservative than she was, he was also an incredibly kind man. At least her job
allowed her to be on the periphery of the career she’d always wanted.
Occasionally, she imagined herself getting a windfall and going back to law
school.
    But Erin was a
realist now—a cynic, as Seth labeled her—and she never expected any of her
dreams to come true.
    She dropped her
bag on the floor, shrugged off her jacket, and then collapsed on her couch.
    Even her
breasts were hurting today, and she sneered down at them, feeling crabby at the
entire world—including her breasts—and wishing she didn’t have to go back into
work tomorrow.
    Being pregnant
sucked.
    It was a wonder
that anyone did it.
    She tried to
relax and was about to doze off when a ringing phone startled her awake—making
her sit up with a jerk and causing her stomach to heave a little. She really
should have eaten something when she got home. Having an empty stomach always nauseated
her more.
    Breathing
deeply and laying back down on the couch, Erin reached over to pick up her
telephone. “Hello.”
    “Hi,” a
familiar male voice spoke on the other end of the line. “It’s me. Seth.”
    “Hi.” She’d
only seen Seth once since their encounter in his office—and that was in a
meeting with their lawyers as they were negotiating terms for a parental
arrangement. That meeting had gone much more smoothly than Erin had expected,
and her lawyer had told her that Seth must have gone into the negotiations
intending to be agreeable, since he hadn’t asked for anything that Erin wasn’t
willing to give.
    Other than
that, Erin had been so wrapped up in being pregnant and trying to envision her
life in the future that she hadn’t thought about Seth in any significant way
for more than a week.
    “Just checking
in,” he explained. “I hadn’t heard from you, and I’d mentioned that I’d like to
be kept up-to-date with the pregnancy.”
    “Oh,” she
mumbled, trying to decide if she had the energy to go into the kitchen and find
some crackers to eat. “Right. Well, it’s only been a couple of weeks. Nothing
new is happening.”
    “Everything is
going smoothly?” he asked, his voice cool and impersonal.
    Erin had no
idea what he was asking or why he wanted to know. Maybe he just wanted to know
if the baby was healthy so far. She hadn’t taken him for a worrier, but what
the hell did she know. “Everything’s fine. I feel like crap, of course, but
that’s normal. Everything’s progressing as it should. I saw the heartbeat last
week.”
    There was a
significant pause. “You saw the heartbeat?”
    “Yes.” She felt
just a flicker of sentiment at the memory of that moment in the doctor’s
office. She supposed, for some women, that would have been a deeply emotional
experience, but for