Suddenly Expecting by Paula Roe Read Free Book Online Page A

want to. She wanted to taste his mouth, have his body slide over hers. Wanted to feel his hot breath on her skin and have him fill her in the most primitive way possible.
    He made her forget things, just for a while.
    She twisted off the bottle cap and took a slow swig, her thoughts churning. She shouldn’t be distracted, not now. She had other things to consider, important, life-changing events.
    Swallowing the water, she stared at the small ventilation window that would herald a new morning, full of light and promise. A brand-new morning revealing the wild chaos of a passing cyclone. As the radio had revealed these past few hours, so many people had lost everything, and not only their homes. Personal effects, memories, things that meant so much to them, had been swept away by Mother Nature in the space of a few hours. It really was a miracle no one had died.
    Relief surged, shaking her for one second before she swiftly got a handle on it. She was alive. So was Marco. They’d eventually return to the mainland, check over any damage to their homes, and she’d get the results of her test then make an informed decision based on those results.
    Belatedly, she realized Grace would want her on the cyclone coverage, would need her expert digging to find that unique special-interest story that would spearhead the show’s donation line. They’d done it for the Queensland floods, for the bushfires, even New Zealand’s recent earthquake. Yet as she stood there with the cyclone’s aftereffects thinning outside, punctuated by the constant radio chatter, all she could think about was...
    Her test results.
    Marco. A baby.
    Their baby.
    And her thoughts scrambled once more, rendering speech useless.
    * * *
    Marco kept his gaze firmly on her as she pointedly ignored his scrutiny. Her warm brown hair was sexily tousled, her neck flushed with faint stubble burn and the buttons on her shirt were crooked where she’d hastily tried to gather her composure.
    “I guess,” he finally said in answer to her previous question, “that we’re giving in to some latent sexual tension, which is only heightened by the storm outside.”
    Startled, she flicked him a glance as she took another drink. “Sure.”
    He waited for more but she remained silent, all her attention firmly on her water bottle.
    So of course, his eyes wandered, lingering on those long legs, the dip of her waist. The almost nonexistent curve of her stomach.
    And suddenly an overwhelming bolt of emotion shot through him, a mixture of desire and fierce protection for both her and that unbelievable spark of life growing in her belly. No one except a handful of people knew the real Kat—the loving, fun woman who’d do anything for a friend, who’d wrestled with her parents’ overprotective influence her entire life. Who’d been dragged through her own personal hell thanks to her mother’s illness, front-page headlines and a bunch of loser men who frankly didn’t deserve her.
    She was intelligent, passionate...and stubborn. Way too stubborn. Once she made her mind up about something, there was no way she’d change it back.
    Like that damn stupid decision not to get tested. It twisted like a splinter in his gut every time he allowed himself to think about it, every time he tried to convince her to just go and find out. And now she’d finally done it.
    Even though she was avoiding his eyes, he knew she knew he was staring. The tension in her shoulders, the way her mouth tightened, all gave her away. And stubbornly he kept on staring.
    After half a minute’s standoff, he gave up and turned up the radio. Eventually she came over and sat in the chair opposite and they listened in silence, the weather updates and on-location reporters slowly charging the air with a sense of growing concern.
    Finally she said, “Is it...? Do you...feel weird?”
    He glanced up, but her eyes remained firmly on the radio. “What? The cyclone?”
    “No, us.”
    He felt many things, but weird