It took her a second to realize that the sigh she heard
echoing in the small, converted bedroom that served as her
office was her own.
Lost in thoughts of the past and preoccupied, Dr. Eve
Walters had thought that the deep sigh had come from Tessa,
the German shepherd she'd rescued from a sadistic owner a
little more than two years ago. On occasion Tessa, currently
curled up under her desk, was given to sighing just like a
human being. Considering the life she'd led both B.R.βbefore
rescueβand A.R.βafter rescueβthe sighs were more than
merited. Before, Eve was certain, the dog's sighs had been
of the fearful, hopeless variety while now, with Tessa's
weight a third more than what it had been when she'd first
been rescued, the German shepherd's sighs sounded as if she
was exceedingly content with her new life and just couldn't
believe her good fortune.
Lately, Eve had become aware of sighing a great deal
herself, as if she couldn't catch her breath. And couldn't
believe the twists and turns that had brought her to this point.
She supposed she could just shrug her shoulders and
attribute her deeps sighs to the fact that she wasn't
accustomed to carrying around this much weight, but if she
were being honest, the cause for her sighs went a great deal
deeper. Never in her wildest dreams did Eve think she would
find herself in this position: approaching thirty in a few
months, single, alone and very, very pregnant.
Tears suddenly gathered in her eyes and she held them back
by sheer will. God, but she was emotional lately. Well, she
was not going to cry. She wasn't.
Another sigh escaped.
How in heaven's name had she come to this state?
Okay, she was gregarious and fun-loving, but never, ever
would anyone have called her reckless. She was always known
as the stable one, the one everyone else turned to in times
of crisis.
When her mother, Evelyn, had died suddenly on Eve's second
day of middle school, Eve was the one who was there for her
veterinarian father, Warren, and her older sister,
Angelaβnot the other way around. This while she secretly
yearned for someone to comfort
her. But she
couldn't indulge herself, couldn't sink into self-pity no
matter how much she wanted to. Others depended on her. And
she always came through.
Beneath her genial, warm smile she was the living embodiment
of the old adage, "Look before you leap." Not only did she
look, she would take out a surveyor's level and plot every
single step from there to here each and every time. It
wasn't that she didn't like surprises; she just didn't like
being caught unaware. And it certainly wasn't like her to
give in to impulse and allow herself to be so completely
swept away, especially by a man she'd hardly known.
A man she didn't know at all, Eve thought bitterly.
Eve blew out a breath and dragged a hand through the flowing
mane of wayward dark blond hair. She stared at the computer
screen on her laptop, silently seeking answers she knew
weren't about to materialize. Barring that, she needed a
distraction.
My kingdom for a distraction, she thought whimsically.
After shutting down the animal hospital for the night, the
animal hospital that had once borne only her father's
nameplate across the front door and where she had grown up,
surrounded by animals in need of care and a kind, gentle
father, Eve had gone home and retreated to her inner office.
She'd turned on her computer to do a little research into
the condition of the near-blinded dachshund that had been
brought in today, searching for a possible way to reverse,
or at least halt the condition. Searching, she supposed, for
a miracle.
How she'd gotten to a chat room for expectant single moms
was almost as mysterious to her as how she'd gotten in this
condition in the first place.
Actually more so, she mused.
Of course she knew all about the mechanics of becoming
pregnant, but it was how and why she'd gotten to that point
that utterly mystified her. In hindsight, it just didn't
seem possible.
She knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life, had
known ever since she could remember. At least she'd known
professionally. She was exactly what she wanted to be: a
veterinarian, caring for a host of dogs and cats just the
way her father had.
What she wanted for her private life was another matter. Oh,
she knew that she wanted to go the traditional route. Wanted
a husband and a family. Eventually.
She would have sworn that she hadn't wanted to reverse that
order, but apparently she had no choice in the matter now.
Unless, as her sister in Sacramento had urged, she give up
the baby.
There was no way Eve wanted to do that. Not because she
viewed the little passenger she was carrying around as a
love child, the living testimony of the passion that had
existed between her and Adam. No, that didn't enter into it
at all. The baby, whose due date Eve's ob-gyn had calculated
was still a long two weeks away, was an extension of her, a
little person whom for reasons that were beyond her, God had
seen fit to entrust to her.
She was even looking forward to holding the baby in her
arms. But she wasn't looking forward to dealing with being
alone at a time when the baby's father's emotional support
would have meant so much.
The latter was her own fault, she supposed.
No one had told her to pick up in the middle of the night
and flee from Santa Barbara, secretly running back home to
Laguna Beach.
"But how couldn't I?" she said aloud.
Tessa, dead to the world only a heartbeat ago, raised her
head and looked at Eve with deep brown eyes. The next
second, seeing that there was no emergency, Tessa went back
to sleep.
Leaning over, Eve ran her hand over the dog's head,
struggled to bank down her agitation. Petting her dog
usually helped calm her.
But not tonight.
Tonight, the agitation refused to leave, refused to budge.
Maybe it was because tonight was Halloween, she thought.
Maybe that was why she couldn't seem to shake the feeling
that someone was watching her.
She sighed again.
Adam Smythe had been almost stereotypically handsome, not to
mention the last word in "sexy." Added to that he was
charming and he had taken her breath away from the very
first moment she'd walked into his rare, first-editions
bookstore. The moment he had looked her way, she'd felt as
if an arrow had been shot straight into her heart.
At the time she'd been looking for a special birthday
present for her father. Warren Walters loved everything that
had ever come from Mark Twain's pen. What she'd wound up
getting, along with a fairly well-preserved first edition of
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, was a
prepackaged heartache.
Oh, Adam hadn't looked like a heartache at first or even at
tenth glance. He looked like a drop-dead gorgeous specimen
of manhood who, given that this was California, she wouldn't
have been surprised if the tall, dark-haired, green-eyed man
had said he was just running the bookstore until that big
acting break came that would propel him into being the
country's next great heartthrob.
To add to this image, Adam was soft-spoken, slightly
reserved, and he exuded such a powerful aura of authority
that he'd instantly made her feel safe.
Eve laughed now, shaking her head at her incredible naivetΓ©.
Talk about getting the wrong signal.
There had been nothing safe about Adam. He made her lose
control in a heartbeat. Some of the boys in high school, and
then college, she recalled, had referred to her as the Ice
Princess.
"I certainly melted fast enough with him," she told her
faithful, sleeping companion. Tessa didn't even stir this time.
One dinner.
One dinner had been all it had taken and she was ready to
completely surrender her self-imposed code of ethics and
abandon the way she'd behaved for her entire adult life
without so much as a backward glance. When Adam had leaned
over to brush back a loose strand of hair from her cheek,
she turned into a furnace. Raging heat flashed through her
limbs. Through her entire body.
And then he'd kissed her.
God, when Adam kissed her, she'd felt as if she were
literally having an out-of-body experience.
And suddenly, without warning, Adam had drawn away and she
came crashing down to earth like a speeding meteorite. A
very confused meteorite.
She was accustomed to men being the aggressors, to having to
somehow diplomatically hold them at bay without hurting
their feelings or their egos. But this had been the other
way around. Adam had been the one who had pulled back. And
she had been the one who ultimately pushed.
Very simply, there'd been something about Adam that had
turned her inside out. Their night together was the stuff of
fantasies.
And then, just like that, all her thoughts centered around
him. She couldn't wait until the next time they were
together, couldn't wait to hear the sound of his voice, to
catch a whiff of the scent that was the combination of his
shaving cream mixing with his aftershave.
Adam had become her sun and anytime she wasn't around him,
she felt as if she'd been plunged into soul-consuming darkness.
What a crock.
How could she, a heretofore intelligent woman, have been so
blind, so dumb?
Smitten teenage girlsβvery young smitten teenage girlsβfelt
this way, not a woman who practiced veterinarian medicine,
who was a responsible, levelheaded and dedicated person.
Except that she had.
Into every paradise, a snake must slither and her paradise
was no different. It occurred shortly after the first
timeβthe only timeβthat they made love.
Made love.
The phrase lingered now in her brain like a haunting refrain.
Even today, knowing what she knew, it was still hard not to
feel the excitement pulsing through her body at the mere
memory of those precious, exquisite moments she'd spent lost
in Adam's arms, in his embrace. Even though it seemed
impossible, he was simultaneously the most gentle, caring,
yet passionate lover ever created. And he had been hers.
Looking back, she could honestly say, if only to herself,
that they hadn't made love. They had made poetry.
Remembering the moment, Eve felt her body aching for him.
"Stop it," she upbraided herself.
Tessa raised her head, this time quickly, as if she was
ready to dart away, afraid that she'd caused her mistress
some displeasure. Displeasure that brought punishment with it.
Eve instantly felt guilty. "No, not you, girl," she said in
a soothing voice, running her hand over the dog's head and
stroking it. "I'm just talking to myself." She looked at the
dog and smiled sadly. "Too bad you can't talk, then maybe my
thoughts wouldn't keep getting carried away like this."
Calmed, Tessa lowered her head again, resting it on her
paws. She was asleep in less than a minute, this time
snoring gently.
Eve smiled at her, shaking her head. "I love you the way you
are, but I wish you were human."
She craved companionship, someone to communicate with. But
her father was gone. He had died less than a month after
she'd come back home. Heartbroken, she'd handled all the
funeral arrangements. Angela and her family had come down on
the day of the funeral and had left by its end. Angela had
left a trail of excuses in her wake. Eve didn't blame her.
Angela and her family had a life to get back to.
It was several days after her father's funeral, as she
wandered around the empty house, looking for a place for
herself, that she finally had to admit what she had been
trying desperately to ignore. She was pregnant.
At least her father had been spared that, Eve thought,
forever trying to look on the bright side of things.
Eve knew he would have been there for her, supporting
herβunlike her sisterβno matter what her decision regarding
the baby's future. But somewhere deep down inside, Eve was
fairly certain her father would have felt disappointed. He'd
always thought of her as perfect.
Again, she shook her head, her sad smile barely moving the
corners of her mouth. "'Fraid not, Dad. So far from perfect,
it would boggle your mind."
Just then, she felt a sharp pain. The baby was kicking.
Again. It had been restless all day.
Probably tired of its closed quarters, Eve thought. Maybe he
or she was claustrophobic, the way she was.
Without thinking, Eve lifted one hand from the keyboard and
placed it over the swell of her abdomen, massaging the area
that was the origin of the pain this time, even though it
did no good.
Was it her imagination, or was she growing bigger and bigger
by the hour?
"Won't be long now, baby," she murmured to her stomach.
She had a little more than two weeks to go. Part of her
couldn't wait to finally have this all over with, to give
birth and meet this little person who had turned her world
completely upside down. The other part of her was content to
let this state continue. She was terrified of the delivery.
Not of what she imagined would be the pain, she'd helped
birth enough animals to know exactly what to expect in that
respect. No, she was afraid of what lay ahead after the
birthing pains had subsided. When the real challenge kicked in.
"You know it's selfish of you to keep it," Angela had told
her for the umpteenth time when she'd called last week.
There was a knowing air of superiority in her sister's
voice. Angela was convinced she
always knew what
was best. "It needs a mother
and a father. Since
you decided to have it, you really should give it up for
adoption."
"'It' is a baby," Eve had shot back, one of the few times
she'd lost her temper. But she was thoroughly annoyed at the
flippant, cavalier way her sister was talking to her. Angela
was acting as if she had the inside track on how to live
life the right way just because she was married and had the
idyllic number of children: two, a boy and a girl. "And what
the baby needs is a mother who loves unconditionally."
"Obviously," had been Angela's snide retort. Eve knew that
her older sister referred not to her loving the baby, but to
the situation that had resulted in the creation of this
baby. "Look, why won't you tell the father that he has a
responsibilityβ"
Eve cut her short. "Because I won't, that's all. Subject
closed," she'd said firmly.
She wasn't about to tell Angela the reason she wouldn't
notify Adam of his paternity.
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