Smooth Talking Stranger (Travis Family #3)(33)

"Did he cry?" I asked thickly, rubbing my eyes.

"Only when he realized the Astros were having another first-round play-off flameout. But I told him there's no shame in crying over the Astros. It's how we Houston guys bond."

I tried to smile, but I was exhausted and not yet fully awake. And to my horror, as Jack approached the bed I had a terrible instinctive urge to lift my arms to him. But he was not Dane, and it was inappropriate, very nearly appalling, to think of him in the same context. It had taken four years of hard-won confidences and emotional risk for Dane and me to reach the intimacy we now shared. I couldn't imagine having that with any other man.

Before I could move, Jack came to stand beside the bed, looking down at me with soft dark eyes. I fell back a little, my stomach clenching with pleasure as I imagined for a split-second that he was about to lower over me, and his weight would be so hard and satisfying—

"Your car will be at the residents' garage in a couple of hours," he murmured. "I paid a guy at the hotel to drive it over here."

"Thank you, I . . . I'll pay you back. . . ."

"No need."

"I don't want to be even more in debt to you than I already am."

He shook his head, looking amused. "Sometimes, Ella, you can relax and let someone do something nice for you."

I blinked as I heard chamber music coming from the other room. "What are you listening to?"

"I picked up a DVD for Luke while I was out. Something with Mozart and sock puppets."

A grin rose to my lips. "At this stage I don't think Luke can see more than ten inches beyond his face."

"That explains his lack of interest. I thought maybe he preferred Beethoven."

He extended a hand to help me from the bed. I hesitated before taking it. I could certainly get off the bed on my own. But it seemed uncivil to ignore the gesture.

My hand felt exactly right in his, his long thumb crossing over mine, our palms converging gently. I pulled away from him as soon as I was upright. I tried to remember if my attraction to Dane had been this immediate and direct. No . . . it had developed gradually, a slow and patient unfolding. I had a solid dislike of fast-moving things.

"Your suitcase is in the other room," Jack told me. "If you're hungry, you can order something from the restaurant on the seventh floor. You need anything else, call Haven. I put her number beside the phone. I won't see you for a few days—I'll be out of town."

I wanted to ask where he was going, but instead I nodded. "Travel safely."

His eyes glinted with humor. "Thanks."

He left with friendly dispatch, his matter-of-fact departure a relief and yet oddly anticlimactic. I went into the main room and found my suitcase, and noticed that the hotel receipt, tucked into a crisp white envelope, had been left on top. Opening it, I saw the final tally, and I cringed. But as I scanned the itemized list of expenses, I noticed something was missing: the room-service dinner.

He must have paid for it, I thought. We had agreed that I would. Why had he changed his mind? Was it pity? Maybe he thought I couldn't afford it? Or maybe he'd never had any intentions of letting me pay for it. Mystified and vaguely annoyed, I set aside the hotel bill and went to gather Luke in my arms. I watched the sock-puppet show with the baby and tried not to think about Jack Travis. Most of all, I tried not to wonder when he would come back.

TEN

In the days that followed i called all my friends to tell them what had happened. It seemed I repeated the story of my sister's surprise baby at least a hundred times until I got good at telling the expurgated version. While most of them were supportive, some like Stacy were not at all pleased that I had chosen to stay in Houston. I felt guilty knowing that Dane was getting more than his share of calls and comments. It seemed that our friends' reactions were divided among gender lines. The women said that of course I'd had no choice but to take care of Luke, whereas the men were far more understanding of Dane's decision not to take responsibility for a baby he'd had nothing to do with.

Unfathomably, some of the discussions drifted into a referendum on whether or not I should have gotten Dane to marry me before now, as that would have made the situation very different.

"How exactly would it be different?" I asked Louise, a personal trainer whose husband, Ken, was a LakeTravis paramedic. "Even if Dane had married me, he still wouldn't want babies."

"Yes, but he would have had to help you with Luke," Louise replied. "I mean, a man can't exactly kick his wife out in these circumstances, could he?"

"He didn't kick me out," I said defensively. "And I could never force Dane into doing something he didn't want just because we were married. He would still have the right to make his own choices."

"That's ridiculous," Louise said. "The whole reason you get married is so you can take away their choices. And they're happier that way."

"They are?"

"Definitely."

"Does marriage take away our choices, too?"

"No, it gives us more choices, plus security. That's why women want to get married more than men."

I was perplexed by Louise's views on marriage. And I reflected that marriage could devolve into a very cynical arrangement if love was taken from the equation. Like a brick wall with the mortar crumbling out, it would eventually collapse.