one hand as she examined the framed photos on a shelf beside the mantel. Family photos, coincidentally. Family was important to him. It always had been. And he did want a family eventually. He just wanted one—in the distant future—with a woman he loved more than anything else in the world.
“It’s too small for kids,” he said, hoping to deter the direction of her homemaker thoughts. “Especially the upstairs.”
“I think all kids should be raised in small houses,” she said. “You’d have no choice but to spend time together.”
“So your family is close?” he asked, wondering how she ended up with nothing and no one to look after her if she had a close family back in Idaho.
“Not really,” she said, staring at him with a wide-eyed hopeful expression on her face. “But I want that for our baby, don’t you?”
Owen started up the stairs, purposely avoiding her question. After a moment, he heard her footsteps on the meticulously refinished stairs behind him. He tossed his bag into the master bedroom, which was exactly twelve square feet larger than the guest room and scarcely fit his queen-size bed. He didn’t need a big master bedroom. All he did was sleep in there, and he never brought a woman home with him.
Until tonight.
“The guest room,” he announced as he crossed the small hallway and switched on the light. “Make yourself at home.”
Sometimes his brother had stayed with Owen before he’d been deployed to Afghanistan. Chad had helped Owen with some of the construction for a few months before he’d left, and they’d often worked into the wee hours of the morning, so Owen had intentionally decorated the guest room in masculine shades of taupe, red, and navy blue because he’d honestly thought the only person who would ever use the room would be Chad or maybe Kelly if he was over and got too drunk to drive—something that had never happened.
“It’s lovely,” Lindsey said, stepping into the room. She glanced around before turning and hugging him fiercely. “I will pay you back somehow,” she said. “Thank you for not making me feel like an unwanted whore.”
He lifted his free arm to hug her in return, his stomach clenching because he might not have made her feel that way, but he had probably thought of her that way at least once, and that had been wrong of him.
“You’re not unwanted or a whore,” he said. “You’re a friend, and friends help each other when they can.”
She snuggled into him, and he became aware of her soft curves and the foreign—but pretty cool—feel of her large, firm belly against him. His body responded with instant, unwanted arousal, and he silently cursed Caitlyn for putting him in such a state. Lindsey was bound to get the wrong idea if he extended a major boner along with his hand in friendship.
“You’re so wonderful,” she murmured. “And you smell so good.”
She smelled of vanilla and desperation.
Warning! Warning! his brain blared again. Owen backed away and handed her the striped tote bag that currently held all her possessions. Her car and the rest of her stuff had been abandoned along some highway in Oklahoma. He’d help her reclaim it in the morning. And maybe send her out shopping for some clothes.
“The bathroom is there.” He nodded at the door at the end of the hall. “I’m going to crash now. I’m exhausted.” And he needed to put as much space between his aching balls and the woman who would probably give him the relief he needed if he so much as hinted that he wanted her. Normally he wasn’t the kind of guy who turned down interested pussy, but he didn’t want to mess things up with Caitlyn, and he didn’t want Lindsey to think there could ever be anything more than friendship between them. And potentially parenting.
Shit.
“Good night,” she said, watching him from her doorway as he entered his bedroom and closed the door.
Owen usually slept nude, but seeing as he had a guest, he climbed into bed in his underwear and a T-shirt. Even though he was utterly zonked, he found it impossible to sleep. He kept thinking of all the sexual requests Caitlyn had made over the past few days and wondering how he would ever find the stamina to fulfill all her fantasies. The woman had dozens of them, and she wasn’t shy about sharing her desires with him. He loved that about her. His dick loved that about her. His sleep-deprived brain even loved her openness. But if he didn’t get some sleep soon, he’d be totally useless the next day.
His cellphone, which was charging on the nightstand, dinged with the arrival of a text message. He wasn’t getting any sleep anyway, so he reached for the phone. Caitlyn. Just seeing her name on the display had him rolling onto his belly to squash his hard-on into the mattress.
God, I want you, she’d messaged.
Not half as much as I want you, he responded.
Twice as much, she answered. And then, If I give you permission to masturbate, will you do the same for me?
It was a tempting proposition. If he jerked one out, he could probably sleep, but she’d been torturing him for days. He was glad she was as fucking horny as he was. She deserved the mutual misery.
No. You are not allowed to come until my dick is inside you.
He sent the message and was waiting for a reply when a thud outside his door made his heart race. He wasn’t used to hearing strange noises in his house. Rushed footsteps hurried down the hall and the bathroom door closed. Just Lindsey, he decided.
Caitlyn’s message arrived an instant later. I’d respond with something sexy, but it will just make me hornier.
He laughed softly and sent a reply.
Good night, Caitlyn.
Good night.
Fuck you tomorrow.
She sent him a rude emoticon—a one-finger salute—which drew another soft chuckle from him, and he dropped his phone on the nightstand before rolling onto his back and making a rather impressive tent in the covers.
He tried flattening it with his hand, but that led to touching it, which made him groan softly. The toilet flushed down the hall, water splashed in the sink, the bathroom door creaked slightly, and footsteps came back up the hall. They paused outside his door. He held his breath to be as quiet as possible. What would he do if Lindsey opened the door and found him with his hand trying to push his hard-as-stone dick into his thigh? What would she do? Would she be embarrassed? Try to touch him? Draw him into her sweet mouth and suck him, her hand sliding between his thighs to gently caress his balls?
No, he couldn’t let himself think like that. He didn’t want Lindsey, he wanted Caitlyn. But Caitlyn was so far away and Lindsey was standing right outside his door.
Finally she moved away, crossed the hall, and closed her bedroom door. Owen released a sigh of relief and rolled onto his belly, once again squashing his dick into the mattress. Rocking his hips slightly helped alleviate a bit of his suffering. Thinking about things other than women and all their delightful parts helped even more. Eventually he got his erection under control and drifted to sleep.
He was pulled awake before the sun was up by a strange and haunting noise. His eyes popped open, and he shifted them side to side, as if that could help him see in the dark. Nothing but silence met his ears, so he decided he’d been hearing things and rolled onto his side. He was almost asleep again when he heard the same sound. It was too human to be a wounded animal, but that was what it reminded him of. He listened to Lindsey groan as if she were in excruciating pain. Maybe she’d fallen, or maybe she’d gone into labor.
He untangled his legs from the covers and hopped out of bed, left his room and crossed the hall. He paused outside her door, listening.
“No,” she shouted clearly enough for him to hear her through the closed door. “No, no. Please stop.” She cried out in pain again.
Owen banged on her door. “Lindsey? Are you okay?”
He didn’t hear any further sounds, so he pressed his ear to the door near the hinge, listening. He could hear her breathing—rapid and broken—but she wasn’t moaning anymore. Wasn’t shouting.
“Lindsey?”
“I’m okay,” she
called out. “Just a bad dream.”
“Are you sure?”
He heard a thud on the other side of the door and reached for the knob. It turned in his hand, and the door swung inward.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” she said.
It was too dark to see more than her outline. He wasn’t sure what possessed him to lift a hand and touch her face. She was drenched in sweat, her hair sticking to her damp cheeks. Or maybe she’d been crying and the wetness on her face was tears.
“You sounded really scared,” he said.
“Just a dream,” she whispered.
“What about? Maybe it will help to talk about it.”
“I—I don’t remember. I never remember the dream. Just the feeling it gives me.”
A terrible feeling, if the sounds she’d been making or the trembling in her body were any indication.
“You have it a lot?”
She nodded, and her head tipped forward, sending tendrils of hair slipping across her pale face. “I’m sure it’s just the hormones. They make me a little crazy.”
He stepped away. “Well, if you’re okay, I’m going back to bed. I thought you had gone into labor or something.”
When he turned, she grabbed the back of his T-shirt. “Just a minute,” she said before pressing her face into the center of his back. “Stay just a minute. Until . . . until I feel safe again.”
“Lindsey . . .” He tried to turn back around to comfort her properly.
“No. Don’t look at me. Just . . . stay.”
He stood there feeling foolish and uncertain of why she was clinging to the back of his shirt like a baby monkey. After a moment she pressed closer, straightening so that her face was between his shoulders and her breasts and belly were against his back. The hand that had been clutching his shirt now slid around his body, flattening against his belly
“Almost,” she whispered.
Almost what? What was she doing back there? He noticed that her breathing was slowly returning to normal and the tremors of her body had gone still. She took one last deep breath and stepped away.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “Sometimes . . .”
She took several steps backward until she’d crossed the threshold back into her room.
“Sometimes what?” he pressed, still not sure what she’d been doing as she held on to him. It hadn’t felt like an attempt to seduce him. As horny as he was, it hadn’t even excited him. It had tugged at other parts of him, though. Parts of him that usually made him do things like climb into a culvert to pull out a crying kitten or empty his wallet into the Salvation Army bucket.
“Sometimes a woman just needs something solid to hold on to.”
She closed the door and left him standing in the hall puzzling over her words. He still hadn’t figured them out when he crawled back into bed to lose a little more sleep.
~~~
The next morning Owen was woken by the smell of bacon. His stomach growled loud enough to make him laugh. He rolled out of bed and placed his hands on his hips, glaring down at his cock, as if that would make it behave. Hoping that a piss would cure him of his annoying problem, he cracked open his door and peered into the hallway for signs of Lindsey. He could hear her humming in the kitchen, her muted song accompanied by the sizzle of frying bacon and the occasional scrape or clang of a utensil against a pan.
He hurried down the hall, and it seemed to take a century for his stream to start. He was pretty sure he’d be permanently disfigured if he didn’t see Caitlyn soon. He planned to get on the road to Houston as soon as he could drive. Of course, there was the problem of finding a place to put Lindsey before he left. He returned to his room to slip on a pair of jeans, convinced they’d conceal his overly excitable dick, and padded down the stairs in his bare feet. As he’d expected, Lindsey was cooking breakfast. What he hadn’t expected was for her to look so tousled and beautiful while doing so.
It was his little head having such thoughts, he told himself as he leaned over the center kitchen island to watch. He refused to stare at the curve of her ass under her nightgown. Much.
“Good morning,” he said quietly, and she jumped as if he’d shouted through a megaphone. “Something smells good.”
“You said I could help myself,” she said, stirring a huge skillet of scrambled eggs with a spatula.
“And I meant it on one condition.”
Her eyes were wide as she turned to gape at him.
“That you’ll share some with me.”
“Oh!” She flushed prettily and turned back to the stove. “Of course. I was going to make toast, but—”
“Mold?”
She nodded. “The milk is still good, though. Do you drink coffee?”
“After not sleeping well?” he muttered, going to the coffee maker to start a pot and finding the coffee ready. He reached for his favorite mug. “I’ll drink the whole pot.”
“I’m sorry about waking you in the middle of the night,” she said as she turned off the burner. “I don’t know why, but ever since I got pregnant I’ve been having nightmares.”
“Maybe it’s the stress.”
“Probably,” she said. “That or my crazy hormonal swings. You can have all the coffee. I’m supposed to be watching my caffeine intake.”
“I have some decaf around here somewhere,” he said, opening a cabinet and shifting its contents around as he looked for the likely stale container of decaf—because, really, what was the point?
“I’ll have orange juice,” she said. “Unless it’s fermented.”
Her giggle made him laugh. Was it odd that he felt so at ease with her in his home? When she’d been around him on the tour bus or backstage, he’d been so tense he thought he’d snap. But here? Here he was at home. She was at home.
Shit.
He opened the fridge and pulled out the orange juice, sniffing it with trepidation but finding it consumable. He also discovered an English muffin and after determining that it was safe to eat, popped it into the toaster.
They filled their plates in the kitchen and carried their breakfast to the small table in the dining room. She smiled at him dreamily as she sat in the seat across from him. He concentrated on his food and not on the way the sunlight streaming through the window caught the golden highlights in her hair.
“Is there an employment agency nearby?” she asked.
He stopped eating with his fork halfway to his mouth. “I’m not sure it will be open on Saturday,” he said.
“Oh. I can try calling and see.”
Even if she found a job today, she wouldn’t have an income for weeks. What was he going to do with her? Leave her here in his house making herself at home while he went to Houston to be with Caitlyn so he could fuck himself into oblivion? Maybe he could take Lindsey to a women’s shelter or maybe—
“The garage apartment,” he said aloud. His parents rented the apartment above the garage to college students, but he knew it was unoccupied until the fall. That would give them the time they needed to find Lindsey permanent accommodations.
Lindsey squinted at him. “What?”
“My mom will help you out while I’m on tour. She loves charity cases.”
Before he could tell her about the apartment, Lindsey’s blue eyes turned stormy. “You think I’m a charity case?”
“No,” he said quickly. “You just need a little help to get back on your feet.”
“I can’t ask your mom for help,” she said. “She’ll think I’m a total slut.”
“Why would she think that?”
She pointed both hands toward her pregnant belly. “Hello?”
“She doesn’t need to know the story behind how you got in that condition.” He poked another bite of eggs into his mouth.
“Do you plan on telling her it’s yours?” Lindsey asked.
“No.”
“Don’t you think she’ll wonder why you’re helping me then?”
“Not really,” he said with a shrug. He’d brought h
ome all sorts of strays in his youth—wild animals, abandoned pets, Kellen Jamison. Lindsey seemed like a natural progression to him. His mom loved dealing with such things. She said his tendency to bring home strays proved that her son had a big heart and was a good person.
Or that he was a total sucker.
“What if she hates me?” Lindsey asked, shifting her eggs from one side of her plate to the other.
“She doesn’t hate anyone. Trust me, okay?”
A crease formed between her pale eyebrows. “I kind of have to. I don’t have many other options.”
After they’d finished their breakfast and cleaned up, Owen checked his messages while Lindsey collected her things from