Read Online Nameless by Claire Kent - Free Book Online Page A

actually think I might try to take
your baby away from you? And what? Try to raise it myself?”
    All of her rising
momentum dropped all at once. “Well,” she muttered, “it sounds dumb when you
say it like that, but how am I supposed to know what you might do?”
    “You know me
well enough. You think I’d do something like that?”
    Erin felt an
uncomfortable tightness in her heart but spoke the truth without wavering. “I
knew you years ago, and you didn’t show yourself to be a very good guy. Am I
supposed to just naively believe that you’re perfectly safe and trustworthy now?
At the risk of myself and...and my child? I’ve dealt with controlling men
before. I told you about my ex. It wasn’t just something he did in bed.”
     “Yeah. But I’m
not him. I’m involved in this to the extent that I want to be involved. That’s
the truth. I’m not going to take the baby away from you in any way.” He
paused, and his eyes were infinitely speaking. “You have my word, however much it
means to you.”
    She believed
him.
    “Okay,” she said,
wishing she’d figured this out before she’d made the big scene. “I don’t like
your snooping, but I guess I can understand why you were suspicious. Neither
one of us is well equipped for this. All I’m doing is trying to have this baby
in the simplest, securest way possible. I don’t want anything from you that you
don’t want to give. You have my word.”
    She didn’t know
if he believed her, the way she’d believed him, but he nodded just as she had.
    They stared at
each other for a minute, still standing in the entryway of his apartment.
    Feeling
uncomfortable, she did what she always did, blurted out something random to
break the tension. “This apartment is something else.”
    It was. There
were only two apartments on this floor, so his place must be three times bigger
than hers was. All she could see, however, was an airy, spacious great room,
and she was quite sure Seth had used an interior designer, since she couldn’t
imagine him picking out the high-end art or Asian rugs.
    “Thanks,” he
said. “I think.”
    “No, it really
is impressive.”
    “My grandfather
told me once that, to prove I’d really made it, I should hire the most
expensive decorator I could afford to do my house, and that I should instruct
them to make it as impressive as possible.” He gave her his wry half-smile.
“That’s the kind of paternal advice he would give me.”
    “How old you
were you when he told you that?” she breathed, astonished at the cold
superficiality of it.
    “Thirteen.”
Seth must have seen something in her expression because he added, “He wasn’t a
bad guy. He was always perfectly nice to me.”
    Even that told
her something. A boy who’d been genuinely loved would never say he’d been
treated “perfectly nice” by his family.
    She felt a wave
of sympathy, which made her very uncomfortable. “So are we okay? About
everything?”
    “We are on my
end.”
    “Me too. But
don’t go spying on me anymore. If you want to know something, then come out and
ask me. I don’t react well to people working behind my back—any more than you
do.”
    “Understood.”
    They were
silent for another minute. Then Erin noticed Seth’s eyes falling lower than her
face. Confused, she looked at him closely, following the line of his gaze to
her belly. “What?” she demanded. “I’m not that big yet.”
    "Of course
not. But I haven’t seen you since the meeting with the lawyers, so I thought
I’d evaluate the progress.”
    Self-consciously,
Erin put a hand on her slightly protruding belly to hide the strip of bare skin
between her shirt and pants. “Well, there’s not much to see yet.”
    Seth, however,
had found something else to see. His eyes had now lifted to the level of her
chest.
    He visibly
repressed a smile. “Speaking of impressive...”
    She peered down
at her own breasts. Saw the full curves and tight nipples clearly through the
stretched