Baby on the Way Read Free Page A

that had married his brother.
    The deep groove beside his mouth kept his features frozen in a mask as his fingers clenched the leather wheel. Caitlin frowned at the obvious signs of stress. She pressed her hand on his muscled forearm.
    “Jordan, what’s wrong?”
    “Which hospital?” he growled.
    “I’m not going to the hospital,” she told him in confusion. “I’m going to Wintergreen.”
    “Wintergreen?”
    “It’s the old Cardmore house. I bought it. I’m fixing it up. It’s going to be a new start for the baby and me.” A place where she could forget the memories and move on.
    “You’re going to have the baby at home?” He squeaked the words out, risking a wide-eyed glance of horror over his shoulder.
    Caitlin sighed. “Pull over, Jordan.”
    When he kept going Caitlin cleared her throat. “Jordan. Pull over. Now!”
    “What?” His strong tanned fingers still gripped the steering wheel.
    “Jordan, I am not going to the hospital. I am not,repeat not, in labor.” She kept her lips from twitching only by using the utmost restraint.
    “But…but…I…” His voice died away in embarrassment.
    Caitlin took compassion on his obvious distress and explained. “That was a sort of fake contraction,” she murmured, conscious of his gaze on her stomach. “It happens more and more lately.”
    His dark eyebrows rose in disbelief.
    “Scout’s honor,” she promised. “Doctors call them Braxton-Hicks contractions.” She grinned at his skeptical face.
    “Trust me,” she told him in an echo of his own tone. “I do know what I’m talking about. They’ve gone now.”
    Jordan looked less than convinced, but when she nodded again, he seemed slightly relieved.
    “It doesn’t mean I’m going to give birth in your car.” Caitlin smiled, struggling to maintain the look of solemn assurance. “Promise.”
    When his eyebrows quirked and his eyes opened wide, she couldn’t hold on any longer. Her giggles finally erupted at the look of patent relief on his face.
    He breathed at last, eyes closed, head bowed. Color began to return to his chiseled profile. “Sorry,” he said as, one by one, his fingers released their death grip on the wheel. “Robyn pulled a ‘not my time’ one on me last summer.”
    His high cheekbones tinged a bright pink. “She had her baby in the back seat of my car at the hospital doors. Talk about procrastination!”
    Robyn, Jordan’s older sister, was famous for postponing things until the last possible moment. Apparently she’d done it once too often.
    Caitlin laughed out loud at the chagrin that contorted his handsome features into a mask of dismay. It felt good to laugh again.
    “It’s not funny,” he told her, his face mournful. “I loved that car, but I had to sell it. I could never drive it afterward without hearing her calling me names and carrying on. I felt totally helpless.” He huffed, obviously affronted at the indignity he’d suffered.
    “She even had the nerve to say it was my fault for not getting to her house earlier! How did I know she’d decide to get things moving just before I showed up? I only went over in the first place to visit Glen. You remember her husband?” He rolled his eyes. “I don’t know how he stands her.”
    It wasn’t easy to ignore his wounded look, but she just managed to stifle the laugh that threatened to spill out. This was something to remember, Jordan Andrews completely out of his depth.
    “I promise not to do that,” Caitlin told him solemnly. “Can I go home now?”
    Jordan drove her home all right, at a sedate twenty miles an hour through the streets of a town in the throes of rush hour. He wasn’t doing anything that would start labor he told her frankly, correctly interpreting her impatient glance at the speedometer.
    “It sure is cold here,” he muttered finally, cranking up the heater. “I can’t seem to get warm lately.”
    “Yes, well, life in the tropics will do that to you. Wasn’t Tahiti where you were