Somebody's Baby Read Free Page B

see that now.”
    About time. He’d spent at least one night in tangled passion with her sister, after all. Obviously, that was enough to help him see how very different they were, how very un-Ophelia-like and unappealing to a man like him Josie was.
    “Yes, you’ve made a mistake, all right,” she said. “A big one. I am not—”
    “I got it. Not the same woman. You think I don’t see that?” He slid his gaze over her, quick and businesslike, as if he were sizing up the marbling on a slab of pot roast before he tossed it in his shopping cart.
    Marbling. As in fat. She shook her head at where her mind had immediately gone. Of the many ways she had been made to feel inferior to her sister, being a full size larger than Ophelia, was one Josie couldn’t shake. And all local jokes about never trusting a skinny cook didn’t really ease her discomfort over it, either. Now she couldn’t help feeling self-conscious under this man’s scrutiny. She found herself folding her arms over a stubborn pout of a tummy no amount of killer crunches had ever diminished.
    He put his hand lightly on her back.
    Josie gasped. She raised her hand to push him away and found muscles tight as steel beneath her fingertips.
    His touch, warm and gentle, almost a reverent caress, belied the strength within the man. She lifted her gaze to his.
    “How could I have not seen it? It was clear the moment I laid eyes on you,” he murmured. “You aren’t the same woman.”
    “No, I’m not.” It sounded almost like an apology, she realized too late. This time she did push his arm away from her.
    He let it fall easily to his own side as if she had had no effect on him whatsoever. “And you sure don’t look as good as the last time I saw you.”
    Accustomed as she was to unfavorable comparisons to her sister in the attractiveness department, this man’s assessment stung like a backhanded slap to her self-esteem.
    She hung her head. “I’m not surprised you’d think—”
    He dipped his head and his eyes searched her face. “You look better.”
    “Better?” she squeaked, cleared her throat, then matched his smoky whisper in depth and volume. “Better?”
    “Mmm-hmm.” He nodded. “Motherhood becomes you.”
    She smiled. Maybe this guy wasn’t a total jerk after all. He knew who she was and had picked up on the one thing in which she had outshone her vivacious twin. Motherhood did become Josie.
    She managed a modest smile. “Thank you for noticing. I know we have a lot to deal with, but it’s good to know you can see how important being a mom is to me.”
    “Oh, yeah, I can just guess how ‘important’ motherhood is to a girl like you—” a sudden change came over his features; a hardness rang in his tone as he wrung out the rest “—Ophelia.”
    Yeeoow. Now she knew how those football coaches felt when the player dumped a tub of ice on them to celebrate a victory! She peeked to make sure that the baby was still sleeping, then turned with a flourish to face this cowboy-biker-Burdett creep. “How can you not know who I am?”
    “I could ask the same of you. Do you know who I am?”
    “Of course I know who you are,” she whispered back, closing in on him to keep her voice from disturbing her child. “You are the man who, if he doesn’t get out of my bedroom this instant, will be explaining himself to the whole Mt. Knott Police Department, every last one of them a close personal friend of mine.”
    His mouth lifted in a one-sided sneer. “I’ll just bet.”
    She spun quietly around to snatch the only picture she had of herself and her twin from on top of her dresser. “I know them all from going to school here. From working year after year alongside their moms and sisters and wives and friends at your family’s factory. I know them from serving them meals at my own diner.”
    Confusion registered in his ominous expression. His gaze flicked downward to the framed photo, then up to her face as if asking if she expected him