His Change of Heart: Unexpected Pregnancy Romance Read online

  Avery let out a deep sigh and headed to the door. She might as well get it over and done with—find out why he was there, waiting for her. She watched calmly as he rushed to the door and held it open for her, standing at the side, allowing her to enter, giving her one of his arrogant twisted smiles. He seemed relieved to see her too. And from the exasperated frown on his face, she guessed he must have been waiting for a while.

  She had stayed an extra hour after class to meet with some of her students who had questions about the exams tomorrow, and after, she had gone shopping with two of the teachers to pick out a birthday gift for the college’s long time librarian. By her calculation, he must have been there for close to two hours. Serve him right, she thought, as she glanced at him again. In fact, if she had any idea that he had been waiting for her, she would have stayed longer or not bothered to come home at all. She would have spent the night at Kat’s or Julia.

  She also didn’t expect him to just show up at her place after he had broken up with her. She thought they had said everything they needed to say to each other—they had already said their goodbyes as far as she was concerned—well, at least Will had conveniently bid her adieu. And now he was here, standing inches away from her with a very expectant look on his face. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought that he had come to apologize and try to win back her trust, but she doubted he was there for that reason.

  She would find out soon enough, though. It was also strange that he had chosen to wait in the foyer. He had never waited for her before. He always had the set of keys to her place to let himself in when she wasn’t there. They had exchanged keys after the third date. Will had suggested it. He had given her the keys to his penthouse, including the code to his alarm system.

  And Avery, feeling completely safe with him, especially after what they had shared on their first date, had handed over the three keys to her place, including the one that gave him access to the building. But unlike Will, she wasn’t living in a luxury penthouse and didn’t have a state of the art alarm system. She did just fine with an extra lock and a secured chain link.

  Now seeing Will standing there, looking at her, made Avery realized that this was the end for them. There was no going back now. And the finality of their relationship hit her so hard and suddenly, like a bucket of cold water being thrown in her face, that it took all the emotional strength she had to pull herself together and put on a brave face. She was so emotionally drained that she was afraid that she would burst into tears if he came any closer to her, but thankfully, she didn’t.

  This was it for them, then, nothing was ever going to be the same again, including coming home and finding Will at the door with a huge grin on his face, happy to see her. She took a deep breath and walked slowly pass him. Her first instinct was to pretend that she didn’t see him standing there, but it wasn’t that easy. She couldn’t, even if she wanted to. Will was uncomfortably close, almost blocking her way.

  “Hello, Avery,” he said to her with a grin on his face, as she came inside, easing purposely nearer to her.

  Avery’s heart skipped a beat at the sight of him and she looked away. She was afraid that if she made eye contact with him, he would see the pain in her eyes and knew the turmoil she was going through because of him. She didn’t want to give him that much satisfaction. Not after what he had done to her, to what they had.

  “I thought I missed you. I was waiting for over an hour. You are usually home by this time. I was beginning to wonder where you were.”

  He was still smiling at her, and Avery wished she could wipe that stupid grin off his face. She didn’t think there was anything remotely funny or pleasant about the way he had ambushed her. She kept her head low and refused to answer him. She wasn’t certain she was hearing him right, especially the accusatory tone in his voice. He had no right to question her whereabouts, or her timing, not anymore. He wasn’t entitled to know anything about her life. He had given up that privilege when he broke up with her.

  She opened her handbag and pretended to search through it for her keys, even though she was holding them in her hand. But she wanted to appear busy. She hadn’t spoken to, or seen Will since that morning at her apartment days before. And she wasn’t certain that she wanted to be in contact with him either, not now, or ever. He had called about a dozen times and left messages on her answering service. She had ignored his calls, and deleted all of the messages without listening to any of them.

  And when he had tried to contact her at work, she had told Marva, the secretary in her department not to put through any of her personal calls, especially if they were from Will because she was swamped with conferences and meetings and didn’t have time to talk to him. She was trying to be as discreet as she possibly could about the break up. She didn’t want her personal life spilling into her work place. And if Marva suspected anything, she hadn’t let on. She also knew Marva, unlike some of the teachers, wasn’t a gossip.

  She had expected Will to show up at the college, especially after she had refused to take or return any of his calls, but he didn’t. He had obviously chosen to come here instead. And she would much rather talk to him in the foyer of her building than at Ellington with prying eyes watching their every move, and eager ears eavesdropping on their conversation.

  Still, she didn’t think they had anything more to say to each other. She didn’t know why he had come to see her. She thought he would be in Chicago by now, setting up business, settling into his new job and life there without her. And looking at him now, made her realize that she must have been crazy to even think that he was here to try to win her back.

  “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be on a plane to Chicago or wherever you are going by now?” she asked him pointedly, moving close to the elevator to avoid being that close to him.

  She wanted to run inside and take refuge, to get away from him. She was trying to be as calm as she possibly could under the circumstances, but she was far from feeling it.

  “I came to say goodbye, and to return these.”

  He reached into his coat pocket and handed her the set of keys to her apartment. Avery took them, and jumped slightly as Will brushed his fingers caressingly against hers, holding onto her hand for longer than necessary. She saw him smile, showing his perfect teeth. And she blushed. It was a deliberate move to unnerve her, she thought. She pulled her hand away and dropped the keys into her coat pocket.

  “You could have mailed them,” Avery said to him in a firm voice. “Or you could have left them with security at Ellington. I would have gotten them. You didn’t have to come here to bring them,” she added, purposely.

  “I didn’t want to take the chance of the keys getting lost in the mail. And do you really want security to tell you that your boyfriend has left the keys to your place with them. That would send tongues wagging, Ave. I know how well you value your privacy, especially at work. Besides, I want to make certain they didn’t fall into the wrong hands. So, how are you?” he said to her.

  He was close enough for Avery to feel his warm breath against her cheek and smell his cologne. And he was gazing intently into her flustered face with the ever present smirk on his face. Avery suddenly felt light headed and weak at the knees. She tried to move away from him, but she couldn’t, because her feet were shaking so badly. Thank goodness she was wearing a trench coat that went all the way below her knees. And she was afraid that if she tried to move she would stumble right into his arms. She wasn’t certain she wanted that to happen, not at that very moment. She heard him chuckled. He knew the effect he was having on her, and he was taking full advantage of it. He enjoyed tormenting her, playing on her weakness for him.

  “You look well,” he said, brushing a strand of hair from her face that had fallen loose and was resting across her left cheek. “Your hair looks lovely this way,” he told her, wrapping his finger provocatively around a curl. “I have never seen you wore it this way. It adds more sex appeal to your look.”

  Then she
felt his wandering finger moving suggestively over her quivering lips, lingering purposely on her lower one. She saw him lowered his head, his mouth mere inches away from hers, and fully aware that he was about to kiss her, Avery tilted her head back slightly, closed her eyes, and waited for the familiar feel of his lips on hers. And for reasons she couldn’t quite comprehend at that very minute, she wanted Will to kiss her. She desperately wanted him to ravish her lips in the worst way possible. She wanted to feel his lips moving against her soft ones, hungrily prying her mouth open, his tongue meeting hers, tasting and sucking her. She wanted to feel that special connection again, even if it was for one last time.

  She wasn’t ashamed to admit the crazy desire she was feeling for a man she knew she should detest. And she wasn’t going to deny herself the pleasure either. She was still hopelessly in love with Will and she wanted him, in every sense of the word. Then, she heard Will chuckle and she opened her eyes to find him staring intently at her with a very amused look on his face, his hands resting on either sides of the wall above her head. He made an attempt to stroke her face, and Avery brushed his hands away angrily and backed away from him.

  “Please don’t make me out to be the bad guy here, Ave. I don’t want to be the bad guy. The break up may not have been mutual, but I still care very deeply about you. That’s why I am here. I want to see you before I leave. I want to make sure you are okay and to know that I can at least call you when I get to Chicago. My taking the job there has absolutely nothing to do with us. It’s about me. I’m the one to blame, not you. I want you to understand that.”

  God, she wished he would shut up! She couldn’t believe he was trying to use the—it’s-not-you-it’s-me, bullshit on her. She had heard that dumb phrase so many times, especially in movies that it was beginning to make her sick. And if she heard those idiotic words one more time she sworn she would scream her head off in frustration. How stupid did those guys think the women they were breaking up with really were? She didn’t think Will would use such a moronic idiom on her, but he was using it. This was what their relationship had come to. She felt like slapping him, punching him even, very hard in the mouth.

  “Oh, I understand,” she told him, instead, with as much sarcasm that she could muster into her voice. “It’s definitely me. I refused your offer to come with you, didn’t I? You have absolutely nothing to do with it.”

  “Avery, please, I don’t want us to end things this way. I want to know that you will be okay when I get on the plane and leave New York. Can I at least call you to find out how you are sometimes?”

  “No, you may not. We aren’t together anymore, remember. I don’t want to talk to you. I thought I made that perfectly clear when I didn’t return any of your calls or answer the phone when you called.” She was brave enough to look him straight in the eyes this time. “Go to Chicago. Enjoy your new job and your life there. Forget about me, because I certainly will be doing just that. In fact, I can’t wait to get out there and start dating again. That reminds me, I have a date line up for this weekend.”

  Avery saw him flinched. And for a second she thought she saw a pained look on his face, but she wasn’t certain, nor did she care. She doubted he was hurting the way she was. He was the one who had dumped her, not the other way around. She was certain he hadn’t cried for hours—in bed at nights, in the shower, in his bowl of cereal this morning, and many more mornings before that.

  She was more than certain that he wasn’t eating because he was in so much emotional turmoil that food didn’t appeal to him anymore. And he wasn’t on the phone at all times crying his eyes out to his friends about the break up, trying to find a way to deal with what he was going through.

  And she was certain that Will hadn’t sat in his car in the garage and bawled his eyes out for a good five minutes before going into work and pretending that everything was fine, blaming his non-existent allergy when someone asked about his red, swollen eyes.

  She was more than certain that he hadn’t made up excuses for missing work, because he was too torn up to go in and face his students and co-workers, choosing instead to spend the entire day in his pajamas in bed feeling sorry for himself. She was certain Will hadn’t done or been through any of those things.

  She was mourning the loss of what they once had together and she wanted to do it on her time, on her terms, at her pace, her way. She most definitely didn’t want him calling her. The best thing for her right now was to try to forget about him, though she wasn’t certain how she was going to do that. Because, in spite of everything thing that had happened between them, she still loved him. She wished she didn’t, but she had fallen so deeply in love with him that it was going to be extremely difficult for her to just turn that off in couple days or weeks. She needed time, lots and lots of it, by her calculation, because, sadly, she was yearning for someone who had both stolen and broken her heart.

  “I can never forget about you, Ave. No matter what you think of me, what we had was something very special. I’ll never stop loving you. What we shared was real.”

  Will was very close to her, hovering over her, his body touching hers. He had her cornered to the wall where she had ended up to put some distance between them. “You will always be the one woman I love—the love of my life.”

  Avery turned and looked at him, more appalled than angry at what she was hearing from him, what he was saying to her. And before she realized what she was doing, her hand went up and she slapped him hard against the cheek. “Don’t you dare use those words with me!” she told him, in a heightened voice. “You don’t have the right. What do you know about loving me?”

  She could see the shocked look on his face. He clearly didn’t expect her to slap him. She had never done anything like this before. There had never been a reason to. There had never been any physical altercation between them. But Will had driven her to this. He had no right to play games with her heart, her emotions, with her. She glanced at him, not knowing what to expect. His face was expressionless, drained. At least she had wiped that ridiculous smirk from his face, she thought, as she saw the red marks appearing on his cheek, and for a second she wished that she hadn’t lost her temper and smacked him.

  She was sorry that she had been forceful with him, but part of her wanted to believe that he deserved it. He shouldn’t say one thing to her and then do another. How could he confess to loving her? He was leaving her, for Pete’s sake! He had broken her heart in the worst possible way. She was hurting. People didn’t just move away from the ones they love or hurt them the way Will did. A man didn’t leave the woman he claimed to have loved. He made sacrifices so that they could be together. She didn’t see Will doing any of that for her. He wasn’t giving up anything, including going to Chicago to be with her. So, clearly he had no right to gave her that little absurd speech about loving her.

  “I will call you when I get to Chicago,” he said to her in a very calm voice. She couldn’t tell if he was angry or just downright disappointed by her action. “Whether or not you chose to answer my call or return my messages is entirely up to you.” He bent and kissed her full on the lips, catching her completely off guard. “Goodbye, Avery. Take care of yourself,” he said to her, and walked to the front door.

  It wasn’t the response Avery was expecting from him. In fact, she didn’t know what she was expecting him to do. He had never lost his temper with her before, not even once. And God knew there were times when he should have. She suddenly felt light headed, as if she was about to pass out on the floor. She leaned back against the wall to steady herself, and gazed silently at Will’s disappearing back, tears running down her face.

  She stood long enough to see him getting into the waiting car, and it driving away down the street at full speed. Then, her hands went up to her cheeks and she brushed away the hot tears that were running down her face and onto the collar of her coat. She didn’t even know why she was crying. She wanted to feel angry, but she didn’t. Instead what she felt was an overwhelming feeling o
f sadness at losing the man she loved.

  She turned and stepped into the elevator and pressed the button to her floor.

  Nine

  The weeks after Will left were the hardest Avery had ever experienced in her life. She was nursing a broken heart, and she didn’t know how to deal with it. She had read somewhere, probably in one of the self help books she had been buying, that it was harder for women to get over break ups. Maybe there was some truth to it, because she was having such a damn hard time. She wasn’t doing such a good job getting over Will. It was a difficult, long process—a daily struggle—both emotionally and physically.

  There were days when she felt like taking refuge in bed, and staying there forever. But she couldn’t, because whether or not she liked it, her life, as she knew it, went on—she had a job to go to, daily routines to keep, things to do. She had people, including her students who depended on her.

  Unfortunately, she realized that this break up wasn’t entirely about her—there were other people who counted on her to get things done. And she felt she couldn’t let them down. She had thought about taking some personal time off work, but quickly decided against it. She wasn’t dying, neither did she have any serious health problems nor urgent issues that required her to do so.