“When I was sick in my first trimester, my doctor told me not to ever worry about the baby. That if need be, my body will give to the baby first, consume my fat stores, then attack my own muscles to provide the baby with nourishment.”

“That’s kind of gruesome. But biological maternal instinct, huh?” Damien stopped in front of the elevators after hitting the button. He opened the bag of food he was holding and pulled out a spring roll. “Eat it. We don’t want your muscles being cannibalized.”

They got on the elevator, and Mandy laughed. “Don’t worry, I have a few fat stores left before they get to the muscles.” But she bit the roll anyway. She was starving.

“Elevator, upset stomach…if I had any coffee, this would remind me of the day we met.”

“Should I bend over? Then it would really be romantic.”

“Yes, it would.” His eyebrows went up suggestively and his eyes darkened. “Though hot is probably a better word than romantic.”

Mandy clamped her mouth shut so carrot and water chestnuts bits wouldn’t fall out. “I was joking! I meant it wouldn’t be romantic, like the day we…oh, never mind. I know exactly what you were thinking, you bloody pervert.”

He just laughed.

After eating, Damien showed Mandy around his apartment. It had been built in the sixties, so it was sparse on details, with chopped-up rooms and low ceilings. He had been working on fixing that, adding molding around the windows and working on plans with a contractor to knock out the walls that created narrow hallways. The end result would be an open, airy flow from three principle rooms, instead of the five tiny rooms he had now.

Except he was thinking some modifications to the plans might be needed.

“It’s a great apartment, and so amazingly quiet.”

“That’s why I moved here.” He paused in the doorway of his bedroom. “I was planning to knock this wall out into the other bedroom and make this room bigger and the other into a walk-in closet, but I’m rethinking that.”

“Why?” Mandy went into the room and turned around, taking in the space as her fingers trailed over his bed, lingering on the soft downy white pillows. “And why am I not the least bit surprised that this room is so clean and neat you could probably eat off the floor?”

Because he had become slightly neurotic. He knew he couldn’t control a lot of things in the world, in his life, but he could control his personal environment. He could wrestle order and tranquility into this apartment.