No, he wasn’t interested in her at all. But he was fascinated by her pregnancy. He had purchased his own copy of The Everything Guide to Pregnancy, along with a half a dozen other books, which she had seen on his desk, and he quoted from them quite frequently in the deluge of e-mails he sent her every day.

She had seen him in person only once, and that had been a mistake on her part. She’d been sneaking in some phone messages to put on his desk, and he’d caught her on the way out. But what could have been awkward, or sensual, had seemed to her just rather friendly. He had been big smiles and all kind concern.

It was infuriating.

And now she was in her cubicle, trying to banish all thoughts of him from her head, when she saw in her inbox she had three e-mails from Damien.

With a sigh, she tucked her feet under her rolling chair and clicked the first one. She was wearing a tight stretchy maternity top, and it kept riding up and exposing her stomach. Tugging it down for the twelfth time, she glanced through Damien’s message.

This looks cool. And there was a link for a cot that turned into a toddler bed, then an adult full bed.

“Oh, my God.” She brushed her hair back. He was checking out baby furniture for her. It wasn’t at all obvious to her how they had reached this point in their relationship.

But it was a rather pretty cot. Damien had good taste. It was a sleigh bed. Glossy, rich wood, dressed up with a pink lace ruffled comforter. Then Mandy saw the price and gasped. It was two thousand dollars. She didn’t have two thousand dollars.

By the time she had paid off her debts from the shop, paid closing costs, and had invested five hundred dollars in maternity clothes, she had only enough left over for a nest egg. Money for emergencies. Rent money for when she was on her six weeks without pay maternity leave. Not money for buying two-thousand-dollar baby beds.

If she had to, she’d ask her parents for the money, of course, but the thought made her wince.

Then there was Ben. She wasn’t quite sure what to do with him, or how to maneuver her way through their new relationship as parents-to-be who weren’t dating. Could she ask him to split the cost of the furnishings? Was that tacky? Was it too much, too little?