"Ready to eat?" she asked with a false smile.
"Sure." But he didn't look at her. He was already dial ing another number. "Just one more call."
She stood in the doorway but he was talking and had forgotten all about her. Suddenly she felt very small and lonely.
She went back into the kitchen and broiled the steaks, only charring them slightly.
"You're getting good at this cooking stuff," Ross commented teasingly as they sat at the table, under the chan delier. "Are you practicing up in order to make someone a wonderful wife?"
Charity stiffened. It wasn't a joke to her anymore when he bantered this way. "Maybe I am," she said without smiling.
But he only laughed and began to talk about Australia and how extraordinary the land was there.
"Ross," she said at last, swallowing hard and trying to be brave. What if he hated this? What if he got angry? Her throat was dry. "I have something I have to tell you. Something important."
He let a large breath out and nodded. "I've got something to tell you, too."
She looked at him. "What?"
He gestured. "You first."
Intuition told her otherwise. "No. You."
He looked her full in the face. "I'm going back to Aus tralia next week."
Charity dropped the fork she'd been using to push food about on her plate. "Oh, Ross! No!"
"Of course I've got to go back," he said shortly. He looked at her beautiful face and wished he could take her along. How was he going to make it through another trip away from her? He needed her. But he couldn't let her know how much. She was such a free spirit. He didn't want to scare her off.
Charity's face was white. "I don't know why anyone would want to go out there again," she snapped, reacting purely out of hurt feelings. "I certainly wouldn't go there on a bet."
That killed that idea cold. He stared at her for a moment, feeling disappointed and a little angry. "It isn't like this is a vacation, you know," he said defensively. "I'm putting together an operation that will entail an awful lot of follow-through. I need to be there to make sure things get done right."
Unconsciously, she put a hand over her stomach as though to protect the new life she carried there. "How long will you be gone?"
He hesitated, wincing at the thought of how long he was going to be away from her. "About two months, maybe three."
She would be almost five months pregnant by then. "You'll be gone for Thanksgiving," she said softly.
He turned and stared at her as if that thought had never crossed his mind and he couldn't for the life of him un derstand why it had occurred to her.