Secret of the Stone

Secret of the Stone by Barbara Delinsky
Paige Matheson, Ice maiden is the stone artist that others want to penetrate her hard shell.
Jessie Dallas and his friend Ben have a bet he can break her, in a weeks time. A set of Knicks final game is on the line.
She's not a city girl and loves the ocean and her house right on the shore. It's calming and it's where she can do her work.
She's in the city visiting the galleriers that carry her work.
Her agents think she should have a fling while in the city. Her regular limo driver, Felix is on another case and she has Dallas for the day. He's to take her around to all the galleries.
He drives her to hidden places to spend lunch time with as none of the gallery owners has thought she needed to eat. She show more studies his features and likes what she sees and touches.
He uses his coat on the ground so she can sit on it. He's got a quality of good foods for them to sample while talking about one anothers lifes.
After her grueling day in the city, they spend a heated sensual night, her last night in the city.
She opens up to her about her sex life when he drives her back from the city to her home in Marblehead, MA.
She finds just the perfect stone on the beach. He's driven her back home and left to return to the city. He's not content there and drives back to her house, arriving on her back porch where they take up where their bodies have left off.
He tells her the truth as to why he is there and hates himself as he's not good enough and they hadn't used protection.
He is a documentary film editor and he just needed a break from it all.
She talks him into being a handyman while he's on vacation and she can go back to her wood and sculpting.
Love detailed descriptions of her tools. She had seen the vision of his hand and put it into the stone she had found along with other corresponding images.
After he must leave she struggles and uses her work to get her through the emptiness. She travels home to attend family obligations. She shares with her mother about her pregnancy.
When Jessie learns of her pregnancy he's very angry. He wants to give the child everything he's never had in his life.
Love multiple meanings of the 'secret of the stone'. show less

Free spirited Paige Mattheson falls for loner Jesse Dallas. They spend 6 weeks together at her beachside home and when he hints that he will leave with no promises to return, she allows herself to fall pregnant by him, without him ever knowing.. When he unexpectedly returns after a few months, he is furious when he finds out, vows to marry her.
Stark contrast here, of Paige's close family unity and Jesse's lonely unhappy childhood, which leaves him bitter and driven to give his child a father of which he never saw.
So-so, but uninvolving.