A Camden's Baby Secret (15 page)

Chapter Eleven

“W
hat am I doing?” Callan shouted, when he emerged from his fog and registered where he was—at his office building. But it was Sunday morning and when he'd stormed out of Livi's house it had been with the intention of going home.

Cursing, he hit his steering wheel with the heels of his hands as if the car was to blame for taking him to the wrong place. But the truth was he had so much on his mind that he'd driven without thinking.

Disgusted with himself, he slammed the gearshift into reverse and backed out of his parking spot to try again.

But his mind detoured once more, back to Livi and what she'd just told him.

She was pregnant.

Another rug pulled out from under him, with another pregnancy.

Maybe this baby wasn't his, either.

“You didn't even ask that, you idiot!” he said to himself.

Considering that he'd already had one woman try to pass off someone else's baby on him, that should have been his first question. But it had only just occurred to him.

Why was that?
he wondered, as he pulled out of the parking garage and headed for his condominium.

Maybe it was because he didn't really doubt that he was the father.

The condom
had
broken, he reminded himself. Plus, everything he'd learned about Livi's past, about her and the kind of person she was, didn't leave him any doubts that he really had been the first man she'd been with since her husband's death.

“Yeah, but she could have come back from Hawaii and really cut loose,” he argued with himself angrily.

But livid or not, he still knew that that wasn't Livi, either. She'd been so shocked that
anyone
had been able to shake her loyalty to her late soul mate. Spending the night with him in Hawaii had been way, way too monumental to her to have gone beyond that.

Until last night...

But he didn't want to think about last night. Last night had been mind-blowing, and remembering any part of it blunted the force of that bomb she'd dropped on him. And he didn't want it blunted. Not when he needed to see beyond the attraction between them to figure out how to deal with the fact that she was pregnant.

Pregnant, for God's sake.

And this time he was sure it was his.

Yet he somehow felt just as betrayed as he had when he'd found out his assistant had fathered his wife's baby.

How come?
Callan asked himself. One baby was his, one wasn't, and those weren't the same...

But he'd still been left in the dark both times. He'd still felt played both times.

Played by Elly, who had been his wife and should have been loyal to him.

Played by Livi, who he'd just started to drop his guard with. Who he'd just started to trust. To let in the way he'd let in Mandy and J.J. And Elly. Just so he could be as blindsided by Livi as he had been by his ex-wife.

That was why the betrayal felt the same.

There was a part of him that wanted to push Livi away. To punish her. To protect himself. A part of him that wanted to just say to hell with her and everything to do with her! He didn't need another woman in his life who wasn't up-front with him!

But even as furious as he was, he couldn't forget that there was going to be a baby.

His baby.

And if that was the case, he couldn't say to hell with anything...

His condo was near his office, so it didn't take long to get home. This time when he parked, he turned off the engine and got out.

He was glad not to meet anyone as he stepped into the waiting elevator, then ferociously punched the button for his floor.

As the doors closed, he drew both hands through his hair, pulling hard on his scalp as if that might calm him down.

It didn't. And when he'd gotten off the elevator and went across to his door, he jammed his key into the lock with a vengeance.

He was just so damn mad! He'd actually been thinking that Livi was something special. That things with her might have a chance of going somewhere.

Then she had to go and pull this!

He opened the door and went in, to find John Sr. already up and sitting at the island counter in his kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee.

Great.

“Morning,” Callan grumbled to the elderly man, barely civil.

John Sr. gave him a once-over that took in the fact that he was wearing the same clothes he'd had on last night. But all his late best friend's father said was, “Morning.”

Callan considered what to do in this situation.

What he wanted to do was just be alone.

But
that
wasn't going to happen.

On the other hand, he was an adult who sure as hell shouldn't have to feel embarrassed or ashamed of having spent a night with a woman.

And he wasn't going to slink off to his bedroom as if he was.

So he tried again to get some control over his temper, tossed his tuxedo coat and tie over the arm of the sofa, and joined the older man in the kitchen, where he poured himself a cup of coffee.

Unfortunately, there were still too many emotions running through him—running him—and when he went to stand at the island across from John Sr., the best Callan could do was set his cup down, lean on his elbows and hold his head.

“Your party didn't go well?” John Sr. asked.

“It went fine. Big success. Raised more money than ever before,” he answered.

“Long night, though...” the elderly man said.

“Yeah.”

“With Livi?”

Oh, the old man was pushing it.

But Callan wasn't a teenager under John Sr.'s roof now. He was a grown man, in his own home, and he was going to do whatever he damn well pleased without tiptoeing around it.

“Yeah,” he said, intending to sound firm.

Instead it had come out with a mixture of the emotions cascading through him.

“I like that girl,” John Sr. said.

“Yeah. Me, too.” But there was still that edge of anger in the admission. He'd liked who he thought she was, yet he still wondered if she'd been playing him. It was true—there was no logical reason for her to try to get to him through Greta, but people weren't always logical when it came to getting what they wanted.

The other man ignored his tone. “She's a nice girl. Some in her family before her might have been bastards, but I don't think it's carried on in those folks now. Especially not in Livi. I think she only means well. She's been good for Greta. Good for Maeve and me, too—bendin' over backward for us same as Kinsey, only without any paycheck comin' her way.”

The old man chose
now
to get wordy?
Callan thought.

He nodded but didn't comment, loath to listen to anything at the moment.

“Wouldn't want to think the good in her is bein' overlooked,” John Sr. said, as if finally making his point.

The point being, Callan thought, that John Sr. still saw him as little more than a troublemaker who was doing Livi wrong.

But while his instinctive response was to get even more riled up, he also couldn't help thinking that in this situation Livi would tell him he had to have patience. That he had to resist the past roles, the past patterns. That he had to work on forging a new relationship with this man.

And somewhere in that, something else suddenly dawned on Callan.

Here, sitting in his kitchen, was someone who had been married to the same woman for decades. Someone who was committed to doing whatever it took to care for his ailing wife—even when it meant leaving the home and land he loved and had worked on his entire life, to live in the home of someone he'd never liked. And it crossed Callan's mind that maybe he should mine that a little.

So he pushed himself off the counter to stand up straight and look J.J.'s father in the eye.

“How do you do it?” he asked.

Bushy gray eyebrows arched over rheumy eyes. “How do I do what?”

“The whole marriage-relationship thing. How long have you and Maeve been together?”

“Oh, better 'n fifty years.”

“So how does that work? Because...I don't know. I blew it once. I don't know what's going on now... Maybe I just don't get it. Every time I think things are good, I get knocked on my ass.”

Once-strong shoulders shrugged. “No master plan I can give you. Knew from the minute I laid eyes on Maeve that I was a better man with her than without her. That I was nothin' without her. Always loved her. Always wanted to be with her.”

“And you'll do anything, go anywhere, swallow whatever you have to swallow to do it?”

“What do I have to swallow?”

Callan started to list all the enormous changes the man was accepting.

But as he got into it, John Sr. began to shake his head, and when Callan had finished, the elderly man said, “Means nothin' to me. Maeve's what means something. Greta. Whatever it takes to be with 'em is what it takes. Otherwise, no Maeve. No Greta. And that'd be worse than anything I can think of.”

“Maeve never went about something the worst way she could have? Enough to piss you off no end?” Callan muttered.

The old man laughed. “Hell, yes, she has. So what? Pissed her off plenty, too. Means nothin' in the long run.”

“No matter what? No matter how complicated it gets? No matter what might be in the way?”

“Guess it would depend how big what got in the way was. For us? Nothin' was ever too big, too complicated to where it meant more than keeping what we've got. Not even now, leavin' Northbridge.”

Callan stared into his coffee cup, feeling John Sr.'s eyes on him, expecting this to turn at any moment, for the judgmental voice of his youth to sound again.

But instead, as John Sr. picked up his own cup and took it to the sink, the elderly man said, “Nothin' worth havin' comes easy, boy. Trick is figurin' out what's worth havin'—and what's not—before you know what you can
swallow
and what you can't.”

Then he headed into the room he shared with Maeve and left Callan alone.

To stew.

Because he
was
still stewing. He couldn't move past how much he hated it that in all the time he and Livi had spent together—including the night they'd just had together—she'd known she was pregnant with his baby and he hadn't. That she'd kept something that big from him. That, for even one minute, she'd pulled the wool over his eyes.

He hated it!

He
hated
it!

He sighed.

But I don't hate her...

He leaned on the counter, held his head again and tried harder to cool off.

How much of what he was feeling was his own past haunting him? How much of his anger at Livi was really lingering outrage at being made a fool by Elly and Trent?

Some of it
, Callan admitted.

And he also acknowledged that Livi had kept the news from him for only a couple weeks after a period of denial herself. That couldn't really compare to the six months his wife had let him believe that he was the father of her baby. At least there was no lie in what Livi had done; there was just a brief omission. And the first opportunity she'd had to tell him—that day at the Tellers' farm—she'd still been rightfully furious with him for abandoning her after their encounter. Would he really have expected her to trust him with news of her pregnancy right away after that?

So maybe calling it a betrayal was somewhat of an exaggeration...

He pushed up from the counter a second time and sighed away a large portion of his rage.

But that just made way for something else.

She'd said she was worried that he had too much on his plate for anything else—and she wasn't exactly wrong. There were so many elements that still made this whole thing overwhelming—work and Greta and the Tellers and learning how to be all he needed to be for so many people already. And now there would be another kid—his own kid—and Livi...

Livi...

Okay, yeah, just the thought of her now—without unreasonable irritation—had its way with him again.

So-o-o...what if there wasn't anything at stake here
but
Livi?
he asked himself, thinking then of what John Sr. had said.

Is she my Maeve?

He and Livi were good together—there was no doubt about that. Great together, actually. In
and
out of bed. Their sexual chemistry was off the charts, but every other minute they were together was great, too. Talking to her seemed to put even the worst day right again. Just being with her was its own kind of refuge—like an island where chaos got sorted through and put in order. Where she helped guide him to better ways of handling problems that otherwise seemed insurmountable.

Like John Sr. had said about Maeve, Callan thought that he was a better man with Livi's help. And, yes, he wanted to be better
for
her, too—which was why he'd altered his work schedule last week to make sure that his job didn't get in the way of his relationships. His relationship with Livi included, because he'd expected to see her last week.

And when he hadn't? When night after night he'd gone home to dinner hoping she'd be there and she wasn't?

He'd felt a gaping hole where she should have been. Even surrounded by the Tellers and Greta and Kinsey, who all made for a much fuller house than he'd ever been used to. But still, without Livi, it had seemed empty to him. Drab and colorless. Lacking its most important part.

Because Livi
was
the most important part, he realized suddenly.

The way Maeve was for John Sr.

Livi was the first thing he thought about when he woke up in the morning. She was who he thought about in terms of everything—what he wore, what he ate, how he scheduled his day and—like this morning—even how he treated other people in his life.