“Yeah.” My voice was husky from disuse. “Orientation at work and I picked up my first shift.”
Reardon’s smile dissolved with his appetite, breakfast cooling in front of him. “Shay?”
That was my first lie. The easiest. Already, he wasn’t buying it. I hoped I was better at selling the biggest one.
I hadn’t begun my job at all, but the long weekend had sure as hell felt like work.
A hash of unraveling nerves churned my stomach. Inside I was battered. Outside, I was stoic. “Can we go to your–” I was gonna say office, but that was a bad choice. It had seen so much sex and sass. The bedroom was out, the crow’s nest too.
Christ, was there any place in this palatial penthouse we hadn’t made love?
“Can we talk outside?” At least on the balcony I wouldn’t feel like a wild animal cooped up in a cage.
Escorting me to the balcony, he took a defensive stance.
I tried like hell to forget the night we’d been out here dancing, followed by such fast and furious fucking we fell off the sun lounger. Children’s high-pitched squeals flew to us from the playground below the bridge. My fingers tingled, moving to cover my belly.
Heat emanated from his broad palms hovering above my shoulders.
I stepped away.
“Is this about Delilah?” His hand stretched out again, clasping my fingertips. “She would have been turning one about this time, wouldn’t she?” He spoke real gently, trying not to startle me.
Of course he’d have figured out the very reason fate was such a frigging whore. Giving me a second shot at a time I really needed it, making me think I could have a baby and Reardon too. My heart quailed, but I showed no response. If I cracked, I’d rupture apart right in front of him.
His fingers scaled my arms to my shoulders. “Shay? Was it what I said the other night?”
I stared blankly.
“I only need you.” He reminded me of those wonderful words.
My heart did its pitter-patter, and my tummy did its flutter-thing. I beat them both down. Slowly, I nodded. I could use this. I didn’t have a plan. I hadn’t planned any of this.
A flash of sweat broke out across his forehead. “I’ll back off.”
“I don’t believe you,” I lied.
“You have my word.”
“No, I don’t believe you only need me.” My heart twisted and squeezed until it was wrung dry.
“But I love you.” Bewilderment was written all over his scrunched eyes and drawn lips.
“Not enough.”
Lie
.
His expression skated from shock to disbelief. His lips parted, his eyes widened. When his face contorted in loathing, I knew my words had sunk in.
A storm building inside him, he paced the deck. “Not enough? Not enough!” He muttered acidly, slammed the French door so hard the glass shuddered. He wheeled about. “The hell I don’t!”
Shoving his face to mine, he was ferocious. “You think I went through all this fucking agony coming to terms with Will’s death–that I fell in love with you–to let you walk out on me?”
The ice encrusting my chest wrapped around my voice. “It’s your M.O.”
“What? What the hell are you talking about?” His nostrils flared, his arms bunched, prepared to fight for what he wanted, to fight for me.
“You never really wanted a relationship, did you? You’ll always be a take ’em and leave ’em kind of guy.”
Lies, lies, lies.
The desire to battle for me fled, leaving only the angular severity of his face. “You really believe that?”
I nodded.
“You’re right. You’re right, Shay.” His lips reduced to an ugly sneer. “You see? I warned you I didn’t know how to love. I’m never wrong. Not in the boardroom, and for damn sure not in the bedroom.”
Witnessing his acceptance of my deceit put me back in the deadened state I’d lived in after Delilah, before him.
He stared past me like I no longer existed.
My heart plummeted, it broke. Pulp squeezed, feeling bleeding out. I swallowed in great gulps, on the verge of hyperventilating, and I knew...
Oh God, I knew what he was gonna say next.
I couldn’t, I couldn’t let him.
Flying at him, I slammed into his body. My face buried in his chest, I sobbed, “Don’t. Don’t say you hate me!”
His hands remained at his sides, his posture wooden.
“I lied!” Grabbing his face, I made him look at me. “I lied.” My voice lowered. “I’m pregnant.”
He flinched.
“I knew it! See? This is why I have to do it alone.” I turned to go.
Reardon blocked the door. “Jesus, give me a second here, Shay! You just told me you don’t love me–”
“I never said that.”
“You might not have said the words, but by God, you meant it. You told me you were leaving, and now you’re saying you’re pregnant?” His hands folded over the back of his neck where he rubbed and rubbed.
He appeared hopeful and scared and maybe like he wanted to throw up. I knew the feeling. A tide of emotions rushed over his face. It seemed he wanted to touch me, probably to shake some sense into me. “Is it mine?”
“Of course it is, you jackass.” I muttered, “I don’t know what the hell happened, if you got super-swimmers or somethin’…”
His lips jerked up once before flattening to a thin line. “I don’t understand. If it’s mine, why were you walking out on me?”
I made a grab for him.
He sidestepped me. “You don’t want my baby.”
“’Course I do! But you said straight up, straight out in the beginning you didn’t want any pregnancies.”
“I don’t give a good goddamn what I said back then. Fuck, Shay! You weren’t gonna tell me?” He leaned toward me, asking with stunned awe. “It’s really mine?”
“Yes.”
“You figured I wouldn’t want to be here for you? You decided you’d go it alone?” Shaking his head, he slid down against the railing. “What kind of a man do you think I am?”
“A good one.” I ignored the river of tears on my face.
“That so? You just figured I wasn’t man enough to cope with any of this?”
“Not man enough? That’s never been y’all’s problem.”
“This isn’t making sense. Why were you breaking up with me? Why did you say those things?”
I dropped before him, getting right in his face. “Can’t you see? I’m not woman enough. I’m no good at makin’ babies. It isn’t gonna last!”
“You didn’t think I’d get past another death.” He shrugged me off. “You don’t know a damn thing about me.”
“I do. I know you.” My hands smoothed down his arms. “You take care of your own, no matter what, without lookin’ after yourself.”
He drew me to him in a hug resembling goodbye instead of forgiveness. “I would’ve taken care of you.”
His lips capsized as he got to his feet.
“You believed every foolish thing I said, didn’t you?”
“It’s not much of a stretch, Shay. Don’t you know, there’s a grain of truth in every credible lie?”
“I’m callin’ bullshit on that one.”
“What?”
“Just what I said. Bull shit. None if it’s true, Reardon.”
“Shay, you need to–”
“No, I’m talkin’ now and you’re damn well gonna listen.” Poking my finger at his chest, I tried to convince him. “I love you. All weekend I couldn’t stop thinking about Will and Delilah. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
When he couldn’t escape my advance, he moaned, pulling me tight, then yanking away. “I’m furious with you right now.”
“Go on, give it to me.” I challenged.
“When did you find out?”
“Friday.”
“Friday. So all weekend you were...what?” Inspecting me, he discovered my guilt. “Planning a way to get rid of me, weren’t you?”
“No, actually. I was too busy bleeding to think much beyond I was gonna miscarry mere hours after I found out I was pregnant.”
“Christ Almighty.” Holding me tight, his words came out rocky. “Is it okay? Are you and the baby okay?”
“Yes. For now. But–”
“Oh God, thank God. What happened?”
“I fired my OB.”
He leaned back. “What’d he do to you?”
“Made me wait from Friday night until yesterday mornin’ to see him, saying there was nothing he could do to stop a miscarriage so early on.”
“I want his name.” By the fire of his glare, I knew Doc Nage wouldn’t have a job at East Cooper Family Care by the end of the day.
I tried to calm him. “It’s okay, baby.”
“The hell it is. No one treats you that way, especially not a doctor entrusted with your care.”
His anger on my behalf, on behalf of our baby, sprinted through me. Until he exclaimed, “Shit, shit! Who went with you?”
“No one.”
His fingers bit into my shoulders. “You went alone?”
“I didn’t know who to call.”
Strong, steady, he told me, “You call me. No more appointments without me, you got it?”
“I’m so sorry. I thought I was bein’ selfless. I didn’t see how selfish it was. With the bleeding, and my history and Momma’s, I spent all night arguing with myself. God, I’m sorry.”
“Sshh.”
“Aren’t you scared?”
“I’m fucking petrified.”
I clambered away. “That’s exactly why I couldn’t tell you.”
He roped me right back in. “Will you let me finish, woman?” He silenced me with a soft touch to my lips. “I’m also overjoyed. To be given this chance, with you? The woman I love?” My face between his hands, he placed his forehead against mine. “What the hell were you thinking?”
I curled into him. “It all seems so stupid now. But you and Will and me and Delilah–”
“It was thoughtless, yes.” His fingers snuck between us to tap the golden pendant on his chest. “There will always be Will, and there’ll always be Delilah.”
Reardon snuck one hand to the nape of my neck, the other to my belly. “You know you make me insane, right?”
“Well that’s okay then, makes two of us.”
“You’re crazy.” He shook his head, keeping a shy eye on me.
“Not
Fatal Attraction
crazy though, right?”
“I should hope not.”
“Crazy about you though.”
“Are you?”
I met his eyes and sampled his mouth and murmured, “Certifiably in love.”
“You sure?” He was sheepish, gorgeous, and all mine, I hoped.
“Yep.” I went back to nibbling his lips.
He halted my seduction with a hushed, “I want to be here for you.”
“Be here for me, or be here with me?”
“With you and for you.”
A jet of adrenaline pulsed through me. We toppled together, pulling at clothing, pressing closer.
His glasses went spinning. The lounger dipped to its side. Our whispered desires combined with the swell of the children playing far below. My heart soared high, and so did my skirt.
Slaking my thirst on his lips, his throat, his chest when I quickly unbuttoned his shirt, I smiled up at him between swirls of my tongue over flat nipples, laughing low and hot when he shivered and sucked in a breath.
My palm discovering his cock, my lips looping from one side of his muscular abs to the other, my fingers tickled the button of his trousers...and a thought kept pestering me.
His hands stroking my bare thighs and the backs of my knees, he groaned when I pulled away. “Shay?”
“You were gonna say you hated me.”
Tugging my dress down over my legs, he grimaced. “I probably would have.”
“And now?”
His silence–so loud it deafened me, so telling it defeated me–filled me with nauseating dread.