Like those thoughts were productive. Besides, them going to bed was exactly what led to their current predicament. Then again, one couldn't fall pregnant twice. Jeez, Sage, pull yourself together, woman!
Tyce abruptly stood up, nearly tipping his barstool with the force of his movement. "I need to get out of here."
"Okay, well..." Sage bit her bottom lip and looked around. "Give me a call if you want to chat about this some more."
Tyce looked like a hard-assed warrior about to go to battle. "Oh, hell, no, we're leaving together."
Sage frowned at his high-handed comment. She wasn't ready to leave. This cocktail party and exhibition of the Ballantyne family jewelry collection was the culmination of their latest PR campaign to attract new customers. Her family was all in attendance and she was expected to stick around. Not that anyone would notice if she left... Her brothers Jaeger and Beck were both slow dancing with their women-Piper and Cady-and she was the last thing on their minds. Her oldest brother, Linc, who'd brought Tate, his son's temporary nanny, to the party, was nowhere to be seen.
Sage was sure that she could leave and no one would be any wiser but that would mean leaving with Tyce and that wasn't an option. "I don't think so."
"Walk out with me or I swear, I'll toss you over my shoulder and walk you out that way."
His alpha bossiness only turned her on when they were naked but since they weren't-and would never be again-his terse tone ticked her off. She opened her mouth to blast him and closed it again at the determination in his eyes. She could either leave walking or over his shoulder and she didn't want a scene to ruin this fabulous evening. Sage glared at him, picked up her designer clutch and walked with him into the foyer of the ballroom. She collected her coat and went to stand by the elevators.
The doors opened, Sage followed Tyce into the cube and pushed the button for the first floor. As the doors closed, the spacious interior shrunk with a big, broad, freaked-out man inside.
Tyce slapped his hand against the emergency stop button.
"What the hell, Sage? You're pregnant?"
Obviously, he was taking some time to process the news. Sage winced at his shout, his words bouncing off the wood paneling. She lifted her hands as the elevator shuddered to a stop.
"Okay, calm down, Tyce."
Pathetic as it was, it was all she could think of to say. Even furious, he was ludicrously good-looking. Blue-black hair cut stylishly with short back and sides, equally dark eyebrows over those black sultry eyes. When he smiled, which was, in her opinion, far too rarely, he could charm birds down from trees, criminals into converting and start polar caps melting. Sage wished that she could say Tyce Latimore was just a pretty face but he was so much more than that. He was tall, a few inches above six foot and his body, that body she'd licked and explored and teased and tasted, was all muscle honed from a lifetime dedicated to martial arts. Tae Kwon Do, judo, Krav Maga...they'd all contributed to creating a body that was spectacular and spectacularly sexy. The hair on her arms lifted and her fingers ached to touch him. Her off-the-shoulder silk dress felt abrasive against her sensitive skin and want and need danced through her.
Focus, Sage. Sheesh.
Tyce pushed his jacket back to place his hands on his hips, his expression summer-storm vicious. "Are you messing with me?"
Sage just barely restrained herself from rolling her eyes at his question.
"Yeah, Tyce," she sarcastically muttered. "I crave your attention that much that I'd make up a story like this to play games with your head!" Seeing his still skeptical face, she shook her head and, needing support, she leaned her back against the wall of the elevator. "I am pregnant. Since you're the only guy I've slept with in the three months-" Three years, she mentally corrected, but she wasn't telling him that! "-I think it's safe to assume that the kid is yours."
"But we used condoms," Tyce said, pushing his shaking hands into his hair.
Sage blushed. "That first time...you did slide in without a condom. You put one on later but maybe..." Lord, this was embarrassing! "...something slipped past."
Tyce stared at her, his hands linked behind his head and his expression stricken with panic and fear. "I can't be a father, Sage. I don't want to be a father. I don't want kids!"
Sage assumed as much.
Sage reached around him to release the emergency stop button. "As I told you, that's not a problem. I don't expect anything from you. You can carry on living your life as you always have."
"You can't do this on your own!" he said and for the first time ever Sage saw Tyce a little unhinged. He banged his fist against the stop button to prevent it from going any farther and the car's shudder reverberated through her.
"I am young, healthy, have huge family support and ample resources to hire the help I need to raise this child," Sage told him, pushing a finger into his chest. "I don't need anything from you."
A little support would be nice, a kind word, but wishing for either was futile. Tyce wasn't the kind, supportive type. Hot and hard, amazing, fantastic sex? Yes. Warm and reassuring? No. She'd only told him because he had the right to know and not because she expected anything from him. She didn't want anything from him...or from any other man.
She was fine, safe, on her own.
"Miss Ballantyne?" Sage jumped at the disembodied voice coming from a speaker above her head. "Is everything alright in there?"
She nodded at the camera in the top corner of the elevator. "Everything is fine, thank you. We're just having a chat."
Chat? They were having a life-changing conversation. There was nothing chatty about it.
"Okay then." The voice sounded dubious. "Um? Do you think you could, um, chat somewhere else? There are people waiting for the elevator."
Sage nodded, walked to stand between Tyce and the light panel and pushed the emergency stop again. She pulled in a large breath and turned to face Tyce, who was staring down at the mulberry-colored carpet. "Tyce."
He didn't lift his head, so Sage called his name again. He eventually looked at her with those intensely dark, pain-filled eyes.
"I'm letting you off the hook. Look, I'm presuming that your statement from three years ago-when you told me that you don't do commitment-still holds?"
"Yeah." It was a small word but a powerful response.
Sage nodded. "I'm very okay with that-I'm not looking for someone to nest with me. Take my offer to walk away. This child will be raised a Ballantyne. No one will ever have to know that he, or she, is yours. I'm giving you permission to forget about this conversation."
Something flashed in Tyce's eyes and Sage frowned, not sure what she'd seen. Before she could say any more, the doors to the elevator opened and they faced a bank of people waiting for the tardy lift. Sage pulled on her practiced, cool smile and stepped into the throng. She swiftly walked into the lobby and she nodded when the concierge asked her whether she wanted a taxi. Sage pulled on her coat and tried to ignore Tyce as he stepped up to walk beside her, a silent, brooding sexy mass of muscle.
She'd barely stepped onto the curb when a taxi pulled up and the doorman hurried to open the door. Sage climbed inside and sighed when Tyce crouched in the space between the open car door and her seat.
"We're not done discussing this, Sage," he said, his voice a low growl.
"We really are, Tyce." Sage forced the words through her tight lips. "Don't contact me again. We are over."
"Yeah, you can think that," Tyce said, standing up. "But you'd be wrong."
The slam of the taxi door was an exclamation point at the end of his sentence.
Three
In his converted warehouse in Brooklyn, Tyce stood at the massive windows that provided perfect light for his studio, his forearm resting on the glass. He'd been home an hour and he was grateful that he'd fought the impulse to follow Sage to her apartment. Instead of acting impetuously, he'd fought his way through the shock to slow his thoughts down, to think this situation through. He needed time to let the fact that he was going to be a dad sink in, to figure this out.
Tyce walked away from the window to the far wall, to a row of canvases that were stacked against the wall. Sitting cross-legged on the paint splattered floor, he reached for the most recent canvas, a portrait of Sage at her workbench, her brow furrowed in concentration, a pencil in her hand. He'd painted the portrait from a photo published in an arts magazine and it was, he admitted, as lifelike as the photo. Bending his knees, Tyce stared at the canvas, thinking that his child was growing her belly, that his DNA was joining with hers to create a new life.
God, what an awesome, terrifying, crazy thought. What the hell did Life think it was doing, asking him-the most emotionally disconnected person on the planet-to be a father? As a child he'd been consumed by anxiety, responsibility, overwhelmed by a world that asked him to deal with far too much, far too soon. Adulthood, his and Lachlyn's, and his mother's death, allowed him some measure of relief. But, because he never wanted to feel so unbalanced-scared-again he deliberately distanced himself from emotionally investing in situations and people because that would make him vulnerable. To Tyce it was a simple situation, vulnerability equaled hurt and pain was to be avoided. The logical conclusion was to avoid emotion altogether, like he had with Sage three years ago, or to disconnect, like he had learned to do with his mother.