Project Runaway Bride(46)

She sighed. “I haven’t even told my parents yet that I called off the wedding. They’re going to be furious, and can you imagine how much worse it will be if they find out I’ve been playing house with you while I’m supposed to be preparing to walk down the aisle with Paul?”

Shaking her head, she wiped her palms nervously down the outsides of her bare thighs. “I’m sorry, but I can’t deal with it. If things were different... If we’d met and started our little tryst months after Paul and I were history, it wouldn’t be so bad. But I can’t deal with them doing the math and figuring out that we hooked up before my broken engagement was even cold...or worse yet, the truth—that the engagement wasn’t quite as broken as it should have been when we started seeing each other.”

Her hands stopped moving against her thighs and she crossed her arms, hugging herself. He watched the muscles of her throat roll as she swallowed. “Maybe later, after things settle down,” she said barely above a whisper, “we could reassess and start seeing each other again. We could try for normal instead of sneaking around.”

Reid scowled, remaining deathly still where he sat on the floor for fear of what he might do if he stood up. “Don’t do me any favors.”

The color leeched from her face. “Please don’t be like that. You knew this is how things would end,” she told him quietly, her light blue eyes apologetic but determined. “And I don’t want to spend our last moments together fighting.”

It was the please that did it. The please that got him to bite his tongue. To remain silent instead of raging about the bad decision she was getting ready to make or the kick to the gut she’d delivered just as he was prepared to bare his soul and ask her to stay with him. Good thing she’d stopped him before he’d put that foot in his mouth, wasn’t it?

The silence that filled the room was so heavy it was almost painful to bear. But he knew if he opened his mouth to say anything, it would be something he’d live to regret. So he kept his lips pressed tight, teeth clenched so hard he was afraid they might snap.

After a while, when she realized he wasn’t going to say anything more, Juliet dropped her arms, shoulders following suit as she sighed. Without a word, she shrugged out of his shirt and draped it carefully over the back of the armchair, then lowered her chin and padded quietly out of the room.

For all he knew, she’d been pregnant even then. Looking back, he shouldn’t have let her go. He should have gone after her, continued to fight, hashed it out with her once and for all until she saw reason and decided to stay with him.

But he hadn’t. He’d stood there in the study, listening as she climbed the stairs to the bedroom, where she’d gotten dressed and collected the few items she had at his place, then come back downstairs and walked out.

Out of his house, out of his life...but never quite out of his mind. Or his heart.

* * *

What little light reached him from the lamp on his desk glinted off the amber liquid in the highball glass in his hand as he shook off the clinging bleakness of the memory. Reid turned it this way and that, playing with the different facets and angles.

Having Valerie walk out on him all those years ago had been painful. He’d felt as though the rug had been yanked out from under him because he’d let himself make plans. Plans to marry her, settle down, start a family. All in the natural order, things going along as he’d always expected them to.

But even then, the worst part had been the loss of his child. A child he’d never met, but who’d still left a tiny hole in his soul when he was taken away. He hadn’t known for years that the child had been born and was out there somewhere, being raised by another man. But that only changed the sense of loss; it didn’t necessarily make it better or worse.

Now, though, there was an ache in his chest that just wouldn’t go away. It had started the night Juliet told them they were through and walked out of his life...he’d thought forever. The moment he’d realized she was no longer going to be in his life. Filling his house with her soft voice and feminine laughter. Giving him something—someone—to look forward to at the end of the day, somebody significant to talk with and confide in about more than business and the weather.

The ache was still there when he’d tracked her down at her family’s lake house, though he’d done his best to hide it, ignore it, spackle over it so the pressure didn’t weigh him down and keep him from functioning.

Then she’d told him she was pregnant, and the steady throb had changed to something warm and comforting. Almost like...hope. He was getting a second chance at all those things he’d given up on so many years ago.