“Molly, I have been thinking about it. For the last five months I’ve pretty much done nothing else but think about it.”
“Thinking about it with your mind closed to all possibilities but the one you want isn’t really thinking, is it?”
Another quick stab of guilt. “Aren’t you supposed to be on my side?”
“Oh, I am, sweetie. You know that.” Molly sighed. “I’m just saying that sooner or later, all secrets are blown. And it might be better if you did it yourself. You know?”
Kate let her head fall back and her gaze fix on the heavy wood beams spanning the ceiling of her cottage-style bungalow. Her friend had a point, she knew, but it was one Kate didn’t want to acknowledge. “Maybe you’re right, Molly. I don’t know. All I’m really sure of is I can’t say anything. The gorgeous bazillionaire wouldn’t be interested anyway.”
“Fine. I won’t say anything else about it.”
Oh, she didn’t believe that. Molly was like a dog with a bone, and she was very protective of her friends and family. If she thought she could help, she’d never give up. But for now, Kate sighed. “Thanks. That’d be great.”
When the doorbell rang, Molly jumped up and said, “I’ll get it. You stay put.”
Kate sipped at her tea, heard the front door open and then heard her friend’s voice go soft and flirty. “Well, hi. Where’d you come from?”
“California,” a familiar, deep voice said flatly. “I’m here to see Kate Wells. Is she home?”
Stomach flipping and churning, mouth going dry as dust, Kate slowly stood up, set her teacup aside and tried to harness the wild gallop of her heartbeat. This could not be happening. She held her breath when Molly said, “And you are?”
“Sean Ryan.”
Kate groaned and half hoped that she was having some sort of weird walking dream. If she pinched herself, maybe Sean wouldn’t really be walking toward her. Molly wouldn’t be behind him mouthing the word wow, and she herself wouldn’t be wearing an old T-shirt and denim shorts.
But it wasn’t a dream. Sean was right in front of her, and his gaze was locked on her belly. “You’re pregnant?”
She dropped one hand to the swell of her baby as if to protect her from hearing her parents argue even before she was born. Instantly, she went for outrage. “Sean, what’re you doing here?”
If you had no defense, she reminded herself, go for a strong offense. All those years watching football games with her dad was finally paying off.
“Seriously? That’s what you have to say?” He stopped, shook his head, then shoved both hands through his hair. “Are you kidding me?”
“Um,” Molly said from behind Sean, “I think I’m gonna go. Looks like you two have some talking to do—”
Kate wanted to reach out and grab hold of her friend as if she was a life preserver. But what was the point? That would only be delaying the inevitable. Sean was here. He knew the truth. Bag open, cat out. So with absolutely no other choice, Kate told herself it was best to just put it all on the table.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Kate told her, still staring at Sean.
Sean never took his gaze from the mound of Kate’s belly, so he didn’t see Molly miming fanning herself because he was so hot. Okay, yes, Kate thought, Sean was truly an amazing male. But right now, it wasn’t desire that was pouring through her, no matter how good it felt to see him again. Panic had the upper hand at the moment.
His blue eyes lifted to meet hers, and she saw the banked fury sizzling there. “Were you ever going to tell me?” he ground out the minute the front door shut behind Molly.
“Probably not,” she admitted. “At least, not unless I absolutely had to.” Kate had considered this situation from every which way for the last five months. While her child grew inside her, Kate had remembered the horrified look on Sean’s face when he’d thought she was trying to trap him into something permanent. Remembered him telling her he had nothing against kids, he just had no interest in having one himself.
“Sean, don’t you remember? You made a point of saying you didn’t want a family. You were appalled at the thought of it. Why would I tell you about my baby?”
He took a step toward her, then stopped dead as if he was too angry to get closer. “You want to use what I said about a hypothetical situation to explain you lying to me for five months? Not gonna work. You should have told me, Kate. Because it’s our baby.”
Kate flushed and kept her protective hand against her belly. “Fine. Technically, you’re right...”
“Technically?” he repeated, eyes wide.
She ignored that. God, she’d imagined this conversation a million times over the last few months, whenever her guilt would get the best of her, and she pictured what might happen if Sean found out. And in none of those imaginings had he looked this...ferocious.
“Maybe I should have told you.”
He choked out a short laugh.
“But it wouldn’t have changed the reality, Sean. The fact is, I want the baby, you don’t.”
He managed to look even more shocked than he had at his first glance at her, and she couldn’t blame him. He was so angry, his blue eyes glinted with icy shards. Deliberately, Kate lifted her chin, met his hard gaze and prepared to do battle.
This baby meant everything to Kate. It was a gift from a universe that had already taken too much from her. She wouldn’t lose this child. Wouldn’t share it with a man who, if he didn’t already, would one day resent its very existence.
“I’ve talked to you dozens of times over the last five months,” he said, his voice quiet, glacial. “Emails. Faxes. Phone calls. Video calls. And not once did you find the time to say ‘By the way, I’m pregnant?’”
Truth was, Kate had been in a kind of fog for the first three months of her pregnancy. At first, she hadn’t believed it. Then she’d realized what a miracle had happened. She was finally going to have the family she’d believed lost to her when Sam died. She didn’t need a husband, but she needed this baby.
* * *
So did Sean.
His heart was pounding, and it felt like he’d taken a hard punch to the gut. He couldn’t seem to catch his breath. His gaze was locked on Kate’s softly rounded belly as his brain tried to process, think, figure. He hadn’t expected this. Sure, he’d known something was up, which was why he’d come to Wyoming the minute Mike and Jenny got back from their honeymoon. But Sean had thought it was a problem with the hotel. Or the crew. Anything but this.
They’d used condoms. What was the point of using them if people got pregnant anyway?
Hell, now he knew how Brady Finn had felt when he’d traveled to Ireland to check on the hotel there, only to find that Aine was pregnant. At the time, Sean had taken Aine’s side in all of that, telling Brady to get over it and do the right thing. Apparently the universe was getting a kick out of landing him in Brady’s exact position.
Scrubbing one hand across his face, Sean fought past the fury choking him and tried to steady himself. The woman who had been haunting him for months was carrying his child. That was fact. That was what he had to focus on now.
But even as he thought it, his past rose up in his mind to remind him that it wasn’t the first time he’d found himself in this position. As he fought them, images from ten years before swam to the surface of his mind as if finally released from behind a thick dam.
He’d done a year of college in Italy, and there he’d fallen in love with Adrianna. She was beautiful, smart, funny. And everything was perfect. Until the night she told him she was pregnant. He still felt shame over his reaction, though over the years he’d tried to explain it away by saying he was young. Stupid. Selfish.
But the bottom line was, she had been excited and saw a shiny, happy future for the two of them. All Sean had seen were chains. They had argued viciously and two weeks later, she miscarried the baby she had wanted so badly. Sean went to see her in the hospital, but she turned him away. He could still see her lying on that narrow bed, her beautiful face as white as the sheets beneath her. Her eyes were filled with shadows of pain and a single tear tracked along her cheek.
“Go away,” Adrianna had said, turning her face to the wall so she wouldn’t have to look at him.
Sean clutched the huge bouquet of roses he’d brought with him and tried again to reach her. To make her see him. To make her realize just how badly he felt. “Adrianna, I’m sorry about the baby.”
She spared him a glance then, and in that brief motion he saw that her dark eyes were empty. “You are not sorry, Sean. You didn’t want our child. Well, now he is gone so you can be happy. But be happy somewhere else. I don’t want you here. I don’t want you to come back.”
The smell of the hospital, the rumble of nurses and doctors being called over the communication system, the soft moan from an old woman in a bed across the room—none of it mattered. The only thing that mattered was Adrianna, and he was losing her.
His heart breaking, Sean stood his ground, fist tightening on the flowers he held, determined to make her understand why he’d reacted as he had. Make her forgive him. “Adrianna,” he whispered, “we can get past this.”