“I’d rather not talk about her right now.”
Sure. He was going back into that shell of his, just as he’d done after the scandal had reared its ugly head.
But she wasn’t about to let that happen.
“Just today,” she said, “you told me that you knew you’d made a mistake in how you handled Eli. Now you’re going to deal with me the same—”
“Please don’t, Mina.”
It would’ve hurt her less if it’d been an actual slap. As it was, she felt the mortifying sting of it.
She pulled the sheets up over her chest, and that forced his hand away from her and the baby.
Already, she felt abandoned.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll leave it alone then. But we’re going to have to talk about this sometime.”
“I just want to…” He was staring at the ceiling. “Jeez, I don’t want this to matter—the way the baby was conceived.”
It went unsaid, but she knew he was mulling over how she’d presented the news to him—belatedly. Maybe even, according to him, cruelly.
“But it does matter,” she said, so eager to get past this if he would let them.
She rose up to a kneeling position, still covering herself with the sheets. His hands seemed so empty as he rested them on his stomach.
“I want to hear everything you have to say,” she said. “I want you to lay it all out there so we can take care of it now, not later, after it’s had time to fester. Tell me what’s going on with you.”
He pressed his lips together.
“Please,” she said.
Then he sent her a long glance that she couldn’t quite understand, sat up, got out of the bed to put on his pants. She hadn’t meant to drive him away—not tonight.
But she couldn’t live with a partner who resented her, either.
“Is this about lying?” she asked.
“I…” He dug a hand into his hair. “Damn it, Mina, I just have to wonder how long you would have waited to tell me.”
“Until I thought you could handle the news. And maybe I should’ve waited even longer, until after your wounds with Eli had mended a little more.”
“You didn’t trust me.” What might’ve sounded petulant from another man only seemed rock-hard coming from him, as if his reaction had been written in stone a long time ago and it’d been fruitless to try to change it, even for her, the woman he supposedly loved.
She swallowed, clutching those sheets now.
All she could say was, “You can’t compare this to what your mother did. I would never have done that to you. It’s not even remotely the same.”
But Mina could see that no matter how happy he’d seemed when he’d first heard the news, as the reality had set in, so had the hurt.
His mind was popping with so many different things, right or wrong, that he didn’t know what to think.
There was genuine joy at the baby they were going to have, and that’s what had come out when she’d announced the news.
But then there was the resentment that had followed—an emotion he didn’t want to have, even though it wouldn’t leave him.
He’d thought he’d gotten over his trials and tribulations, but here he was, still a prisoner of them.
But there was something else eating away at him that he hadn’t expected, a dark mass that was just now taking shape.
He recalled when Mina had told him about her ex-boyfriend back at the Utah resort. How she’d said her family had despised the other guy after the break up.
In light of that, had she worried about bringing Chet, the father of her child, home? Had she ever wondered how her all-important family was going to react to the Barron bastard who couldn’t be any good for her, either?
Had she been embarrassed about who he was and how that would affect her and their child?
They were over-the-top thoughts, but he couldn’t help thinking them. He’d gone through too much rejection—just like the illegitimate child that Eli had never claimed until he’d been forced to do so. Just like the man who’d been lied to his entire life.
And Mina had lied to him, too.
She wrapped the sheets around her even more, covering all the skin she could, and that slammed him hard, as if she was retreating from him when, just shortly before, they’d been as together as two people could be.
With a child besides.
He thought of the moment he’d heard the news, and it folded him up inside, warm and bright.
They were going to have a baby.
He told himself to go back to her right now, to talk this out. But he’d been optimistic before and look where it’d gotten him.
Nowhere.
Maybe he just needed time…. Maybe it’d just be best to get out of here so he could breathe and think….