He expelled a long slow breath. “We need to talk.”
She waited, half-afraid/half-curious about how this’d play out.
A beat passed. “First off, I wouldn’t have taken the job if I woulda known you were pregnant.”
“What would you have done? I didn’t find out until the end of November. By then I was a little more than three months along. And I did call your parents’ house to talk to you. I had no idea what I should do when your brother said you’d be out of touch until the following summer.”
He scowled. “You talked to Kane?”
“Briefly. I wasn’t comfortable having him pass on the message about your impending fatherhood.”
“So you kept the information to yourself?”
“What other choice did I have?”
“What choice did you have? Jesus, Sky, that’s the problem. You seem to think you get to make all the choices and keep all the control in this relationship. You have since day one.” Kade shoved a hand through his hair. “I’ll admit I made a mistake in not tellin’ you I wasn’t Kane. But you cut me off without lettin’ me explain my side of things.”
She bristled. “You pretended to be someone else. I slept with you thinking you were Kane. How is that my fault?”
“It isn’t.”
“At least we agree on that point.”
Kade sighed. “Skylar. I don’t wanna fight with you.”
When it occurred to her he’d used the word relationship, she looked at him oddly.
He stared right back, completely nonplussed. “Does anyone ever mix you up with your sister?”
“No. Even before India became the tattooed woman we weren’t hard to tell apart. Different eye color, facial structure, body type.” India was lean and muscular and sometimes Skylar resented that she’d been cursed with a rounder, womanly physique, but they were easily distinguishable from one another.
“This ain’t an excuse, but you don’t have any idea how that feels. Not only am I saddled with an identical twin, but we also look just like our other McKay cousins in three counties. Some folks act as if we’re all interchangeable. So I’ve heard ‘one of them McKay twins’ or ‘one of those wild McKay boys’ my whole life. Seems I don’t have an identity beyond my last name.
“Might sound stupid, but I’d convinced myself that for once, the name I had, the name you knew me by, didn’t matter, because you were interested in the man inside. Yeah, I realize it was dumb. But I didn’t have any idea on how to go about making it right back then.”
She waited, unsure of where he was going with this and unsure of how she’d respond.
Kade reached for her hand. “Except I can make it right now. Let’s start over.”
“It’s too late.”
“It’s never too late. Come on. I’ll go first.” He formally shook her hand. “Howdy, little lady. I’m Kade McKay.”
Skylar laughed.
“You shore are purty. Anyone ever told you that you have a beautiful laugh? Like bluebells in springtime.”
“Kade.”
“You maybe wanna go out with me sometime?” He grinned and gave her an exaggerated wiggle of his eyebrows. “Or do you just wanna skip all that normal datin’ stuff and have my baby?”
She laughed again. It’d been a long time since she’d made that carefree sound. She’d forgotten how Kade had tried to cajole her out of a mood during their dates, if she’d had a stressful day at the office. Not only was he sweet, he was the rare person who could make her laugh. She squeezed their joined hands. “You goof-ball.”
“C’mere.” He tugged her until she fell across his lap. His arms came around her, keeping her close. “You looked like you could use a hug.”
She twisted her neck to gape at him. “You remember that?”
“I remember everything. I had nothin’ but time to think about it. All of it.”
Even when her mouth said, “This isn’t a good idea,” Sky’s attempt to squirm away was half-hearted at best.
“Relax. I ain’t gonna maul you. We’ll be less apt to argue if we’re close like this. Plus, if I have hold of your hand, you won’t be tempted to take a swing at me, since rumor has it you’re a fighter.”
She wondered where he’d heard that. Did she have a reputation around town as a hard-nosed business woman? Cold, efficient and emotionless? No matter, for now, she’d let him soothe her with simple human contact, just for a minute or two.
“You take Eliza to work with you every day?”
“Yeah. She’s usually pretty good and it helps I can set my own hours. I try to keep us both on a daily schedule. If I have to be on a conference call, or meet with salespeople and distributors, I can leave her with the onsite daycare.”