by Susan Meier
Well, that just sounded cold and impersonal.
“What I mean is I had fun in Barcelona. You helped me keep my cool over Pierre’s ranch. And I did see Spain and some of Ireland—even though it was dark.”
She sighed. That just shifted it over to too personal.
She said a quick goodbye and hung up before she dropped her phone to a convenient chair and headed to the big bathroom of her luxury suite. She ran water in the tub and used some of the bubble bath available for guests. Twenty minutes later, relaxed and crinkly from the time in the water, she got out and wrapped herself in the big fluffy robe also provided by the hotel.
Tired, she sat on the bed, then lay down—just for a minute—then immediately fell asleep.
She woke with a start two hours later. Gasping, she realized she just barely had enough time to arrange for a car to pick her up before she showered and dressed.
She wasn’t even sure she’d have time for dinner.
Which was fine. She’d had a big lunch. She raced into the shower to wash her hair and would have simply raced through getting dressed, except she picked up the curling iron to do her hair and remembered Barcelona.
Dancing and almost kissing.
She ignored the wave of attraction that tried to steal her breath, plugged in the curling iron and walked to the hotel room phone to call the concierge to see about getting a car to drive her to Pierre’s event.
With those arrangements made, she returned to the bathroom and spent the next forty minutes styling her long, thick hair. She applied makeup, refusing to think of Barcelona, then stepped into the pretty blue gown.
But when she slid into the silver shoes bought by Claudine, Trent’s personal shopper, she couldn’t help thinking of him. About dancing. About watching the other couple kiss and wondering what it would be like to kiss Trent that way. About longing for it. About knowing—with a woman’s intuition that she’d always thought only a myth—that he’d wanted to kiss her, touch her, when they’d returned to his condo.
Her breath stalled as a confusing mix of yearning and self-doubt assaulted her. She told herself to stop thinking about things that couldn’t be. But when she walked by her phone, still sitting on the Queen Anne chair, she looked down and saw there was a message.
Her heart sped up, but she forced it to slow down again. She’d called him and told him to go home. The polite thing to do would be to call her to say goodbye.
Might as well listen to it and get it over with.
She pressed the button to retrieve the message, but it wasn’t Trent. It was her mom.
“Sweetie, where are you? I stopped by your apartment with cinnamon rolls the other morning and you weren’t there. I figured you’d left for work early but when I went by today you weren’t there again. I almost had your superintendent let me in to see if you were alive...but you know me. I’m not one to panic or butt in.”
Sabrina laughed. Her mom panicked and butted in all the time.
“Call me.”
She would. As soon as she talked to Pierre, the return trip to the hotel after the charity event would give her time to call her mom, when everything was settled.
Happy with her plan, she left her room, her essentials in the little silver evening bag Trent’s shopper had bought for her.
Trent.
Sexy, smart, considerate Trent.
She checked her phone. He hadn’t called her.
He had to have gotten her message. Maybe he didn’t think a response was necessary? In fact, in part of her babbling message hadn’t she told him it wasn’t necessary for him to call back?
Wrestling with disappointment that she didn’t want to feel, she headed for the elevator, got in and rode to the lobby. She turned to walk to the concierge desk but stopped dead in her tracks. There, chatting with the exuberant concierge was Trent.
Dressed in a tux.
His curly hair wasn’t its usual wild and free. It had been cut and styled in a short arrangement that accented his sharp features, especially his dark eyes. He was cute, adorable, sexy, with his long, curly locks. With his short hair, he was devastating.
He looked up. Their eyes met and his were not happy.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SEEING SABRINA, TRENT sucked in a breath. She was so perfect it almost hurt to look at her. But he was also furious.
Call him and tell him to go home? Forget what he’d told her about Seth skinning him alive for dumping his baby sister in Europe?
His temper flashed at just the thought.
She sauntered over, the filmy skirt of her gown rippling. “Did you not get my message?”
His anger threatened to spill over. He took a second to stifle it before he said, “I am not dumping Seth’s baby sister in Europe.”
Though right at that moment she didn’t look like anyone’s baby sister. The skirt of the gown might have been full and flowing but the top cupped her breasts and lifted them like an invitation. Her long, silky curls kissed her shoulders.
He shook his head. Yelling at her or drooling over her wouldn’t solve anything. “Your car is here.”
She held his gaze with cautious blue eyes. “Okay.”
He motioned to the door. “Let’s go.”
They headed to the revolving door. She started to speak but he cut her off. “Don’t tell me I’m not coming or that you don’t need me or that I can go home. I started this and I’m seeing it through.”
Early-evening traffic filled the street, providing a cacophony of noise and confusion. Sabrina didn’t argue when Trent climbed into the black sedan with her. The driver closed the car door before walking to the front and sliding behind the steering wheel.
They said nothing for the first ten minutes. He waited for an apology or even for her to start an innocuous conversation to get them beyond his anger. When she said nothing, the dam of his emotions broke.
“It kills me how you cannot understand that if I left you, Seth would be furious.”
“Seth will be on his honeymoon.”
He groaned. Always practical Sabrina would be the death of him. “He’ll hear about this sometime and when he does all he’ll see is that you were in a life crisis and I abandoned you.”
“This isn’t a crisis. It’s a situation.”
He gaped at her. “Does everything have to be so logical for you? Can you just once get mad? That man, Pierre—” he said the name with a disdain that rolled off his tongue like fiery darts “—didn’t deserve the time he got with you.”
No man really deserved her. She was soft and sweet. But hardened by a childhood with a father who expected her to be a perfect little doll. The man she finally let loose with, was honest with, had to be someone special. Someone who would see she deserved to be treated with kindness and love.
Not merely passion.
And right now the feelings he had for her were nothing but passion. He was angry, but she was gorgeous, sexy. He could picture every move of making love to her. He could almost see her reactions. Hear her coos and sighs of delight.
He scrubbed his hand across his mouth. It sounded as if he wanted to be that man. And he had to admit he liked the heat that raced through his veins when he thought about keeping her in his life, but that was wrong. He was a man made to be single, to enjoy life, to forge his own path. She was pregnant with another man’s child, a woman who would need stability to bring order to her world right now.
And if both of those weren’t enough, she was the sister of his best friend, which made her strictly hands-off.
“I know Pierre better than you do. I know how to approach this.”
The reminder that she had to be hands-off stemmed his anger and shut down any fantasy he might have of being the man who brought love to her life. “Yes. Of course. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be butting in.”
Obviously puzzled by his quick change
of heart, she studied him for a few seconds before she said, “I get it. You’re like Seth. You want to fix things.”
He snorted. “Don’t confuse me with your brother. I’m not a fixer. Seth is.”
“He’s like that from spending a lifetime trying to make everything run smoothly when our dad got home.”
“I understand.”
* * *
Sabrina did, too. She always had. But something about saying it out loud, after seeing herself in the red dress and realizing she was only now finding herself, caused puzzle pieces to shift and scatter and then come back together as a totally different picture.
That life of scrambling to please her dad was over.
Not just because he was gone, but because her brothers had moved on. Both were married now, creating their own families.
Her mother had moved on. She was the happiest grandmother on the planet.
And with the birth of her baby, she would move on.
She glanced out the window. Halfway between daylight and dark, the world shimmered with an eerie glow, but she could see trees and grass, a world outside the city on the way to a castle.
A castle. She was going to a castle.
A man on a bike rode the side of the narrow country road. Lights began to flicker on in houses.
The simplicity of it stalled her breath, made her smile. “Ireland is pretty.”
“Just figuring that out?”
She was figuring out a lot of things. Like it had taken years and maybe even a pregnancy for her to shake off the sense that she still had to please everyone.
The inside of the car quieted. Lost in thought, she didn’t say a word. Trent didn’t, either. Finally, the driver turned onto a long lane and after a few minutes pulled the sedan up to the castle.
As she stepped out of the car, she saw that the sky had totally darkened. A blanket of stars twinkled overhead. She leaned back to see them fully, then breathed in a long draught of air. Like the cloudless sky, her brain had cleared. The weirdness of the time since her dad’s death found meaning. She’d wanted to move on but had so many habits ingrained in her behavior that she’d felt like she was treading water. Now that she understood that, bits of her life finally made sense.
“Ready?”
Except him.
Trent’s being in her life made no sense. She wasn’t even sure what he was doing here. Though he’d certainly stirred things up. Made her think. Maybe even helped her to realize it was okay to move on.
She glanced at him. With his shorter, slicked-back hair, his cheekbones were sharp, his dark eyes dominant, crystal-clear and focused. His full lips created a mouth just made for kissing.
The thought should have baffled her, but she’d thought about kissing him before, had wanted him to kiss her...still wanted him to kiss her. That was even more confusing than trying to figure out how to tell Pierre he was about to be a dad.
She straightened her spine. That was exactly why Trent was a distraction. A woman shouldn’t be thinking about a new man until she totally settled things with the last one—
She stopped her thoughts. She couldn’t lie to herself or let herself make up excuses. The truth of why she needed to stay away from Trent had nothing to do with Pierre. She’d never been attracted to a man this way before and it scared her. The hunger inched itself into her thoughts at the worst possible times. And it was wrong. Attracted to him or not, she couldn’t give him what he needed.
She had to ignore everything she felt for him. “Let’s go.”
They walked up a cobblestone path to a huge gray stone castle. Spotlights in the grass surrounding the building highlighted turrets and stained glass. Two men in tuxedos stood by the enormous wooden doors. Obviously original, they’d been sanded and treated with a dark stain.
As Sabrina and Trent approached the doors, the two young men yanked on the handles and pulled them back, revealing the huge, well-lit foyer where men and women milled about, holding champagne flutes as they examined the paintings on view.
Sabrina gasped. “I can see why he didn’t want to miss this.”
Trent shrugged. “As parties go, it’s a seven.” He pointed to a huge picture of Pierre over a fireplace. “Or, if that’s a picture of Pierre, maybe he likes the fact that these people seem to adore him.”
She sniffed. The crowd parted, and Pierre walked out of a side room and into the group like a movie star making a grand entrance.
Trent shook his head. “If he just got here, we have to give him time to mingle.”
“We? Don’t think you’re coming with me.”
“You already told me that. But you should know that if I think things are getting ugly, I’ll be in there so fast he won’t get his next word out.”
He took a champagne flute from a passing waiter. “Could you get a glass of water for the lady? And put it in a flute.” As the waiter walked away, Trent said, “No point making it look obvious that you’re not drinking.”
She calmly said, “Thanks,” but her insides churned. She’d dated Pierre for years, yet she hadn’t known about his ranch, hadn’t known about an event he did every year. When she saw the pretty girls approaching him, hanging on his every word, she knew why. He’d liked her, but he loved this attention.
That registered as a simple fact. She wasn’t jealous or angry. She was finally seeing that she hadn’t been paying much attention to who he really was—because he wasn’t right for her and she’d always known it. She’d dated him for fun and he’d probably spent time with her for the same reason. Now she had to tell him he was going to be a father and she knew he’d be upset or angry. Or both. Their relationship had been free and easy, and creating a child was about as serious as it gets.
The waiter returned with her water. She and Trent walked around, looking at Pierre’s paintings. She found the area in which she could bid on one of them or donate to the charity and she gave the assistant the appropriate information for a sizeable gift.
“Sabrina. How lovely to see you!”
At the sound of Pierre’s voice, she turned—
Just in time to see Trent stiffen.
“Pierre, this is Trent Sigmund. Trent, this is Pierre.” Tall, thin, wiry Pierre. Good-looking enough with his round eyes and black hair, but not really anything special. Not devastating like Trent.
Refusing to think that through, she caught Pierre’s arm. “Is there somewhere you and I can talk privately?”
He glanced at Trent, clearly believing him to be her boyfriend or new lover. “Privately?”
Seeing no reason to disabuse him of a notion about something that was none of his business, she said, “Yes. I have something I need to tell you.”
Though Pierre seemed unhappy about it, he pointed at the door to a room on the left. “Of course.”
She went in ahead of him and he closed the door behind him. “What is this important thing you have to tell me?” He sauntered over and caught her upper arms, his smile warm and intimate. “If you’re looking to get back together, I’m open to a discussion.”
Revulsion rippled through her. Even assuming she had a new boyfriend, Pierre made a pass at her?
She stepped away from him. “No. It’s not that kind of something.” She took a breath. She was so far over him that sharing a child with him took on a new meaning. Something more objective. Something businesslike. “I’m pregnant.”
His mouth fell open. “What?”
“I’m pregnant.”
He stepped back. “I hope you’re not here thinking we’ll get married.”
“No.” She almost laughed at his narcissism, as if she’d gotten pregnant to trap him into marriage. Lord, the thought of a lifetime with him almost made her shudder.
“Oh, really? Why else would you fly across an ocean so soon after your brother’s wedding?”
It took a few seconds to figure o
ut what he meant. “Oh, you think I got all starry-eyed at the wedding?” She shook her head. “No.”
“You’d better not.” He walked even farther away from her. “Because we’d talked this through.”
Her patience with him hit a wall. “You know what? Sometimes you behave like a real child. I’ve always known you filtered everything through the lens of your own benefit, but this is ridiculous.” She stepped into his personal space. “I don’t want anything from you. In fact, if you’d tell me you wanted nothing to do with our child I’d go home a happy woman. I’m perfectly capable of raising this baby alone... No. I will raise him or her alone. But for the baby’s sake, you might want to be involved in her life. If not...” She shrugged. “I’ll give her your name when she’s eighteen and what happens from there will be up to you.”
She turned and began walking out the door but spun around to face him again. “You should probably also grow up before your child turns eighteen.” She almost turned to walk away again, but said, “And get my picture off your piano.”
Pierre’s faced whitened. “What? How did you know about...?”
“Nice ranch, by the way. I should bill you for about a billion dollars’ worth of lunches and dinners...not to mention hotel rooms and airfare.”
She pivoted and walked to the door, which she was sure Pierre had closed. Yet, here it was, open. She strode through, not bothering to close it for Pierre.
Her shoulders straightened. The long breath of air she took filled her lungs with something that felt a lot like freedom. Or empowerment.
She had been young when she began dating Pierre. She might have been smart, but she’d been sheltered, inexperienced...and maybe confused by her parents’ relationship. She forgave herself for missing all the obvious signs that the guy was nothing but an egotistical spoiled brat. But she wasn’t confused now. She felt strong, capable, intelligent—
Like a woman who was right where she was supposed to be, doing exactly what she was supposed to be doing.
* * *
Hiding along the side of the door, Trent had watched it all. Unable to bear the agony of waiting, he’d slid to the entry of the room where she and Pierre talked, turned the doorknob and jumped out of the way when the door opened on its own.