Because of Them: Heartfelt Romance

by Melissa Macomb

  While I was talking, I crossed the room until I was close enough to touch him. God, how I want to touch him. He looks shocked at what I said. I guess no one’s ever told him their truth before. Take that, asshole.

  Standing in front of him, with my hands on my hips, I finally look him in the eye. “That’s how I’m doing, thank you so much for asking.”

  I could practically see what he’s thinking from the emotions that crossed his face. It seemed like he was embarrassed or ashamed at first, but by the time I’m done, he looks just as angry as I do.

  “Really? I used you? Are you sure it’s not the other way around? Are you sure you didn’t distract me by screwing me, then, the first chance you got, you kidnapped the twins like you kept saying you would? Sounds pretty hypocritical to me, Contessa Stephenson, and premeditated. Yeah, I’m feeling pretty used myself.”

  The nerve of that smug bastard. I’m seething and about to let fly again when Mrs. MacThomas comes in and forces her short, but ample body between us. I know she’s really upset because she lapses into Scottish.

  “Noo, jist haud on! Haud yer wheesht!” The words are gibberish to us but neither of us has any doubt that she’s telling us to shut up. She’s breathing heavily and her hair is falling out of its usual tight bun, and seeing how upset she is makes me embarrassed at my behavior. I open my mouth to apologize to her, not to Bram, but she holds up her hand to further shush me.

  “Both of yer’s bum’s oot the windae. Mind the bairns.”

  The bairns. Oh crap. I’ve forgotten all about the twins. They probably overheard me and Bram fighting. Now I’m really ashamed of myself. Thank God Mr. Perry’s already gone, or he’d have taken both the kids and run away as fast as he could.

  “I’m sorry, Rhona. You’re right. Are the kids okay? Bram was just leaving, so there won’t be any more fighting.”

  The look she gives me clearly says she thinks I’m an idiot. Her words confirm it.

  “Bram is not just leaving. The two of ye are overdue for a good talk. Mind that I said talk and not a shouting match, ye ken?”

  Both of us stand and watch awkwardly as she leaves the room. I know she’s right, but I just don’t know if I’m ready to have this talk with Bram. I don’t want to tell him about the baby yet. I want to share it with him when it’s good news, not something that I’m worried about how he’ll take it. I don’t know if that day will ever come, but I know for sure it isn’t today. He looks just as reluctant as I do.

  “Look, Bram, yes, we need to talk. But clearly this isn’t the right time for it. I’m so tired of it all.”

  “What do you mean? What is ‘the all’ that you’re so tired of?”

  Because he looks genuinely unsure what I mean, I decide to answer him honestly.

  “I’m tired of not knowing where I stand in your life, Bram. I need to know for sure how you see things between us. Whatever it is, I can accept it. I just can’t accept living my life in limbo. And if you don’t know how you feel, then I’m just going to have to move on, because this place I’m in right now, it sucks, and I just can’t keep living this way.”

  “Okay, Tessa. I was going to tell you anyway. You’ll want to sit down for this. It’s a long story.”

  39

  Bram

  Now that the moment is here, I don’t know how to even begin. Tessa is sitting in front of me, looking so good and so beautiful, I just can’t say the words that might keep her away from me forever. I have to tell her. But first, I’m going to tell her how I feel about her. Let her judge me knowing all the facts.

  I draw a deep breath and let it out slowly, as much to delay, even for just a second. I wish now I’d prepared for this like I do for a business meeting. I’ve never felt so out of depth before. Because I want to be able to look in her eyes when I tell her I love her and she’s looking at the floor, I kneel down in front of her and take her hands in mine. I’m hopeful when she doesn’t immediately pull them away.

  “You want to know where you stand in my life? Tessa, you are my life, you and Archie and Abbie, you mean everything to me. You’re the first thing I think of when I wake up. I wonder if you’ve slept well, or, if like me, you’re awake until all hours wishing that we could be together. During the day, I look at a piece of paper and see your smile, or the curve of the back of your knee, or your sweet brown eyes, or, God help me, your perfect body on top of me. I hear your laughter in my empty apartment, and the sound of your bare feet on the stone floor of my hallway. I smell your honeysuckle perfume when I take a shower and when I’m in bed at night, I feel your warm hands on my chest. I love you, Tessa. I miss you. I need you. I can’t live without you. Does that answer your question?”

  What I see in her eyes gives me hope that maybe she feels something for me, too. I don’t expect her to love me, hell, I know I’m not all that lovable. I just need her to give me a chance. But she’s got to know everything first.

  “Oh, Bram.” She squeezes my hands, which are still holding hers. The pain in my stomach is back because I know what I’m about to say is going to wipe that smile off her face and into next week.

  “Wait, Tessa. There’s something else I need to tell you. I just wanted you to know how I feel first, because after you hear this, you’re probably going to hate me. I know I do. And I hate that I’m having to spoil this moment, but you deserve to know. I should’ve already told you.” I can feel myself stalling again, and I hate like hell that Tessa looks guarded again, clearly straight back to not trusting me.

  “Do you remember the woman that interrupted us that day in the apartment?”

  “You mean Katrina Rutherford, the woman in all those pictures online, the woman that you’re engaged to?”

  I’m surprised she knows Kat’s name, but thinking about it, of course she does. I know she saw the pictures and Kat’s name is right there along with them. I’m an idiot, too, for not realizing she’d think the engagement might be real. No wonder she thinks all this bad shit about me. I’ve not even considered what it must look like from her point of view. I’ve been too busy seeing it from mine.

  “Yeah, that’s her, but Tessa, we’re not engaged. Kat staged all that. First, she blackmailed me into hosting that dinner party, then she arranged for all those misleading pictures to be taken, then she released them online.”

  “Exactly how does someone go about blackmailing you to host a dinner party with them? What does she have on you that she could do that, and why would she even want to? You’re not making much sense, Bram.”

  “I told you, it’s a long story.”

  “I’ve got all day, but my patience doesn’t, so you’d better keep talking.”

  Fuck. This is harder than I thought it’d be. “Okay, here goes. Kat and I had a thing a while back. It was before I met you, I swear, and I haven’t slept with her since we met. I haven’t slept with anyone but you since we met.”

  “Well, there’s some consolation in that, I guess.”

  The sarcasm in her voice isn’t lost on me. “The dinner party was something she planned to make it look to the world, to her world that is, that our relationship is more than it really is. I don’t know why; you’d have to ask her. I guess because she thought I’d just go along with things and gradually we’d be dating. See, she knows I don’t date one woman exclusively.”

  When I say that, Tessa gives me a look that plainly tells me everything I’m saying is vindicating every bad thing she’s ever thought about me.

  “Anyway, she always sells pics of her events to online society pages. A lot of people in her circle do, so I didn’t think anything about the photographer, except when she kissed me and he took the picture, I told her not to put it online, but she did it anyway. I never wanted you to have to see any of that.” Tessa is looking really angry the more I talk about the dinner party, so I quickly move on. “It was all just staged for effect, down to the phony engagement ring. There was only one reason I was even at that dinner party, and that was to meet Thompson Davis.” I have
to tell her about Davis and the expansion. I’ve got big plans for that, plans that include her and the kids, but this isn’t the time to tell her. She’s not ready to listen.

  “Davis is Kat’s godfather, but he also happens to be someone I’ve wanted to do business with for quite some time. He could really help me take my company to the next level, and Kat knows this. That’s how she lured me to the dinner party. Before that, I’d already told her I didn’t want anything to do with her anymore. So, I went to that party purely to meet Davis, which I did. Then she pulled all this other crap, and it’s a huge clusterfuck.”

  Tessa is sitting there, not saying anything, and for once, I can’t read her face. Here goes.

  “When you showed me the pictures and kicked me out, the first thing I did was call Kat and told her off. I told her to go online and recant the pictures and make sure it’s clear that we aren’t engaged. Because we aren’t. I don’t love her. I never have and I never will. I would be more than happy to never see her or hear her name again. The problem is that day on the phone, she told me something that meant I had to go back to New York.” I pause, wishing like hell I didn’t have to say these next words.

  “She told me she’s pregnant, and that it’s mine.”

  40

  Tessa

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Everything Bram is saying seems to be coming from a person I don’t know. I don’t want to think about what he’s just said. I can’t think about that yet. So I think about the dinner party. He used Kat’s connection to this Davis guy and let her think she had a chance with him so he could meet him. Okay, so the woman’s a bitch, but that doesn’t make Bram using her any easier to take. And Bram himself said he doesn’t date just one woman. I’ve known that all along, but now I know it without any of the doubts, hopes, or what ifs that I’ve been letting creep in. It might as well be in black and white. I’ll never be the only woman in Bram’s life. Especially if Katrina Rutherford is having his baby, too.

  My ears start ringing and I feel faint. My hand goes involuntarily to my stomach, where another little baby is growing, and I feel sick. Really sick, like I’m going to throw up. I snatch my hands away from Bram’s and stand up, but I move too fast, and I feel myself sway. Afraid I’m going to fall, I reach out for something to hold onto. In a split second, Bram is on his feet and steadying me with his strong arms around me. I want so much to just melt into those arms, but I can’t stop hearing all the awful things he just told me. The words just keep echoing in my head and all I can think about is Kat Rutherford having Bram’s baby, so I pull away and push him off of me at the same time.

  “Get out.”

  “Tessa, please, you have to believe me that I don’t care anything about her. I never would’ve even given her the time of day if I’d met you first. There’s been no one since I met you, there couldn’t be. I love you, Tessa, please.”

  Just one hour ago, when my home pregnancy confirmed my suspicion, I would’ve given just about anything to hear him say those words. Now they just ring hollow in my ears. I feel numb all over, even in my brain, like everything is just shutting down. This is just all too much to take in right now, and the nausea is coming and going in waves. I feel all the fight just leave me. All I’m left with is a terrible, overwhelming sadness, for all of us. We could have built something so beautiful, Bram, me, the twins and this new little one.

  Bram must sense there’s a shift in my mood because his arms go around me again and he helps me sit back down. I let him because I don’t know what else to do. He kneels down in front of me again and I have a wild second where I’m afraid he’s going to propose. I don’t even know what I would say now.

  “Please, Tessa. Don’t hate me. Give me a chance to show you how much I love you. I’ll do anything you want. We can make this right, I promise. I’m trying to get Kat to take a paternity test, and as soon as I find out that baby’s not mine, she’s out of my life for good.”

  He looks so sincere that I almost believe him. I reach out and touch his jaw, feeling the razor stubble beneath my hand, and the warmth of his skin. I look into those beautiful, gold-flecked hazel eyes and wish things could be different. I love him. But I’ll never be able to trust him.

  “I can’t, Bram. I know you’re sorry, I can see it written all over your face, but that’s not enough. I’ll never be able to trust you. And if Katrina Rutherford is really having your baby, you need to focus on that. It’s not the baby’s fault.” I almost choke over the words as I say them. “We have the hearing on Monday. If you stay in town over the weekend, of course you can spend as much time with the twins as you want, but I can’t be around you right now. Please go.”

  My heart aches as I watch him go. Part of me just wants to melt into his arms and not care about a woman in New York, not care about the possible other baby. Part of me just wants to beg him to forget about everything and everyone else and just love me. But that’s not the woman I want to be, so I send him away before I cave.

  I’m so tired. I know some of it’s because of the pregnancy, but the rest of it is just tiredness of spirit. Things are so complicated, and Bram only knows part of it. There’s no way I could tell him about our baby after hearing about the possibility that he’s also having one with someone else, but I’m going to have to tell him sooner or later.

  At least it’ll be another couple of months before I start showing. That gives me time. Not to mention that after Monday, Bram will probably be right back on his jet to New York City. He said he’s ‘trying’ to get Kat to take a paternity test. She must be resisting it. I mean, I would, too. He better not even try to pull that shit with me. If he doesn’t believe me that it’s his, he doesn’t deserve that baby. Part of me knows I’m not being fair to him. After all, he’s been tricked by Kat before. But I’m not ready to cut him any slack.

  The twins come running in and start crying when they realize Bram’s already left and he didn’t say goodbye. That really makes me feel like shit. I should’ve stuck with my original plan and offered to let him spend the day with them.

  “Ye all right, love? Want a cup of tea?”

  I let her fuss over me because it feels good. She’s like a mother to me, now, and I appreciate her so much.

  “I couldn’t tell him, Rhona.” The kids are still in the room with us, so I’m not any more explicit than that, but I don’t need to be. She knows exactly what I mean.

  “Well, ye’ll know when the time is right. I heard a little of what was said, ye ken? The walls are thin, I wasn’t earwigging.”

  “Then you know.”

  “Aye. I’m sorry, love.”

  “Yeah, me too. But I’ve got to shake it off, for their sake, at least. Speaking of, will you contact him and see if he wants to spend the day with them? I was going to ask him while he was here, but after…” I couldn’t go into it again, so I just let my voice trail off.

  “Of course, my dear. Leave it with me. You just go upstairs when he comes, and I’ll deal with him. No need for you to see him until Monday if that’s the way you want it.”

  “Thanks, Rhona. I’m so glad you’re here, I don’t know what we’d do without you.” I can tell my words embarrass her, but she’s pleased, too, and that makes me happy. “I’m going to go lay down for a while.”

  “Oh, aye, ye need yer rest and it’s been a rough morning. I’ll wake ye fer lunch, shall I?”

  And with that, I leave my little world in the nanny’s capable hands and fall asleep as soon as my head touches my pillow.

  41

  Bram

  I’ve never felt as empty as I did walking away from Tessa’s house yesterday morning. I can’t blame her for anything. This is all a huge mess of my own making. Sure, Kat is a conniving bitch, but I knew better than to get involved with her in the first place. No, this is all my fault and I’ve got to fix it. I hate to think of my sister looking down on me, seeing how royally I’ve fucked up. I’m sorry, Mary. If you’ve got any pull from where you are, please help me. I promi
se, if I get another chance, I won’t screw it up again.

  The time spent with the twins yesterday afternoon was bittersweet. I’d really hoped to at least see Tessa again, but Mrs. MacThomas was keeper of the gates, and there was no way she was letting me in. She gave me a sympathetic pat on the arm when I asked about Tessa, but she didn’t tell me anything about her state of mind. No, ranks have been closed against me on that front. But at least I got to spend time with my niece and nephew. I arranged with Mrs. MacThomas to go back today and pick them up. We’re spending the whole day together today, and I did some online research in preparation.

  Yesterday, the kids had wanted to go bowling, but we really didn’t have enough time. Mrs. MacThomas had already asked me to take Archie for a haircut, but their eyes lit up when I told them I’d take them today. I picked out a bowling alley in what looks like a really cool area of Oklahoma City called Bricktown. There’s plenty to do there besides bowling, so I figure we’ll be spending most of the day there. There’s even a river that runs through it and boat rides are on offer, so we can be outside some, as well, and enjoy the early fall weather.

  With a tingle of excitement in my gut, I head for Tessa’s house. There’s the slim possibility that she won’t be hiding away in her room today. I doubt it, but I can hope. The weather today couldn’t be more perfect. Even though it’s September, it’s still really warm. I don’t get the chance much in New York to dress as casually I can get away with here in Oklahoma, so I took full advantage this morning and put on a pair of khaki shorts with my polo shirt. I just bought them yesterday, especially for today. I chose the yellow-gold shirt because Tessa once told me that the color brings out the gold-flecks in my eyes. I don’t know what she’s talking about, but if there’s any chance she’ll see me in it, I need all the help I can get.