Loving Mercy

by Dena Christy

  “And I’m guessing since you think you might be pregnant that more than talking happened.”

  Mercy nodded as she took a bite of her soup. Fortunately, her stomach was going to be able to handle it. She had eaten little in the past few days and if she was pregnant, she needed to get some nutrition into her body.

  “I have never been so scared in my life than when we were running in the woods, trying to get away from Nathan. And even though Rafe came in time, all I could think of was that we could have been killed. You could have died, I could have died. Add to that the humiliating feeling of being used, and I was in a pretty dark place that night. I wanted to feel something other than the fear so I kissed him. And those kisses led to other things, and we ended up going to bed together. We were safe and used protection, but if I am pregnant, then it obviously failed.”

  And sleeping with Alex had blotted out the fear and the humiliation, leaving her with only the joy and pleasure he’d brought to her. At least until she’d woken at the crack of dawn and realized what she’d done. She’d used him to blot out her feelings, and shame over that had made her slink away like some sort of criminal.

  “And how was the morning after? Did you two talk and agree that it was a one off?” Honor took a bite of her sandwich and Mercy felt a blush heat her cheeks. Her friend saw it and frowned at her. “You might as well tell me all of it.”

  “We didn’t talk because I left before he could wake up. And I’ve been hiding out at my place for the better part of six weeks. Today is the first time I’ve seen him since that night.”

  “Oh, Mercy, why would you do that?”

  “Because I freaked out a little when I woke up and saw him lying there asleep. Every time I get together with someone it all turns to shit, and when I looked at him, I thought if I didn’t get out of there I was going to start down the same track that I always go down. That I would jump too fast and it would all turn to crap.”

  Honor sighed.

  “You know you’re going to have to talk to him now, don’t you? You will tell him that he’s the father if you are pregnant?”

  Mercy nodded. She knew what it was like to spend a childhood without a father and that was not something she wanted for her baby. So hiding her pregnancy from Alex was not something that she would do.

  “Once I know for sure, I’ll tell him.”

  “And I suggest you find out for sure today. No more wondering, no more ifs. Go to the drugstore and get a test, take it and plan your next move accordingly.”

  2

  Alex knew he should be tired, he’d just put in a full shift at the bar and he’d gotten his wish. Things had picked up considerably once dinner time had rolled around and he’d been busy enough to keep thoughts of Mercy at bay. Unfortunately, it hadn’t lasted. By the time he’d locked up at the bar, she was right back inside his head as if she’d never left.

  “You need to fix that. You need to move on.” His voice sliced through the silence in his truck as he turned down his driveway.

  Maybe Roger was right, maybe he needed to find a mate. He was certain that it wasn’t as easy as the old man claimed. Finding someone wasn’t like going out and buying a new car, but maybe he should put himself out there. Be open to the possibilities.

  His mouth gave a twist when he thought of going out to find a mate and the only face his mind wanted to supply was Mercy's. Looking for someone else was the whole point, to get her out of his head.

  With a sigh, he stopped his truck and turned off the engine. He wouldn’t find anyone new tonight, and maybe things would be better tomorrow when his head was clearer. Maybe seeing her today and deciding to move on from that night six weeks ago would be the start of him forgetting about her.

  He got out of the truck and scrubbed his hand over his face. His steps were heavy when he went up the steps of his porch to his small house in the woods. The night was silent around him, and while he normally liked the stillness of his own little place in the world, tonight it did nothing to quell the restlessness inside him. Why the hell did she have to show up at the bar today?

  He put the key in the lock and was about to twist it when a scent came to him. Recognition clicked in his brain and he closed his eyes for a second. He was going crazy. He had to be. On top of thinking about her all the time, he was smelling her now too?

  He turned his head in the smell's direction, fully expecting to see nothing there. He blinked for a second, sure that his mind must be playing tricks on him. A short distance away, in one of the chairs he had on the porch, was a huddled figure. Shadows covered the spot where she was sitting, but he was certain it was her.

  A frown pulled his brows tight together, and he turned his head to look at his driveway. Her car was parked off to the side, not too far from the passenger side of his truck. How the hell had he missed it? He must have been on autopilot when he’d pulled in here. He rarely got late night visitors, so perhaps his brain had been too busy thinking about her to bother paying attention.

  “Hello, Alex.” Her voice was soft and his jaw clenched.

  So she was real, and not a figment of his imagination. For a second he thought he’d rather she was a phantom instead of a flesh and blood woman sitting on his porch. It would be so much easier to deal with that. Hell, he’d been dealing with it since she’d taken off from his bed that night.

  He turned and walked toward her. He towered over her and tried to penetrate the shadows to read her face. She looked up at him but there wasn’t enough light to give him any insight into what the hell she was thinking.

  “What are you doing here?” The words came out in a curt growl and she seemed to shrink back in the chair.

  He knew he should feel bad, but couldn’t bring himself to. Six weeks and nothing, and now he was seeing her twice in one day. If she was going to pull stunts like the one she had that night and then show up weeks later, she shouldn't expect him to roll out the red carpet because she graced him with her presence.

  “I was hoping we could talk.”

  Oh, so now she wanted to talk? He would have been open to talking to her at any point in the last six weeks, but now? The time for talking was over.

  “I don’t really see the point in that, do you? I’m sorry you came all this way for nothing.” He turned away and stomped down the porch. To his surprise, she didn’t move, just sat there in the chair. He turned his head to look back at her, and she hugged herself on the outside of her heavy coat as she shivered.

  “Please, Alex. It’s important. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.”

  Alex sighed as he turned his head back to face the door. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want her in his house again.

  It was bad enough that for the past few days he’d been contemplating getting a new bed because all he could think about every time he climbed in it was making love to her. He didn’t want any more memories of her in his house. The whole point of his new resolve was to forget about her and move on to someone else.

  But there was something in her voice that stopped him from telling her to get lost. It wasn’t in his nature to be a jerk, so he unlocked the door and pushed it open.

  “Well, I guess you better come in.” He stood by the door and waited while she got out of the chair and came toward him.

  She was a little bit of a thing, only coming up to his shoulder and he remembered how well they’d fit together that night. The last time she was here he hadn’t planned on sleeping with her.

  She’d been vulnerable and scared, and like a sucker, he fell for it. She was the one who’d instigated the kissing, and he’d known the whole time that he should put the breaks on. But her lips had been sweet, her flesh even sweeter and he couldn’t stop himself.

  She brushed by him and went into the house, and his gut clenched when the scent of her shampoo drifted toward him. It sent memories slamming through him, of them naked in his bed, with her body on top of his. His hands had tangled in that rich black hair of hers and he’d devoured her mouth. His
appetite for her had known no limits, and even now, in the cold of his front porch, the smell of her shampoo brought the hunger back.

  He walked into the house and flicked on the light switch by the door and saw her standing there waiting for him. She flinched when the door closed harder than necessary. His jaw clenched when he saw how she huddled inside her coat as if she was trying to make herself as small as possible.

  “Take your coat off and stay a while.” Alex shrugged out of his coat, and it didn’t escape his notice that she still wouldn’t look at him. What the hell was her problem?

  He hung his coat on the hook and walked out of the vestibule and into his living room. He flicked on a lamp by the sofa but was reluctant to sit. Whatever she had to say, she could do it quickly and he could move on with his life. Closure was what he needed and perhaps seeing her in his house again might be what gave him that.

  Standing in the middle of the room, he crossed his arms over his chest and waited for her. For someone who’d shown up at his place in the middle of the night, claiming she needed to talk to him, she sure seemed to be taking her sweet ass time getting to it.

  With a conscious effort, he forced himself to relax and let his arms fall to his side. Whatever it was, it was important enough for her to come here after not seeing him since that night. Perhaps she seemed so skittish because he hadn’t exactly been welcoming.

  She walked into the living room, and for the first time since he’d glanced at her on the porch, he could really see her. Her face was bathed in the soft light coming from the lamp. She was pale and her eyes were huge. When she finally turned her eyes to him, he saw genuine fear in their depths and it was like a match to the powder keg inside him.

  What the hell did she have to fear? He’d done nothing to her to make her afraid, and he finally lost his patience.

  “Is this some kind of game to you? Do you get some twisted pleasure in tying me up in knots? I wake up alone in my bed and don’t see you or hear from you for six weeks. You show up where I work, won’t look at me and run away to the bathroom as if I make you sick. And now I find you on my front porch, claiming that we need to talk and you look at me as if you’re scared to death. What did I do to you, Mercy? I really want to know, because for the life of me I don’t get what I did to make you act like this.”

  His voice bounced against the walls, and his jaw tightened as he clenched his teeth. His outburst only made things worse.

  Her lower lip trembled, and her face crumpled a little as her eyes filled up.

  “I’m sorry.” He could barely hear her, and as she stood there trembling with a tear running down her cheek, he felt like the world's biggest asshole. He had no idea what was going on with her, didn’t know why she’d left that morning. And yelling at her wouldn’t get him the answer to why she was here now.

  He closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath and released it slowly. When he opened his eyes again, he slowly approached her like she was a skittish animal. To her credit, she didn’t flinch away from him, so at least she wasn’t afraid that he’d hurt her physically.

  “I’m the one who's sorry. I’ve been ugly lately and shouldn’t have yelled at you. Come and sit on the sofa and we’ll talk. Do you want a drink or something?”

  She shook her head and moved to sit on the sofa. She brushed her hands on her cheeks, and he felt worse for making her cry. It had hurt when he’d woken to find her gone but that didn’t make it okay for him to lash out at her.

  He joined her on the sofa, making sure there was a small distance between them. As much as he wanted to touch her, to offer her comfort when she was so visibly upset, that was what had gotten him in this mess. So he would keep his hands to himself, listen to what she had to say and move on with his life once she was gone.

  “So you came all this way to talk, what is it you wanted to say?”

  She looked up at him and swallowed. There was an obvious reluctance in her demeanor. “I don’t know how to say this without just coming out and saying it. I’m pregnant.”

  Of all the things he expected her to say, that wasn’t it. He blinked several times as he tried to wrap his head around the words that had come out of her mouth.

  Pregnant. She was pregnant.

  “I think I’ll go get that drink now.”

  He got up off the sofa, moving like a robot as he went to the kitchen where he kept a bottle of whiskey. He felt like she’d launched a grenade in the middle of his life as he poured himself two fingers of whiskey in a glass. He gulped down the drink and as the liquor burned a trail down his throat to his stomach he knew moving on from that night was out of the question now.

  Well, that went about as well as she expected it to. To say that her news was a shock to him was an understatement. If it wasn’t for the baby in her belly, she’d probably want to have a drink too. Of course, if there was no baby she wouldn’t be here.

  She waited patiently on the sofa for him to return. She’d had more time to get used to the idea of a baby than he had. He would need time to catch up before they talked about how they were going to move forward.

  It was hard to believe that under her still flat stomach that there was a life in there. No matter what happened with Alex, she’d known as soon as she’d seen the positive results on the pregnancy tests she’d gotten from the drugstore, that she wanted this baby. It may not have been planned, it may not be coming at the best time in her life, but it was definitely wanted. At least by her. She wasn’t sure about Alex, and if he didn’t want to be involved it would hurt, but she wouldn’t push.

  He came back into the living room, slowly as if he was still a little shocked. It didn’t escape her notice that he refrained from sitting beside her on the sofa. He chose the chair that diagonally faced where she was sitting and turned his body so that he was facing her.

  She looked at him but couldn’t tell what he was thinking. There was still a little lingering shock on his face. The faint smell of whiskey came to her and thankfully it didn’t seem to upset her stomach. That would have been just what she needed, on top of everything else that had happened so far, to toss her cookies in the middle of his living room.

  “How long have you known?” His voice was without inflection, and he wouldn’t look at her.

  “I took a test after I left the bar today. I’ve suspected for a while just based on how I’ve been feeling but didn’t dig my head out of the sand until today. I will have to go to my doctor to get confirmation, but considering I took two different tests with the same results, I’d say it’s a sure thing.” And she wondered how long it would have taken to get out of denial about her condition if she hadn’t had lunch with Honor today. She hoped it would have been before she developed a baby bump.

  “That’s why you ran for the bathroom while you were at the bar, wasn’t it?” He looked a little relieved, and she remembered that when he was yelling at her, he mentioned her running to the bathroom. How could he have thought that it was him making her sick?.

  “I’m sick for a good portion of my days now, and the weirdest things set me off. Today it was the thought of bread and butter that did it.” She looked down at her hands for a second. “You seem to be rather calm about this. I’m a little surprised. I half expected that the first thing you would ask is if it is yours.”

  He frowned at her for a second. “Would you be here if it wasn’t?”

  “No.”

  “Then why would I insult you by asking if it was mine? And why would you insult me by thinking I would ask?” His mouth tightened for a second, and she could see he made a visible effort to stay calm. It seemed it didn’t take much for her to be able to push his buttons. “I was there that night, I know what happened. We used protection, but condoms fail. I’m not about to accuse you of lying about the baby being mine.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t seem to say the right thing. I didn’t mean to insult you.” She didn’t know if she was ever going to be able to say the right thing to him. But she better learn how if they were goi
ng to be involved in raising a baby together.

  That assumed that he wanted to be involved. She took it as a positive sign that he was sitting here talking to her that perhaps he did.

  “Why don’t we offer up a blanket apology for everything that has been said or not said in the past six weeks and start fresh. I haven’t exactly been at my best tonight, and there were things that I’ve said that haven’t been worthy of me.” He sighed and got up from the chair. He sat beside her and took her hand in his, running his thumb over the back. “What are we going to do?”

  She looked up at him and bit her lip. She had thought no further ahead than telling him. She didn’t expect him to declare they were mated and have her move in with him so they could play at being a happy family. All she knew for certain was that she was keeping this baby and that she wanted his involvement. How that was going to work in reality she had no idea. “The only thing I know for sure is that I want this baby.”

  “Of course.” The way he said it told her that he expected nothing else but that this baby would be given a chance at life. Thank God he was on board with that. She would fight tooth and nail for her baby but was grateful that she didn’t have to.

  “And I’d like you to be involved. How much is up to you. My father left when I was little and I don’t want my baby… our baby to grow up not knowing you.”

  He nodded, and his face was sober. “That’s good because I don’t want our baby to grow up without me either. As far as the rest goes, we’ll have to figure it out but not tonight.”

  Mercy sighed and sank back into the sofa for a second. Her nerves had been stretched tight for most of the day and now that what she’d been dreading had happened and gone better than she’d expected, tiredness swept over her. But she felt that there was more she needed to say.