Lone Star Lovers

by Jessica Lemmon

But that wasn’t it. This wasn’t about timing.

  I love our daughter. I care about you.

  He couldn’t have been any clearer about the division of his feelings—about the clearly marked boundary lines—during his proposal.

  She’d believed when he’d started his speech that miraculously, she’d broken through. That during the course of this party, Zach had seen the light.

  I love our daughter. I care about you.

  His was a marriage proposal of convenience the first time, and now it was one of merged interests. It hadn’t come from his heart and soul. A long time ago she’d convinced herself she didn’t need romantic love. But now that she was looking at Zach, her heart twisting like a wrung-out cloth, she was certain about two things.

  One, she loved him, and two, she refused to enter a marriage where Zach was only half in.

  He might never leave her, cheat on her, or abandon her, but he also wouldn’t ever love her the way she deserved to be loved.

  And she deserved love.

  He stood behind her, his breath on her ear when he bent forward. “I know I’m springing this on you, but this is the best plan. We can have each other, have our daughter, have our lives together.”

  She closed her eyes against the surge of longing in her chest. There was a part of her, and it wasn’t small, that wanted to turn in the circle of his arms and say yes. Give in to the idea that Zach might someday love her the way she loved him.

  But that was a fairy tale. Her life wasn’t glass slippers and godmothers. It was pumpkins and practicality.

  She turned and faced him, shoulders back, chin tipped to take in his handsome face, and spoke in her most practical voice. “We can’t be this selfish because we like to have sex, Zach.”

  His head jerked on his neck like she’d slapped him instead of spoken.

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” he bit out.

  “It means exactly what I said. We have a child to think about.”

  “A child who needs both of her parents around,” he said, his voice escalating, “not one at a time at prearranged intervals.”

  “Our child needs parents who love her and love each other. If we can’t fulfill both of those bare minimums, then we have nothing more to talk about.”

  “Marriage isn’t good enough for you?” Zach’s cheeks reddened. “Marriage and sex isn’t good enough for you?” His voice was measured and low, but anger outlined every word.

  “Is it good enough for you?”

  “Marriage and sex and you? Damn straight it’s good enough. What more do you want from me, Penelope?”

  She parted her lips to tell him there was so, so much more to want. So much more to marriage apart from sex and sharing a house. She and Zach could be so much more than parents. What about when their daughter was raised and out of the house? What about Penelope’s own life beyond being a mother? What about that deep, committed love she’d seen in her parents’ lives? Didn’t he want that?

  “The original agreement was to untangle these knots before our baby was born. And that’s what we’re doing.” She started for the balcony door, but Zach caught her upper arm and tugged her back.

  In his face, she saw a plethora of emotion. Pain. Fear. Anger. Hope.

  As per his usual, he went with his standby: demanding.

  “I can’t let you do that. I’m far from done exploring what we have. Sharing what we’ve built.”

  She shook out of his grip. “What we have is built on a lie and an accident!”

  The moment she lifted her voice to shout the accusation, his eyes slid over her shoulder and the sound of low, casual chatter filtered out onto the balcony.

  Reason being, Stefanie Ferguson stood at the threshold to the balcony, door open wide. Her eyes welled with unshed tears, betrayal radiating off her strong, petite form.

  “Stefanie,” Pen started, but Stef steeled her spine and looked, not to Penelope, but to Zach for answers.

  “Is that true?” Stef asked him.

  Behind her, onlookers peered out, eyebrows raised, mouths forming Os of curiosity. Stef shut the door behind her and stepped onto the patio, crossing her arms over her midsection.

  “What lie?” she asked.

  “Stef,” Pen tried again, but the younger woman stood in front of her brother. Zach, who’d released Pen the moment Stefanie appeared, shoved his hands into his pockets.

  “Penelope and I are discussing something very important. Go inside and we’ll be in soon.”

  “Tell me what lie and I’ll leave you to it,” Stef said.

  “I said—”

  “The engagement isn’t real,” Pen blurted. Zach’s jaw clenched and he shot Pen a look showcasing both his outrage and feelings of betrayal. Well, too bad. She felt betrayed, too.

  Pen took her eyes off him to comfort her almost-future-sister-in-law, who looked thoroughly heartbroken.

  “Zach made up the engagement when Yvonne interrupted Chase’s birthday party,” Pen said softly. “He needed a distraction.”

  “And you agreed.” Stef’s voice was steel, similar to the tone her brother had used many times before.

  “I agreed to help him, yes.” Pen thrust her chin forward. She hadn’t done anything wrong.

  “And the pregnancy?” Mortification colored Stef’s features as she swept her eyes to Pen’s belly. “Is it real?”

  “Yes.” Pen let out a gusty sigh. “God. Yes, Stefanie. I’d never lie about that. I was pregnant the night of Chase’s birthday party, but didn’t know it.”

  Stef’s sigh of relief was short-lived. “You lied to me.” She swung her gaze from Pen to include Zach. “Both of you.”

  “It started out as a lie to distract from Yvonne, yes,” Zach said. “But things between Pen and me have developed since then.” He fastened his eyes on Penelope, but spoke to his sister. “I proposed to Pen right before you walked out here.”

  The warm breeze lifted Stefanie’s bangs from her forehead. She tightened her arms around her middle and shook her head.

  “I don’t think your proposal went over well.” Stef backed to the door. “I came out here to tell you we’re ready for the announcement about the baby...” Inside a sea of curious faces studied the scene beyond the wide windows. Pen and Zach and Stef must look like a dramatic silent movie from their guests’ vantage point. “Now it seems you owe your guests an explanation.

  “Tell them the truth, Zach,” Stef said. “It’s the least you could’ve done for me.” She pulled open the door but before she went inside, skewered Pen with, “I expected it from him. Not from you.”

  Once she was inside, Chase pushed out the door next and angled his head at his brother.

  “Excuse me.” Penelope bumped past Chase’s suited arm and darted through the crowd. Zach called her name, but when she peeked over her shoulder, Chase was blocking the door and giving advice she knew Zach didn’t want to hear.

  “Let her go.”

  Twenty

  Zach muscled past his brother. Or tried anyway. Chase, despite his suit and community standing, pushed back.

  He banded an arm around Zach, which might look like he was consoling his younger brother, but felt more like he was attempting to crush Zach’s ribs until they audibly snapped.

  Through his teeth, Chase said, “Hold it together,” as he shut the door to the balcony behind them. “We’re outside having a brotherly chat.”

  Chase released him and pulled his shoulders back and Zach mirrored his stance. Inside family and friends dashed concerned looks to the balcony and then in the direction Penelope had left.

  “You have thirty seconds. I’m not going to stand out here when I should be going after her.”

  “Stefanie went after her. Didn’t you see?” Chase replied calmly. Years of experience in the public eye had made him adept at handling a crisis
situation with ease. “If Pen wanted to talk to you, she’d still be standing on this balcony. Everyone inside is waiting for an announcement. Granted, they got one, but it wasn’t the one they were expecting.”

  Zach thrust his hand into his hair. Of course it hadn’t been what they were expecting. Pen’s reaction to his proposal hadn’t been what he was expecting.

  “Your options,” Chase continued, “are to either leave and let the gossip begin. Or stay and offer a generic explanation.”

  “Like what?”

  “If it were me? I’d apologize with no more explanation than a ‘my fault.’” Chase demonstrated with his hands in surrender pose.

  “My fault,” Zach growled. “My fault? It’s my fault for asking Penelope to marry me? For asking the woman carrying my baby to stay with me the rest of our lives?”

  “Lower your voice.”

  “You’re as bad as the rest of them, Chase. I don’t give a fuck about public opinion or what anyone in that room needs.”

  “Yes, that’s clear.” Chase reprimanded in an irritatingly calm tone. “You only care about one person. You.”

  That was it. He’d had it. Had it with trying to do the right thing and being crucified for it.

  “You know what?” Zach shouldered by Chase and gripped the handle to the door. “Tell them whatever the hell you want.”

  * * *

  “Penelope! Wait.”

  Pen paused on the sidewalk, surprised that Stefanie had followed her down. Stef had been clear upstairs that she didn’t appreciate being left in the dark.

  “Where are you going?” the younger woman called as she clipped to a stop next to Pen.

  “You were right in there. You deserved to know. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I couldn’t.”

  “You should be. I’m mad at you and my idiot brother for keeping a secret this huge from me. I kept your pregnancy to myself! I could’ve kept this quiet, too.” Stefanie stepped closer, kindness in her eyes. “But no matter how mad I am, I’d still give you a ride home.”

  Pen folded her arms over her middle, the reality of her situation settling in. She didn’t have a home...only the home she shared with Zach. “I don’t want to go home.”

  Not tonight. Maybe never again. This was as good of a break as any. Her leaving had always been inevitable. From the first time she spotted Zach in Chicago, to the jazz club, to the morning he kissed her goodbye, some part of her knew that holding on to him would be like trying to hold on to the wind.

  Maybe getting it over with would allow her to heal quickly.

  She hoped.

  “I won’t ask you to choose between me and your brother,” Pen told Stef, because she refused to be unfair.

  “I’m not choosing.” Stefanie dug through her clutch. “I’m helping out a friend. If that makes Zach mad, so be it.”

  Stefanie approached the valet with her ticket. “We’re in a hurry.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the valet replied with a hat-tip. Then he ran—yes, ran—to get the car.

  Sadly, not fast enough.

  This time when Penelope heard her name, it was Zach. He slowed his jog when he was close, brow pinched and fists bunched.

  “I’m taking her home with me,” Stefanie stated.

  “No, you’re not.”

  Stef turned on him. “Yes. I am.”

  “Pen.” In his eyes, Penelope saw the plea. A dab of pain that hadn’t been there before. But she couldn’t open up again, not after what it took to get to this point.

  “I have nothing more to discuss, Zach,” Pen announced sadly. “You offered me everything and nothing at the same time.”

  His mouth froze open for a moment before clacking shut. Baring his teeth, he said, “I offered you everything I could.”

  She swallowed past a thick throat as the valet pulled Stef’s car to the curb. Through a watery, sad smile, she nodded. “I know. And it’s not enough.”

  * * *

  Zach, arms folded, watched one of the movers walk the last of Penelope’s boxes downstairs before loading the box into a moving truck.

  He wasn’t one for admitting defeat, but with Penelope standing in the hallway, notebook in hand as she checked off a list, it was clear they were over.

  “What about the baby stuff?” the other mover asked, pointing to the room behind Zach.

  Pen turned, her white summer dress rounded at the front, her heeled sandals reasonably high for a change.

  “Yes,” Zach answered at the same time Penelope said, “No.”

  Their gazes clashed, and in her pale blue eyes, he saw both challenge and loss. Or maybe he felt it.

  “Take it,” he told her.

  “You’ll need it,” she said with a head-shake.

  “I can buy more.” He could replace every single thing in this house with a phone call, save one. The blonde across from him on the landing.

  He’d tried contacting her for the past few days, but after the one night she slept at Stef’s, he hadn’t been able to reach her. Even Pen’s office had been dark when he stopped by.

  Then, this morning she’d texted him to ask if he’d be home. Foolishly, he’d believed she was coming by to reconcile. Instead, she’d shown up driving ahead of a moving truck.

  So this was it.

  She’d made up her mind. She was leaving.

  “I can buy more, too, Zach. I have time before she’s born. And anyway, I’m not sure how much of the furniture I can fit in my apartment.”

  His chest tightened as his eyes dipped to Pen’s stomach. He was losing...everything. And it flat-out pissed him off.

  “Are we going to talk about this?” he all but shouted. A mover leaned on the wall outside the bedroom door to watch. Oh, hell no. Zach curled his lip when he addressed him. “Get the hell out of my house.”

  He went, ambling down the stairs, and bitching to his friend who stood on the porch. But both men stayed outside.

  Zach turned back to Pen. “Well?”

  “Well, what? There’s nothing to talk about.” She gestured with her notebook. “I’ve decided. Luckily, my landlady loves me and ushered me into the first available two-bedroom she had.”

  “You had the space you needed here.” He widened his arms to encompass the massive house he now lived in alone.

  “I never asked for this,” she replied. He wished she would’ve yelled. Her maintaining her composure made him wonder if she cared about him at all.

  “There are arrangements to be made,” he growled, hating the loss of control, the feeling of spinning out of it. “Decisions about our daughter.”

  “Yes.” She flipped to the back of the notebook, tore out a sheet of paper and handed it to him. “They’ve been made. Consider this a proposal. We can define the particulars later.”

  Penelope the Planner had an answer for everything. He folded his arms rather than take the sheet of paper.

  “Why are you doing this really?” he asked.

  “Because.” She sighed. “As much as you claim to know what you want—” she tucked the paper back into her notebook “—you deserve better than an arranged marriage with a child as the prize.”

  Her smile was sad when she finished with, “And so do I.”

  Stepping close to him, she placed her hand on his chest, went up on her toes and placed a brief kiss on the corner of his mouth. Too brief. When he moved to hold her, she backed away.

  “We’ll be okay,” she promised. Her eyes went to the baby’s room. “Keep the furniture. You’ll need it for when she visits.”

  Pen walked downstairs, calling out to the movers, “We’re done here, guys. I’ll follow in my car.”

  Zach’s screen door shut with a bang behind her as car and truck engines turned over and pulled out of the driveway. He lowered to the top step upstairs, elbows on his knees and listened to the
quiet of the house.

  There was defeat in the silence.

  Zachary Ferguson didn’t do defeat.

  He stood, in that instant deciding he’d do whatever it took to win Penelope back. To make her understand what she was walking away from. To make crystal clear that the best path for their future was a future with him in it.

  He had a few billion in the bank.

  Surely he could come up with something.

  Twenty-One

  Pen’s mother sprayed the dusting cloth with Pledge and wiped the rungs of a wooden crib. Paula and Louis had driven to Texas, claiming the road trip would do them good. They’d arrived the day after the movers left everything behind and Pen had been so glad to see them, she could’ve cried.

  In fact, she had.

  “It was yours when you were a baby,” her mother said as she polished the crib. “I honestly didn’t remember that we had it. Your father cleaned out the storage unit and there it was.”

  “Thank you, Mom.”

  Paula Brand abandoned her work and scooped Pen into a hug with just the right amount of pressure. Pen would have cried more if there were any tears left.

  “Are you going to tell me the real reason behind you walking out on your billionaire fiancé?” Her mom held her at arm’s length and waited.

  Pen’s lips compressed as she considered doing just that. She was willing to tell her mother a partial truth, but she couldn’t bear confessing that the engagement was never real. Especially since, for Pen, her love for Zach was very real.

  “When Zach proposed—” both times “—he did it out of obligation rather than love. I couldn’t settle for less than his whole heart.” Speaking of heart, hers gave a mournful wail. Walking out on him instead of accepting half measures was harder than she’d like to believe.

  She’d been comfortable with him. She had a home, combined parenting, and yes, the money was a source of comfort, as well. But she wasn’t the type of woman to let comfort and stability rule her world. If she were, she never would’ve left Chicago.

  Hand resting on her swollen stomach, Pen thanked God that she had left Chicago. That she carried this baby in her belly and that, for all the heartache Zach had caused her, she’d finally experienced love.