This was supposed to be short-term. Fun. Seth had helped her secure her future. He made her feel desirable and beautiful even though her body was changing constantly. He’d introduced her to his family. And after all of that, he still made passionate love to her.
How was she supposed to let him go?
Fourteen
He could not wait for his bed to show up. An air mattress with two sleeping bags on it wasn’t cutting it. Going back to the hotel would have been the smart thing to do. But he hadn’t been able to wait to have Kate in this house with him and she was game, so an air mattress it was.
He wanted her in ways that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Which had to be why he was awake at some ungodly hour of the morning, trying to make sense of it all.
Thankfully, Kate was still asleep. She lay curled against his side, her burgeoning belly nestled on his hip, her leg thrown over his. Her breathing was deep and regular, and every so often, she’d twitch a little in her dreams. He hoped they were good dreams.
He gently stroked her hair and tried to think. In the midst of everything that had happened yesterday, Seth had almost overlooked one of the things his dad had said when he’d been telling Seth to man up.
They were sending him to Shanghai in a matter of months, then maybe to India. Which was great. Seth loved to travel. He liked to see the sights and try new foods and...
It wasn’t like he had misled Kate. Part of their conversation about him buying a home had revolved around the fact that he was not going to live in it year-round. But he hadn’t told her exactly what that entailed.
It was one thing to live in LA for a year. Sure, it took a little while to get from LA to Rapid City and back, but it was doable. Seth had made it home for birthdays and anniversaries and holidays with a few more frequent flyer miles under his belt and a growing distaste for airport coffee.
But Shanghai? Mumbai? Bangkok, maybe? Those weren’t quick trips home.
It would be best for everyone, he reasoned, if the break was clean. He did not want to string Kate along. There was probably a great man out there who would appreciate everything she had to offer. Seth wouldn’t stand in the way of that by giving her false hope that whenever he made it home, they could pick up where they left off.
Yes, a clean break was best. It just made sense.
Kate stirred against him. “Seth?” Her voice was heavy with sleep. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he told her, tightening his grip around her shoulders. “I’m just not used to the air mattress. Go back to sleep.”
For a moment, he thought she was going to do just that. After all, he had run her all over God’s green earth yesterday—industrial sites, soccer fields, soul-sucking house closings—not to mention several rounds of explosive sex. Plus, she was pregnant and he hadn’t missed the yawns she’d hid behind her hands during the signings.
But then she put her palm on his chest and leaned up on her elbow. The room was too dark to see her face, but he knew she was staring down at him. “What aren’t you telling me?”
I love you.
The words almost tumbled right off his tongue without his permission. He just managed to get his mouth closed around them before they complicated everything. Because if there was one way to make sure the break wasn’t clean, it was those three little words.
“Seth?”
“I’m going to Shanghai,” he told her, suddenly glad that they were having this conversation in the dark. He didn’t want to see the hurt in her eyes. “My dad confirmed it yesterday at the soccer game.”
The silence was heavy. “When?”
“After the holidays.” He ran his hand up and down her back, willing her to lie back down. He didn’t want to have this conversation about him leaving now. He didn’t want to have it ever.
The realization was stunning. He loved her. When the hell had that happened?
“How long will you be gone?” Just because he couldn’t see her face didn’t mean he couldn’t hear the sorrow in her voice. And that cut him deep.
“I’m not sure. At least six months. Probably a year.”
“Oh.”
Suddenly, he was talking. He couldn’t let that one single syllable be the end of this. He couldn’t let this be the end.
“I knew this was a possibility, I just thought we might have a few more months. The Boltons are all family men,” he explained. “Dad won’t leave the shop, anyway. Bobby would go, but he doesn’t like to be away from his wife and daughter very long and Stella doesn’t like to take Clara out of school. Ben’s a homebody and Josey wouldn’t leave her school for that long,” he explained, desperately trying to make her understand.
“So it has to be you?”
“It’s a family business. They made me part of their family.” When she didn’t reply right away, he added, “I owe them, Kate. You don’t know what it was like before they came into my life. Mom and I—we got by okay, but sometimes we were on welfare and in the winter, it got cold. She went to bed hungry so I’d have enough to eat, you know? She tried to hide it from me, always saying she’d eat after I went to bed, but I knew the truth. And I hated that she had to. I hated it.”
His voice caught in his throat and it took a few moments before he could speak again. Kate didn’t rush into the silence, though. She waited.
“I never wanted to see my mom suffer like that. And then, when Billy and Mom got together, that all went away like magic. Suddenly, we had plenty of food and I had my own room and clothes that fit—and I had a dad. I’d never had a dad before.” He could still feel the sense of awe he’d felt in court, when the adoption had been finalized. The entire Bolton clan and almost half the reservation had shown up. “I had a family.”
She sat up, although she didn’t take her hand away from his chest. He clutched it, holding her palm over his heart. “I would never ask you to give up your family,” she said solemnly. “Not for me.”
He rested his hand on her stomach. She had hardly started to show, although now that he had been sleeping with her for a month, he could see the small changes in her body. He was going to give that up, too. He was going to leave before she got to the end of her pregnancy. He wasn’t going to be there to see the baby born. He wouldn’t see how her body changed with motherhood.
No, he knew that she would never ask. Because that wasn’t who she was and that wasn’t their deal.
“Kate,” he said hoarsely, and then stopped because he couldn’t be sure what he was going to say next.
She moved then, straddling him. The faintest glimmer of starlight came in through the bare windows—just enough that he could make out the generous swells of her breasts. His body responded immediately because he couldn’t get enough of her.
He might never get enough of her.
She took him into her body and set a slow, steady pace that heated his blood all the same. Nothing stood between them now. “I will miss you,” she whispered as he cupped her breasts and teased her nipples. She sank her hands into his hair and pulled him up. “God, how I will miss you.”
She shuddered down on him, and he quit trying to fight it. He was lost to her.
What could he offer her? A nice house? Financial stability? Great sex, definitely.
But he couldn’t offer her himself. He couldn’t be there when she needed him. So instead of telling her that he loved her, that she was everything, he forced himself to say, “I will, too, babe,” because it was the truth—just not the one he wanted it to be.
* * *
“So this is it, then?” Seth asked as he looked over Bobby Bolton’s expansion plans for Shanghai.
“This is it,” Bobby said, lounging in the chair in front of Seth’s desk. “Setting up the showroom in Shanghai, training the staff, making sure everything goes smoothly for the Asia launch. In a perfect world,
it’ll take you six months.”
“The world ain’t perfect,” Seth said, the sour feeling settling in his stomach. He didn’t speak Chinese. He wasn’t fluent in the local power structures. He needed to figure out his target market and the best way to reach them.
Even assuming he found the right bilingual staff who understood motorcycles, Seth was looking at a year in China.
He had jumped at the chance to go to LA for a year. He loved his family, but there was no getting around the fact that the Boltons could be overwhelming. And even then, Bobby had made a habit of stopping in every few months, unannounced, to see how things were going.
China was the ultimate fresh start. Seth should’ve been thrilled by this prospect.
“You know,” Bobby said in a kind of voice that Seth had long since recognized as manipulative, “we could send someone else. I’ve made a few contacts...”
“What? No—I’m going. I’m a partner in this company. This is my job.” He was a Bolton. He worked for the family business. He wasn’t about to shirk his duties because he’d accidentally fallen in love with Kate.
The sour feeling in his stomach got more awful.
“The museum project is barely off the ground,” Bobby went on, as if Seth hadn’t spoken. “We still need to select the architect, finalize the design, and then there’s the actual building to oversee.”
“You’re going to handle that.” Of all the brothers, Bobby was the one who traveled the most—and that wasn’t just because his wife was British. But the man practically turned into a homebody from September to May while Clara was in school.
Bobby stared at him flatly. Seth heard himself continue, “This was the deal, man. I promised to do this and I’m not going to go back on my promises to you guys. We’re family.” Bobby didn’t respond, and an odd sort of dread churned around with the sourness. “Aren’t we?”
“Have you ever spoken with your dad?” Bobby asked unexpectedly.
What the hell kind of question was that? “I talked to him this morning when I came into work. Why?”
“No, I mean your birth father. Have you ever talked to him?”
It shouldn’t have hit Seth like a sledgehammer to the chest—but it did. “No. I don’t even know who he was. All I know is that he left. Mom was pregnant and he left her alone.”
He did not like the way Bobby was looking at him. The man was perhaps the most intelligent of the three brothers, but he hid it behind a veneer of playboy charm. There was no getting around the fact that Bobby played a long game. “She’s pregnant, isn’t she?”
The hits just kept on coming. “I’m not the father.”
There was no need to ask who had figured it out. Kate had come to Julie’s championship game—the Mustangs had easily won. And if no one had asked her if she was expecting, that was because her body made that question irrelevant. She was soft and round and glowing. Any idiot could see that she was with child—and his family was not full of idiots.
However, no one had asked. Kate’s impending joy had been the elephant in the room that they had all avoided talking about at the game and ever since. Even Billy had skirted the subject, instead favoring Seth with hard looks that said more than words ever would.
Now Seth was going to leave Kate behind. Because his first priority was his family. Because that was what Boltons did. Family was first. Family was everything.
And Kate was...
He was going to be sick.
“I made a promise to you guys and to the company,” Seth said slowly. “I haven’t made any promises to anyone else.” Which was true.
So why did saying it feel like a betrayal?
Because Kate was spending almost every night in Seth’s bed and every morning in his arms. Because they ate dinner together and talked about their days.
Because he had asked her if she wanted him to go with her to her doctor’s appointment where she found out she was having a girl. He’d discussed names with her. Because he had a diamond solitaire pendant with matching earrings already wrapped in silver-and-red paper with her name on it—his parting gift to her before he left.
Because, like an idiot, he had completely fallen in love with her. Deeply, irrevocably in love.
It didn’t help that Bobby was still staring at him. Usually, you couldn’t shut the man up. But today, he was acting more like Billy than ever. “Who else does she have? I did some digging, you know. Her ex-fiancé stayed with her parents’ firm. An old friend had to give her a job. And then a certain knight in shining armor rode in and threw some big commissions her way. But if you leave, who else will she have?”
It was not uncommon for the Bolton brothers to come to blows. Bobby and Billy were like oil and water, and although Ben did his best to keep them from pummeling each other, Seth had seen a few noses get busted in his time.
Aside from that one incident before his parents had gotten married, Seth had never been a part of a family brawl. Mostly because he wasn’t nearly as big as his dad and his uncles, but also it didn’t seem right to take on the men who’d made a place for him.
But right now? Right now, he wanted to break Bobby’s jaw. And maybe a few other bones, just for good measure. “If you’re going to say something, just say it.”
Bobby cracked that smooth grin of his. Seth wanted to push it in with his fist. “Wouldn’t be surprised in the least if your aunts didn’t descend upon that poor woman. Your mom, especially, wouldn’t like the idea of Kate being all alone when she has that baby.”
No, of course Mom wouldn’t. Even though Seth was twenty-five years old now. Even though Mom had been married to Billy for almost eleven years, Jenny Bolton still ran an after-school support group for pregnant teenagers because she didn’t want anyone to feel as alone as she had when she’d been pregnant with Seth.
“Are you done yet?” Seth ground out. “Because I don’t know what you want me to do here, Bobby. You show up with a plan that will have me in Shanghai for almost a year and then simultaneously make me feel like crap for doing my job? Go to hell. And get out of my office.” It felt damn good to be able to say that.
Bobby stood, in no hurry to go anywhere. He straightened his cuffs and popped his neck from side to side. “I’m not the one making you feel bad, kid.” He headed for the door, but paused with his hand on the knob. “And we are family, Seth. Family is the most important thing we have.” The words settled in the room like silt at the bottom of standing water.
Seth understood what Bobby was saying. His uncle had just been playing devil’s advocate—but they still expected him to put the family first and do his best to open up the Asian market. “I understand.”
He was definitely going to be sick.
Bobby gave him a measured look. “Do you?” And with that parting shot, he was gone.
Fifteen
“Katie, my girl,” Harold Zanger said, striding out of his office and snapping his suspenders. “How are you getting on this fine day?”
Kate patted her ever-growing stomach. “Fine,” she said with a smile as Harold beamed. She left out the part where she had to pee every seven minutes and her back hurt. According to the doctor, things were going perfectly. She only had another three months to go.
“Is that Mr. Bolton of yours going to be coming around?” Harold asked the question in a too-casual manner.
But Kate didn’t miss the yours in that question. “I don’t think it’s physically possible for him to buy any more real estate,” she said, dodging the question.
Seth was not hers. In fact, with Christmas weeks away, he was less hers every single day.
They hadn’t talked about it, but she knew he was leaving soon. And she knew it was selfish, but she didn’t want him to go. The last three months with him had been the best three months of her life.
Harold gave her a kindly look.
“He’s done all right by you, hasn’t he?”
Kate looked away. “He has. But then,” she said, forcing a smile to her lips, “so have you.”
Harold patted her on the shoulder. “You’re a sweet girl, Katie. You deserve better.” Tears stung in her eyes as Harold gave her shoulder a squeeze and then turned away, politely pretending she wasn’t about to cry. “I’m off to show some houses today,” he announced loudly, giving his suspenders another snap just for good measure. “You’ll hold down the fort?”
“Of course,” she said, smiling through it all.
Seth had done right by her. Thanks to the purchase of the house—which still had next to no furniture in it—and the industrial property, she was able to plan to take six months off with her little girl, whom she’d decided to name Madeleine.
More than that, he had given her back her sexuality. Kate hadn’t even realized what she’d been missing until Seth had come into her life. But now? She wouldn’t settle for anything less. He had built her up instead of wearing her down, and never again would she go along just to get along.
Seth was leaving and she was going to let him go. It would be selfish to hold him here, but God, she was going to miss the hell out of him.
She was lost in these thoughts and others—what should she get him for Christmas?—when the chimes over the door jingled. “It’s a zinger of a day at Zanger, how may I...” She looked up to see a familiar figure standing in the doorway. Her stomach curdled because she recognized that man—and it wasn’t Seth.
“Roger?” What the hell was he doing here?
He looked like hell. Oh, he still looked good. His hair was combed, his face cleanly shaven, his suit nicely pressed. But as he stepped into the office, Kate could see the shadows under his bloodshot eyes. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week, maybe longer. “Kate,” he said, and then stopped when she stood up. His eyes widened. “God, you look so...”
Little Secrets--Claiming His Pregnant Bride Page 13