Hadn’t she dreamed of this very situation for years? When Sam died, Kate had accepted that those dreams were gone. Now, she had a chance to grab hold of them, and she wouldn’t let it go.
“Right for who?” Molly asked, tipping her head to one side until her long, strawberry blond hair fell in a curtain of curls.
“For me. For Sean.” She paused, thought about it, then nodded for emphasis. “For everyone.”
“Your life, sweetie,” Molly said. “And God knows I hate to interfere—”
Kate snorted.
Molly’s eyebrows arched. “But secrets are hard to keep. The truth will eventually jump up and bite you in the butt at the worst possible time.”
Kate didn’t want to believe that, so she made a joke instead. “Is that a sort of variation on Murphy’s Law?”
“I’m Irish,” Molly told her. “We’re all about Murphy’s Law and all of its subsidiaries.” Sighing a little, she set down her glass on the table and braced her forearms on her knees. “At least think about it, Kate.”
“Molly, I have been thinking about it. For the last five months I’ve pretty much done nothing else but think about it.”
“Thinking about it with your mind closed to all possibilities but the one you want isn’t really thinking, is it?”
Another quick stab of guilt. “Aren’t you supposed to be on my side?”
“Oh, I am, sweetie. You know that.” Molly sighed. “I’m just saying that sooner or later, all secrets are blown. And it might be better if you did it yourself. You know?”
Kate let her head fall back and her gaze fix on the heavy wood beams spanning the ceiling of her cottage-style bungalow. Her friend had a point, she knew, but it was one Kate didn’t want to acknowledge. “Maybe you’re right, Molly. I don’t know. All I’m really sure of is I can’t say anything. The gorgeous bazillionaire wouldn’t be interested anyway.”
“Fine. I won’t say anything else about it.”
Oh, she didn’t believe that. Molly was like a dog with a bone, and she was very protective of her friends and family. If she thought she could help, she’d never give up. But for now, Kate sighed. “Thanks. That’d be great.”
When the doorbell rang, Molly jumped up and said, “I’ll get it. You stay put.”
Kate sipped at her tea, heard the front door open and then heard her friend’s voice go soft and flirty. “Well, hi. Where’d you come from?”
“California,” a familiar, deep voice said flatly. “I’m here to see Kate Wells. Is she home?”
Stomach flipping and churning, mouth going dry as dust, Kate slowly stood up, set her teacup aside and tried to harness the wild gallop of her heartbeat. This could not be happening. She held her breath when Molly said, “And you are?”
“Sean Ryan.”
Kate groaned and half hoped that she was having some sort of weird walking dream. If she pinched herself, maybe Sean wouldn’t really be walking toward her. Molly wouldn’t be behind him mouthing the word wow, and she herself wouldn’t be wearing an old T-shirt and denim shorts.
But it wasn’t a dream. Sean was right in front of her, and his gaze was locked on her belly. “You’re pregnant?”
She dropped one hand to the swell of her baby as if to protect her from hearing her parents argue even before she was born. Instantly, she went for outrage. “Sean, what’re you doing here?”
If you had no defense, she reminded herself, go for a strong offense. All those years watching football games with her dad was finally paying off.
“Seriously? That’s what you have to say?” He stopped, shook his head, then shoved both hands through his hair. “Are you kidding me?”
“Um,” Molly said from behind Sean, “I think I’m gonna go. Looks like you two have some talking to do—”
Kate wanted to reach out and grab hold of her friend as if she was a life preserver. But what was the point? That would only be delaying the inevitable. Sean was here. He knew the truth. Bag open, cat out. So with absolutely no other choice, Kate told herself it was best to just put it all on the table.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Kate told her, still staring at Sean.
Sean never took his gaze from the mound of Kate’s belly, so he didn’t see Molly miming fanning herself because he was so hot. Okay, yes, Kate thought, Sean was truly an amazing male. But right now, it wasn’t desire that was pouring through her, no matter how good it felt to see him again. Panic had the upper hand at the moment.
His blue eyes lifted to meet hers, and she saw the banked fury sizzling there. “Were you ever going to tell me?” he ground out the minute the front door shut behind Molly.
“Probably not,” she admitted. “At least, not unless I absolutely had to.” Kate had considered this situation from every which way for the last five months. While her child grew inside her, Kate had remembered the horrified look on Sean’s face when he’d thought she was trying to trap him into something permanent. Remembered him telling her he had nothing against kids, he just had no interest in having one himself.
“Sean, don’t you remember? You made a point of saying you didn’t want a family. You were appalled at the thought of it. Why would I tell you about my baby?”
He took a step toward her, then stopped dead as if he was too angry to get closer. “You want to use what I said about a hypothetical situation to explain you lying to me for five months? Not gonna work. You should have told me, Kate. Because it’s our baby.”
Kate flushed and kept her protective hand against her belly. “Fine. Technically, you’re right...”
“Technically?” he repeated, eyes wide.
She ignored that. God, she’d imagined this conversation a million times over the last few months, whenever her guilt would get the best of her, and she pictured what might happen if Sean found out. And in none of those imaginings had he looked this...ferocious.
“Maybe I should have told you.”
He choked out a short laugh.
“But it wouldn’t have changed the reality, Sean. The fact is, I want the baby, you don’t.”
He managed to look even more shocked than he had at his first glance at her, and she couldn’t blame him. He was so angry, his blue eyes glinted with icy shards. Deliberately, Kate lifted her chin, met his hard gaze and prepared to do battle.
This baby meant everything to Kate. It was a gift from a universe that had already taken too much from her. She wouldn’t lose this child. Wouldn’t share it with a man who, if he didn’t already, would one day resent its very existence.
“I’ve talked to you dozens of times over the last five months,” he said, his voice quiet, glacial. “Emails. Faxes. Phone calls. Video calls. And not once did you find the time to say ‘By the way, I’m pregnant?’”
Truth was, Kate had been in a kind of fog for the first three months of her pregnancy. At first, she hadn’t believed it. Then she’d realized what a miracle had happened. She was finally going to have the family she’d believed lost to her when Sam died. She didn’t need a husband, but she needed this baby.
* * *
So did Sean.
His heart was pounding, and it felt like he’d taken a hard punch to the gut. He couldn’t seem to catch his breath. His gaze was locked on Kate’s softly rounded belly as his brain tried to process, think, figure. He hadn’t expected this. Sure, he’d known something was up, which was why he’d come to Wyoming the minute Mike and Jenny got back from their honeymoon. But Sean had thought it was a problem with the hotel. Or the crew. Anything but this.
They’d used condoms. What was the point of using them if people got pregnant anyway?
Hell, now he knew how Brady Finn had felt when he’d traveled to Ireland to check on the hotel there, only to find that Aine was pregnant. At the time, Sean had taken Aine’s side in all of that, telling Brady to get over it and do the ri
ght thing. Apparently the universe was getting a kick out of landing him in Brady’s exact position.
Scrubbing one hand across his face, Sean fought past the fury choking him and tried to steady himself. The woman who had been haunting him for months was carrying his child. That was fact. That was what he had to focus on now.
But even as he thought it, his past rose up in his mind to remind him that it wasn’t the first time he’d found himself in this position. As he fought them, images from ten years before swam to the surface of his mind as if finally released from behind a thick dam.
He’d done a year of college in Italy, and there he’d fallen in love with Adrianna. She was beautiful, smart, funny. And everything was perfect. Until the night she told him she was pregnant. He still felt shame over his reaction, though over the years he’d tried to explain it away by saying he was young. Stupid. Selfish.
But the bottom line was, she had been excited and saw a shiny, happy future for the two of them. All Sean had seen were chains. They had argued viciously and two weeks later, she miscarried the baby she had wanted so badly. Sean went to see her in the hospital, but she turned him away. He could still see her lying on that narrow bed, her beautiful face as white as the sheets beneath her. Her eyes were filled with shadows of pain and a single tear tracked along her cheek.
“Go away,” Adrianna had said, turning her face to the wall so she wouldn’t have to look at him.
Sean clutched the huge bouquet of roses he’d brought with him and tried again to reach her. To make her see him. To make her realize just how badly he felt. “Adrianna, I’m sorry about the baby.”
She spared him a glance then, and in that brief motion he saw that her dark eyes were empty. “You are not sorry, Sean. You didn’t want our child. Well, now he is gone so you can be happy. But be happy somewhere else. I don’t want you here. I don’t want you to come back.”
The smell of the hospital, the rumble of nurses and doctors being called over the communication system, the soft moan from an old woman in a bed across the room—none of it mattered. The only thing that mattered was Adrianna, and he was losing her.
His heart breaking, Sean stood his ground, fist tightening on the flowers he held, determined to make her understand why he’d reacted as he had. Make her forgive him. “Adrianna,” he whispered, “we can get past this.”
“No.” She stared at the wall, her fingers clenching on the thin blanket covering her. “No.” She took a shuddering breath. “I needed you and you were not there. Now,” she added, “I do not need you anymore.”
Helpless, Sean had dropped the roses on the chair by the door and left, knowing that he’d lost something precious. That he’d thrown away what some men only dreamed of having.
And he’d lived with the shame and guilt of that for ten years. Never shared it with his brother—with anyone—just carried it around like a lump of ice in a corner of his heart. But now, he had a chance to let go of that past by being the man he should have been when he was too young and self-involved to know better.
Sean looked into Kate’s lake-blue eyes and read her determination to keep him out of this. To get him to leave. To walk away from her and his child. But it wasn’t going to happen.
He wouldn’t fail again.
“You should sit down,” he said.
“What?”
“You’re pregnant. Sit down.” He steered her back to the couch and hovered there until she sat.
“Seriously?” She flipped her long, loose hair back over her shoulder to stare up at him. “I was on the job site today installing new windows and ripping old paneling off walls, and you think it’s too strenuous for me to stand in my own living room?”
It sounded stupid when she put it like that. But he was off his game. Hell, knocked off his feet. “So cut me a break. I’ve known about this baby for like ten seconds. Might take a little longer to get used to it.”
“That’s my point, Sean. You don’t have to get used to it.”
“Right.” He shoved both hands into his pants pockets. “You really expect that I’ll just say ‘take care’ and walk away?”
The fact that he had done just that ten years ago had nothing to do with this.
“That’s my child you’re carrying,” he snapped, feeling anger and frustration nipping at his insides again, “and it’s my responsibility to see to it that it’s safe.”
“Her.”
“What?”
“You said it,” Kate said tightly. “The baby’s a girl.”
“A girl.” Sean swayed in place as a rush of emotion filled his throat. Another hard hit in a series of them. He had a daughter. That knowledge alone made this all the more real. All the more vital. Sean took a breath to steady himself and looked at Kate. Stubborn fury was etched into her features. She was hostile and prepared to dig in her heels to fight him on this.
It fried him that she’d kept this secret. Kept his baby from him and clearly had had no intention of ever telling him about it...her. Maybe Kate had her reasons, but at the moment, he didn’t give a good damn what they were. So yeah, he remembered telling her that he had no interest in children or a family. And maybe he hadn’t really considered it since Italy. He might not have gone out and deliberately tried to be a father, but now that he was faced with the reality of it, he wanted his kid.
He was here and not going anywhere. Kate was going to have to find a way to deal with it. No doubt the two of them would butt heads over this situation, but in the end, Sean would have things his way. Kate had no idea what Sean could do when he was set on a certain path. Hadn’t he, his brother and their friend built a billion-dollar business from nothing? He hadn’t allowed anyone to get in his way then, and he wasn’t about to start now. Sean made his living by convincing people that he was right so they would fall into line. Kate would eventually give way, just like everyone else.
First things first, though. “Is the baby all right?”
Her face softened in an instant as she stroked her palm over her belly. “She’s fine.”
“Good.” He nodded and swallowed hard over the sudden knot of lust clogging his throat. Were all pregnant women this hot? “That’s good.”
“Sean,” she said on a sigh, “I know what you’re doing.”
“Is that right?” He tucked his hands into his pockets. “What am I doing, Kate?”
She stood up to face him, and he felt the same surge of desire he had felt the first time he’d met her. Kate Wells affected him as no one else ever had—and pregnancy hadn’t changed that a bit. But staring at her now, he wasn’t thinking of the baby, or the lies, or the arguments waiting for them in the coming days.
All he saw was the woman who had been in his mind for months. Her eyes were flashing, her mouth was set in a straight, grim line and that stubborn tilt to her chin only made her look more amazing. What the hell did it say about him, he wondered, that he found a woman who looked like she wanted to rip his lips off so damned irresistible?
“You’re trying to make me feel badly about not telling you about the baby.”
“Don’t you?”
She blew out a breath. “Yes, I do. But I did what I thought was best, just like I’m doing now. I want you to leave, Sean.”
“We don’t always get what we want, Kate.”
“How are you even here? How did you find out where I live?” She threw her hands high, then caught herself and paused. “Never mind. Not important. What’s important is that you leave. Now.”
He grabbed her upper arms and held on to her, when he felt her jerk back in an attempt to free herself. “You weren’t that hard to find, Kate. And now that I have found you—and my daughter—I’m not going anywhere.”
She paled a little but recovered quickly and went on the defensive. “Sean, you don’t have anything to prove. It’s nice that you offered to be
involved with the baby, but it’s not necessary.”
“It’s not nice,” he said, feeling that swell of irritation come thick and fast again. “That’s my daughter as much as yours, so yeah, me being a part of this is necessary. You’re not cutting me out, Kate. I’m in this.”
Outside, the sun was nearly gone, and Kate reached out to flick on a table lamp. Golden light streamed through the room, and he could see her even more clearly than he had before. She didn’t look happy, he thought. Well, that made two of them.
“We’ve got things to talk about.”
“No, Sean, we don’t. I’m the one who’s pregnant, so I’m the one making decisions.” She picked up her teacup, stepped to one side and grabbed Molly’s wineglass then headed out of the room, throwing words back over her shoulder. “And since I’m only five months along, I’ve got plenty of time.”
Sean followed right after her. It didn’t take long. You could drop her entire living room, dining room and kitchen into the main room of his condo in Long Beach and still have room left over. In the tiny galley-style kitchen, he walked up behind her and, in effect, trapped her there. Backed up against the kitchen sink and hedged between the stove and the refrigerator, all she could do was stare up at him.
“We’ll both be making any decisions necessary, Kate. I’m not walking away from my kid.” He dropped his hands onto the sink’s edge on either side of her. “I’m here in Wyoming for the next three days. I’d stay longer, but we’ve got the release of our latest game next week and I have to be there to help.”
“Don’t let me stop you,” she quipped and ducked beneath his arm to escape him.
But he grabbed her arm and held on. “Oh, you won’t. You won’t stop me from doing anything.” It was a warning and a declaration all at once. It was time she knew that he wasn’t going to quietly disappear. She was carrying his baby, and that link bound them together.
She’d just have to get used to it.
Seven
Kate felt like she was being stalked.
Everywhere she turned, there Sean was. He watched what she ate, what she drank. He hovered over her on the job site until even her crew stopped coming to her with questions and instead spoke to Sean first. She felt the threads of control slipping through her fingers, and there didn’t seem to be a thing she could do about it.
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