Project: Runaway Bride

by Heidi Betts

  Like ripping off a bandage, she’d decided to just blurt it out. As soon as she was dressed and presentable and able to stand upright for more than five seconds without the room spinning like a Tilt-A-Whirl.

  Now, though, she was beginning to rethink her brilliant and noble idea. Because Reid didn’t look as though he was handling it well at all.

  As soon as the words had left her mouth, he’d gone paler than a ghost. Worse, she’d be willing to bet, than she’d looked while hunched over the toilet bowl.

  He’d stared at her as though wings had sprouted out of her back and she’d flown into the rafters of the cabin. And then he’d turned on his heel and stalked out.

  He was still out there, pacing the length of the porch. She could hear his heavy footfalls as he marched back and forth, back and forth. Pausing occasionally with his hands on his hips.

  Through the wide front window, she saw his mouth moving and the shake of his head, and wondered what he was saying to himself. She suspected it was nothing nice, at least not where she was concerned, and likely dotted with some colorful, creative curses.

  After what seemed like hours of giving him his space and time to absorb the news, Juliet released a sigh and slid off of her stool, leaving the last of her can of clear soda behind. Thank God for Reid’s quick thinking and her father’s habit of keeping the lake house well stocked. The soda had really helped to settle her stomach and get the morning sickness to pass a little more quickly.

  Moving to the front door, she opened it quietly and stood there for a moment while Reid continued to pace. When he reached her and saw her from the corner of his eye, he stopped, the expression he turned on her dark enough to melt glass.

  A muscle in his jaw ticked, and she stiffened, almost afraid of the onslaught of whatever he was about to say. Taking a deep breath, she decided to beat him to the punch.

  “Before you say anything,” she said on a rush, “you need to know that I don’t expect anything from you. I only told you because I believe you have the right to know, but you don’t have to be involved. I’ll be just fine on my own. You don’t have to worry that I’ll come after you for child support or anything like that.”

  And for the first time since the plus sign had appeared on that tiny test strip, she realized it was true. She would be just fine.

  Oh, there would be some explaining to do, some “cleanup in aisle three” with her family and with Paul. But she was a strong, independent woman. She had a good job and great loved ones to fall back on. Without a doubt, she knew that once they got over the shock, they would support her unconditionally and be there for her if she needed anything along the way.

  So she would be a single mother—so what? She would be a good one. She would be a great mother and have a permanent reminder of her time with Reid for the rest of her life. That would make her sad once in a while, she was sure, but for the most part it would fill her with only happy memories. Eventually.

  Feeling more confident than she had in quite a while, Juliet waited for Reid’s tense posture to relax. For him to blow out a relieved breath and say, “Okay, great, thanks.” Because what man wanted to have an unplanned pregnancy and impending fatherhood dropped in his lap?

  Of course, if he wanted to be part of his child’s life, she would allow it. It would make things more complicated for her in a lot of ways, but it was only right.

  Instead of the whew she’d anticipated, however, his glare grew even darker, the slash of his mouth flattening even more, and she could have sworn she heard his molars grinding together.

  “Are you sure?”

  She blinked, confused. This wasn’t the direction she’d expected the conversation to take. “Excuse me?”

  “Are you sure?” He bit the words out, each one exploding like gunfire in her ears. The corner of his left eye started to twitch. “Are you sure you’re pregnant? And that it’s mine?”

  At the second part of his question, she flinched. And then straightened defensively.

  “Yes. On both counts.”

  That muscle along his jawline jerked again.

  “So you’ve seen a doctor,” he said, making it more of a statement than a query.

  “No.” She wrapped her arms across her waist, caught slightly off guard. “But I took one of those over-the-counter tests, and it was positive.”

  Not to mention the morning sickness, missed periods and myriad other symptoms that told her the little plastic wand she’d left in the church wastebasket wasn’t wrong.

  Reid’s teeth were clenched, his eyes narrowed to slits. Juliet’s heart lurched as it became clear that in another second, steam was going to start pouring out of his ears.

  Uh-oh.

  She took a step back, wondering if it was too late to retreat. Or flat-out run. She hoped the lock on her bedroom door was a strong one.

  Not that she’d get the chance to find out. Before she could put even more distance between them, he reached out and snatched her wrist. His grip was firm, immovable, yet he wasn’t hurting her, and she knew somehow that he wouldn’t. That if she said anything, asked him to let go, he would do it.

  He might not let her go let her go—as in let her walk away from the conversation he so clearly intended for them to have—but he wouldn’t restrain her physically against her will.

  Because of that, because she was nervous and uncomfortable, but not truly afraid of him, she didn’t try to pull away. He was going to have questions, she understood that, and he deserved answers. Even if it meant meeting his show of temper head-on.

  Rather than pulling her back out onto the porch, though, he turned her around and nudged her farther into the house.

  “Pack your bags,” he told her. “We’re leaving.”

  “What? Wait. Why?” Tugging out of his hold, she twisted to face him.

  “We’re going back to New York. You’re going to get checked out by a doctor, and then...”

  He let the sentence trail off, she suspected because he didn’t know what would come next and probably didn’t want to make threats—or promises—he wasn’t sure he’d be willing to carry out.

  “No,” she said with a shake of her head. “I told you, I’m not ready to go back there. Paul, my family... They’ll ask questions, want answers I’m not prepared to give just yet. I came here to think, to be alone until I can get a better handle on things, and I still need to do that. I need some time to myself.”

  “Too bad,” he replied, zero sympathy in his voice. “You don’t get that luxury, not anymore. And neither do I.”

  A beat later, his tone softened. “Look, I just want to be sure. You were awfully sick this morning, too, so I’d like to know everything’s okay. We’ll stay at my place. No one else needs to know you’re in the city until you’re ready to see them. But we can’t just stay here, doing nothing, pretending the problem doesn’t exist as long as we don’t go back to the real world.”

  Juliet tipped her head to one side, annoyed by his reference to her pregnancy as a “problem.” She could hardly call him on it, though, since until very recently she’d thought of it exactly the same way. Even worse, she’d considered it something of a major catastrophe.

  “What if you go back to the real world and leave me here to pretend awhile longer,” she suggested hopefully.

  His plan made sense, and she could understand his desire to be medically certain about what she was telling him, but she just wasn’t mentally prepared to return to New York so soon. She’d barely gotten any time alone to sort things out, thanks to his unexpected arrival.

  “Nice try,” he replied with what could only be described as a smirk, “but not on your life. Now go pack your things and meet me back here in ten minutes or I’ll toss you over my shoulder and carry you to the car, with or without your belongings.”

  She narrowed her eyes, her need to stand her ground warring with the fact that she believed Reid would do exactly what he said.

  “Fine,” she finally acquiesced.

  She wasn’t
happy about it, but as long as he kept his word about letting her hide out at his brownstone, she supposed it wouldn’t hurt to see a doctor and have the pregnancy confirmed. She should probably be on prenatal vitamins and the like by now, anyway.

  The only problem with staying with Reid was that they would be alone together for heaven knew how long. And wasn’t that how she’d gotten herself into this mess in the first place?

  * * *

  They left Juliet’s car at the lake house and drove back to the city in the Range Rover Reid had borrowed from his company’s vehicle pool. She wasn’t exactly happy about it, but he hadn’t given her a choice. And he’d promised to make arrangements for a couple of his employees to drive to Vermont and bring the BMW back to New York for her. Of course, that would also require hiding it somewhere until she was ready to let her family know she’d returned—possibly in his corporate lot.

  “Oh, what a tangled web we weave” kept dancing through his head as he drove, the only thing to fill the otherwise tense silence. He didn’t like secrets, and he didn’t like lies. It was part of the reason he’d become an investigator—to ferret out those sorts of details and set things right for the people who had been taken advantage of or betrayed.

  Yet everything to do with the person sitting next to him seemed to be smothered in secrets and wrapped in lies. From the moment he’d met her. Worse, he’d found himself twisted up in his own share of both when he’d always prided himself on his solid and unwavering strength of character.

  And he’d ignored the signs, made excuses, all because of the irresistible hold she apparently had over him.

  And now there was a baby.

  Maybe a baby. Not that he doubted Juliet’s word, not about this, but mistakes could be made, and he would feel better hearing it from a medical professional after the proper tests had been conducted. Then and only then would he let himself start making any kind of plans for the future.

  Reid’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, his knuckles going white. He was pretty sure the entire thing was going to snap in two if he didn’t loosen his grip soon. Behind his eyes, a headache was brewing.

  How ironic that this would happen to him twice in a lifetime.

  When he’d first met Valerie, he was in the army. Special Forces, to be precise. They’d been hot and heavy in the way only two young people with too many hormones running rampant and not enough common sense to keep them in check can.

  Then she’d turned up pregnant. Valerie hadn’t been the least bit happy about it, but surprisingly, Reid had. He’d been ready to settle down, ready to find something that would ground him and help him find a balance between what he did for a living and a normal, everyday life.

  He hadn’t been in love with Valerie as much as in lust, but with a kid on the way, he was more than prepared to marry her and do the whole modern-American-family thing.

  The problem was, Valerie had no interest in marrying him or settling down to start that family. Instead, he found a note taped to his door not long after she’d told him about the baby, and she and the kid were both gone with the wind.

  He’d thought about going after them, of course. Every day for a really long time, as a matter of fact. But if Valerie didn’t want to be with him, didn’t want him to be a father to her—their—child, then maybe it had been smarter of her to leave without telling him where she was going. For all he knew, she’d had an abortion on her way out of town, and the whole fatherhood thing was a moot point.

  So he’d let them—her?—go. And maybe he’d started drinking a bit too much from time to time, but then, who could blame him?

  Soon after that, he’d left the military and gone to work in private security, then private and corporate investigation, and finally opened his own firm. Once he was well and truly established with his first million in the bank and his first mention in Forbes, he’d actually put his skills to work and tracked them down after all.

  Them. Valerie and his ten-year-old son, Theo.

  She’d returned to West Texas to live with her family until the baby was born, and a few years after that married a lawyer from Dallas.

  As far as Reid could tell, they were happy, and his son was being treated well. Whether or not Theo knew the attorney wasn’t his real father, Reid wasn’t sure. And unless there was a good reason to move in and shake up the boy’s life, Reid had no intention of telling him.

  But that didn’t mean Reid didn’t think about him. He wondered if his son liked science or sports, was into dinosaurs or train sets. And what his life would have been like if Valerie had stuck around and put up a white picket fence with him instead of running off to do as much with another man.

  Not that it mattered, except for the fact that he now found himself in almost an identical situation with Juliet.

  Reid’s chest tightened as his thoughts and emotions from the past mixed and mingled with the present until he had trouble drawing a breath.

  This time around, however, there was another man already in Juliet’s life. Another man who could, conceivably, be the father of her unborn child.

  Although, to be perfectly honest, Reid didn’t think so. He believed Juliet when she said the baby was his. Otherwise she would have gone through with her wedding to the obnoxious jerk.

  Why make her life more complicated for herself than it already was when she could have kept her mouth shut and simplified things exponentially? The first word he would have heard about Juliet having a child was if the birth announcement ended up in the paper.

  So that was one problem that needed to be dealt with. Damned if he’d have Paul Harris butting in or causing trouble down the road. If Juliet truly was pregnant and the baby was his, then the ex-fiancé would have to go. On his own or with a bit of persuasion, Reid didn’t particularly care which.

  The next order of business would be what to do about the pregnancy.

  Initially, the decision would be Juliet’s, he knew that. No matter how he felt or what option she chose, he would have to take a step back for that one and let her do whatever she was going to do.

  If she decided to keep it, though, he would have to make a few decisions of his own. Like whether to suggest they stay together and try to give the child a stable, two-parent home. Or go the separate homes/single parent/shared custody route.

  One thing was for certain. He wasn’t going to walk away this time. He wasn’t going to let another woman give birth to his child without letting him be part of that child’s life.

  This time he would be involved.

  This time he would be a real father, no matter what it took.

  * * *

  Juliet stared at her reflection in the mirror above the vanity of Reid’s upstairs bathroom. It was a nice-size room: not too big and not too small, with cream-colored walls, oak trim and dark green ivy accents.

  She wasn’t surprised at the stylish décor that was neither too masculine nor too feminine. It matched the rest of the town house, which had also been professionally restored, furnished and decorated.

  Thanks to a bit of makeup and the passing of her latest bout of morning sickness, she actually looked fresh and presentable. It was to Reid’s credit that he’d made today’s appointment with the doctor of his choice for early afternoon, after he knew any trouble she had with nausea would have passed.

  He’d also put her in a room at the opposite end of the hall from his and stocked the downstairs refrigerator with clear soda and the cupboards with crackers, cream of wheat and soups he thought would be bland enough for her sensitive stomach.

  As hosts went, he was being a kind and extremely accommodating one.

  Why, then, was she such a knot of twisted, writhing nerve endings?

  She’d been on pins and needles ever since he ordered her to collect her belongings and get in the car so he could drive her back to New York. But being under the same roof with him with so much tension simmering between them made her feel like a goldfish in a very small bowl. Staying in her room most of the time was
akin to hiding inside her tiny plastic castle.

  Now, though, she was dressed and ready not only to brave the outside world but to accompany Reid downtown to an unfamiliar doctor’s office, where she would presumably be poked and prodded until tests either confirmed or denied that she was, indeed, pregnant.

  Since she couldn’t go back to the loft and risk being seen by Lily or Zoe or both, Juliet was living in the few items of warmer clothing she’d taken with her to the lake. Which meant that instead of a nice dress or skirt and heels like she would normally wear for an appointment of this type, she was wearing khaki slacks, a cream-colored knit sweater and a pair of comfortable—but dressy, thank goodness—ankle boots.

  Glancing at the watch on her left wrist, she realized she couldn’t spend any more time hiding out in the bathroom and took a deep, stabilizing breath as she pulled open the door.

  Negotiating the long hallway and wide set of carpeted steps leading downstairs, she found Reid waiting for her near the front door. Waiting, if not patiently.

  In slow, measured steps, he paced a few feet across the tiled foyer, stopped, checked his big, platinum watch face much as she had her own smaller one only moments before then turned on his heel and paced the same short length to where he’d begun. She caught him doing that twice as she descended the stairs.

  As she reached the bottom, he stopped and turned in her direction, hands on hips.

  “Ready?” he asked simply, but somewhat sharply.

  Since she understood his impatience and anxiety, she didn’t take it personally.

  “Yes,” she answered.

  He removed her lightweight jacket from a row of hooks along the wall beside the door and helped her into it. To be perfectly honest, the spring temperatures in New York were probably too warm for both a sweater and jacket, but they’d agreed that she should look as nondescript as possible whenever she went out, for fear of being recognized. And she could always shed the jacket once she reached the car or doctor’s office.