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“I love you,” I said again, forcing every ounce of truth and energy into my words. “I think I loved you since the moment in the French place. You opened up about who you were and what you really wanted, and I couldn’t resist you after that.”
“Really?”
I reached out and ran a finger down the side of her too-pale cheek. “I’d never lie about that. I think you opened up and revealed your soul, luv, and I’ve been hooked then on out.” I moved my arm so I could place my palm flat against her stomach.
Damn me. I should have noticed she was looking a little rounder, her cheeks more flushed. If I’d been thinking at all, I might have realized she was showing that new glow of coming motherhood. After all, I knew the look. It just…we’d been so careful, except that first time, and she was on the pill. This being a possibility had never occurred to me at all.
“I love both of you. If you’d told me…why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was afraid.”
“Of Seth?”
“Well, yes, but I was scared of a ton of things,” she said. “I thought you’d reject me. This was just about fun.”
“It was, but it’s more now.” I caressed her stomach. It was just barely gaining weight. I couldn’t wait to see her belly swollen and round, growing large with my child. “You should have come to me.”
“You already have a life with your daughter. And I can’t even pretend to replace Priscilla. I mean, not to sound awful, but every year you raise millions of dollars for cancer because you lost her. I can’t be her.”
“I don’t need you to be her, and Symone adores you. I’m sure she’d love to be a big sister to our child.”
“Maybe, but I was scared I was still just a fling. If you’d said that to my face, I couldn’t have survived.”
I nodded and then moved my hand back to cup her chin. “That’s funny.”
“What?”
“The only things that could truly crush us; they’re inversed. You couldn’t have lived with me rejecting you, which I’d never, ever do, luv. If Seth had called me and said you’d died…I’d have gone mad. Cracked into a million pieces.”
She sniffled. “I didn’t mean to make you so upset. I just…”
“Then,” I said, leaning closer so that my breath hit her cheeks. “We have to be better. Not just for us anymore, but for our child. We have to trust each other.”
“Like by not running to another country?”
“Another continent,” I said, winking at her to let her know I wasn’t mad. God, as long as she and the baby survived, finding out about both of them today would be about the third or fourth happiest moment of my life. “We definitely need to be better together. I’ll say more what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling. It’s been fifteen years since I had to let a woman really into my thoughts and into my heart.”
“I’m in your heart.”
I kissed her again, tasting every bit of her unique flavor on my tongue. “Luv, you’re so deep in there that I’d never be able to get you out again, and I’d never want to.” I squeezed her hand. “So, you and me and the baby.”
“Possibly my father’s shotgun?”
I laughed. “He might have tried to deck me already. I worry about Seth taking on too much. Desk life has made him softer than I.”
She shook her head. “Nothing about you is anything but hard, Cal. I just think that whatever comes, it’s going to be so difficult. My family’s really pissed, and I do understand it. Believe me, I do. I can’t say I’d be different if David did something probably this dumb?”
“Get pregnant, luv?”
“No, but get sick or get himself hurt.”
I squeezed her hand more deeply. “But we’ll get through it together. We’ll be honest, and in five months, we’ll have the second-best baby on the planet.”
“Second?”
“Or tied. I’m not going to get yanked into sibling rivalry and be forced to choose between Symone and the new one. I am now Switzerland and am completely neutral.”
She laughed, and it was the best damn sound I’d ever heard. “You’re about to be the father of two kids, at least soon enough. I think there’s no neutral place to hide in that!”
