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“What are you talking about?” She regarded him sideways. “Rule, what’s wrong?”

He gulped—like a guilty child caught stealing chocolates. “There’s something I really must tell you.”

“What?” She was starting to look frightened. “Rule. What?”

“You should … sit down, I think.” He tried to take her arm.

She eased free of his grip. “Okay. You’re scaring me. Whatever it is, you need to just go ahead and say it.”

“I will, of course. It’s important and I should have told you long ago, right at the first.”

“Rule.” Now she was the one reaching for him. She took hold of both of his arms and she looked him squarely in the eye. “Tell me. Whatever it is, tell me right now.”

Was there any way to do this gently? He couldn’t think of one. So he went ahead and just said it outright. “I was a donor for Secure Choice Cryobank. It was my profile you chose. Trevor is my son.”

Chapter Thirteen

She still clutched his arms, her fingers digging in. Her face had gone chalk-white. “No,” she whispered.

“Sydney, I—”

She let go of him, jumped away as though she couldn’t bear to touch him. “No.” She put her hands to her mouth, shook her head slowly. “No, no, no. You never said. Ever. I asked you, I asked you directly …” She whispered the words. But to him, that whisper was as loud as a shout. As a scream.

“I know. I lied. Sydney, if we could just—”

“No.” She shook her head some more. “No.” And then she whirled on her heel and she marched over to the sofa where Lani had been sitting. Carefully, she picked up the laptop and set it on the low table in front of her. Then she sat down. “Here.” She pointed at one of the wing chairs across from her. “Sit.”

What else could he do? He went over there. He sat.

There was a silence.

They regarded each other across the low table, across a short distance that seemed to him endless. And absolutely uncrossable. He only had to look at her—the pale, locked-away face, the lightless eyes—to know the worst had happened.

He had lost her.

She asked in a carefully controlled voice, “So you did take my information from Secure Choice, after all?”

“I did, yes.”

“Um. When?”

“Almost three years ago.”

“When I was pregnant? You’ve known since then?”

“Yes. I knew from the first.”

With another gasp, she put the back of her hand to her mouth. And then she seemed to catch herself. She let her hand drop to her lap. “All that time. You did nothing. And then, suddenly, out of nowhere, you were there. Lying to me, pretending it was all just a happy little accident, that you had happened to see me going into Macy’s. That you were so very intrigued by my determination. But it wasn’t an accident. Not an accident at all.”

His throat clutched. He gulped to clear it. “No. It was no accident. I was following you that day.” She pressed her fist to her stomach. The baby. He started to rise. “Sydney. Are you—?”

She stuck out her hand at him, palm flat. “No. Stay there. Don’t you dare get up. Don’t you come near me.”

“But you—”

“I am not ill. I am … there are no words, Rule. You know that, don’t you? No words. None.”

He sank back to the chair, said the only thing he could say. “I know.”

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