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Leaning against the door frame, she shook her head. “I haven’t told him and Cassie that I’m pregnant yet, and they’d need to know that to understand why you have to be here. But it’s not his anymore. I bought the house from him when he and Cassie got married.”
She looked relaxed, leaning there, even with her long dark ponytail as pristine as her house. He missed seeing her hair down.
Around him.
Not a place he could go. Absolutely not, if he accepted her invitation to live there.
And he had to do that. He couldn’t lose the chance to be around his unborn child. To feel the baby move. Or be there if something went wrong...
He glanced around, picturing his furniture in the empty space. Seeing himself living there. Wanting to live there.
And still needing to know more.
“You do plan to tell Wood and his new wife about the baby, then?” What was he walking into?
“Of course. They’re my family.”
And about that...
“Have you told your parents?” She’d never mentioned them but had never asked about his, either. Had she even considered that her baby was going to have two sets of grandparents?
Of course, until the day before, they hadn’t even known if the baby was his.
There he was, rushing into things again. Wanting it all done at once.
Elaina straightened then, arms crossed, leaned against the doorjamb again. “My parents are dead, Greg. I thought you knew that.”
His heart stilled. And ached, too. “I’m so sorry. I...how would I have known that?” How couldn’t he have known that? He’d been sleeping with her, exclusively, for more than a year, longer than any lover other than his ex-wife, and he didn’t know she was an orphan?
“What happened? How long ago?”
“They were killed in a car accident when I was in college. My sophomore year. I was an only child and already dating Peter then, and he was wonderful to me. He and Wood...they took me into their home, their family, as though I’d always been a part of their world...”
Everything slowed. His thoughts. The air pulling into his lungs. The vacant room seemed too full. “Did you say...Wood?” He homed in on the one thing that he could grasp.
She nodded. “He was Peter’s older brother. Their dad died when Peter was little, and then, when Wood was seventeen, their mom died, so Wood quit school to take care of Peter. He even put him through medical school.”
She’d lost her parents in a car accident. And then lost her first husband the same way? The fact that the woman was standing there, owner of her own home, planning a life for herself...spoke volumes to him. She was a survivor. One who didn’t give up. No matter what the cost.
And... “You married your husband’s older brother.” It was all coming at him so fast. He was both fascinated and horrified, feeling the need to get out of there and also wrap his arms around her, hold her and never let go.
She met his gaze, held it for what seemed like forever. He held hers, too. It was all the touching they could do. They weren’t lovers anymore. And couldn’t be anything else. Still, Greg had to know who she was, this woman he’d taken to his bed for so many months, and who was going to have his child.
“It was Wood’s idea,” she said, sounding as though she had to reassure him of that point. He wasn’t sure why. “And we were never intimate—just emotionally connected. But I should have realized what it was going to cost him.”
“Cost him?” He’d gotten Elaina. There was no price to be put on that...
“He’d given up so much of his life to raise Peter, to see his brother through medical school. And just when he was about to get his own chance to make a life for himself, there I was, needing him, and he started all over again with me.”
Greg considered the man lucky. To have had Elaina needing him...
Forcing himself to focus on what she was trying to get him to see, he asked, “How did marrying you equate to raising a little brother and seeing him through school?”
“I was just starting medical school. He was my support system.”
“What about insurance? Surely with the accident...”
“The driver wasn’t insured. At least not enough to make a difference. And Peter only had the minimum underinsured policy.”
