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This wasn’t fair. Amy, who’d wanted children her entire life, had died trying to get the baby she desired. For years, he’d felt like a failure because he’d been unable to grant her deepest wish. Yet now, after one stupid try, he’d planted a child in B.J., and there was no way in hell she’d been desperate to become a little mama.
He felt like hell. How could he so easily impregnate one woman, a woman he hardly knew, but he couldn’t manage to come through for his wife who’d been the absolute love of his life?
Taking his foot off the brake, Grady pressed the gas. He had to talk to B.J. He had to know how she could do this to him. He didn’t want to be a father. He didn’t want to look down and see a bloody little corpse ever again.
Why couldn’t
she have just left him alone in Houston, damn it?
Since B.J. lived in a small two-bedroom bungalow farmhouse hardly two miles from the filling station, Grady pulled into her drive only minutes later. Her truck was sitting out front, telling him she was home. As he parked behind it and slid out of his cab, he took a long, calming breath.
Realizing he was probably going to hate this encounter, he slowed his step but still reached her porch all too soon.
When he knocked on her door, he heard her call, “It’s open.”
Grady stepped inside. As soon as he’d gained entrance, he stopped and let the door quietly fall shut at his back. Her living room was small but tidy. It looked like a neat bachelor pad. The furniture was old, ugly and mismatched but appeared incredibly comfortable. The colors were neutral, nothing flashy or feminine. She had posters on the wall of four-wheelers and airplanes. And the television was on, turned to NASCAR.
B.J. entered from a doorway on the left. She was barefoot, dressed in an old pair of faded blue jeans with holes ripped in the knees. She had on an equally old T-shirt with a beer logo on the front, and her wet hair was pulled back into its usual ponytail. She carried a bag of microwave popcorn and tugged it open as she strolled in from the kitchen.
The voice of the gossipmonger from the filling station filled Grady’s head. I’m still convinced she’s got a body that just won’t stop under all those man clothes. He knew just how true those words were. Lithe form, long legs, tightly packed muscles, soft curves, breasts that more than filled his hands. His mouth watered.
When she saw him, she jerked to a stop. “What are you doing here?”
His first thought had nothing to do with children. The first—and pretty much the only—declaration to enter his head was, Mine.
Chapter Nine
“You wanted to see me?” Grady asked, clearing his throat and returning to his senses.
B.J.’s eyes widened, and she shook her head. “N-no.”
Grady’s jaw went hard. “You called twice and stopped by once this morning,” he reminded. “What was it you needed to tell me?”
Her head once again swung back and forth, “I don’t. . .nothing,” she insisted.
He bit back a sigh. The woman was an awful liar. It did nothing to ease his growing anger.
“So, the gossip around town isn’t true then?”
B.J. frowned. “I don’t listen to the gossip around town, so I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He lifted a brow and sent her an arch look. “That so? You have no idea what I’m talking about, huh?”
“I just said I didn’t,” she snapped a little too defensively; her stance went from cowering to attack-mode.
“Well, I heard about five minutes ago that someone had knocked up B.J. Gilmore.”
That finally evoked the response he’d expected. Her face drained of color and she dropped her bag of popcorn, spilling kernels around her bare feet.
“Who told you that?”
Grady folded his arms and stared hard. “I overheard Gabe Watson telling Ulrick Pullson about it at Herb’s Quick Stop. Both of them already knew.”
“Who?” she demanded, and then she shook her head furiously. “Oh my God, I can’t believe this. How could anyone know? I just found out myself Tuesday when I went to Dr. Carl’s office and got the damn test taken. I mean, okay, so Pop suspected, but there’s no way my own father would start a rumor. . .”
“Dr. Carl’s office?” Grady repeated, his lungs constricting.
Dr. Carl had been Amy’s doctor too. Just knowing B.J. was going to go to the same man who’d been standing over his wife when she died made him break out in a cold sweat.
