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She'd spent most of the time at her brother's house. With her father's big celebration approaching, they'd turned Chase and Allison's place into party-planning central. Willow had lingered late into the night the past four evenings, setting up last minute details. She and her sister-in-law, Allison, had compiled an assortment of pictures detailing her father's life. They'd spent most of their time scanning the photos into Chase's computer so they could create a video slide show to play after her father blew out the candles and publicly announced his impending retirement.
One evening she'd lingered so late, Chase and Allison had encouraged her to stay the night in the guest bedroom. The next evening, she'd stalled on purpose, hoping they'd make the same offer again, and she wouldn't have to go home to memories of a certain jerk cop.
But her brother was too smart for his own good. He'd tugged her aside and quietly asked, "What's going on?"
"Nothing," she said, and pulled her elbow out of his grip.
Chase had known her too long, though. He stared at her another
moment and said, "Did you and Malloy break up?"
She scowled. "We weren't dating, so there was no way we could break up. There was nothing there to break." Just her heart.
"You had a fight then." He used his assistant county attorney questioning skills to interrogate her. "Don't lie to me, Will. I know something's wrong."
She sighed. "Something's only wrong when Malloy and I don't have a fight."
"Then what'd you two fight about?" he pressed.
Willow paused to smile at her big brother. He scowled moodily, obviously distressed by her distress. Finding it sweet that he cared so much, she stood up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. "I love you too," she told him. "But don't worry about me. I'm fine."
He made a face and wiped the wet spot off his cheek as if irritated by her show of affection, but two seconds later, he pulled her into a hug and said into her ear. "I worry anyway." Pressing his mouth to her forehead, he added, "You can stay here again tonight if you want to."
She had wanted to, but she didn't stay at her brother's again. She'd have to go home sometime. So she'd dragged herself back to her house and hadn't been able to fall asleep the entire night, wondering if he'd come crawling into bed with her sometime in the wee hours, the way he had before. Pathetic her, she'd even left the back door open in case he felt so inclined.
But Raith never came.
The timer Camille had set beeped and Willow jerked to the present. Three people surged toward the kitchen. Arriving in one lumped crowd, they stumbled toward the table and started to lean over the test stick.
At the last moment, Camille pulled Dylan back to let Willow be the first to see the results.
Holding her breath, she looked down. Then she blinked a few times as if to clear her vision and make sure she wasn't seeing double. Finally, she reached out and lifted the test to get a closer look.
The results didn't change.
Two pink lines stared up at her. She lifted her gaze to an impatiently waiting Camille and swallowed.
She sent her cousin a smile and an incredulous laugh. A crazy kind of joy burst through her. The first thought to zip through her head was, he has to marry me now. Then reality returned. Marry her? Who was she kidding? This was the twenty-first century. Raith Malloy didn't have to do shit. And that's probably exactly what he would do. Absolutely nothing.
She burst into tears.
Camille rushed to her and hugged her, rocking her back and forth. Dylan strode forward, ripped the test strip out of Willow's hand and studied it for himself. He started to curse.
"I'm going to have a baby," Willow sobbed and wilted against Camille.
~ * ~
Raith settled into his office at the sheriff's department, intent to get some paperwork done. Staring at the cursor on his computer screen, he picked up a pen and tapped it against the armrest of his chair. He needed to finish filling out an incident report he should've started three days ago, but he only had the first line typed so far.
All he could see, however, was her face.
Taking up the stalking profession after all, he'd driven past DeVane's place every night. It'd been two weeks since he'd last seen her, and on six of those fourteen days she hadn't been home until after midnight. Two nights, she'd come pulling in right at ten. One night, she never came home at all.
He clenched his teeth, wondering where in the hell she'd been. But he refused to ask her.
Willow DeVane had kicked him out, and he wasn't setting foot back inside her house until she gave him a golden invitation. Oh, but he wanted in. He wanted to check her back door, see if she'd left it unlocked for him. He wanted to slip into bed beside her and hold her through the rest of the night.
He stayed away, though, no matter how much it killed him.
