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He paused, glancing back at the child, then turned, yanked on the door handle, and practically vaulted out of the car. Angel opened her door and walked around to him. He shook a cigarette out of the pack and bent his head to light it. He tilted his head back and blew out a stream of smoke.
Angel stood watching him. She knew this was a lot to dump on someone all at once.
Cole glanced at her, his eyes traveling over her again. “You look like you’re doing okay. I hardly recognize you.” He changed the subject. He wasn’t ready to talk about the fact that he may be a father. He needed a minute to process that.
She crossed her arms and looked away. “Why? Because I’m not that scared little twenty-year-old anymore. Dressed in cutoffs and—”
“You were beautiful, even then,” he said, cutting her off.
She met his eyes, and he looked away.
He took another hit off his cigarette. “Did you find yourself a wealthy husband? One that can afford to keep you in designer clothes?”
“No husband.”
He looked back at her and asked the one question that had haunted him for three years now. “Why’d you leave like that?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, stunned.
“No goodbye. No note.” He studied her. “I come back and just find you gone. Mack said you took a cab and left.”
“What?” Her arms came unfolded. She looked at him, stunned and a little pissed. “That’s not what happened!”
“You know what? It doesn’t really matter anymore.” He tossed his cigarette into the distance and turned to get back in the vehicle. Maybe he didn’t really want to know the answer.
“Like hell it doesn’t,” she snapped, grabbing his arm and pulling him back around. “You’re going to hear the truth, damn it!”
He stared at her and jerked his arm out of her grasp. He didn’t want her touching him. If she did, he’d lose it, and the walls he’d built to guard his heart, walls he’d carefully, painfully built, brick-by-brick over the last three years would come tumbling down.
“You left me!” she yelled at him.
“What?” He stared at her. What the hell was she talking about?
“That morning when I woke up alone, I thought you’d come back. I waited—”
“Evidently not very long, babe,” he interrupted.
“Mack called me into that room.” She pointed in the general direction of the clubhouse. “He told me you’d left and wouldn’t be back for a couple of days—”
He interrupted her again, shaking his head. “No, Angel, I was back in a couple of hours—”
She continued, talking over him, “He said you told him to make sure I got a cab home. And to tell me it’d been fun.”
“What? I never—”
She kept going. “Guess your brother wanted to get rid of me. I wrote you a note. Left it on your bed. Did you read it?”
“There was no note.”
“Gee, wonder who could have gotten rid of it? Just like he got rid of me.”
Cole shook his head, trying to make sense of all this. He couldn’t have been wrong all this time, could he?
“Look, it doesn’t matter.” She threw her hands in the air. “What I need to know is if you’ll help my daughter.”
When he heard her say “it doesn’t matter” something inside him snapped. His look darkened, and he advanced on her.
She took a couple of steps back and felt the vehicle pressed against her back.
He put his hand on the vehicle and leaned into her, bringing his face to within a couple of inches of hers. “Don’t you mean our daughter?” he challenged.
They stared at each other.
Her eyes dropped to his mouth, and she remembered the feel and taste of it. “Yes. I… I hope our daughter.”
