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Life was finally starting to look up. She’d had the baby’s heartbeat checked this morning at Maya’s surgery and had been able to count off another day towards her three-month mark and the point when she could start making plans for her and the baby. And the sun was shining through the tiny window, making the dust motes glitter.
All she had to do now was focus on achievable goals and let everything else take care of itself. Maybe she’d never been destined to have a happy-ever-after with the man of her dreams, but if she was very lucky she might have something every bit as good in eight months’ time.
She heard the door open. ‘Just a minute, Daze,’ she said as she typed the last of the August suppliers’ receipts into the calculator.
‘You should have told me about the baby.’
Her head shot up at the deep, husky voice—and all the breath sucked right out of her lungs.
‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered. Surely she had to be hallucinating.
He stood by the door, his tall, broad-shouldered frame in worn jeans and a Cal Arts T-shirt making the cramped room look even smaller.
‘I came to talk,’ he said calmly, his eyes raking over her face, the intense blue making her breath catch. ‘Among other things.’
He stepped towards her, but she shot out of her chair and moved back. ‘Go away. I have nothing to talk to you about.’ She couldn’t go through this, not again. The yearning, the longing and the knowing it had never been real.
‘That’s nonsense and you know it.’ He skirted the table and she retreated another step, backing into a rack of dresses pushed against the wall.
‘Why don’t we start with why you walked out on me?’ he said as he continued to bear down on her. ‘And then we’ll move right along to why you didn’t tell me about our child.’
‘Why would I?’ she said as a rage that she hadn’t even known was inside her rose up to batter her chest. ‘Why would I tell you about a child you don’t want?’
There could only be one reason he was here. One reason he’d flown all the way from LA. The sickening realisation had fear sprinting up her spine.
She tried to dash past him, trapped and desperate to escape. But he stepped into her path and wrapped an arm round her waist. Hauling her into his arms.
‘You’re going nowhere until you explain that statement,’ he said, holding her easily as she tried to struggle free.
She lifted her fists, pummelled his chest. ‘I’m not having an abortion. You can’t make me.’ Tears blurred her eyes, the fear growing like a tempest.
‘Juno, stop it, it’s nothing like that.’ He took the blows and tightened his arms until her attempts to hit him became futile and she struggled uselessly in his embrace.
‘I won’t do it. I won’t. Leave me alone. I hate you,’ she cried out.
But it wasn’t Mac she saw any more, it was Tony, the sneering contempt, the smug indifference on his face. And then the last of the rage, the fury, drained to leave nothing but bone-melting exhaustion, bitter sobs racking her body.
‘Shh, Juno, don’t take on so.’ His voice seemed to come from a great distance away as he lifted her. He took the seat she’d vacated and cradled her limp body in his lap. His hand brushed her cheek, pushed the hair back from her face. ‘I never told you to have an abortion. And now you’ve fallen pregnant, an abortion is the last thing I want.’ He covered the hand fisted in her lap.
She shifted, trying to get off his lap, but his arms held her in place.
‘You told me to take the morning-after pill,’ she said. ‘What’s the difference?’
He cursed softly and gave a heavy sigh. ‘Ah, hell. That was a stupid knee-jerk reaction, said in the heat of the moment. Don’t hold it against me now.’
‘Why would you say it if you didn’t mean it?’
His eyes flicked away.
‘I’d always believed I could never be a father. That I might have the same thing inside me, the same weakness my own father had.’ He hesitated. ‘But now I can see how foolish that was.’ He looked back at her, squeezed her hand. ‘I want to be a father to this baby. Do you believe me?’
Seeing the truth in his eyes, she felt emotion swell in her chest. ‘Yes.’ She huffed out a breath, resigned to telling him the rest. ‘But there’s a good chance there might not be a baby.’
‘Tell me what happened, Juno,’ he said gently, brushing his thumb across her cheek. ‘Because I’ve a feeling it wasn’t only me you were fighting a moment ago?’
Her bottom lip trembled perilously. She supposed she owed him this much. She’d accused him of something he’d never really said. ‘I got pregnant,’ she said simply. ‘After… After the night with Tony.’
‘I see,’ he said. ‘That’s not all, though, is it?’
