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“Right.” Pen somehow managed the one-word response despite her heart being lodged in her esophagus. He was right. It made sense to continue seeing him. If they mysteriously ended their engagement right when Yvonne had agreed to keep her trap shut, no one would believe it was real. Which might not matter except that Chase had announced to one and all that his brother was going to be married. She didn’t want to be responsible for making Dallas’s trustworthy mayor into a liar. If that wasn’t enough public attention, there was the business world wagging their tongues about Ferguson Oil’s youngest CEO taking a wife. Soon they’d have to amend their announcement to add that Zach had impregnated his bride-to-be...who the public would later learn wasn’t going to be his wife at all.
God. This was a nightmare.
Maybe she didn’t have to tell him today. Hope sparked fresh in her chest. She had a good four weeks before her baby bump made itself known. Why not avoid him until then? And the paparazzi and public functions... She could become a hermit.
If she folded up the shingle on her PR business.
Sigh. That wasn’t a realistic plan at all.
The only certainty was that she was keeping the baby. Her pregnancy was unexpected, yes, but Penelope believed deep in her soul that life unfolded in the order it did for a reason. If fate decided she was to be a mother, then she’d accept. It was as simple, and terrifying, as that.
Zach drank from his beer glass and eyed Pen’s untouched wine. There was no way to avoid him for an extended period of time. He was a force—he was in her life. She had to do the mature thing and tell him the damn truth.
She filtered through her muddy mind until she located the speech she’d practiced in her office’s bathroom mirror five times before she came here tonight. It was short, sweet and to the point.
“I’m pregnant.”
* * *
Zach’s limbs were stiff and unmoving, the blood sloshing against his eardrums making Pen’s voice sound a mile away.
“I found out Friday night and I couldn’t tell you over the weekend until I decided what to do. So here I am.” Pen fastened her gaze on the wineglass. The wine she couldn’t drink because she was pregnant with his child.
He focused on the beer glass in his hand for an exaggerated beat before managing, “What do you mean?”
His tone was as flat as the firm line of his pretend fiancée’s unsmiling mouth. Pale blue eyes rested on his as if she was as shell-shocked as him. Only she couldn’t be, because she’d been processing for three days and he’d had three seconds.
“I mean I’m having the baby—your baby. Keeping this a secret from you was never an option.”
Hell, no, it’s not, came the immediate thought.
He hadn’t sat around and contemplated fatherhood, but now that he knew it was a reality, the surety of being involved rang tuning-fork true in the pit of his gut.
“The due date is December, right before Christmas.” She shared it like she was talking about some other couple who was suddenly expecting a bundle of joy. For as distant as he felt from this announcement, she might as well be talking about someone else.
He set his beer aside and stood, unable to sit any longer. His measured steps were more of a stalk, but he reined in his energy to face the woman on his couch. Penelope had radically changed his future—his entire family’s future—in a few short weeks.
Wait. Weeks? He did some quick math.
“It’s been a little over two weeks since my brother’s party. How the hell could you know you’re pregnant already?”
Her porcelain skin went pink. “It’s been four weeks, Zach, since you and I had sex the first time.”
The first time?
Ah, hell.
He nodded to himself as reality reared its head. That was the clincher about math—the answer wasn’t up for debate.
The jazz club. The night he’d explored her up and down and up again. The night he thought would be the last he saw of her.
He pulled a hand down his face, pausing with it over his mouth for a moment. His shock was a palpable entity swirling the room, his thoughts ranging from excitement to horror to wanting to accuse her of attempting to take his money like his ex-wife.
But this was Penelope he was talking about. Even if he didn’t trust her—and he did—there was the significant matter of her not knowing he had that many zeroes in his bank account the night he took her back to her place.
“I have a plan,” she said.
“A plan.” Mind racing, his vision blurred as his thoughts circled the track again.
