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I climbed the wide front steps that led to a door so tall it made me feel like Alice in Wonderland after she drank the shrinking potion. Their butler answered the door and ushered me into the small salon, the one used for entertaining at Thanksgiving and Christmas. There was a larger one at the other end of the house for their bigger affairs.
Insecurity used to dog my footsteps when I walked into a James family gathering. Who would I talk to? Rather, who would talk to me? Since the answer was so often only Darla, and sometimes Fletcher, I hadn’t been to many of them. None in the last eight years. Now I was back, but the insecurity wasn’t. My only companion was a weary sort of apathy.
As usual, everyone was already there. Tiffany and Darla were in unspeakably elegant designer dresses and looked more like sisters than mother daughter. The boys were in their usual black suits, highball glasses in hand, bored expressions on their faces. Fletcher was standing in front of the broad picture window, gesturing broadly as he made conversation with two men I vaguely recognized as being his cousins.
“Hello, darling,” Darla said, making her way to my side. She’d lost Tiffany along the way–she’d split off to stand with the boys. The trio of heirs standing shoulder to shoulder. I could have laughed at how obvious their message was—and how unnecessary. I didn’t want to be part of their inner circle. Not anymore.
“Hi, Darla.” I leaned into her ephemeral embrace, the one where she seemed to hug you, but you barely felt the whisper of her limbs before she was pulling away, leaving only the lingering scent of French perfume. I used to long for one of her real hugs, but then I realized this was it. Tiffany and the boys got the same glancing, shadow of affection. But she was truly kind. Better than Fletcher deserved.
Fletcher caught sight of me standing with her, and a strange expression crossed his face. I stared back, imagining that my own expression was strange, too. We hadn’t exactly left things on good terms. They weren’t bad either. But I didn’t think either of us expected to come into contact with the other so soon. We had a good seven months until Thanksgiving, after all.
Before long, his attention was drawn back to his cousins, and I tried to focus mine back on Darla. Normally, she would steer me over to the bar where she’d pour me a glass of wine. I braced myself for it now, still unsure what excuse I was going to give for why I couldn’t drink it. To my surprise, though, she trailed her fingers down my arm and squeezed my hand lightly. “Darling, can I pull you away for a moment?” she murmured, her accent somehow more pronounced in the whisper. “I have something so very important to tell you.”
Intrigued, I searched her eyes for some sign of what it might be.
She lowered her voice even further. “It might change everything.”
30
JULIAN
This changed everything. I couldn’t get the image of Willow approaching the doctor’s office out of my head. It shouldn’t have been her mother beside her–it should have been me. It didn’t matter what else had happened between us. If she was pregnant, it was my baby, and I should be there. I’d gone straight to her place, but she hadn’t been there. I knew I could have probably tracked her down by finding out where Miller was, but I wasn’t going to do this in front of him.
Instead, I just started driving. At first, I wasn’t even trying to find her. I was just trying to find some peace. My goddamn head was buzzing like someone had filled it with a thousand wasps. Each one was a different thought, and I couldn’t catch one of them long enough to examine it, long enough to think it through.
Willow was pregnant.
I was the father.
She hadn’t told me yet.
She was going to, though, she had to.
Didn’t she?
Did I want her to tell me?
Of course I fucking did, I was going to be afather.
I’d always wanted to be a father. If you’d asked my friends ten years ago who would be the first to start a family, they would have guessed me. It shocked the hell out of me to watch them fall one by one. Find women they wanted to be with forever and start families while I stayed the same. Playing the same damn game, making the same damn mistakes. But then Willow had come along, and I’d wondered–is she it? Is it my turn to fall stupidly, blindly in love and change my whole life for a woman?
The answer had been yes and no. I had been stupid and blind, but I hadn’t had the chance to change my life for her. She’d betrayed me and walked away. I’d fully expected to never see her again. But now everything was different. Shewasgoing to change my life forever, whether she liked it or not. I wasn’t going to be a Fletcher. If she was really pregnant, I was going to be there for that baby every single day, and no one would stop me.
Not even her.
Filled with determination, I called Landon.
“Give me every address you can get,” I ordered. “Her mom, her friends, everyone. I want to find hernow.”
31
WILLOW
Darla drew me away from the parlor deep into the private recesses of the house. Then, to my surprise, she tugged me up the smaller staircase in the rear of the house. I’d only ever used the grand, sweeping one that was designed to impress and intimidate. That one took you to a long hall, but this one took you right into the heart of the house.
I looked around at what had to be their informal living room. The couches, while still terribly expensive and fashionable, actually looked like something you’d want to sit on. Each one had a giant throw over the back, and one even had the throw askew, like someone had recently been there. Darla gestured for me to sit, then went over and kindled a fire in the large fireplace with surprising ease. I’d assumed there were servants for that sort of thing, but she stacked the logs quickly and lit the flame beneath so efficiently it had to have come from long practice.
Only when the flames were happily chewing through the wood did she come back to join me on the couch. I was disconcerted to realize that the unfamiliar expression on her face was nerves.
