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Chapter 3
Kim stood in the entrywayin the kitchen, watching the departing back of the man who answered the door. The father of her baby. The whole time he stood there, she felt a deep and abiding guilt that he didn’t know.
She could say she didn’t have his contact info, so she couldn’t tell him, and that was accurate. Although, she certainly could go through Todd to get it.
Then Todd would want to know why, and so far, no one knew.
No one except Iva May, who passed away, and her, apparently, real parents.
They wanted to help her, would love to help her, but she just needed some time to think. It felt like her life had completely fallen apart.
And now, to make her feel even worse, like she needed that, she was apparently evicting this man out of his house.
The man she had a one-night stand with. The father of her baby. The man who was her ex-husband’s business partner.
That last part made her want to run from the house, to go somewhere, anywhere other than here.
Maybe she would feel better if she knew what he really thought of her. Did he believe her when she’d told him she’d never done anything like that before? Did he think that was the way she was? That she was just like Todd?
He offered to marry you.
He had no idea what that had done to her. There was a part of her that desperately wanted to take him up on it. He didn’t even know about the baby.
But of course, that wasn’t the reason he offered. It was just out of convenience so that neither one of them would have to live above the stable.
She looked around the small cottage. She didn’t want to share it with someone she wasn’t married to. Everything in her rebelled against that. Just like everything in her rebelled against the idea of having a one-night stand.
The one time in her life she’d done it, she’d gotten caught, red-handed it seemed.
Never again. She wasn’t going to compromise her convictions no matter how bad she felt or how much she wanted to walk away from life.
Definitely a person reaped what they sowed.
Well, she was going to reap, because she didn’t have a choice, but she was going to be a lot more careful about what she sowed from here on out.
So, was she really going to allow Davis to move out to the stable, or was she going to entertain his idea of marriage?
Before she made any decisions about that, she probably ought to sit down and tell him about the baby. That was the right thing to do.
It was one thing for her to say she didn’t have his contact info and couldn’t tell him, it was a completely different thing for her to live beside him for any length of time and not tell him. The idea made her stomach cramp and her heart twirl, skipping beats and running ahead and making her feel lightheaded.
She took two steps back to the kitchen counter and sat down on the stool.
She needed to tell him. Right now. Waiting would only make it worse. He was going to be upset enough as it was. The problem was, she wanted to tell him and then never see him again. She didn’t want to tell him, then have him living above the stable where she would run into him on a weekly, if not daily, basis almost certainly.
She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, but eventually his footsteps sounded on the stairs and then in the hall as he came closer. Pushing herself up from the cozy kitchen stool, she took a second to admire the kitchen with the big windows that faced the lake and sheer curtains that would blow gently in the lake breeze this summer. She braced herself, glancing around for something to focus on. The cottage was decorated beautifully, lakeside colors of blues and greens with soft cream throws on the recliner and the loveseat.
“Davis?” she said as he walked into the room, realizing she was wringing her hands together and forcing herself to stop.
