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What the ever-loving fuck?
I was going to be a father. Me. A fucking father. Responsible for another human being. With Marlow.
Which would be harder to handle, her or our baby, I didn’t know. Sweat broke out on my forehead. Shit. A father. What did I know about being a dad?
And what was that crap about letting her take care of our pumpkin and knock me out of the picture? No way in hell. I’d already started a draft for how to hedge that.
I had lost my mind. A vacation with Wicked? I swear that woman’s habit of speaking without thinking had rubbed off on me. She’d kill me. Or maybe I’d strangle her first. And I thought I could handle parenting with her?
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“Counselor, are you in the courtroom or out to lunch?” The judge stared at me, along with everyone else in the room.
I cleared my throat. “I apologize, your honor. Where were we?”
I foundmyself standing outside Holt’s garage. When Marlow attempted to leave last night, I hadn’t stopped her, too shell-shocked. She’d seemed indifferent about our baby. Because the child wasn’t her precious Jack’s, she wouldn’t love her as much? She’d all but come out and said I’d never live up to that—man.I will not think ill of the dead.
“If you’re looking for my sister, she’s not here.”
Holt jogged down the stairs.
“You heard from her?”
“Nope. She told me a few days ago she wouldn’t be here today. Somethingwith military wives.”
Marlow hanging out with military wives?She wasn’t exactly the social type.
I surveyed the garage. “Place is looking good. Every time I come by it looks closer to opening.”
“You’re here almost every day.” I shrugged. “Did you tell her? About the wedding?”
“I invited her to an event on Thursday. Didn’t say what.” I pushed my suit jacket out of the way and put a hand in my pocket. “This is not a good plan.”
He turned his ball cap around backward. “I don’t know if I want her there.”
“Then we won’t come. You can figure out how to undo the damage.” He’d regret it later, but I’d done all I could do to help.
“Why are you always taking up for her?”
“Hell if I know. Believe me, she’s been as much of a witch to me as she has to you.” Last night was a prime example.
“She made it clear she thinks the wedding is a mistake. She doesn’t want to be there.”
“I beg to differ on that. Well, the part about not wanting to be there. Your wedding. Your call. Let me know before go-time if I’m taking her to the church or out to dinner.”
“How do you do it?”
“What?”
“Put up with her?”
“All of us are misunderstood, some of us just more than others.” As much as she irritated me, it was the little moments when she dropped that wall. Like when she’d brought me breakfast to cure my hangover and apologized for what she’d said about my career.
He rocked on the balls of his feet. “I guess.”
“Has she ever mentioned anywhere she’d like to go?”
“To eat? I can’t remember.”
