His Heir, Her Secret (Highland Heroes Book 1)

by Janice Maynard

  When that task was accomplished, Brody carefully deposited his precious cargo in his bed.

  “Why isn’t she waking up?” Isobel fretted.

  “She doesn’t look good,” Duncan pointed out, voicing Brody’s own thoughts.

  Brody sat and chafed her cool, long-fingered hands. Duncan kept the ice bag against her temple. Isobel sagged into an armchair, suddenly looking every one of her ninety-two years.

  Finally, after what seemed like a lifetime but was probably only another five or ten minutes, Cate’s eyelashes fluttered and lifted. Her gaze was cloudy with confusion. “What happened?” she whispered.

  Brody smoothed a lock of hair from her cheek. The golden strands clung to his finger. “You fainted.”

  Though she was ashen before, now she turned dead white, her expression both aghast and defeated. Her throat worked as she swallowed. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Duncan moved to the end of the bed. “Could you be coming down with the flu, Cate? I heard in town yesterday that the clinic is seeing a big surge in new cases.”

  “If that’s true,” Brody said, “you shouldn’t be around Granny. Flu can be deadly for people her age.”

  Duncan jumped in, clearly trying to temper his brother’s unwittingly harsh comment. “Let’s not race to conclusions.” He smiled gently at Cate. “Do you feel feverish or nauseated?” he asked.

  Cate clenched the sheets on either side of her, her fingers gripping the folds white-knuckled. “Yes.”

  “Damn.” Brody gazed down at her, his chest tight. Young people also died from the flu. “I guess we should call the doctor.”

  Cate struggled to sit up despite their protests. She rested her back against the headboard and pushed the hair from her face. In Brody’s big bed she seemed small and lost and defenseless.

  Her mouth opened and closed. She licked her dry lips. “I don’t have the flu,” she said clearly. “I’m pregnant.”

  Duncan whistled long and slow.

  Brody cursed and jerked backward, lurching to his feet. “That’s not funny.”

  Isobel actually laughed and put her hands to her cheeks.

  Cate lifted her chin, her eyes glassy with unshed tears. “Do I look like I think it’s funny?” She turned toward Isobel, who should have been shocked, but instead, sat quietly with a look of Machiavellian concentration on her wrinkled face. “I can still take care of you, Miss Izzy. At least until the baby comes. Don’t worry about a thing.”

  Brody felt his world caving in. “Whose is it?”

  Isobel jumped to her feet and thumped his shoulder with all her less-than-substantial weight. “Brody Stewart. You apologize right this instant.”

  Duncan frowned. “Granny’s right.”

  Brody swallowed hard. Did men faint? He felt damn close himself. He grimaced at his brother and grandmother. “Why don’t the two of you go eat before the caterer has apoplexy. Cate and I will stay here and talk.”

  Cate lurched out of bed. “Oh, no,” she cried. “I’m not staying here with you.” She gave Brody a look that could have melted steel, but the moment she tried to stand, she wobbled and fell over again. This time Duncan caught her, because he was close.

  He helped her back onto the bed.

  Brody fisted his hands, his chest heaving. “I’m sorry. You two go. Cate and I will be okay.”

  When Duncan and Isobel exited the bedroom and closed the door, the room fell silent. Brody knew he needed a conciliatory tone, but all he felt was fury and pain. “When were you going to tell me?” he shouted, totally unable to help himself.

  Cate shrank back against the headboard, her arms wrapped so tightly around herself it was a wonder she didn’t break. “I was working on it,” she said, the words dull. “If you don’t believe me, feel free to search my laptop. The letter is time-and date-stamped. I started writing it two weeks ago. Right after I found out. You were an ocean away. It wasn’t an easy thing to do.”

  “How far along?” He didn’t mean for the question to sound accusatory; he really didn’t.

  But Cate took it as such. He saw it on her face. “Four months give or take.”

  “We used protection.”

  “Not that one time. In the middle of the night.”

  He blanched, suddenly remembering every detail. He’d awakened hard and aching, already reaching for her in his sleep. She had been like a drug to him. The euphoria of taking her again and again shot him to the top and wrung him out. He’d been obsessed with her.

  If he hadn’t gone back to Scotland, they might have fucked themselves to death.

  “Is there a chance anyone else could be the father?” He made himself ask the dreadful question.

  Cate’s green eyes sheened with tears. “Of course not, you stupid, thickheaded Scotsman.” Her voice was tight. “If I weren’t about to throw up on your priceless oriental rug right now, I’d get out of this bed and slug you in the stomach. Do you really think I found someone else so quickly after you left? Good Lord, Brody. You were the first man I’d slept with in five years. And that was a fluke. I wasn’t looking for sex in the first place.”

  He knew she tried to stifle the sob at the end, but it slipped out. Why was he being such a prick? Perhaps because he had never been so scared and confused and guilty in his life. And ashamed. Conscience-stricken that he hadn’t been with her during these traumatic weeks.

  “Have you been sick from the beginning?” The only way to establish any sense of normalcy was to keep talking, but honest to God, his head spun, and he hadn’t a clue what to do. It was like the time he took one of his boats out alone and got caught up in a wicked storm and nearly drowned.

  Only tonight was much worse.

  Cate shook her head slowly. “No. This is new.”

  He scraped both hands through his hair, trying and failing to come to terms with the fact that he was going to be a father. Nothing made sense.

  “I’ll provide for the child,” he said, his jaw clenched so hard his temples screamed with pain.

  Cate’s emerald eyes went dark. “You needn’t bother with speeches, Brody. The only reason I was going to tell you about the baby at all was to soothe my conscience. I make a decent living. I have a nest egg from my parents. I don’t want or expect anything from you. You’re free to go back to Scotland. The sooner, the better, in fact. Isobel doesn’t need you and neither do I.”

  Fury, hot and wild, pounded in his veins. But when he looked at her, sitting so defeated and miserable in his bed, he forced himself to swallow the words of angry confrontation that he wanted to throw at her. Cate carried his child. She was sick and confused and vulnerable.

  “Clearly, there are decisions to be made,” he said quietly. “Now is not the time. I know you don’t feel well, but you need to eat. Let’s go back to the dining room and give it a try.”

  “You go,” she said stubbornly. “I’ll stay here and rest.”

  He managed a smile and wondered if it seemed as strained and false as it felt to him. “I can tell you’re feeling better,” he said. “Your cheeks have color in them again. Don’t fight me on this, Cate. You’ll only make things worse.”

  Ignoring her sputtered protests, he kissed her on the forehead and picked her up again. “You’ll wear yourself out fighting, Little Mama. Take a break tonight. Talk to Duncan and Granny. Tomorrow the sun will come up and you’ll feel better, I swear. We both will.”

  Her head lolled against his shoulder, her breath warm on his neck. “I hate you, Brody.”

  A mighty sigh lifted his chest and rolled through him with a tsunami of regrets. “I know, Cate. I know.”

  * * *

  An hour later Brody stood at the front door and watched as the taillights of Cate’s car disappeared down the hill. He had lost the violent argument about whether or not she would drive herself back to town. Only when brave, beauti
ful Cate broke down in tears did he make himself back down. He didn’t know much about pregnant women, but her mental state seemed precarious at the moment, so he acquiesced reluctantly. It felt like an eternity before he at last got her text saying she was safely at home.

  The caterer was long gone and the countertops pristine. Brody prowled the darkened kitchen, scrounging in the refrigerator for a piece of the key lime pie he had been too upset to eat earlier.

  Though it was late, Brody was miles away from feeling sleepy. Maybe he was finally getting over his jet lag, and maybe tonight’s news would give him permanent insomnia. Adrenaline pumped in his veins. He jumped when Duncan showed up unannounced in the dimly lit space.

  Duncan sprawled in a cane-bottomed chair at the small table in the breakfast nook. “What are you going to do?”

  That was Duncan. Cut to the chase. Don’t dance around the issue.

  “I haven’t a clue,” Brody said sullenly. “What would you do in my shoes?”

  “Cate is an intelligent, beautiful, fascinating woman.”

  It pissed Brody that Duncan had noticed. Caveman instincts he didn’t know he possessed clubbed their way to the speech center of his brain. “Don’t get any ideas, little brother.”

  Duncan made a rude hand gesture. “If you don’t want her, why shouldn’t she find another guy who will value and appreciate her?”

  Brody’s teeth-grinding headache was back. “I never said I didn’t want her.”

  “Oh, come on, Brody. I know you pretty damn well. You never date any woman long enough for her to get ideas about marriage. You might as well have it tattooed on your forehead. Brody Stewart doesn’t commit.”

  It was true. In fact, Brody had given Cate a version of the same speech. “You make me sound like a jackass.”

  “If the kilt fits.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Do you think there’s any possibility she got pregnant on purpose? To force your hand?” Duncan’s look held enough real sympathy to make Brody’s throat tighten.

  Brody swallowed hard. “No. Zero possibility. It was all on me.” He’d made a mistake. A passion-driven, unthinking, hot and crazy, erotic mistake. That one unbearably sensual night had been emblematic of the two-week affair he couldn’t forget. Now there was going to be a far more tangible reminder of his impulsive, testosterone-driven behavior.

  Panic rose again, tightening his chest. “I don’t know what to do, Duncan. Swear to God, I don’t.”

  Duncan rolled to his feet and got a beer from the fridge. He popped the cap. “What do you want to do?”

  “I want to rewind my life and go back to last week.”

  “Not an option, bro.”

  “You’re no help.”

  “Look at it this way. We were both planning to go home in a few days. Now you can stay and make sure Granny is doing okay.”

  “I don’t want to stay,” Brody yelled, tempering the volume at the last minute to keep from awakening his grandmother.

  “Then come back to Scotland with me. I’m sure Cate can manage without you.”

  Hearing the stark choices laid out so succinctly made Brody’s blood chill. He glared. “Sometimes I wish I could still knock the crap out of you like I did when we were teenagers,” he muttered.

  “Your memory is faulty. I won at least half of those skirmishes. Face it, Brody. You’re not the first guy to find yourself in this situation, and you won’t be the last. But Granny complicates the equation. She won’t let you walk away from your responsibilities.”

  “I appreciate your high opinion of me.”

  Duncan shrugged. “You live on another continent. Cate will do fine on her own. I, of all people, would understand if you set up a trust fund and let that be it. Do you even like kids?”

  “How would I know? I could learn, I guess.”

  “I think the bigger question is whether or not Cate Everett means more to you than an easy lay.” Duncan yawned. “I’ve got to get some sleep,” he said, standing and tossing the empty bottle in the recycle bin. “I’ll do whatever I can to help, Brody. But the first move is yours.”

  Six

  Now that Cate had fallen prey to pregnancy sickness, it settled in with a vengeance. The morning after the disastrous dinner party, she was late opening the store because she spent an hour hunched over the sink in the tiny antiquated bathroom of her upstairs apartment. Fortunately, tourists were not beating down her door in late February. Most people in town were busy with their own endeavors.

  By the time she made it downstairs midmorning, the worst of the nausea had passed. Until noon, she was able to huddle by the fire and sip a cup of tepid tea and think. Apparently, pregnancy brain must be a real thing, because random thoughts bounced inside her skull like a drunken pinball game.

  She was an inveterate list-maker as a rule. Though a blank pad lay on the table at her elbow, and a nearby antique coffee tin held an assortment of pens, she never actually wrote down anything at all. The future stretched before her, a terrifyingly blank canvas.

  Would she set up a nursery in Miss Izzy’s house? That wasn’t part of the deal. It was a lot to ask of a woman Isobel’s age to welcome an infant with all of the accompanying inconveniences and demands.

  And what about the store? Would Cate have to find a manager? Could she afford to take maternity leave? It would be five years before the kid went to kindergarten.

  At the moment an eerie and surprising calm wrapped her in a soothing cocoon. One hand rested on her stomach. This pregnancy was real. But she didn’t feel any different. If it wasn’t for the nausea, she could easily ignore the entire fiasco.

  Only when she allowed herself to think about Brody Stewart did pain intrude. If there had ever been a man less pleased to hear he was going to be a father, she couldn’t imagine it.

  Brody had reacted to her news with shock and dismay and even anger. She winced inwardly, remembering his face. She couldn’t really blame him. This situation was unprecedented for both of them.

  To be honest, it was probably best he lived an ocean away. There would be no awkward encounters on the street, no need to take his feelings into account when she began making decisions about what kind of baby bed to buy, how soon to introduce solid foods and when to decide the kid was old enough for day care.

  She didn’t want or need Brody to take up parenting as a duty. No child deserved that. Neither did Cate.

  Cate was in this all alone...for the duration. At least she had five more months to get used to the idea. The baby would be born in July. That was good. No worries about blizzards or nasty winter viruses. She would be able to go for long walks with the baby in the stroller and get back in shape after pregnancy strained her body.

  She wanted to be elated and excited and exuberant about her situation. And she would be...probably. As soon as she got beyond feeling so sick and tired and overwhelmed. She hoped so.

  She had actually dozed off in her chair when the bell over the front door jingled. With a yawn, she stood up and stretched. “Coming,” she said. For some reason, finding Brody standing near the cash register caught her completely off guard. “What are you doing here?”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “We have decisions to make.”

  Her heartbeat sped up drunkenly. “No,” she said carefully. “We don’t have to decide anything. This is my baby. All I owed you was the courtesy of information. Now that we have that out of the way, you’re off the hook. Fly home with your brother.”

  He scowled. “I think we should get married.”

  She swallowed, and her eyes bugged out. “Um, no. Let’s not do the dance, Brody. You have nothing to worry about. I’ve got this. Your boats need you.”

  “You and I are good together in bed.”

  The blunt challenge angered her and at the same time made her legs quiver. Heavens, yes. They definitely were. But so what? That d
idn’t make a marriage. “And your point?”

  “Lots of couples start with far less.”

  She rubbed two fingers in the center of her forehead. “A hundred years ago I’m sure there were shotgun weddings all over North Carolina. But, thank God, that’s in the past. No one will bat an eye if I have this baby on my own. Seriously, Brody. You owe me nothing, nothing at all.”

  “You’re carrying my baby.” His gaze was stormy.

  “But you don’t really want to be a father, do you? Be honest. You don’t even want to be a husband. Why would we put ourselves through a sham that will only lead to heartbreak?”

  His brooding stare made her nipples tighten against the slippery fabric of her bra. She had never met a man as unflinchingly masculine as Brody Stewart. It was easy to imagine him in another time, a fiery chieftain leading his clan.

  “I can’t win this particular argument,” he said, “since I was so blatant about not wanting to settle down and be a family man. But circumstances have changed, Cate.”

  “Not for you. Not really. I won’t be an obligation you check off some moral list, Brody.”

  “Would marrying me be such a terrible fate?”

  In his deep blue eyes, she saw a hint of the same turmoil she had carried with her every day since the baby became a reality. The prospect of being Brody Stewart’s bride was a fantasy she had entertained briefly back in the fall. The intensity of their combustible attraction had raised the possibility that Brody might be the one.

  Even now it would be far too easy to fall prey to the fairy tale. But she had done that once before and been burned. She was older...wiser.

  Fortunately, more bookstore enthusiasts arrived, erasing any possibility of further substantive conversation.

  Brody’s lips tightened with frustration, but he waited more or less patiently as she greeted her customers. Then he caught her by the arm and drew her close. “I’ll take you to dinner tonight. In Claremont. We’ll talk.”