Brody’s pupils had dilated as if he was alarmed or embarrassed or both. “I didn’t say anything to Granny that I haven’t said to you,” he muttered.
Except to admit that you aren’t in love with me. The raw truth hurt like hell. Only then did Cate realize she had been weaving painfully naive fantasies. She knew better than most that men used honeyed words and sex to get what they were after. Brody was far more honorable than the professor who had humiliated her, but at the end of the day, he wanted certain things, and he was willing to try everything in his power to sway her to his way of thinking.
“I’m not angry, Brody.” She kept her voice completely even. Calm. All the while, her heart shattered into a million painful fragments. She turned back to Miss Izzy. “If Brody and I were ever to get married—and that’s a big if—it would be for practical reasons, and it would be temporary only. We would have a lot of details to work out before that time comes.”
Isobel sniffed. “In my day we’d say you put the cart before the horse, sweet, stubborn Cate.”
Brody put his arm around Cate. “This is our problem, Granny. You’ll have to trust us to deal with it in our own way and in our own time.”
Cate stiffened when Brody touched her. She couldn’t bear his nearness. Not right now. And his words poured salt in the wound that was her bruised and aching heart. She jerked free and wrapped her arms around her waist. Her voice wobbled despite her best efforts. “I don’t consider this child a problem, Brody Stewart. I’m sorry that you do. If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll skip dinner and have an early night. I’ll see you both in the morning.”
Eleven
A man knew when he had been summarily dismissed. Hell.
Isobel’s worried expression underscored his own unease. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, lad. Do you think she heard the whole conversation? I shouldn’t have butted in.”
Given his grandmother’s obvious distress, Brody didn’t have it in him to chastise her. “Not to worry,” he said lightly. “I’ll smooth things out with Cate.”
“Not tonight.”
“No,” he said ruefully. “It won’t be tonight.”
Only when he undressed at 1 a.m. and crawled naked into his lonely bed did he realize how much he had come to anticipate the sweet hours with Cate at the end of each day. Her changing body was a miracle to him.
The wounded look he had seen in her eyes earlier troubled him. Was he at fault in this situation? He’d proposed marriage, damn it. What more could she expect from him?
A restless sleep did nothing for his disposition. He spent the long hours alternating between unsettling dreams and awakening to find himself with a painful erection. By the time he arrived in the kitchen the following morning, he was in a foul mood. It didn’t help that Cate barely acknowledged his presence. Isobel had not made an appearance. One of the signs she was slowing down at all was that she liked to sleep in until nine or ten.
Brody poured himself coffee. The American custom was one he had embraced eagerly. Today he would have mainlined the caffeine if he could. Instead, he downed the first cup and started in on a second.
Cate sat at the small table in the breakfast nook, her head buried in a pregnancy magazine.
He took the chair at the opposite side of the table and stared at her, hoping to force a confrontation. Apparently, her ability to ignore him was greater than his patience for being ignored. “Look at me, Cate,” he said, forcing the words between clenched teeth.
She glanced up, wrinkled her nose dismissively and returned to her reading.
Brody counted to ten. “I don’t understand why you’re so pissed at me,” he said, aggrieved and truculent.
Very slowly, she folded down the corner of the page she had been reading, closed the magazine deliberately and met his ill humor with a bland green-eyed gaze. “You called our baby a problem,” she said. “I wasn’t aware that my child and I were such a great hindrance to your welfare. I would tell you to get the hell on a plane and head back to your precious moors, but you’re not a man known for taking direction well, now, are you?”
Her snotty tone sent him into the red zone. “You don’t want to mess with me this morning, Cate,” he said, each word distinct and as threatening as he could make them.
His attempt at cowing her bounced off as if she had sealed her emotions in a deep freeze. “Go away, Brody. Let me have my breakfast in peace.”
This time he had to count to twenty. He was angry and horny and completely out of his depth. No woman he had ever known could yank him in so many directions at once. “Tell me what you want, damn it. I’m tired of guessing and coming up short.”
Her chin shot up and fire flashed in her eyes. “I don’t want anything from you. I thought I had made that abundantly clear. In fact, I don’t care if I ever—” She stopped dead and hunched over the table, her expression equal parts stunned and startled.
“What is it?” he snapped. “What’s wrong?”
She didn’t reply. Her gaze focused somewhere on the far side of the room. Her body had frozen into complete stillness.
He jumped to his feet and put his hands on her shoulders, shaking her gently. “Talk to me, lass. Are you ill?”
Her head fell back against his chest and a tiny smile crept across her face. “I’m fine.”
He stroked her cheek. “You’re scaring me.”
“It’s the baby, Brody. I think I felt the baby.”
He sat down hard in the nearest chair, loath to admit that his knees were wobbly. “Is that normal? Does it hurt?”
She bit her lip, still with that look of intense concentration. “Normal? Yes, I think. I’m almost five months. It’s time. I’m not sure what it should feel like, but there was something...”
“May I?” He reached across the small space separating them, not waiting for permission. Reverently, he placed his hand on the rounded swell of her belly. “Where, Cate? Show me where.”
“Here.” She took his fingers and shifted them a few inches. “I don’t know if you can feel it from the outside.”
But he did. Distinctly, yet subtly. A delicate flutter that rippled beneath her skin and warmed his fingertips. “Good God.” The baby had been ephemeral to him until this moment. A tiny, unspecified, barely-there idea.
His breath lodged in his chest and his eyes grew damp. The flutter stopped. He glanced up at her, alarmed. “Why can’t I feel it now?”
Cate shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe she’s sleepy.”
“He,” Brody said with certainty. “A Stewart male to carry on the line.”
“Good grief.” Cate rolled her eyes, but when she looked at him, her earlier antagonism had vanished, replaced by a sense of dawning wonder. He recognized it, because the very same feeling snaked through his veins, making him the slightest bit nauseated. Such wild, unfamiliar emotion was unsettling.
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” he said, stroking her hair from her face. “I hurt your feelings, but that wasn’t my intention at all.”
Some of her open joy faded away. She eluded his touch and stood, placing a hand on the table to steady herself as if her feet weren’t on solid ground. “I’m sorry, too,” she said, her expression sober. “I understand, I think. Or I’m trying to. I’ve been reading a lot, and everybody says men are at a disadvantage in the beginning, because the baby doesn’t seem real.”
Brody nodded slowly. “At the risk of sounding like a jerk, I’d say that’s true. I’ve been more focused on you and how you’re feeling.”
“For me,” Cate said, her eyes pleading with him to understand, “it’s like everything I’ve known about myself is changing at once. My body. My emotions. My future. As scared as I was in the beginning, and as distraught, I never once thought about giving this child up for adoption. But that’s on me, not on you. I won’t let one crazy middle-of-the-night sexual encounter where I was
fully participatory dictate the rest of your life. It’s not fair to you, and it’s not really fair to me.”
“Why is it not fair to you, lass?”
She bit her bottom lip, her eyes shiny with tears. “Because I deserve to have someone by my side who is crazy in love with me. Maybe that won’t ever happen. I don’t know. But I do know that a lukewarm marriage of convenience and practicality sounds like a wretched, lifelong prison sentence.”
Brody absorbed the hit without flinching. After knowing what Cate’s parents had been like and then finally hearing the story of the man who had betrayed her trust and love by lying to her and humiliating her, he couldn’t fault her logic.
Slowly, he nodded his head, his mind spinning. “I see what you’re saying. I really do. But—”
She held up her hand. “Stop. Just stop. To you, this pregnancy is a problem, one you’re trying so very hard to solve. I appreciate the fact that you’re interested and that you care and that my welfare and the baby’s are important to you. But I won’t be any man’s problem, Brody. I’ve spent my whole life being a problem for somebody. Now I’m on my own, and this baby is a miracle. I refuse to look at it any other way.”
He swallowed the urge to argue and held up his hands. “Understood. Perhaps we could call a truce?”
Cate yawned suddenly, telling him that her night might have been equally as unsettled as his own. “Yes,” she said simply. “I don’t have the energy to do battle with you, Brody. But promise me you’ll think about going back to Scotland. I’m very serious about that.”
“Fine. I’ll think about it.” Still, no matter how much he missed his old life, he couldn’t see himself walking away.
* * *
Cate struggled against an overwhelming tsunami of fatigue. She hadn’t slept well without Brody in her bed. Admitting that weakness, even to herself, was alarming.
On top of her sleepless night, this latest confrontation had left her wiped out. “I’ll see you tonight,” she said, hoping to slip past him without incident. She needed to get to work.
He caught her arm as she walked by. “Thank you,” he said gruffly.
They were so close she could inhale the masculine scent of his sleep-warmed skin. “For what?”
“Sharing that first with me. The baby moving. I’m glad you wanted our child, Cate. Pregnancy suits you.”
She closed her eyes and allowed herself one brief moment to lean her head against his shoulder and absorb his strength. “You’re a silver-tongued devil, Brody Stewart, but I’ll take the compliment.”
Stroking her hair, he chuckled. “Could you use any help at the bookstore today? Granny has decided not to go into work. She told me last night. The two managers are doing very well, and she wants them to know she trusts them. Actually, I was afraid the business would be in chaos with Grandda dying and Granny grieving, but things are solid.”
“I’m glad.” Cate sighed. Actually, she wanted nothing more than to climb back into bed. But the bookstore was her responsibility and her livelihood. “I’d love some company,” she said. “Let me get a few things together and we’ll leave in fifteen minutes... Does that work for you?”
He kissed her forehead and released her. “I’ll have the car waiting.”
Cate brushed her teeth and grabbed the large canvas tote that held the things she would need for the day. It was still packed from the afternoon before. On top were the handful of books she had been so excited to share with Brody. Goodnight Moon. Pat the Bunny. Two different Sandra Boynton board books. Already she was looking forward to snuggling with the baby at bedtime and singing silly songs as she rocked her son or daughter.
Wistfully, she removed the books from the tote and left them on the dresser. She had let herself get too far ahead on a road that went nowhere. There was a very good chance that Brody would not even be around for the birth. She still had four months to go.
Already, she struggled with the notion of where to set up a nursery. Did Brody and Duncan really want her to stay with Miss Izzy in the long-term? Cate was happy to keep her friend company, but Isobel’s beautiful home was filled with priceless antiques and objets d’art. As soon as the baby started crawling and walking, the environment would become imminently unsuitable.
Cate was trying, really she was, to live in the moment and not to worry so much. With each day that passed, however, new questions arose.
Brody was as good as his word. When she stepped out the front door, he was waiting with the vehicle. But the car parked on the flagstone apron was not the nondescript rental sedan in which he and Duncan had first arrived. This beauty was a shiny, black, luxury SUV with tinted windows.
“What’s this?” she asked, running an appreciative hand over the spotless hood.
Brody jingled the keys in his hand. “I bought it yesterday. Didn’t make sense to keep the rental any longer since I’m going to be sticking around for a while.”
“I see.”
He opened the passenger-side door and helped her in. As he did, new-car smell wafted out to mix with the crisp morning air. Cate breathed in the appealing scent and fastened her seat belt with a sigh of appreciation. The seats were high-end leather, buttery soft and oh-so-comfortable.
Brody chuckled and reached out to turn on the radio. “I’m glad you like it. I listed your name alongside mine on the contract. If and when I go back to Scotland, you and the baby will have a safe, reliable means of transportation. The crash-test ratings for this model are impeccable.”
“Brody?”
“Hmm?” He glanced in the rearview mirror and pulled out onto the winding road that led to town.
“You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Trying to take charge of my life. I’m a grown woman. I already have a car, a perfectly reliable means of transportation.”
His frown was quick and unmistakable. “You do have a car,” he said, “but it’s a dozen years old, and besides, it’s way too close to the ground. When you’re eight or nine months pregnant you won’t be able to get in and out. Not only that, this car is perfect for a car seat. You can put the baby in and out without having to bend over and break your back.”
“And I suppose you’ve already bought the car seat, as well?”
“No,” he said. “I assumed you’d want to choose that for yourself.”
Blatant sarcasm wasn’t satisfactory at all when the object of her retort was too impossibly arrogant to realize she was making a dig at his expense. She kept drawing a line in the sand, and Brody continued to step right over it. If she wasn’t careful, he’d end up in the delivery room helping some poor doctor deliver the baby.
Luckily for Brody, Cate was far too tired to put up a fuss about the car. She closed her eyes and catnapped during the quick trip into town. It was nice having someone looking after her. If she allowed it, Brody would wrap her in cotton wool and protect her from every difficult situation and challenging decision.
Unfortunately, she was going to have to develop a backbone very soon. Otherwise, the alpha-male Scotsman was going to take over her life entirely.
When they parked in front of the bookstore, all the businesses up and down Main Street were beginning to open for the day. The bank. The dry cleaners. The corner diner. An assortment of retail shops offering everything from clothing to candy. A handful of professional offices that accommodated lawyers and title companies and an acupuncture therapist.
Cate loved Candlewick’s small-town ambience and relished the knowledge that her business was an integral part of the community. If she hadn’t gotten pregnant, her life would have ticked along year after year with very little variation along the way.
This town and its residents had welcomed her when she arrived broken and alone. Izzy, in particular, had taken her under her wing. The old woman had seen Cate’s lost soul and had coaxed Cate into wholeness and healing wit
h homemade bread and cups of coffee and long, wonderful conversations about books and authors and whether or not the digital age was going to ruin intellectual curiosity.
While Cate was lollygagging and lost in thought, Brody had exited the driver’s side and come around to open her door. “C’mon, woman. It’s getting late.”
His intervention startled her. She recovered quickly and hopped out of the car. Once she had unlocked the bookstore door and turned off the alarm, she turned to Brody. “Make yourself at home. Browse the shelves. I have a couple of things to do straightaway, and then I’ll see if I can find a project for you.”
He grinned, his eyes this morning the blue of a springtime sky. “Don’t invent jobs for me, lass. I’m quite content to hang out and watch you work.”
She left him in the New Fiction section, still laughing.
Her small office was tucked away in a corner at the back of the building. The antique rolltop desk that was her pride and joy always seemed to be stacked with catalogs and bills and advance reading copies. She had thought more than once about hiring help, but it had taken several years before she finally began showing a profit. Not only that, Cate was a very private person. It couldn’t be just anyone she brought into her special spot.
This bookstore had saved her life. It was her home.
When the bell over the front door chimed a warning, Cate poked her head out of the office to see who it was. Brody was in the midst of greeting Sharma Reddick and her four-year-old twins.
Cate hurried out to meet them. “Hey, Sharma. I haven’t seen you in weeks.” The young mother shopped often at Cate’s bookstore.
Sharma grimaced. “The boys had the flu. We’re only now rejoining the land of the living. They were driving me crazy, so I promised if they cleaned up every one of their toys, I would bring them down here.” She turned to Brody. “Cate is a genius. She fixed up that little corner over there several years ago. Now it’s the best spot in town for parents who want a few minutes of peace and sanity while they shop.”
His Heir, Her Secret (Highland Heroes Book 1) Page 10
