“It wasn’t in your plan?” Dean asked bitterly.
Janie inhaled sharply and glanced down at the swollen mound in her stomach. Her plan? If any of this had been about her plan, she would have been doing somersaults with joy. Getting randomly impregnated by her sexy, charming boss and falling head over heels for him was hardly part of the plan. Abandoning the post she had worked her entire college career to obtain was definitely not part of the plan. And running away from the house she had just barely settled into? No, that wasn’t part of the plan either. If he wanted to talk plans, she could talk plans.
But the sad, lonely sigh that came on the other end of the receiver brought an ache to Janie’s heart. She didn’t want to hurt Dean. She knew from his actions and some of the things he said that he hadn’t always had it very good.
He’d had it rough, and it was hard for him to connect with other people, particularly women. She shouldn’t throw that kind of thing in his face. It could do a lot of lasting damage that she didn’t want to do. She did love him, after all. But she didn’t think he was even capable of returning the feeling. Not with his history. He would move on just fine without her, with his company, and she would be happy to say that she had a small hand in that by knowing when to bow out of the race once and for all.
“This doesn’t have anything to do with my feelings for you,” Janie said, swallowing hard. How would she ever be able to explain this to him? The harder she tried, the more impossible it got. She felt like she was betraying him worse than she had ever betrayed anybody in her life. She wasn’t just quitting her job. She was quitting him too.
“Well, I’m starting to wonder if women even have feelings,” Dean said with a small growl.
“Cut it out,” Janie scolded. “You know I do. I love you, Dean. And I don’t think that will ever change. But I just can’t do this, not right now. Please try to understand.”
Dean was silent for a moment before he finally said, “All right.”
She opened her mouth to speak again, but before she had the chance, he had already hung up the phone.
It was the most desolate Janie had ever felt in her life. But when she looked back down at her abdomen, which seemed to be growing larger by the second, she knew that she had done the right thing. He was going to be fine. She had to assure it to herself again and again, but it was true. Men like Dean didn’t just go down without a fight. He would do whatever it took to make sure he was the last man standing. Even if it meant he was standing alone.
17.
Dean stared numbly at the phone he had just hung up, unable to believe his ears. The wolf, understandably, was in torment. How could a woman he had claimed, claimed!, be so matter of fact about rejecting him? It just seemed unethical.
Not only that, but he had really begun to grow into his feelings for Janie. He was starting to look forward to seeing her every day, to speaking to her. The way she spoke and laughed and wore her hair had all begun to drive him crazy in the funniest, simplest way. It was nothing like the feelings he’d developed for other women over the years. In fact, they couldn’t do any more to drive him up the wall if they had tried. No, Janie was different. And the idea of having to spend his life without those little moments that had begun to drive him was actually terrifying.
“Mr. Resner, it’s your ex on the phone. She says she has something important to tell you.”
Dean growled deeply. From one woman rejecting him to another.
“What?” he snarled into the receiver.
“Nice to speak with you too,” Kiera said. He could almost see the sneer on her face and felt half-tempted to strangle her. But he had never laid a hand on a woman, at least, not a hand that harmed rather than pleasured her, and he didn’t plan to start now.
“Seriously, what do you want? It’s kind of a bad time.”
“Isn’t it always a bad time with men like you?” Kiera asked pointedly.
“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, so could you just get to the point before I hang this fucking thing up and unplug it?”
His temper seemed to delight Kiera and he regretted showing his claws to her immediately. It would only fuel her sadistic fire and motivate her even more to strike out at him.
“I recently heard through the grapevine that you and that little woman friend of yours were going to be working with a team of at-risk youth, and I thought you should know that-”
“That’s not going to be happening anymore,” Dean snarled. “Any other plans you’re hoping to trample today or are we done here?”
He could almost taste Kiera’s bitter disappointment and wished he was in a better mood so that he could relish it. Unfortunately, as it stood, he was miserable and she simply recovered by saying, “Well, that’s a shame. It’s always nice to do a good deed. You know. Repay your debt to society.”
“I don’t have any debt,” Dean said. “Unlike you.”
Kiera laughed brightly. “Always a pleasure,” she said, and hung up the phone quickly.
Well, whatever she had called to piss on him about had backfired. At least that was something. He pushed Kiera out of his mind quickly and bent over the reports for the month. Things had been taking a downturn since his divorce had begun to hit the tabloids. For some reason, housewives and fathers who wanted their sons to be like Dean Resner seemed to think twice about using his gear when they thought that he didn’t have a stable romantic life. It didn’t make sense, but numbers didn’t lie.
“What have you gotten yourself into, old boy?” Dean sighed at the wolf. It whined pathetically and Dean felt a sharp jab of pain. He couldn’t let himself waste his time by pining away for Janie. The pressure had been too much on her and she had bailed. It was just like all the other women. He didn’t know why he had allowed himself to think that, somehow, this time might be different. It was obvious that he simply was not the kind of man made for love. He would just have to try his best to keep his sights set on the business. Unlike other people, the fruits of his own labor never let him down. And so that was what he was going to rely on from then on.
***
The next few weeks without Janie at the office left Dean swamped with paperwork and phone calls. Everybody was scandalized by the tabloid reports of his tryst with Janie, and her disappearance from the scene made it look even more suspicious. What the hell had she been thinking, leaving him in hot water like this?
To make matters worse, the coach and the kids from the football team had showed up at the office that morning, and he somehow had to find a way to deal with them without coming across as the surly asshole he was feeling like.
“Nice to meet you all,” Dean said politely to the team. He had been frazzled when he heard the news and had scrambled to set them all up in the biggest empty meeting room he had at the building. Now, about thirteen fidgety middle-schoolers were sitting in swivel chairs, swirling themselves around and looking at Dean with wide, awe-struck expressions on their faces. The coach rose and shook Dean’s hand.
“Thank you for taking the time to see us,” he said. “I know it’s not a great time.”
Dean smiled tightly. He could say that again.
“It’s no trouble at all,” he said instead. “I’m happy to lend a hand.”
But, of course, the hand he had been planning this all out with, the hand of the photographer that was supposed to portray him in a great light, was nowhere to be seen.
Dean spent the rest of the afternoon answering questions and signing autographs for the kids, and all of it left him feeling drained and irritable. He swore he would bite the head off of the next person who spoke to him, but was surprised when that person was a young wolf shifter who looked at him closely, as if he were able to see right into Dean’s soul.
“How did you know that things were going to get better?” the boy asked, his sad eyes locked on Dean.
This was the question that Dean had been terrified to answer for himself. He had been dreading something like this the entire time Janie had been t
elling him about the engagement. But now that it was out in the open, hanging, frail and vulnerable in the air like the child himself, Dean was glad to hear it spoken out loud.
“I didn’t know that it was going to get better,” Dean said, smiling at the boy. “I didn’t know what was going to happen. All I really knew was that I was in control of whatever happened to me, and if I worked really hard, I would achieve my goals and everything I tried to build would get built, one way or another, as long as I kept trying to build it.”
The boy’s tired eyes lit up and he nodded, as if all of that seemed to make sense to him. It was a rewarding feeling, being able to speak to the kids so candidly, and once that boy’s question had been answered, Dean realized that he was actually glad to be able to face his past and see just how true it could be to rely on your own merit and work hard for the best results.
He left the meeting with a slight boost, but his chest constricted painfully as he ventured down the hall and past the room where Janie had originally been assigned. She wasn’t there anymore. Nobody was there to know that he had done the thing he had most feared doing. He was just as alone now as he was then, and sank into a dark depression.
The depression didn’t lift until he checked his email and grinned at the unexpected surprise waiting for him there. His friend Larry had always had a bad habit of hacking and sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong. But now, for the first time, that annoying little habit seemed to have the answer to all of Dean’s prayers.
Maybe things were finally looking up, after all.
18.
“Leah, it’s so good to see you!”
After three days on the road (it probably would have been fewer if she had been able to avoid taking so many bathroom breaks), Janie finally arrived at her best friend’s house.
Leah and Tom had been living together for the past year and a half, and the place was a decent size for that area of California.
“I missed you so much! I’ll show you to your room.”
Leah led Janie upstairs and into the guest bedroom, then quickly closed the door behind herself.
“Show me the belly.”
Kiera blushed and pulled her shirt up. Several more tendrils of purple had begun to snake out from her navel, and the mound where the pups were growing–she was convinced it was a litter of at least three–had grown twice the size it had been originally.
“How did you know?” Janie asked, looking down at the floor.
“Oh please! I’ve known you my whole life. When you told me you quit, and I saw the tabloid pictures, maybe I put two and two together… How many do you think you’re having?”
“Two or three,” Janie said. “Maybe more, but that’s uncommon in human mothers.”
“Listen to you!” Leah exclaimed, laughing. “You’re the expert now, are you? How does daddy feel about the little bundles of joy?”
Janie swallowed hard and looked away. “He doesn’t know about them.”
“What?!” Leah exclaimed. “How can he not know?! Can’t shifters sense that kind of thing or something?”
“Maybe he could have if I would have stuck around a little bit longer.”
“You have to tell him, Janie! This isn’t right!”
“I can’t,” Janie said, hot tears burning her eyes. It was the first time she had allowed herself to actually cry about this. “It would put them in danger. And Dean…the bear shifters have been really on the offense lately. I just couldn’t bring myself to put them in harm’s way…”
“Okay, okay,” Leah said, hugging her friend and fishing a tissue off the end table. “I understand. You can stay here as long as you need. But I’ve got to warn you. I don’t know anything about giving birth to wolf pups. This is all new turf for me.”
“You and me both,” Janie said, finally smiling again. Her emotions had been out of control lately. She went from wanting nothing more than to speak to Dean to hating him for ever putting her in this position to begin with. Nothing seemed to be good enough.
“Well, settle in and then do your best to make it down for dinner if you’re up to it. We start at 7pm usually. All right?”
Janie nodded and Leah smiled kindly at her before leaving.
It was nice knowing she had a friend that she could depend on through thick and thin. No matter what happened, there would always be that.
***
“Are you all right, Janie?”
Janie’s face was tense with pain, and she swallowed hard. She had been with Leah for the past eight months, too independent to stay at her mom’s house, but too scared to venture out on her own during her first pregnancy. Her best friend didn’t care at all, and they’d been enjoying the experience as they had back in college.
“I don’t think so,” Janie gasped, a contraction jolting her forward. She cried out in agony and soon, she could hear the urgent footsteps of Leah and Tom heading toward her.
“Her water broke,” Leah said in a loud whisper. Tom immediately left the scene, scurrying around the house to get the diaper bag and suitcase of clothes they had prepared months in advance.
Janie closed her eyes, silent tears streaming down her face. What she wouldn’t give for the man holding her suitcase to be Dean.
But that was all but impossible. From the media coverage, it seemed that he didn’t seem to care one way or another that she was gone. Sure, he hadn’t been rumored to be dating anybody, in the throes of his nasty divorce, even if he was, his PR department would take care of the publicity. Still, it would have been nice to see at least some indication that he missed her.
Another contraction nearly brought her to tears, and soon, Leah was ushering Janie out of the house and into the big SUV parked in the driveway. Tom was already behind the wheel, the picture of panic incarnate. If Dean had been driving, she knew she would have felt safe and cared for no matter what happened. He wouldn’t let on that he was scared even if the world was on fire.
“Easy does it,” Leah said, helping Leah into the back seat and sitting beside her.
They sped off to the hospital, where Leah was quickly admitted.
“Are you all right?” Leah asked. “Do you want anything? Should I call your mother?”
Dean. All she wanted was Dean. She was having their child alone, without him, and he had no idea. What was going to happen to her? Would she ever be able to tell him?
Labor was agonizingly painful, but after twelve long hours of excruciating pain and tears shed, both for her own pain and the pain of not being able to share the experience with Dean, something miraculous happened.
A tiny wail erupted into the room and soon, she was holding an 8lb. 8oz. baby boy in her arms. She had expected there to be more in there, she’d read horror stories about litters of pups being born to human mothers that left doctors astonished, but as soon as she looked at her baby she knew he had been her only.
“He’s beautiful,” Leah gasped when everybody was finally allowed in to visit. “I can’t believe it. What are you going to name him?”
Janie’s voice shook, but she said the name as firmly as she could muster.
“Dean.”
19.
“You have no idea how close you are to losing the company,” Dean’s lawyer sighed. He’d just had a private meeting with Kiera’s lawyers and Dean groaned loudly.
“Then you’re not doing your job!” he barked.
Dean stormed out of the room, bitter and disillusioned. Not only did he have Kiera breathing down his neck, just a few steps away from single-handedly destroying his empire, but the private detective he’d hired to keep tabs on his mother hadn’t been able to find any trace of Janie. He’d been looking pointlessly for months to no avail.
For some reason, he just couldn’t stop thinking about her. It was the first time a woman had so completely consumed him. Even being married to Kiera hadn’t been this emotional. He’d mostly let himself get away with his own fantasies. Finding a woman who could tolerate his uncompromising attitude and give him
the family he so desperately wished for. He wanted a family. A family that loved and cared for him, unlike his own parents. But now, all of that had gone to hell. He would never lay hands on another woman again. Not if he felt anything toward her. A family was out of the question now. Suddenly, the phone in Dean’s pocket rang and he answered quickly.
“What do you want?”
“Dude! You’ll never guess!” Larry exclaimed. Dean frowned.
“Never guess what?” Dean asked with a tired sigh. He couldn’t handle any more disappointments right now.
“I just got something juicy, dude. Something really juicy.”
“On Kiera?” Dean asked, his heart tremoring with excitement.
“On Kiera.”
Larry sounded giddy and Dean grinned to himself.
“What is it?”
“Come to my office tonight. As soon as you can. We’ve got to get this out to the media. Like now. But I want to see what you think first.”
“Of course,” Dean said, already worming his arm into the sleeve of his jacket. “I’m on my way.”
***
Dean’s eyes widened and he grinned smugly. Yes, this was a wealth of information indeed.
“How did you find this?” Dean breathed, his eyes scanning the files in delight.
“I have my ways,” Larry said proudly. “Unfortunately, I can’t reveal my sources.”
“Perfect.”
Somehow, though, even though this was going to take care of all of his problems, he still couldn’t help but feel sad. Janie had been gone from his life for a year, and when she left, she had taken part of him with her.
“Larry, do you think you could do me one last favor?” Dean asked, hating himself for this pathetic, desperate drive to see Janie again.
“Sure, dude,” Larry said distractedly, clicking at folders on his computer so that Dean could see, in detail, all of the ways his ex-wife was going to stack an even longer jail sentence onto herself. “What is it?”
HAMMER (Forsaken Riders MC Romance Book 16) Page 109
