by Alison Kent
Why did her heart skip a clichéd beat when she looked up to see him? Why did her body tingle and heat? Why did she think of a hundred ways to greet him then trip over every word on her clumsy tongue?
Why did she have to love him? This man who would want no part of the gift he’d given her, who’d presented her with a legacy she’d never thought to claim. Why did it have to be the wolf she loved, the one determined to need no one, to walk through life alone?
Joel came to a stop, scrubbed a hand through Gordy’s ruff then glanced up at Willa. His smile faded. His stance stiffened. His chin came up a defensive notch even as his brow went down.
Hands on his hips, he asked, “What’s wrong.”
Common sense and decorum never had a chance.
“I’m pregnant.”
Chapter Sixteen
“YOU’RE PREGNANT.”
They sat at her kitchen table, two adults, talking rationally, calmly, over coffee. Or so anyone looking through the window on Willa’s back door would think.
Sure, there was a cup of coffee poured and waiting, but Joel, after a quick thrilling jolt that he didn’t examine too closely, had long since left his chair to pace.
She was pregnant.
“How did it happen?” Lame statement, but true. “I don’t understand.”
She lifted one shoulder in a shrug that carried a belligerence he’d not seen before in Willa. ‘“The usual way. Sex.”
“Yeah. I got that part” They could’ve populated a town with the sex they’d had. He tunneled a hand through his hair. This might take a while. And more patience than he was sure he could hold on to. “You said you weren’t able to have children.”
“Doctors told me I couldn’t get pregnant. The universe seems to have had a second opinion.”
And the room fell silent.
Turning his back on Willa and her words, Joel braced his palms on the ledge of the sink and stared out the window above. He’d had a plan. That first day he’d walked through the academy’s doors, he’d had a plan—for his future, for his life.
A plan that had just nosedived, taking his future and his life crashing down.
He’d been so cautious in all his previous encounters and so damn carelessly stupid with Willa. The only birth control method guaranteed 100 percent effective was abstinence. And they hadn’t even bothered with condoms.
How many street kids had heard him deliver that sermon? And had then suffered through his refrain of wrap that rascal? So, why hadn’t he practiced what he preached? Because he wanted to feel her, skin to skin, without anything between.
At Willa’s explanation, he’d been a damn fool and abdicated responsibility. Yes, they were both clean, but he still should’ve worn a rubber. He didn’t want children. And he’d done nothing to prevent Willa’s pregnancy. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
He hung his head, finished mentally beating himself up then turned around. Arms crossed, he leaned back against the counter’s edge and propped his weaker ankle over the other. Glancing at Willa, he drew up short and frowned at what he saw.
She sat in the straight-backed chair, her hands laced on the table. Her ponytail was more severe than usual and a noticeable slump to her shoulders caught his eye. She’d appeared tired for a week or so now and that hadn’t escaped his attention, but he’d chalked it up to summer heat and her go-go-go schedule.
Why hadn’t he noticed the changes in her body, the body that he held close every night? The way her hand trembled around the coffee mug she’d yet to lift to her lips. The pallor of her skin. She hadn’t looked him in the eye since they’d come inside. And that wasn’t Willa.
After she’d made her announcement, they’d finished the evening feedings in silence, working as the team they’d become. He’d noticed earlier the smudges beneath her eyes. But now, even though he saw her face from the side, he could tell the color would not wash away.
He took a breath into his tight chest. “What did the doctor say? What happened?”
“The same thing that often happens to women who have their tubes cut instead of banded or tied. An eight-pound, five-ounce, twenty-one-inch ‘oops.”’ She slumped back in her chair. “All it takes is one good egg to fight its way through the scar tissue, jump the hurdle and set a downhill course.”
He didn’t know if she was bitter, defensive, or scared out of her mind. Maybe she was a bit of all three.
Like him.
A long slow exhalation gave release to the building pressure. “I can’t believe this. You had no idea?”
Hurt seized her expression with the impact of a fist to the gut. Joel felt it and flinched even as Willa schooled her features with a calmly resigned dignity.
“I’ve been through this with my doctor, Joel.” She shook her head, pushing back loose strands of hair with one palm. It took a minute, but she seemed to settle at least a small piece of her conflict. She turned to face him.
Her posture straightened. Her chin lifted. “You have to know how foolish I feel. I should’ve learned more about my condition. Especially once I was old enough to understand. None of the mumbo-jumbo made sense at the time of the accident.”
She took a deep breath, shuddered it out. “You can’t imagine how frightened I was, listening to my parents and the doctors. I was hurt and confused and everyone around me was speaking in tongues.”
This time her shrug signaled adult misgiving more than a child’s alarm. “Maybe I didn’t do the research because I didn’t want to know. Maybe it was easier to live with the barren truth instead of holding on to some tiny spark of hope.
“I wouldn’t have been able to stand that, counting down the days every month.” Vehemently, she shook her head. “I accepted my fate. And I went on to live happily ever after.”
“And now?” he asked quietly because he had no other words to say.
“Now?” She looked up at him and tears spilled from her eyes, trailing down her cheeks unrepentantly. “I’m going to have a baby, Joel. I’m going to be a mother.”
She pressed her palms low on her belly and Joel swallowed the baseball-sized lump caught fast in the pocket of his throat. She’d gotten to her feet now and her face was radiant, a glowing porcelain that had him thinking of the picture of Jen when Leigh had been born.
The way his sister had looked in the hospital bed, holding that red-faced squalling wrinkled little thing and gazing into her new daughter’s face like the miracle she held would change the world... Joel would never forget it
He’d had to leave then—Jen’s room had been filled with flowers and the pollen got to his nose in a bad way, or so he’d used as an excuse—but he’d seen enough before his eyes had watered up. And the way Willa looked now was Jen all over again. But better. Because for Willa the wonder was an honest-to-God-given miracle.
“A mother,” she repeated and spun in a circle. On the toe of her work boots, she spun a circle. “I’m going to give birth and breastfeed and change diapers. I’ll get to plan birthday parties and nurse broken bones and bite my fingernails over driver’s education and struggle with homework and cheer at ballet lessons—”
“Only if it’s a girl.”
“What?” She returned from gazing into her future and focused on his face.
“If it’s a girl, it’s baseball or nothing,” he said, not even sure if he was teasing.
His comment settled between them, a heavy weight that dragged Willa’s buoyant mood back to uncertainty and his to grim determination. She hadn’t yet invited him to play a part in their child’s life. No matter. He was prepared to acknowledge accountability and bear blame and get on with the adult decisions they needed to make.
He didn’t need her invitation. He knew his position on this team. Fatherhood had not been part of his plans. But plans changed. The Wolfsley genes would live to see another generation and...
Ah, but life could be sweet. Suddenly, Joel felt on the edge of busting a gut as he tried not to smile. Not only were the genes getting another run, so was the Wolfs
ley name. Four female Wolfsleys and not a baby named Wolf in the lot. His dad would break an arm patting himself—and Joel—on the back.
Unless Willa didn’t plan to give the child Joel’s name...
The cold water splash of reality hit hard and soaked his premature celebration. They had a lot to talk about and he didn’t want to wait. Not when he had her here and he couldn’t stop thinking that she might change her mind.
“We can negotiate on the ballet. I’m not that much of a sexist pig.”
Willa shook her head, a tiny shake, a movement that barely moved. Her smile was equally slight. “That’s okay. I have a feeling if this baby is a boy, the only interest he’ll have in Swan Lake will be how many fish he can catch.”
“That’s a Wolfsley for you. A rod and a reel and nothing else matters.” Joel took a big breath and a bigger step into the unknown. “This baby will be a Wolfsley, won’t he, Willa? Or were you planning on him being a Darling?”
“I don’t know, Joel.” Returning to her seat, Willa pressed her laced fingers between her knees. “I haven’t thought that far ahead.”
It was a protective sort of withdrawal, Joel knew and understood. But he didn’t know or understand enough. “How far along are you?”
“About two months.”
“You’ve had tests?”
She nodded. “I saw the doctor last month.”
Last month. She’d known for a month and was telling him now. His own mood shifted, leaving the arena of calm and rational to irritatingly grate against the grain. “Why’d you wait so long to tell me?”
“Honestly?” She looked up, her eyes wide and blue and totally open to his searching gaze. “I wanted this time for myself. To hold close all I was feeling. Just for a little while, you know?”
He didn’t, but he nodded.
Willa went on, gesturing with her hands now as if she could pluck the words she wanted to say from the room’s tense air. “This thing that has happened, it’s so incredibly precious. So unexpected. I didn’t want to share it. With anyone. Not just yet.
“Not until I really believed I hadn’t dreamed the whole thing. Or knew for certain that the doctor hadn’t mixed up my test with that of another woman. A woman who still didn’t know she was pregnant because I got her good news by mistake.”
He couldn’t imagine what she’d been going through, the doubt and disbelief, the wonder and worry. He wished he’d been with her. God, he wished that. “You could’ve told me, Willa. I would’ve helped. With the doctor, at least.”
“I couldn’t. Not when I knew how you felt about having children.” She hugged her arms across her stomach in a protective maternal embrace. “Not when there was a chance you wouldn’t want me to have this child.”
Joel couldn’t respond. He had to think to breathe. Angry retorts rose to the tip of his tongue and he bit down hard on the words to think clearly. A chance he wouldn’t want her to have this child? Willa knew him better than that.
Or did she only know what he’d told her?
They’d been lovers for two months, two months of unbelievable sex that had him grinning like Sylvester with a mouth full of Tweety.
But just because he and Willa had spent less than a dozen nights apart since mid-April didn’t mean she knew how he would react to her news—especially since they’d gone into this arrangement with a strict no-attachments policy.
She assumed the worst because he’d given her no reason to think differently. And, honestly? He hadn’t known until hit in the face with those two words “I’m pregnant” how he’d react to such news. He couldn’t say he was happy, no.
But he wasn’t the one with the highest stake in this pregnancy. The decisions he had to make weren’t going to come easy. Not when he’d been set on his course for so long. But this was Willa’s body, Willa’s choice.
He pushed away from the sink edge which had pressed a permanent crease into his hip and returned to his chair and his coffee. “Willa, listen to me. You’re right that I don’t want children. But you’re wrong to think I wouldn’t want you to have this baby.
“And I’m not going to turn my back on you or on our child.” A deep breath and he said what he had to say. “I want this baby to be a Wolfsley.”
Willa rocked in her chair, her gaze locked on his, working through an equation of thoughts until she reached an answer. “You want this baby to wear your name?”
God, yes, he wanted that, but he still sniffed the air and warily nodded. He didn’t like whatever was coming.
“You think that will make him a Wolfsley?” Her voice softened. “Will it, Joel? Is being a Wolfsley all about wearing the name?”
“Hell, no. That’s not what I meant.” He flexed his fingers before he snapped the handle off his mug. No matter what trick Willa was trying to pull, this one was going his way. “He’s already a Wolfsley. Nothing’s gonna change that one gene-filled, sperm-donor fact.”
“So, you’re saying it’s the name and the genes and the donated sperm that make a man?”
“Of course not.” He rubbed at his eyes. Why couldn’t he say what he was thinking? “It’s his honesty and integrity. His values. His morals. The way he lives his life.” He could play bad cop a hell of a lot better than she could. “Whether he runs out on a woman pregnant with his child, or stands by her side.”
“Stands by her side.” Her face tightened, the lines around her mouth deepening, the light in her eyes going out. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“Criminy, Willa. You want me to marry you? I’ll marry you,” Joel said and felt the earth swallow him whole. What the hell was he doing?
“No, Joel,” Willa answered and Joel plunged deeper. “I don’t want you to marry me. If you loved me, things would be different. But you don’t And this is how things are.”
Teeth clenched, jaw aching, Joel stared and waited.
Willa stood, leaned forward, placing but a foot of room between their eyes. “If you want this child to be a Wolfsley, then you’d damn well better be there, ready to play your part in making him one.”
Chapter Seventeen
JOEL HAD ASKED HER TO marry him. She’d told him no—without a tremor in her voice or a moment of hesitation. It was amazing that the world—and Willa—had survived two such cataclysmic back-to-back events.
Adjusting to the darkness of the storage shed after the glare of the late June evening’s six o‘clock sun, Willa smiled to herself as her focus turned inward.
She hadn’t forgotten a thing about that day three weeks ago when she’d informed Joel of her pregnancy. The memory sat on her stomach a lot better now than had the dose of confrontation she’d been forced to swallow then.
What a conversation they’d had that afternoon in her kitchen. She’d never thought he’d blow his top—that wasn’t the way of the Big Bad Wolf. But still she had to give him credit. He’d taken the news a lot better than she’d expected considering the two-word bomb she’d dropped had literally exploded his life.
But that proposal... Willa shook her head, reaching for both feed pails stored on the shelf built into the shed’s back wall. The look on Joel’s face when he realized what he’d said... She’d never seen anyone try so hard to reach out and grab back words already spoken.
For one fleeting moment, she’d thought that startled expression might’ve signaled the shocking revelation that, yes, he did love her. But that moment only lasted a heartbeat, during which her mind switched gears from wishful thinking to common sense.
Slamming and latching the shed’s heavy slatted door, Willa turned and squinted against the golden glare. Dusting her hands together, she swallowed thickly. No, Joel didn’t love her.
Once she’d accepted that truth, she’d accepted a second. Their relationship as lovers couldn’t continue. It was headed for its end, sooner than expected but an end no less inevitable.
Placing her hands in the small of her back, she stretched, amazed despite her emotional pain at how great she felt physically. The end of he
r first trimester had arrived, bringing the most amazing difference in her energy level
It was like the first, fussy weeks of pregnancy hadn’t happened at all. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so head-to-toe healthy. Lifting the two pails she’d filled with chow, she followed the worn path to the back of the kennels.
She was glad she’d raised her rates. Her expenses hadn’t increased disproportionately with her summer business, but she was spending more time working than ever before—and was determined to draw wages accordingly.
Soon she would have another mouth to feed and she intended to fill her child’s belly on her own. The lone wolf could keep his money, his independence, and his future intact. He could also keep to his lair and out of her bed.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want him there. She loved him. Holding him close in those dark and quiet hours brought peace to her sleep and her dreams. And that precious connection of tangled arms and legs brought a contentment of heart she’d never known before Joel.
But he hadn’t spoken of feelings for her, and pride and self-respect had become an issue. Their arrangement as lovers hadn’t been based on such feelings. Instead, the bond of friendship and companionship and the power of physical attraction brought them close. Love, however, required more. More, it seemed, Joel couldn’t give.
Since telling him of her pregnancy, their physical relationship had taken on a new intensity when they made love, which they didn’t do as often these days. They still spent the nights together, most often at Willa’s house, Joel slipping into bed long after she’d tucked herself in
He held her close and touched her, but she was the one who turned in his arms to initiate intimacy. Each time she loved him, she gave up another piece of her heart. In return she was held in strong arms, stroked with broad hands, pulled back into a solid body and safely held.
But that wasn’t enough.
It was beautiful and it was tender and it was a lot to give up. Especially when she could’ve had it every night wearing Joel’s name and his ring on her finger. But a ring and a name and a warm, willing, hard male body couldn’t satisfy her most ardent, urgent desire.
