It should be enough. She wanted to be the woman for whom it would be enough. Where his loyalty and limited offerings would be substantial for as long as they lasted.
But they weren’t.
It was the wrong time to broach the topic, but she’d been unable to summon the bravery to do it before. Now or never, as the saying went. So while the elevator zipped them to their destination, she blurted, “I’m going to announce that the wedding is on hold when I announce that we’re having a daughter.”
His steely glare matched the hardness of his jaw. “Penelope.”
“I’m not asking permission.” She lifted her chin. It was past time she pulled the plug on the relationship that was rapidly eating away at her heart.
“This isn’t—” he started, but the elevator doors swished open at that moment.
They stepped out of the elevator and were greeted by a sea of smiling faces, very few of which she recognized.
Collectively, a shout rose in the room. “Congratulations!”
The “surprise” baby shower wasn’t pink and blue or even green and yellow. The palette was a sophisticated blend of white and gold, right down to the confetti now littering the floor. Balloons tied with gold-and-black ribbon were suspended from the main table, which boasted flutes of champagne and an array of tapas displayed on elegant platters.
The banner draping the back of the room was white with gold metallic cursive lettering reading, “It’s a baby!”
A few flashes from cameras snapped as Stefanie broke off from the crowd and enveloped Pen into a warm hug. Pen held on a beat longer than she expected. Ending the engagement with Zach also would mean distancing herself from his family, and she was going to miss Stef when she left.
“We’re very surprised,” Pen said, including Zach, who stood at her side like a wall. She quirked an eyebrow at him and his mouth pulled into a tight smile for the benefit of their guests. Yes, probably her timing wasn’t the best on telling him her plans.
Stef hugged her brother next. “I know you hate surprises, Zach, but try to lighten up.”
“I’ll try,” came his gruff response.
“So, I lied about this being a cake-tasting,” Stefanie said, gesturing to a round table off to the side, “but we do have cake.”
Chase, Elle and Rider emerged from the crowd next to deliver hugs and welcomes. Elle, in particular, was notably excited.
“Granddaughter or grandson?” she asked Pen conspiratorially. “One blink for a girl, two for a boy.”
“No! Absolutely not.” Stefanie positioned herself between her mother and Penelope. “Nine o’clock is the announcement, and not a moment before.”
“Nine o’clock,” Pen said, her own smile faltering. A quick glance to Zach confirmed that his was gone completely. “Uh, Stefanie, this room is amazing. The party, the food. Everything looks incredible.”
She had to focus on her appreciation for what Stef had done, and pray that she could somehow dismantle the engagement and announce that she was expecting a girl without ruining the vibe of the party, or undoing Stef’s hard work. She hoped Stef would understand and forgive her.
Stefanie put a hand on her hip and gestured like a model on The Price is Right. “I did it myself. I mean, yeah, okay, I had a team helping, but the ideas came out of my brain.”
“Well, it’s incredible,” Pen said, meaning it. “If I need a party of any kind in the future, I’m coming to you.”
“Sparkling grape juice.” Stef plucked a flute from a waiter’s tray. “I put little purple ribbons on the nonalcoholic drinks for you.” Pen accepted her bubbly drink, a lump settling in her throat. She forced it down and called up her party smile again.
“Come see what else I have planned.” Stef wrapped her arm around Pen’s and led her away. Pen gladly took the reprieve—anything to keep Zach from bringing up the conversation she’d railroaded him with in the elevator.
He was easy to avoid over the next two hours given that Stef had filled the evening with games—albeit sophisticated ones.
“We’re adults,” Stef had said with committed seriousness. “I’m not melting chocolate bars in diapers, or asking guests to guess your belly width with lengths of toilet paper.”
“Thank you for that.” As sisters went, Zach hit the jackpot. Pen ignored the feeling of melancholy that swept over her. No matter where Pen and Zach ended up, Stef would always be their daughter’s aunt. Pen would hold on to that.
Dessert was a selection of miniature cakes or cupcakes, and cake pops on sticks, all decorated in white fondant with edible gold sprinkles. Pen sampled the sweets, and drank down another sparkling grape juice as she played coy about her baby’s sex. She’d lost count of how many times she’d told someone “Sorry. The announcement is at nine.”
About twenty minutes before the evening’s most anticipated hour, she found an opening and slipped away from the crowd. Zach and Chase were speaking to their grandparents’ friends and since Pen had already spoken with Rudy and Ana, she knew their conversation could last well past the time Pen and Zach were to take the mic.
August in Illinois was hot, but nothing like Texas hot. There wasn’t much fresh air to be had on the balcony, but it was private, and she desperately needed a break from the fake smiles. Her cheeks were starting to ache.
Sweltering heat, even this late in the day, blanketed her bare shoulders. Hot, yes, but quiet. She rested her hands on the railing and looked out at the city beyond. Of all the goals for a fresh start she’d made when she left Chicago, none of them had involved a giant engagement ring on her finger, a billionaire fiancé and a baby due by Christmas.
The phrase “Man plans and God laughs” flitted through her brain, but she could admit she was laughing with Him. True, she hadn’t planned any of this, but she was also so incredibly grateful to be pregnant—something she likely never would’ve planned.
Her eyes tracked to the windows and she spotted Zach, dark slacks accentuating his height, button-down pale blue shirt unable to hide his muscular build.
Her heart did what it’d been doing for a few weeks now, and gave an almost painful squeeze. She’d fallen for him. Head over heels. Ass over teakettle. Hook, line and sinker.
No matter how hard she tried to compartmentalize her feelings from the relationship, they managed to glob together into one four-letter word.
Love.
Whenever he walked into a room, she lit up. She sank into him whenever he pulled her close for a kiss, like she could fuse her very being with his. But all of this oneness and overwhelming feeling of rightness wasn’t shared by her betrothed.
Zach offered support, loyalty and means but not love. Love for his daughter? Most definitely. But for Pen, his caring stopped at friendship, and some days before that. Since she’d learned about his ex, Lonna, it was like she could visibly spot each and every boundary line he drew. Those boundaries were intentional—whether he was aware he was doing it or not.
He took care of her, provided for her every need and was adamant about not missing a moment of his daughter’s life. Zach made love to Penelope with a single-minded focus on her pleasure, and if she were a fresh-faced twentysomething, she might mistake his actions for love.
But as a thirtysomething who’d been around the proverbial block a few times, she knew better.
He gave and gave and gave...everything but his heart. That part of his anatomy was walled off so solidly, she hadn’t managed to breach the outer layer. And if she noticed the distance between them—her besotted, and him casually comfortable—so would his family, eventually. And so would their daughter.
Pen had made a lot of decisions recently—big, sweeping life decisions—and the number-one decision she’d made was to put her daughter first.
She would sacrifice anything—her job, her home, her very lifestyle—to give her daughter what she needed. She’d even sacrifice wha
t she had with Zach. And that was saying something as it was the first time she’d truly been in love.
In the quiet, dark corners of her mind lay a flickering hope that Zach might come around. That he might open up and learn to love her. The optimist in her thought he might, but the realist in her couldn’t risk what it meant if he never did.
She wasn’t waiting around for him to decide to love her. Not with their daughter watching. And that was why she also couldn’t let the engagement continue. Sure, there’d be a stir of interest and a touch of gossip, but she could spin their interest toward their daughter. She was the reason for the relationship anyway. Most of it.
Some of it, Pen sadly corrected.
Regardless, percentages didn’t matter. Penelope didn’t want her love for Zach to grow bitter and stale after years of not being returned. More important, she didn’t want her daughter to witness her mother’s feelings for her father crumbling into dust.
Their daughter would have a mother and a father who cared about one another, who respected one another. Who loved her with all their hearts. And that was going to have to be enough. For all of them.
Zach must’ve escaped the clutches of his grandparents’ friends, because he now stood at the balcony door with Chase. They were talking, looking very much like brothers with the same strong lines of their backs and hands buried in pants pockets.
Zach chose that moment to look over and catch her eye. He didn’t smile, but held her gaze with a smoldering one of his own. His longish hair was tickling the collar of his shirt, his full mouth flinching in displeasure.
As magnanimous as she’d sounded in her own ears moments ago, Pen’s heart throbbed with the need to satisfy her own desires rather than her daughter’s.
She only wished loving Zach satisfied both.
Nineteen
Zach took in Pen on the balcony, observing her as he had when he’d first laid eyes on her. A white lace dress hugged every inch of her, from exquisite breasts to shapely hips. The graceful line of her neck led to pale blue eyes that could stop a man dead in his tracks—and full lips that had stopped his heart for at least one beat on several occasions.
Now, knowing her the way he did, he still appreciated her physical attributes, but what he mostly saw was beauty. Beauty in a dress that showed off what women at the party kept referring to as her “baby bump.” Beauty, decadently outlined in white lace, snatching away first place from the breathtaking sunset behind her.
Beauty that was all woman.
That was all his.
Was. That word punched him in the solar plexus so hard, the room around him seemed to cant. He’d been possessive over her since the beginning, not wanting to let her go.
And now she was going.
Pen played with a few strands of her hair that had come down from an elegant twist at the back of her neck, her other hand resting on the railing. Her red shoes had tall, spindly heels, in spite of how many times he’d asked her not to wear them.
Throughout the evening, his flared temper had died down. His thoughts, while meeting guests who were his parents’ friends more than his, kept returning to Penelope and his unborn child. His future.
Not only his future.
Theirs.
He envisioned his daughter’s birthdays. Holidays. Family vacations.
As he’d glimpsed each fractured bit, he realized it was an impermanent, if not impossible, future.
Because Penelope was backing away from him.
There was no escaping how much she’d infiltrated his life in a short period of time. Zach barely recognized himself from the man who’d smoothly followed her back to her apartment for what was supposed to be a hell of a one-night stand.
And tonight it was ending.
Pen turned and caught his gaze, only to face the city lights once again. Over his shoulder, Chase spoke, and Zach wrenched his attention away from her.
“You’ve done it, haven’t you?” Chase asked, expression serious.
Zach threw back his champagne and wished it was beer. He had a good idea of what his brother was referring to, but damned if he was about to guess.
“The pretending has become real.”
“The pretending,” Zach said, relinquishing his empty glass to a nearby table, “is about to come to an end.” At Chase’s frown, Zach explained in a low voice so no one could overhear. “The engagement is over.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Zach practically spat the word. “Weren’t you the one advising me not to get in too deep because I thought this would be ‘fun’?”
“Yes.”
Their silent standoff ended with Chase explaining.
“It’s become clear to me that she means a lot more than a good time to you. So again, I ask, why?”
Zach blinked, his brother’s stern visage blurring as Stef’s voice crackled over the speakers in the room.
“Five minutes until we learn whether I have a niece or a nephew!”
The crowd clapped, and there were a few titters of excitement.
“If you don’t know, you’d better figure it out in five minutes,” Chase recommended. Zach followed his brother’s gaze to Penelope and the world wasn’t just canting but swimming.
“If you were going to succumb to a woman—” Chase nodded his head in greeting when Pen turned to look at them “—that’d be the one to lie down for.”
“I’ve tried,” Zach mumbled through numb lips. She was the one ending it. He was the one who wanted to keep her close.
“Try harder.” One more cocky tilt of his lips and Chase was gone.
Rather than make another excuse that he had tried, Zach considered that maybe he hadn’t. That maybe a fake engagement wasn’t enough for the woman who spelled out future with a capital F.
Like the F dangling from the bracelet on her wrist.
His. Pen was still his. She needed to know that the engagement he’d thrown out as a distraction had become real for him. That was what Chase had meant when he’d told Zach to try harder.
Decisively, and damn that felt better than uncertainty, Zach slid the balcony door aside and stepped out into the heated air with his fiancée.
“Is it time?” Her tone was neutral, her body held in check. She was ready to unravel everything at that microphone, and Zach had about two minutes to stop her from doing it.
“We have to talk.”
Her fair eyebrows lifted. “Didn’t I get in trouble for saying something similar to you before?”
He didn’t break stride, reaching her in a few steps and cradling her elbow. The deep hues of a purple-and-pink sky had given way to ink-blue.
“We have to talk about the announcement,” he said, throat tight, sweat beading on his forehead, and not from the summer temperatures. He wasn’t at the mercy of his nerves—not ever. Not when he proposed to Lonna years ago, or when he proposed to his ex-wife in Vegas, but now that he was faced with proposing to Penelope, there was no other word for it.
He was nervous.
Not only did he have no idea if she’d say yes, but he was almost positive she’d say no.
He needed her not to say no.
Not just for him. For herself—for their daughter. For all of them.
“Penelope Brand.” He cleared his throat, the seriousness in his tone causing her lips to softly part. He lifted her left hand and thumbed the engagement ring he’d placed there on a whim. Or some kind of mental dare. Now that he knew her inside and out, and knowing she’d bear his first child, he knew better.
It might have started out as a whim, but now? He meant it.
“I know what we have started out as fake, but over the past several months, having you at my side, being with you day in and day out... The announcement that you were pregnant, learning we’re expecting a daughter...” He trailed off, the magnitude of what they’d
shared stealing his breath. “The reality is, Penelope—” he locked his gaze on her startled one “—this isn’t fake. Not anymore.”
“Zach...”
“Let me finish.”
His eyebrows closed over his nose in concentration as the second hand rapidly ticked away precious minutes. Quickly, he reordered his thoughts. Now to deliver them in the most genuine, efficient way possible.
“We’re good together,” he told her. “Not only in the bedroom. As a unit. We’re learning our way, and I probably have further to go than you do, but we’re committed to the same important goal. Raising our child surrounded by so much love she’ll never want for anything.”
Pen’s eyes filled and she blinked. In her expression, Zach saw hope—hope that gave him the courage to continue.
“I love our daughter with a fierceness I didn’t know was possible. I care about you, Penelope. I don’t want to end what we have because your PR timeline says we should.”
Her expression blanked. He couldn’t tell if she was shocked or in agreement, or if she felt equal measures of both.
He thumbed her diamond engagement ring so that it was centered on her finger. Then he looked her dead in the eye and forced past his constricting throat, “Will you marry me? For real this time.”
In the space of one heartbeat, then two, Pen only stared. Then her lips firmed, tears streaked down her cheeks and she tugged her hand away from his.
* * *
Pen swiped her tears away almost angrily as the city melted in her watery vision. She sucked in a gulp of air, calling upon her very strong constitution for assistance. Her heart was cracked when she’d arrived.
Zach had just shattered it.
He moved to comfort her instantly, his wide, warm hands on her hips, strong chest flanking her back.
“Pen. I know how this sounds. I know you think it’s too late...”
Lone Star Lovers Page 13
