I Knew You Were Trouble

by Lauren Layne

  “That was…” She waved her hand helplessly, trying to find words. “That was before. Before I realized that the idea of having a baby with someone I love makes me feel entirely different about the situation.”

  He went still at her use of the word love, but then he shook his head and tried to move around her.

  She tried again, grabbing the front of his shirt. “Are you listening to me, you ridiculously stubborn jerk? I freaking love you, even though you’re being an ass.”

  “Just…” Nick took a deep breath. “I need a bit, Taylor. This would be a shock even without the Bradley element.”

  “The Bradley element meaning he was here, or the Bradley element in that you still think he could be the father?”

  He didn’t answer, and that was answer enough.

  Okay, then.

  Taylor let her hand fall from his shirt, her head dropping forward. Defeated. Karen would be so disappointed in her. Never let them beat you.

  Well, sorry, Karen. This one beat me. He made me love him, but he doesn’t love me back.

  Nobody loved her back. Heck, even the dog would probably bound out the door after Nick.

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said quietly.

  “Yeah,” she said, her voice caustic. “I’m sure you will. Gotta provide that cheek swab for the DNA test, right?”

  He just shook his head and walked out the door, closing it behind him with a quiet click.

  Taylor heard a terrible sound and a split second later realized it had come from her. A ripping, gasping sound. Had she been more experienced with emotion, maybe she’d have known it for what it was—a sob. The kind that preceded a hot torrent of breathless tears.

  She slumped against the door, her body shaking as she sank to the floor. Twinkie licked her face before curling up beside her.

  Taylor had cried like this only once before in her life: the day Karen had died.

  Then, Nick Ballantine had been there to hold her.

  Tonight, she was all alone.

  Chapter 30

  “Would you please stop being so freaking nice when I’m in the midst of the most embarrassing moment of my life?” Taylor muttered, grabbing angrily at the offered tissue and dabbing her eyes.

  Hunter Cross only smiled at her.

  She was sitting in the guest chair in his office. He was leaning across the desk as he passed her tissue after tissue from the box on his desk.

  “Don’t think a thing of it,” he said. “I’ve got three sisters and four nieces, and my best friend is a woman. I’m fluent in the language of lady tears.”

  “That sounds gross,” she said in a wobbly voice. “And anyway, none of those people are your employee, sitting in your office, sobbing in front of her boss.”

  “I’m also your friend, Taylor.”

  She nodded, her eyes watering all over again. “Damn hormones.”

  This had started out as a perfectly professional meeting scheduled by Taylor to tell her boss that she’d be needing to take maternity leave later this year. She was still in her first trimester, so it was a bit premature. But when she’d realized that her leave would overlap with the launch of the new website, she’d wanted to be up front with Hunter and give him a chance to find someone to cover for her.

  And somehow in the process of calmly telling him about her pregnancy, she’d turned the whole thing into a hideous cryfest, sobbing out the whole story.

  The woman who’d once never cried suddenly couldn’t stop.

  No wonder Brit called Hunter her best friend. The man was a damn good listener.

  “You need me to do anything?” Hunter asked. “As a boss or as a friend? Ballantine’s not my employee, so I can beat him up.”

  “You have no idea how tempted I am by that,” she muttered.

  He laughed. “I love that you sound like you mean it.”

  “I do mean it.”

  She hadn’t seen Nick in the week since he’d walked out of their apartment. Wasn’t even sure that she wanted to.

  Taylor was heartbroken, yes. So shattered she felt like a zombie just trying to get through daily life.

  But she was also freaking pissed. Men weren’t supposed to treat women this way. Men certainly weren’t going to treat Taylor Carr this way.

  “You want a couple of days off?” he asked kindly.

  Did she?

  No. It sounded like far too much free time to think about stuff. But then throwing herself into work hadn’t been much help either. Not with Nick’s desk sitting empty, visible out of the corner of her eye.

  Where was he? Holed up on a writing binge?

  Don’t care. You don’t care what he’s doing. He’s dead to you.

  Except he wasn’t. She still loved the stupid bastard. Still loved his baby growing inside her. Their baby.

  I’m going to be a mom.

  She straightened her shoulders. She would figure this out. No way was she letting her son or daughter be born to a weepy, lovesick mess of a woman.

  “I’m good,” she told Hunter, smoothing her skirt and standing. “I’m sorry again about the breakdown.”

  He waved a hand. “Stop. I’m here anytime.”

  She smiled in thanks. Her boss was a good guy. Good-looking, smart, charming…he also wore glasses when he worked on the computer, which was sort of adorable.

  And none of it did a damn thing for her. Even if she hadn’t already learned her lesson about getting involved with someone in the office, she couldn’t see any guy around the image of Nick that seemed to be always in her peripheral vision, even when he wasn’t around. And he definitely wasn’t around.

  “Go home for the day,” Hunter ordered, walking her toward the door. “Pedicure, retail therapy, whatever. Just try not to think about Ballantine.”

  Yeah, right.

  “Thanks, Hunter,” she said, forcing a smile.

  Already she knew she was going to take him up on the offer to leave early, and the retail therapy suggestion had given her an idea.

  She was going shopping for baby crap. Crib, play-thingy, the whole works.

  The best way to get Nick Ballantine off her mind? Get his stuff out of her house.

  She was going to turn his room into a nursery.

  Chapter 31

  He knew he shouldn’t go. He went anyway.

  Nick knocked on the door of the Brooklyn walk-up apartment, hands shoved in his pockets.

  She didn’t make him wait long.

  “Hey,” Kelsey said, stepping aside so he could enter the apartment.

  “Shawn around?” he asked, taking in the small but clean apartment.

  She shook her head. “At work.”

  Nick nodded. “Hannah?”

  “Asleep. I didn’t know you were coming by or I would have delayed her nap for a bit—”

  “It’s probably better,” he interrupted. “I was the one who said we needed to not see each other anymore. For her sake.”

  Kelsey nodded. “I admit I was surprised to hear from you. You seemed pretty cozy with your supermodel, last I saw you.”

  Her voice was just the slightest bit snide. He gave her a pointed look, and she flinched guiltily. “Right. I don’t get to play that card.”

  “No. You don’t.”

  “Can I get you a drink? I’m no longer dating a bartender, so I think I only have beer….”

  “Why’d you do it?” he asked.

  She exhaled. “I always wondered when you’d ask that.”

  “I’m asking now.”

  She wiped her hands on the front of her jeans. “Why’d I do what? Cheat on you, or not tell you there was a chance the baby wasn’t yours?”

  “The latter.”

  He didn’t care why she’d cheated on him. He’d quit caring about Kelsey a long time ago. Hannah, though…that had been hard to take.

  Kelsey’s eyes watered. “I don’t know. I regret it so much. It’s just…” She swallowed. “I wanted it to be you so badly. I knew you’d be a great dad, and then you were a g
reat dad. And I guess I thought if I pretended hard enough, it would be true.”

  “How’d Shawn find out about the baby in the first place? Did you tell him?”

  She shook her head, and that made him dislike her more. But he wasn’t here to make peace with Kelsey; he just wanted answers. To understand.

  “I quit seeing him after I started showing, but he was my personal trainer,” Kelsey said, nibbling her lip. “He told me later that he’d noticed the changes in my body and wondered about them.”

  They fell silent, a soft murmuring noise from the baby monitor the only sound for a moment. It ate at his heart.

  He wanted that again.

  It was Kelsey who spoke next. “Had Shawn not wanted to be a part of her life—had he not wanted to be her father, and insisted that we marry—would you have stayed? Raised her?”

  Nick clenched his teeth. It was a question he’d asked himself a million times. Would he have stayed, knowing Hannah wasn’t his?

  He already knew the answer, though. Deep down, he had always known it. “From the moment I first held her, I would have done anything for her. If that meant being her father when she wouldn’t otherwise have one, I’d have done that. If it meant stepping aside so her real father could step in…well, I did what I had to do. For Hannah.”

  Kelsey’s eyes watered again, and she pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes to wipe away the tears. “Damn. You really are the best guy. I hope your supermodel deserves you.”

  I don’t deserve her.

  The thought hit him so hard he nearly stepped back.

  What the fuck was he doing?

  A woman he’d casually cared about had had a baby that wasn’t his, and he was ready to die for Hannah.

  The woman he loved was having his baby, and he was…

  Being a damned fool.

  Nick’s eyes closed as self-loathing washed over him.

  When he’d heard Taylor was pregnant, seen her with Bradley, he hadn’t been able to think.

  Instead of seeing Taylor, the woman he loved, he’d been seeing his past. Reliving that moment when he’d found out Hannah wasn’t his, and completely terrified of having to experience it again.

  Seeing Kelsey, though, he realized that the contrast between her and Taylor was startlingly clear.

  Kelsey wasn’t a bad person, but she was a cowardly one. One who’d avoided confrontation, avoided hard realities. She’d convinced everyone around her that she was sweet and kind, when really she was just scared. Scared of doing what was right because it was hard.

  That wasn’t Taylor.

  Taylor hadn’t been scared of a single thing in her life. If she’d had even the slightest doubt about whose baby it was, she’d have ripped Bradley’s and Nick’s hair out herself and marched it in for prenatal paternity testing. She’d have grabbed the entire situation by the balls, owned up to every difficult reality.

  How had he thought for even a second that it would be otherwise? That his beautiful Taylor would be anything other than brave?

  Nick clenched his teeth harder.

  She was brave, but not unbreakable. He’d hurt her. How could she not be hurt? At that moment Nick hated himself so much he wished he could die.

  When his eyes opened, he wasn’t even embarrassed to find they were slightly damp.

  “I’ve gotta go,” he said roughly. “Kiss Hannah for me, ’kay?”

  “Wait, Nick, are you okay?”

  No.

  But he didn’t bother to explain anything to Kelsey. He had more important things to worry about.

  Like getting his family back.

  Chapter 32

  “Okay, Twinkie, how can we be so bad at this?” Taylor asked, petting the dog, who was chewing a bone next to her hip. “We’re smart ladies. A simple chest of drawers shouldn’t defeat us.”

  She and the dog sat in the middle of Nick’s room. At some point in the past week he’d come by while she was at work and collected some of his stuff, so it was mostly just furniture that remained.

  His room wasn’t as big as hers, which didn’t give her much space for furniture assembly. Not that it mattered. It was probably time to accept that she simply was not literate in Ikea directions.

  She’d ordered a crib and changing table already assembled, to arrive closer to her due date. She hadn’t wanted to risk setting her baby on anything that she herself had put together, out of fear for the poor child’s safety.

  But for some reason it had felt important that she get hands-on with something for the baby. She wanted to make something for her son or daughter.

  The more she stared at the directions and their indecipherable illustrations, the more she realized she should have opted for taking up knitting. A cute pair of booties had to be easier than this crap.

  On the plus side, at least it was preventing her from thinking about Nick.

  Mostly.

  Sort of.

  Nope, not at all.

  She sighed and rubbed Twinkie’s head. “It’ll pass, right? I’ll get over him?”

  “I hope not.”

  The gruff voice came from the doorway, and Taylor whipped her head toward the sound just as Twinkie lost her mind over Nick’s return.

  He came back.

  Taylor was every bit as excited as the dog, but she kept her voice carefully cool and impassive. “What are you doing here?”

  Instead of answering, he toed one of the billion pieces of particleboard that covered nearly every inch of the floor. “Another bookshelf?”

  She looked away. “Dresser.”

  Not that it’s any of your business.

  She stopped herself from saying the childish add-on out loud, but it didn’t really matter. The coolness of her tone spoke volumes.

  Or maybe not, because instead of wisely beating a retreat, Nick entered the room, stepping around the pieces of furniture. He kicked them aside until there was just enough room for him to sit beside her.

  Twinkie had apparently decided there wasn’t enough room for all three of them and the disassembled dresser, and she’d gone into the living room.

  Or maybe she’d remembered that Nick had abandoned them, and she was punishing him. The thought pleased Taylor.

  Without saying a word, he picked up the directions and began flipping through them. She had a painfully wonderful flashback of the night she’d been trying to put together her bookshelf. Another attempt at self-therapy, only that time she’d been sulking over Bradley.

  Pathetic. In hindsight, she recognized that night for what it really was: the first step in realizing that Nick Ballantine was ten times the man Bradley was.

  At least she’d thought he was.

  But good men didn’t accuse their pregnant girlfriends of having someone else’s baby and then walk out the door.

  Wordlessly he began gathering the pieces he needed for the second step (she’d completed step one on her own, but just barely).

  She wanted to tell him to get out.

  She didn’t. She told herself that the only reason she wasn’t ordering him out was because she wanted the dresser put together.

  So what if it provided a moment of guilty pleasure to soak in the sight of him?

  He looked…well, okay. He didn’t look great.

  He had shadows under his eyes. The scruff on his jawline was even scruffier than usual. His hair was a mess, his shirt was wrinkled.

  Nick looked as miserable as she felt.

  Still he said nothing. Neither did she. She simply watched as, piece by piece, he put together the dresser that would eventually hold her baby’s tiny clothes.

  Their baby’s clothes.

  Was that why he was here? Was he just resigning himself to the fact that if the stupid paternity test came back with his name on it, he’d have a child?

  Because as much as she was hurting, as much as her heart wanted to push away from him, there was no way she’d keep Nick from his child. However involved he wanted to be with their son or daughter, she’d welcome it.


  Just so long as he kept his distance from her.

  Still he didn’t look at her. She forced herself to look only at his hands, watching as he quietly, competently assembled the dresser, until all that was left was the handles.

  He gathered them in one hand, along with the screwdriver, but instead of putting the finishing touches on, he held them out to her.

  Her eyes watered, because he understood. Understood her need to contribute something for the child she couldn’t yet hold.

  Adding the handles was wonderfully foolproof, no instructions needed. She put them on one by one, until she got to the last remaining knob.

  She screwed it on, and the second it was all the way tightened, she dropped the screwdriver and covered her mouth to hide a sob.

  Nick pulled her to her feet, hauling her body against his.

  He held her. He held her as she cried big sobs over…she didn’t even know what. Him. The baby. The family unit that would never be because he’d hurt her.

  He’d hurt her so bad.

  “I know,” he said in a choked voice. “I know, and I’m so fucking sorry.”

  She stilled. Had she spoken her pain out loud? Or had he just known?

  Didn’t matter. Sorry wasn’t good enough.

  She pushed at his shoulders. He let her shove him away, but only just enough so that he could continue to hold her with one arm, using the heel of his other hand to wipe gently at her tears.

  “Leave,” she whispered.

  Nick shook his head. “Can’t do that.”

  “Well, you don’t get to do this,” she said. “You don’t get to accuse me of cheating on you, of trying to pass off someone else’s baby as yours, and then walk out the door. You don’t get to do all that and come back and build a dresser and act like it didn’t happen. Like you didn’t break my heart.”

  His face creased in anguish. “Tell me what I can do to make it better. To make you mine again.”

  “I don’t want to be yours.”

  “You think I don’t know that I don’t deserve you?” he said urgently, cupping her face. “You think I don’t know that I was a fucking idiot? That the baby you’re carrying is mine? I know all of that, Taylor, but here’s what I need you to know. I need you to know that I want that baby so much, but I want you more.”