Her Baby and Her Beau

by Victoria Pade

  “After that they were supportive,” she went on. “They said it was my decision what to do—whether to have the baby or have an abortion. That they were with me either way, but they didn’t want to see my life ruined.”

  “So there was pressure for an abortion.”

  He said it as statement of fact, as if he already knew that.

  “They thought it would be for the best.” And just remembering that, remembering the way she’d felt, made her eyes sting with tears she was not about to let fall.

  “Had you decided when you miscarried?” Beau asked then.

  “No, I hadn’t decided. I didn’t know what to do...” Because there had been a part of her that had wanted their baby. That had wanted to keep that part of him in spite of everything. And she’d hated herself for it.

  “Then the decision was taken out of my hands,” she concluded, reliving for a moment how sad that had made her. Relieved but so, so sad, too. Reliving the depression she’d sunk into for a long while because she was so despondent over losing him and their baby.

  They’d both stopped eating altogether by then, but Kyla took a drink of her iced tea to wash back the tears that still stung her throat and eyes.

  Then she took a deep breath for strength. “Now you want to tell me your side,” she accused, her tone uglier than she’d intended it to be.

  He let that lie for a moment and she wasn’t sure if he was weighing his words or hoping the pause might diffuse some of her anger.

  Then, in a voice that was deep, very solemn, and quiet again, he reiterated, “I was not there the day your dad came to Denver. I never saw him. I never saw your letter. I never knew anything about the pregnancy. If I had, I’d have gotten to you—come hell or high water, Kyla, Annapolis or not—I’d have gotten to you. I was pretty messed up over you at the time as it was—that would have given me the reason I was looking for.”

  He’d been looking for a reason to get back to her?

  That sounded good. But if it was the truth, if he’d wanted to get back to her—pregnancy or not—he knew she would be in Northbridge for a while after he left, so it would have been easy for him. And he hadn’t come back.

  Kyla just raised a challenging chin at him, saying nothing.

  “In his journal H.J. wrote that he made a deal with your dad,” Beau went on then. “H.J. paid him a chunk of money—a big chunk—to make the problem go away. I have the canceled check, with your father’s endorsement on the back. It was with your letter in the journal. I can show it to you—”

  Kyla swallowed hard and shook her head, not wanting to believe what he was saying.

  “And I wouldn’t ever have said or implied that you were a skank,” he added. “No one in the family knew anything except H.J. If GiGi had, she would never have stood for me not doing—”

  “Don’t say ‘doing the right thing,’” Kyla cut him off. “I hate that. It makes the father sound like some kind of hero, handing out a favor.”

  “That isn’t how it would have been, either. If I had known...” He shook his head. “Everything would have been different. I was so broken up over you. It wouldn’t have mattered what anybody else said or thought, I would have gotten to you. I’m telling you, it would have given me the reason I was looking for,” he insisted.

  “But H.J. knew that,” Beau continued. “He wrote that he knew I was lovesick—his word. He was worried that I was going to do something stupid over you. He wrote that when he heard you were pregnant, he knew that if I found out I’d forget about Annapolis. He wouldn’t let that happen. And burying problems under a whole lot of cash was one of the ways he took care of things—he paid people off.”

  Kyla wanted to throw that notion back in Beau’s face. To shout that there was no way her parents would have done anything like that.

  But she knew better.

  Certainly until right then the thought that her father had taken H. J. Camden’s money hadn’t occurred to her. Not for one single minute.

  But now...

  She didn’t have to see the check made out to her father or his signature endorsing it to put two and two together. There were other things.

  It wasn’t only her parents’ fury at her that had changed after that trip to Denver. It wasn’t only that they’d been more sympathetic and understanding. When she’d miscarried not long after her father came back, her parents had announced that they were finally going to try their luck in Los Angeles.

  Los Angeles had long been their goal, but the cost of living in the larger music meccas like New York and Chicago and Nashville had been financially disastrous for them. Before her father’s trip to Denver they’d said they were a long, long way from being able to try LA.

  But not only had they suddenly been able to afford that, once they were there they’d also had the money for better housing than they’d been in before, and more elaborate and expensive attempts to launch their music career.

  Kyla had wondered about it at the time. But she’d been sunk in her own misery, fighting to recover physically and emotionally. So she hadn’t delved too deeply into the vague reasons her parents had given her when she’d asked.

  She’d never known exactly how much money her parents had available at any given time. And she’d thought that—in their own way—they were trying to cheer her up by going to LA, by getting a nicer place than usual, because that’s what they’d said.

  But now that she knew this, money from H. J. Camden was a far more likely explanation.

  Her parents had profited from her pain.

  That wasn’t an easy thought to have.

  But there hadn’t been much about growing up raised by Kevin and Lila Gibson that had been easy for Kyla.

  “So that’s where the money came from,” she said, her voice so low it was barely audible.

  “You knew about the money?”

  “No. Well...there were some things I didn’t understand, things we hadn’t been able to have or do before because we couldn’t afford it. But when I asked they said there was an end-of-summer bonus from the ranch, and that the roadside vegetable stand had brought in more than they expected. I was...kind of a mess myself,” she said. “I just took what they said at face value.”

  Beau was silent, leaving her with her own knowledge of her parents and the past.

  Kyla was grateful that he didn’t say anything insulting or offensive about her parents, that he left her what little pride in them she had left.

  But it was a lot to take in and she wasn’t sure how long she sat there, staring at the oak tabletop, remembering more and more things that this information explained. Trying not to feel angry at two people who were long gone, at what they’d done so many years ago. Wondering a little why it surprised her that they would have done something like this.

  “You really didn’t know?” she asked then, wishing her voice hadn’t come out so small. But since she honestly hadn’t known what had really gone on, it made it more difficult to insist that he had.

  “I really didn’t know,” he said sincerely. “If I had I would never—never—have let you deal with any of it without me.”

  She could see that being true of the man he was today. But what about the boy?

  It had been so hard then to believe that he’d denied their being together. So hard to believe that when he’d said he loved her he’d merely been trying to get what he wanted. So hard to believe that he wasn’t the person she’d thought he was. But she’d come to believe it. And now to reverse that belief...

  But these pieces were the pieces that really fit. That really made sense.

  “I’m sorry, Kyla,” Beau apologized to her again. “If that old man was around today I think I’d wring his neck.”

  Kyla acknowledged that sentiment by raising her chin. “I guess at least you can say that what your great-grandfather did was in your best interests. What my parents did was just...selfish.”

  “None of them had the right to make the decisions for us, no matter how young we were.” />
  He was angry. It was under control, but Kyla could see the fury in the clench of his jaw.

  And out of everything, that went the furthest in convincing her that he really hadn’t known anything at the time.

  “I suppose it’s all water under the bridge...” she said then.

  “For me it’s fresher than that.”

  That was an odd twist, Kyla realized. While she was struggling with long-held and deep-seated angers and resentments, this was all new to him and so were the angers and resentments. It almost made her want to apologize to him, though she wasn’t sure for what.

  So instead she said, “I wouldn’t have wanted to be responsible for keeping you from going to Annapolis, becoming a marine—you’d dreamed about that from when you were a little boy.” She knew that because he’d talked so much about it.

  “Still, what they did was wrong,” he said with conviction.

  There was no arguing with that, so she didn’t try. And as strange as it seemed for her to say it and mean it, she said, “Maybe we just have to put it behind us.”

  He raised those blue eyes to her, his brow furrowed above them. “Can you do that?”

  That was a good question.

  She couldn’t very well go on resenting Beau or being angry with him for something he hadn’t done, could she?

  All she could say was, “I can try,” because she also knew that it might take a little while for the truth to alter feelings she’d carried around for over a decade.

  He nodded as if he understood that and she appreciated that he didn’t try to force instant forgiveness, that he was accepting blame he wasn’t due.

  There was a quiet strength in that that she couldn’t help admiring.

  Some of that same strength she’d seen in him fourteen years ago, strength that had set him apart. That had drawn her to him and made her like him.

  And she had liked him.

  So much...

  She looked at him then and for some reason remembered the first time he’d kissed her.

  She hadn’t kissed many boys before him because she’d never been in any one place long enough to have a real boyfriend. But Beau had seemed to have more experience—when it came to kissing, at least.

  They’d been on the pier. His arm had been around her shoulders. And he’d just swiveled from the waist toward her and kissed her...

  The best kiss she’d had up until then.

  And one she’d never forgotten. Not even when she’d wished she could.

  Okay, enough, she told herself. She’d had too much for one day—being out of bed and active, all the Immy stuff, all the talk of the past and everything that had stirred up—she was on overload and her brain was launching things at her that she was not at all equipped to handle.

  “We didn’t do much justice to this pizza, but I think I need to call it a day.” She just had to get away, to be alone with everything she’d learned, to get some control over her wandering thoughts.

  Beau didn’t try to stop her. Instead he nodded as if he thought her calling it a day was a good idea. “Go on up. And leave the baby monitor—I’ll take care of Immy through the night so you can get some rest.”

  “In the middle of the night it’s just a diaper change, a bottle and a burp, and she should go right back down,” Kyla instructed. “At least, that’s the ideal. If you have any problems—”

  “I’ll scream louder than she does.”

  There was just the faint hint of a smile to let Kyla know he was joking.

  She smiled back the same way, her gaze catching on that sexy mouth of his.

  And those thoughts of kissing him flew back at her until she dodged them by sliding out of the breakfast nook and getting to her feet.

  “Barring you screaming in the night, then, I guess I’ll see you in the morning,” she said.

  “If you need anything—”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  She only made it a few steps away from the nook when his deep voice sounded again.

  “Kyla?”

  She stopped and peered at his way-too-handsome face over her shoulder.

  “I really am sorry,” he apologized yet again.

  Only this time her answer was, “Me, too.”

  Then she left him sitting in the kitchen, feeling his eyes on her the whole way out.

  And once more she struggled against the invasion of those thoughts of long-ago kissing.

  Against wondering what it might be like to kiss him again now.

  But in the struggle she also made it clear to herself that she was never going to know.

  They were a long way away from those days when they used to kiss, and she didn’t see them going back—not as the very different people they were now.

  There just wasn’t anything in their future but the time it took for her to get on her feet and figure out her game plan.

  Then they would part ways again.

  And nowhere in that was there going to be kissing.

  Chapter Four

  Zero-hundred this. Zero-hundred that.

  Kyla only partially listened to Beau over breakfast on Friday. Her head was still swimming with all he’d revealed to her the night before about what had really happened fourteen years ago.

  After so long condemning him she found herself in some kind of no-man’s-land with the whole thing. She couldn’t say that she’d forgiven him because if he’d been kept in the dark about the pregnancy there wasn’t anything to forgive him for.

  She guessed that she was on the road to accepting that, at least—that he honestly hadn’t even known that she was pregnant and so hadn’t abandoned her or denied her or said terrible things about her.

  And that was something. Not resenting him was something...

  There was more of the zero-hundred talk and she told herself she needed to concentrate.

  They were sitting in the nook in his kitchen eating cereal. Immy was content in the infant seat, being mechanically swayed back and forth between them while Beau outlined the schedule he usually kept, the schedule he thought Immy should be on—based on research he’d done on the internet—and the schedule for the most efficient and effective rest and recuperation for Kyla.

  She had no idea how the military time jargon translated into hours and minutes, but it caused her to think that if there was such a thing as over-organization, Beau Camden had the market cornered.

  At least, that was what she was thinking when she wasn’t thinking about the past or the way his gray USMC T-shirt fitted him like a second skin, or how great his rear end had looked in the jeans he was wearing when he’d bent over to put Immy in her chair.

  “That should take us right up to when the lawyer will be here this afternoon,” he seemed to conclude.

  “Wait...did you say the lawyer?” Not surprisingly, she’d missed something.

  “Your lawyer—I told you he called when you were still upstairs this morning.”

  “Right. Sure,” she said as if she’d known all along.

  She’d given Beau’s number to Eddie and Rachel’s lawyer after moving in—she just hadn’t expected to hear from him so soon.

  “He said he has something to talk to you about,” Beau reminded. “He’ll be here at seventeen-hundred, after he leaves his office for the day. Immy woke up at sixteen-forty-five yesterday, so that would give us just enough time for a diaper change, but if we don’t do her bath until just before bedtime tonight—the way the website advised—we should be okay. Let’s say an hour and a half with the lawyer, then bath, bottle, bedtime and—”

  “Okay...wow...” Kyla said. “First off, I don’t understand military time, so could you put me on real time?”

  “Sorry, I keep doing that...”

  “And I agree that trying to keep Immy on a schedule is good—Rachel did that. But you have to be a little flexible, too. She’s a baby, not an alarm clock, and sometimes things vary a little, so you probably shouldn’t think any schedule can be followed to the minute—she might sleep half an
hour longer or get up earlier—”

  “But the closer a schedule is followed the better,” he said, not allowing for much of that flexibility she’d mentioned.

  “And I appreciate that you’ve worked out that I should nap when Immy does,” Kyla went on, “but I don’t really like to nap. Even in the hospital and here for that last day of bed rest, I didn’t sleep during the day. I’m not operating at full speed right now and I can tell when I need to sit down and take it easy, but to schedule it doesn’t really work for me.”

  “But you will rest.”

  He just didn’t budge, did he?

  “Sure,” Kyla conceded. “If and when I need to. But I’m not an invalid. I feel better today than I did yesterday and I think that’s the course I’m on now—every day I’ll be a little better. Some of the swelling has even gone down in my fingers and I can almost start to bend them...”

  She demonstrated, though her ability to bend her fingers was still minimal and painful.

  “And actually,” she continued, “I like to be busy.” What she was really thinking was that she didn’t want to just sit around and look at Beau all day. She needed her attention not to be so much on him because every time he was within her line of vision she lapsed into studying him and noticing all over again how hot he was.

  And she didn’t want to do that. Even when she succeeded at resolving the resentment she’d felt all these years, it still wasn’t as if there was or could be anything between them. They might have hit it off when they were teenagers isolated on a small-town ranch, but that wasn’t what they were any more. Now not only weren’t they teenagers, they’d grown up to be very, very different people who tackled things in very, very different ways with very, very different drives for control and regimentation.

  So the last thing she needed was to be cataloging assets and appeals that didn’t ultimately matter.

  “I’ll do as much as I can with Immy,” she informed him. “And I can make formula and fill bottles—I just have trouble screwing on the nipples.”

  Ooo...had that sounded to him the way it had to her? Because to her it had sounded sort of racy.