by Lizzie Shane
They had time. They had their whole lives. He could wait.
Even if that one look at her had gotten him hard as a freaking rock in the driver’s seat and nearly sent them inadvertently off-roading.
He wasn’t going to screw things up with her again. One step at a time. And the first step was friendship. Not lust. No matter how much he might want it to be otherwise.
Chapter Eight
They made it to the airport without further detours toward the shoulder, or any other sizzling, electric moments of connection snapping between them. Trina had taken over driving when they stopped for gas and was behind the wheel as they approached the terminal.
The discussion about Ellie and fate—or that momentary flash of lust—had broken the ice and their conversation had flowed easily as the miles flew by, reminding her why she had liked him so much that first night. Though the taste of that reminder was bittersweet since he seemed to have no interest in rekindling their brief affair.
Chris had told her stories about his builds and strange celebrity moments. She’d told him about the highs and lows of medical school. And neither of them mentioned their shared history again. They’d almost been able to forget they were about to become parents together.
Almost.
It had been comfortable—until they hit the Twin Cities. Then Chris had begun navigating and Trina had grown more and more tense as they grew closer and closer to the airport. They had a plan, but it was small comfort. She was still scared of watching him walk away—scared that he would vanish on her again.
Marty had texted Chris his flight confirmation. Marty, who excelled at keeping Chris away from her and would have his ear for the next several months while they were separated. Marty, who thought she was a predatory gold-digger out to wreck Chris’s career.
Trina was silent as she followed the signs for departures, tension thickening the air between them. She wanted him to say something—anything—that would reassure her that she was making the right choice. Not that it felt like she had a choice. She wanted the baby. If she was honest with herself, she wanted Chris and a house in the suburbs and a happily ever after. But if he didn’t want to be with her, what else could she do but watch him fly away again?
Because that had gone so well last time.
“Right here’s good.”
She looked where he was pointing and pulled the car over to an open space along the curb. He didn’t have any bags to get out of the trunk, nothing more to delay his departure. She didn’t need to get out to see him off, but she shut off the car and when he climbed out, she did also, rounding the hood and standing there in front of him, nervously twirling her keys.
“You have my number,” he said.
She wasn’t sure which one them he was reminding, but she nodded.
He reached out, catching her hand and giving it a squeeze. “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine.”
He used their linked hands to tug her closer, reeling her in until she was flush against his body and he could wrap both arms around her, holding her close.
Tears pricked the backs of her eyes. She’d never been a crier before she got pregnant, but now the waterworks were a regular occurrence. She looped her arms around his waist, bending her head so he wouldn’t see her eyes as she sniffed back the tears, determined that she was not going to cry in front of him.
One of his hands rested at the small of her back, the other rose to cup the nape of her neck, his thumb gently stroking her there. Her breath caught with a sharp sexual awareness.
He smelled amazing. She’d forgotten that—how just the scent of him had made her entire body come alive. Just that scent and the lazy stroke of his thumb and she could feel herself going slick and weak-kneed for him.
The hand at her nape slid around to cup her jaw, lifting her face from where she’d hidden it against his chest. “Trina,” he whispered, and she dared lift her gaze.
His blue eyes were waiting for her, so close, with a question in them she was afraid to answer, but he seemed to know what she wanted. What she needed. He bent his head and his lips brushed hers, her eyelids falling down as they suddenly grew impossibly heavy.
God, the taste of him. He was everything she wanted and his kiss seemed to promise that he was hers for the asking. Her chest swelled—
But when he lifted his head there was none of that promise in his eyes, only more questions, and she knew even before he stepped back that this wasn’t a sappy romantic comedy movie ending.
Her life didn’t work like that.
Chris set her away from him, stepping back and shoving his hands into his pockets. “I’ll call you from New York.”
She couldn’t seem to find any words. There had to be something she could say that would make him stay, but her tongue was thick and all she could think was Please choose me. His gaze held hers for a long moment and she almost started to hope he might change his mind, that he might stay, when he gave a nod and said, “Goodbye, Trina.”
“Talk to you soon, Chris.” She refused to say goodbye. Even if this felt like goodbye.
She watched him walk away, feeling her heart stretching after him until the terminal doors closed behind him, cutting him off from view, and all her hopes snapped back on her like a rubber-band, striking her in the chest. She rubbed at her sternum as she turned and walked back to where her car waited.
She was going to drive back to Chicago. They were being practical. They had a plan.
None of which explained why she was sitting in the driver’s seat of her car with the road blurring in front of her, probably going to get a ticket for lingering too long in a loading zone because she couldn’t seem to stop blubbering.
She needed a sign—Beware Emotional Outbursts: Pregnancy Hormones Overflowing.
She kept telling herself it was just the hormones. It had nothing to do with a broken heart.
Chris ignored the feeling nagging at him as he headed toward the kiosk to punch in the confirmation number Marty had texted him to print out his boarding pass.
With TSA Pre-Check and no bags to check or carry, he’d be through security in plenty of time to make his flight. He was on his way back to his regularly scheduled life and so was Trina. It should have been a relief. Instead all he felt was that niggling at the back of his mind that he’d just royally screwed up.
He told himself he was right to walk away, but it felt so wrong to walk away from her. A little voice whispered that he was making the biggest mistake of his life, but he pushed down the feeling, smothering the urge to turn around and run back to her.
He needed to think rationally right now. They couldn’t just think about what they wanted anymore. They had to think about the baby. It complicated things. It added a layer of permanency they couldn’t escape. He couldn’t just play it by ear and have fun with Trina the way he wanted to. The way he would have if they hadn’t lost touch or if she’d come back to him just to be with him and not because of an accidental pregnancy. She wasn’t just a girl he liked any more. She was the mother of his child. That put a pressure on things, imposing the harsh light of reality on a relationship that had been fragile to begin with.
The kiss had been a mistake. He could still taste her on his lips. It had been an impulse—a stupid impulse, born of the moment, of the need to touch her again—but now he couldn’t get it out of his head.
He arrived at a row of check-in kiosks—and froze. Marty stood ten feet in front of him, issuing commands to two of his assistants, Melissa and Aubrey, as they wrestled with a stack of bags.
“Chris!” his agent beamed when he spotted him. “Everything go smoothly?”
Chris frowned, approaching his manager. “I thought you were meeting me in New York.”
“We decided to connect with you here instead. We’re all on the same flight to New York.”
Which was Marty’s way of saying he hadn’t trusted Chris to actually get on the flight and wanted to make sure he got his ass to New York on time. Not for the first ti
me today, the micromanaging nettled.
“How did it go?” his manager asked, obviously going for casual but landing more in the vicinity of irritable and demanding.
“She’s going back to Chicago. When her current med school term is over, she’s going to join me in San Diego around Christmastime and we’ll make plans then.” And just saying that he wasn’t going to see her until Christmas made him feel sick to his stomach.
Marty beamed—so happy Chris found himself inexplicably wanting to punch him. “Good! That’s excellent. By Christmas we’ll have the network contracts signed. I’m sure we can keep it out of the tabloids until then. Just another crazy fan, right? Good boy.”
“I’m not a boy,” Chris snapped—but Marty certainly treated him like one. A child with an overly scheduled life and a career that employed hundreds and raked in millions.
And without Trina in the picture, that career was secure. Or as secure as it could be. His show could still be canceled, but that was always a risk.
“Hey, buddy, relax. Don’t go diva on me now. I know these last few months have been stressful, but we’re almost there. The big time. We’re weeks away from getting what you’ve always wanted.”
What he’d always wanted. Chris nodded, his temper deflating. This was what he wanted. The reason he’d gone on Romancing Miss Right in the first place. To be famous. The celebrity contractor. Help people build their dream homes and be adored by fans in return. He’d chosen this life.
Marty shoved a strip of paper at him. “Here’s your boarding pass. Do you have your ID?”
But Chris wasn’t listening. A single phrase kept repeating in his head.
What he’d always wanted…
Wanted. Past tense.
He and his dad had built his first addition together. His mother had documented the entire thing on their camcorder, narrating and teasing him that he was going to be bigger than Bob Vila. And when he’d lost them, living out his mother’s dream for him had been the only thing that made sense. He’d wanted to make that dream come true, but being the heartthrob had never been the goal. It had been about family. And Trina was his family now.
It had been fun at first when the women chased him, he wasn’t going to lie. But he’d been pursuing his goals blindly for so long that he hadn’t stopped to think about what he really wanted in forever. Not since Trina and Chicago.
He’d wanted her. He’d wanted to make her laugh—and smile that shy, sweet smile she tried to hide from the world. He’d come up with the unplanned night for her, but he’d needed it too.
He’d wanted that.
He still wanted it.
Maybe it was fate.
She’d changed everything—changed him—and he hadn’t realized how much until she slipped out of his life and burst back into it. There was a time to think rationally and there was a time to make a fool of yourself for love. This definitely wasn’t the time to be rational. Rational wasn’t going to make him happy. Not without her.
“Chris? Do you have your ID?”
He was shaking his head, looking toward the drop-off area where he’d last seen Trina. She’d be gone by now. Long gone. But something told him she was still there. His fate was waiting.
Marty was still talking. “Don’t worry—I have Aubry carry your passport just in case—”
“Marty.” The hard tone of his voice cut his manager off mid-sentence. “I’m not flying to New York without Trina.”
Marty’s expression set like concrete. “I thought we took care of this—”
“We didn’t take care of this and we are not going to. She’s the mother of my child. I’m pretty sure she’s also the love of my life, so you’re going to need to do something for me if you want to keep being my manager. Butt out. Don’t bother her, don’t talk about her and you sure as hell better never try to keep her away from me again. Or we will be done. You’re an amazing manager and I am grateful for everything you’ve done to get me to this point—but if I’m choosing between my family and my career, my career is going to lose. So you don’t want me to have to choose. Trina’s going to be my family whether she wants more with me or not, but I want her to want more and I’m not going to wait until it’s convenient for my career to ask her for it. So you have two options. You get onboard or you get the hell out. You can manage my career, but I manage my life from here on out. And she stays. So you either get her a ticket to New York with us, or you reschedule those morning shows, because I’m not going without her.”
He didn’t wait to see Marty’s reaction. It didn’t matter. His manager would either get with the program or he would get lost. Right now all that mattered was Trina.
Chris jogged back toward the drop-off area, hoping she would be there, but already fishing his phone out of his pocket and pulling up her number—now that he had it again.
But when he burst out onto the sidewalk, like a miracle her car was still there. Right where he’d left her.
“Trina!”
He raced around the front of the car, willing to throw his body in front of a moving vehicle if she tried to drive off without him, catching sight of her stunned face through the windshield—then he was opening the driver’s side door and she was gaping up at him, swiping at the moisture on her cheeks—moisture that made his heart leap up into his throat and scratch at it with angry claws.
“God, baby, don’t cry.”
“I wasn’t,” she insisted, frowning up at him irritably. “What are you doing? Did you forget something?”
“Yes.” He took her hand, tugging her out of the car and to her feet. “You.”
“Me?” her voice cracked softly.
“I love you.” Piercing relief met the words, like he’d been waiting to say them for a lifetime. A car honked at them and he pulled her out of the street and up onto the sidewalk, taking both her hands and spinning her to face him. “You make me feel real and alive in a way I haven’t felt in far too long. I don’t want to just be your coparent. I want to be your family. I want to be there for you. And to have you be there for me. No more Marty in the middle. Just you and me.” His gaze flicked to her belly. “And the little addition. If it’s you or my career, then it’s you. But if you’re willing, I want to try to have both—and I want you to remind me every day what’s really important. Because it isn’t the fame or the success. It’s us. It’s having someone who makes every day brighter. You can come with me to New York or I can go with you to Chicago, but I’m not walking away this time. I think I fell in love with you the second I saw you in that alley in Chicago and I want to spend the rest of my life loving you, Katrina Marie Mitchell.”
She stared up at him, her jaw loose, her lashes clumped together with the tears she’d refused to acknowledge.
A bolt of uncertainty streaked through him at her silence, his heart rate accelerating until he wasn’t sure whether he was about to have a heart attack or a panic attack. “If that’s what you want.”
If that’s what you want…
Christian Taylor Evans was standing in front of her offering her forever with an adorably uncertain expression on his face. As if she would say no. As if some part of her heart hadn’t been begging for this moment since the first time he smiled at her.
It was everything she wanted---the scope of it so massive she felt like her body wasn’t big enough to contain this much emotion—and suddenly there were tears hovering on her eyelashes again, but they were happy tears, spilling over onto her cheeks until she realized Chris was still holding his breath.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Relief washed over his face, chased by a huge grin. “Yes?”
“That is what I want. You are what I want.” She took a deep breath, letting it out on a relieved puff of air. “Thinking of you flying away again just about broke my heart. I want us, Chris.”
He lifted a hand to her face, cupping her jaw. “I want that too.”
“I was so alone before I met you. And then everything changed. I think I fell in love with yo
u that first night too. You weren’t part of my plan, but life doesn’t go according to plan, no matter how much I might want it to and with you, for the first time, I feel like the unexpected is even better than I could have planned for.”
“My life is crazy,” he warned her. “Lots of travel, people recognizing me and feeling like they have a claim on me because they know me from TV. It’ll spill over onto you, but I’m selfish and I still want you in my life even if it’s going to be nuts.”
“Just promise me you’ll still be my Chicago Chris. Promise me you won’t let Hollywood swallow you up.”
“Never. And if I do, I fully expect you to kick my ass back into line.”
Tears welled again and she swiped at them. “I was afraid you didn’t want more. That we were just that one night—”
“That night was fate.” He grinned. “And I want forever.”
“Me too.” Maybe they could really make it. A sudden thought made her grin. “Really, we owe it to Ellie to try, since she had to dodge security to give us a chance.”
“I’ll build her a house.”
A laugh bubbled out of her, and he grinned as if lost in the sound. “Maybe we can just take her out to dinner.” She looped her arms around his neck. “Do you really mean it? The love thing?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been so certain in my life.”
She went up on her tiptoes. “Chris?”
“Yes?”
“Why haven’t you kissed me yet?”
That lopsided grin flashed as he lowered his head the last few inches. “You’ll have to be patient with me. I’m a little slow to notice the opportunities right in front of me.”
She had a pithy comeback on the tip of her tongue, but he caught her mouth before she could say it and dedicated himself to making her forget it—and forget any moment before this one when either of them had felt anything but perfectly home.
