by Nina Croft
“Three years!” She groaned, then her frown deepened until she had a distinct line between her brows. “What were you doing with a three-year-old condom?”
“Nothing. That’s the problem. Well, nothing until you came along.”
“You mean you hadn’t been with a woman for three years?”
He shrugged again. “It’s no big deal.” Actually, it was a huge deal. Gargantuan. Maybe if he’d been getting some regularly, he might have been capable of keeping his dick in his pants when Little Miss Sensible started her striptease in his garage. And they wouldn’t now be sitting here talking about babies.
Shit.
“Are you going to have it?”
She’d been staring at the table, tracing patterns on the steel with her fingertip. Now her gaze flew to his face. “Of course I’m going to have…him or her.” She picked up the cup and took a small sip, put it down again. “I won’t let you persuade me to get rid of this baby, so don’t try.”
Where the hell did she get off presuming he was the sort of man who would try and get rid of his own kid?
“I understand that you’ll want nothing to do with the baby,” she continued. “I just needed to tell you, and I wanted to get it over with.”
“You understand nothing, lady.”
She blinked at him, those big blue eyes suddenly wary, and he realized how angry he’d sounded. He had to rein that back, get a grip on his emotions. No point in getting angry. But she had to know he would take his share of responsibility. He took a deep breath. This didn’t have to be a total disaster. There was no reason why it had to be a big deal.
“Look, I know you’ll probably want to keep quiet about…us. I won’t make trouble, I’ll stay in the background. But if it’s my kid, then I’ll pay my way—no one needs to know where the money comes from.”
She’d gone still. “If it’s your kid?” She glared at him. “You don’t believe me? What do you want—some sort of paternity test before you hand over your crappy money?”
“Of course I don’t want a paternity test. I believe you.” He tried to make his tone soothing.
“Big of you.”
They were both silent for a few minutes. He drank the rest of his beer and waited. As the silence lengthened, he shifted in his seat. Finally, he broke. “This doesn’t have to be a big deal,” he said. “You’ll have the baby, you can tell people what you like about the father, you—”
“Perhaps you’d like me to tell people that I don’t know who the baby’s father is? Would that suit you?” Her voice had risen, and he was glad he’d brought her somewhere they could talk privately, because he had a strange idea that she was about to blow. Hormones? He’d heard pregnant woman could be a little moody, but surely not already. He felt like he was sitting across from an unexploded bomb that might go off at any moment.
“Of course, it wouldn’t suit me.” He was trying the soothing again, but he suspected they were way beyond that. Anyway, why was she getting all heated up? She was hardly likely to want all her nice friends and colleagues to know she’d been slumming it with Tanner O’Connor.
“So what would suit you?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer. “How about you go away and forget we ever had this conversation?”
Christ, what was the right answer? “If that’s what you want,” he said cautiously.
She took no notice. “And you can just continue on with your life and pretend I don’t exist. We don’t exist. That’s probably for the best, don’t you think?” This time he’d learned his lesson and kept quiet. “I mean, the last thing I would want in my life is a scruffy, greasy, surly…loser.”
Loser? He supposed she could have said worse. And he decided to cut her some slack—she was clearly a little upset. And that was the understatement of the century. “Exactly. But I will pay my way. That way you can go back to work if that’s what you want. Or you can stay at home and look after the baby. Whatever you want.”
“There’s a big problem with that,” she almost snarled. Her face had gone blotchy, and he wanted to tell her to calm down, that this wasn’t good for her or the baby, but he had an idea that might light the fuse for the explosion.
“There is?”
“I have a morality clause in my contract. Do you even know what one of those is?”
Actually, he had no goddamn clue. He shook his head.
“It means they’ll fire me. It means as an unwed mother, I would be considered unfit to teach the children. I will lose my job.” Yup, that sounded like something the good folk of Saddler Cove might insist upon. Pompous pricks. “And guess what?” she continued, “I love my job. You get to go on with your greasy life as if nothing’s happened. As if you didn’t have a crummy three-year-old condom in your wallet. And I lose my job. How is any of this remotely fair?”
“Then we get married.”
He had no clue where those words came from.
For a moment, she just stared at him. “What did you just say?”
He wasn’t sure he could get the words out a second time. “We get married. Then they can’t sack you.” Though maybe marrying Tanner O’Connor would be seen as far more immoral than having a baby without a husband.
Her eyes narrowed to daggers. “Why would I want to marry a man who goes out of his way to piss everybody off? A man who clearly doesn’t know how to use a condom or a razor?” She waved a hand at his face, and he automatically touched his scruff of a beard. But she wasn’t finished. “A man who would sell a seventy-year-old woman a dangerous motorcycle? Of course we can’t get married. How would that help anything?”
Maybe she had a point. But what the hell did she want from him?
He was just trying to work out how to ask when she shoved herself to her feet. “I have to go. I just had to tell you. But now maybe you can just forget I ever mentioned it.”
Then she turned and stomped away.
Chapter Eleven
She’d lost it spectacularly back there.
She’d called him a loser. She shouldn’t have said that, because Tanner wasn’t a loser. Not at all. Against all the odds, he’d made a success of his life.
Maybe she should have waited a while before telling him. Just until it had really sunk into her own brain. And then she could have explained the situation in a rational manner. Like a reasonable human being instead of a mad harpy.
He’d looked almost frightened. As though she might explode all over him.
But really, she’d expected him to just walk away. Maybe suggest she have an abortion and get rid of the problem. Either way, she’d been sure he would want nothing to do with her or the baby. And then, with telling him behind her, she could have started to work out what her best options were.
Instead, Tanner O’Connor had asked her to marry him. Okay. It hadn’t exactly been a proposal, but he had suggested they get married. Unfortunately, by that time, she’d been too wound up to even take it in. Anyway, he clearly hadn’t meant it—he’d looked almost as shocked as her when the words fell out.
And really, anyone less like husband material she had never come across.
However much she was attracted to Tanner, the sad truth was, she was pregnant by Saddler Cove’s least eligible bachelor.
She was quite aware of the big black truck trailing her all the way back to Saddler Cove. She was driving slowly—she wasn’t the best of drivers under normal circumstances—and these were hardly that. He could have easily overtaken. But he didn’t, he stayed a safe distance behind, until she turned off on the drive to the ranch. Then he parked. When she pulled up outside the house, she glanced back just as he was pulling away.
Was he making sure she got home safely? She had probably come across as a little irrational. Okay, a lot irrational. But then, he hadn’t acted according to how she’d expected things to go, and that had knocked her off balance, and she’d gotten scared and…
She climbed out of the car and headed for the steps up to the house. Then changed her mind and took the path that led
to the barn. It was the middle of the afternoon, and the horses were all inside out of the heat and flies of the hottest part of the day. She headed for Beauty’s box. This was where she came when she was scared or troubled or anything really. She’d gotten Beauty as a one-year-old at the annual pony auction on the nearby island of Chincoteague. Emily had been six at the time, but it was love at first sight, and she’d begged her grandmother for the filly. That was the first year her parents went away—they were both doctors and had volunteered for disaster relief. It was something they’d always wanted to do but had put on hold when she was born. She supposed she should be grateful they’d stuck around for so long. Anyway, Mimi had seen that she needed something to distract her and had bought her Beauty on the understanding that she would care for the mare herself. And she had.
She’d looked after her, trained her, ridden her every day until she was eleven. That was the year her parents had been killed. Flying between hospitals in a tropical storm, in a small plane, in Africa.
Not long after she got that news, she’d stopped riding. At the time, she hadn’t really understood why. Now she’d come to see that she hadn’t wanted to take the risk and leave Mimi with no one. But Beauty was still the one she ran to when she needed a little unconditional love.
The mare was nearly twenty, but still the most beautiful horse in the whole world. Emily let herself into the loose box and stroked her silky black nose. “I messed up, Beauty.”
The horse whickered against her skin.
She had no one to blame for this but herself. Okay, maybe Tanner was a little to blame with his three-year-old condom. Had he really not been with a woman in three years? That was hard to believe. He had such a reputation as a man whore.
But anyway, she was the one who had thrown herself at him. Now she had to sort out the consequences and do what was right for the only truly blameless one in all this. Her baby. Their baby.
She patted her stomach. It was sinking in. She was going to have a baby.
And really, she was much better off than most people in her circumstances, even if she might be about to lose her job. She was pretty certain that a baby outside of marriage would be in breach of the morality clause in her contract. When she’d signed it, it had never occurred to her in a million years that it might become an issue. That wasn’t who she was. So, she was going to lose her job, and that hurt big time, because she loved her job and she was good at it. And she didn’t consider herself immoral. But she was luckier than most—money would be short, but she would have a home, and while Mimi would be disappointed, she would still stand behind her 100 percent.
Tanner had said he would give her money. And stay out of her life. She didn’t want him in her life—he was her fantasy lover, who she was pretty sure would get bored with her in no time. All the same, the offer to just send money and go on about his life had made her so angry. That her life was going to be turned upside down while his would go on with hardly a ripple.
Then he’d mentioned marriage and she’d gotten even angrier. She’d been a little…irrational. Could she blame it on pregnancy hormones? It was a little early, though maybe not. She was throwing up every morning, after all.
“I was horrible to him, Beauty.” He’d said they should get married, and she’d just lost it, because it was so…impossible. Obviously, being tied to her legally was the last thing he wanted. But she hadn’t needed to be so nasty about it.
She didn’t want to marry because she was pregnant.
But she did want her baby to have a father. A tattooed ex-con with an attitude problem might not be what everyone dreamed of as their baby’s daddy, but that didn’t change the fact of the matter. That was what she had, and she’d make the best of it.
So she was going to apologize and suggest they try again.
For their baby’s sake.
Giving Beauty a last pat, she headed out. She considered phoning, but she didn’t have a private number. And the shop would be closed by now. She’d heard that he’d moved out of the apartment and was back to sharing with his brothers. Which meant she’d likely have to see them. And she just wasn’t ready for that yet. Maybe never would be, but it couldn’t be helped.
But as she walked out of the barn, Tanner’s big black truck pulled up. He stopped the engine and climbed down from the cab. A quiver ran through her. The familiar reaction of almost overwhelming shyness and instant attraction he always managed to induce. Even in these horrible circumstances, he still turned her on hot and hard. She was hard-wired to react to him, that was all. Too many years of fantasizing. You couldn’t switch that stuff off.
As he sauntered toward her, hands shoved in his pockets, dark glasses over his eyes, she couldn’t read any expression on his face. He stopped in front of her. “I came to apologize.”
She twisted her hands in front of her, needing something to hold on to. “I was just on my way to come and see you and do the same.”
“You’ve got nothing to apologize for.”
She sniffed. “You mean, apart from turning into an irrational sniping woman? Who accused you of never shaving?”
“Actually, that part was a little scary.” He gave a shrug. “I presumed it was hormones or something. Anyway,” he added, stroking his fingers down the scruff on his jawline, and she had a very inconvenient flashback to how soft that hair had felt against her inner thighs while he’d—she cut off the thought. It wasn’t helping. “I don’t shave.”
For a moment, there was silence. This man was a virtual stranger, and yet they’d connected on a level so fundamental it was doing her head in. There was a life growing inside her. Part her and part Tanner.
For the first time, the amazingness of that struck her. She forgot, for a moment, that they didn’t know each other, they weren’t married, they were polar opposites, and she had a morality clause in her contract so very soon she’d be out of work, and just concentrated on the fact that they’d made a new life together. That was beyond awesome.
“We’re going to have a baby,” she said.
“So it seems.”
“And whatever we do from now on, the baby has to come first.” She searched his face, wished he’d take off the glasses. He looked like such a badass standing there. All muscle and tattoos and bad attitude. What did she know about him, really? Except he’d spent two years in prison for a crime she was pretty sure he hadn’t committed. That he’d come back to Saddler Cove bitter and hating everyone, and that he hardly ever smiled.
That was sad.
“We should talk,” she said. “Nothing deep and meaningful or anything. Just what we’re going to do now.”
He nodded. Obviously, the strong, silent type.
“You want to walk?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Let’s walk.”
She led the way around the back of the barn, not waiting to see if he followed but sensing his presence close behind her. She took the path beside the creek that ran behind the house, and he fell into step beside her. It was late afternoon, the heat was going out of the day, and she didn’t speak for a while, just let the atmosphere soothe her. She loved this place. The ranch, the wild coastline, even Saddler Cove with its small-town mentality and stupid outdated morality clauses.
They walked for about five minutes, then came to a bench her grandfather had made that looked out over the creek and to the distant mountains to the north. She sat, and he came down beside her. It was one of her favorite places when she wanted to think. And just another hundred feet along the creek was the spot she used to swim when she was younger. Where Tanner had no doubt seen her in her underwear just before he went to prison.
There was something she wanted to know. “Why did you come back here?”
“What, today?”
“No, when you…” God, was it impolite to bring this up? She really wasn’t sure of the etiquette with ex-cons. Should you pretend it had never happened?
He twisted slightly so he could look into her face and took off the dark glasses at last, hooking t
hem in the neckline of his T-shirt. He had beautiful eyes, though she still couldn’t tell what he was thinking. She guessed he’d perfected the art of keeping his thoughts to himself. Only letting people see what he wanted them to see. He came across as wild and undisciplined when you didn’t know him, but even after their short acquaintance, she reckoned that wasn’t who he was. It was a facade to hide the real Tanner O’Connor.
As to who that was—maybe she’d never know.
“When I got out of prison?” he finished for her with a sardonic smile.
“I just wondered. You could have gone anywhere and started your business. The people here…” She didn’t know how to put it.
“Are a load of assholes who will always think of me as a deadbeat loser who’ll never make anything of himself. A loser who should have died instead of Dwain Forrester?”
A tinge of bitterness was making its way through his not-quite-impervious demeanor. She’d thought he didn’t care what the people thought about him, but now she could see that wasn’t the case.
“I shouldn’t have called you a loser. It’s not true. And no one thinks that,” she said. Though she wasn’t entirely sure that was the truth. She wondered if she should tell him she believed he was innocent, that she’d always had her doubts. But she didn’t think now was the time. “It was a horrible accident that could have happened to any number of young people.” Though it had totally shocked the town at the time. Dwain was Jed Forrester’s only son. The richest family in Saddler Cove. Dwain had been a nice guy, good-looking, easy-going, everyone had loved him. His only fault—if you listened to most of the town—was his friendship with Tanner. Emily had been sixteen at the time, and she remembered thinking how unfair it all was. “You were just unlucky.”
“Dwain was unluckier.”
They’d taken Dwain’s father’s sports car for a joyride. Without permission. There were rumors that they’d both been drinking, but she didn’t think that had ever been proven. All the same, Tanner had ended up charged with aggravated manslaughter.
“So why did you come back?” she asked.
