very thought had made her blood run cold. Even now she shivered inside the thick robe she was wearing. Tucking her hands inside the opposite sleeves, she chaffed her arms briskly, trying to warm them.
Alex just sat there. He didn’t speak. He didn’t move, except for the rise and fall of his chest. His expression was grim as he stared across the room. He wasn’t looking at her now.
She wondered what he was seeing in his mind’s eye. His dying brother? His unknown son? The parents who had rejected him and each other? His life, as carefully designed as any building he’d ever planned, going down the drain?
She couldn’t imagine. Didn’t want to.
Murphy stood between them, looking from one to the other as if wondering what they were doing in his living room in the middle of the night. Finally, accepting it as dogs always did, he curled up on his bed in front of the fireplace and put his head between his paws.
Alex looked up and met her gaze. “I want my son.”
“Want your …?” Daisy stared at him, breathless, as if he had punched her in the gut. “What does that mean? You can’t take him!” she blurted, anguished. “You don’t have any right!”
“I didn’t say I was going to take him.” Icy green eyes collided with hers. “But I’m not walking away, either.”
Daisy swallowed, tried to think, to fathom what Alex’s “not walking away” meant. For Charlie. For her. She didn’t have a clue.
She only knew what she must not let happen. “You’re not hurting him,” she said fiercely. “I won’t let you.”
Alex rubbed a hand over his hair. His brows drew down. “Why the hell would I want to hurt him?”
Daisy had started to pace, but she stopped and turned to face him. “I didn’t say you would intend to. But it could happen. He’s only four, Alex. He won’t understand. Besides, he has a father.”
Alex’s jaw tightened. “Cal.” He spat her ex-husband’s name. “Did you marry him because of Charlie?”
Daisy ran her tongue over her lips as she tried to decide how to answer it, how to be honest and fair to both Alex and to Cal.
“Did you?” Alex persisted when she didn’t reply.
She sat down in the armchair across from the sofa where he was leaning toward her, his elbows on his knees, his fingers laced. “Yes,” she admitted. “But it wasn’t as simple as that. I didn’t go find the nearest eligible man and ask him to marry me.”
“No?” He mocked her.
Daisy tried not to bristle. “No,” she said firmly. “Cal asked me.”
“And you jumped at it.”
In fact she’d been shocked. It had never occurred to her. They’d been friends. Nothing more. “I thought about it. He insisted we could make it work.”
“Sounds passionate,” Alex drawled.
“Cal and I had been friends for a long time. He said love wasn’t just a matter of passion. It was a matter of choice. I thought he was right. He wasn’t. But—” she met his mockery defiantly “—I love Cal.”
“You thought you loved me.”
“I did,” Daisy agreed. “But that was before I found out you didn’t give a damn.”
Alex stiffened as if she’d slapped him, then surged to his feet and loomed over her. “So you fell out of love with me and in love with What’s His Face in, what? Six weeks? Less?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“No? So, what was it like?”
She knew he didn’t really want to hear the answer. He was angry and he just wanted to put her on the defensive, pick a fight.
But Daisy wasn’t buying into that. “Sit down,” she said, and pointed at the sofa when he didn’t move. “Sit down and I’ll tell you what it was like,” she repeated sharply.
His gaze narrowed on her, but when she kept pointing, he dropped onto the sofa, still staring at her unblinkingly.
When he had settled again, Daisy tucked her feet under her and tried to find words that would make him understand.
“I was hurt when you didn’t feel what I did that weekend,” she began.
Alex started to interrupt, but she held up a hand to stop him. “I know you think I shouldn’t have been. You think I presumed too much, And—” she took a steadying breath “—you were right. I presumed far too much. But I was young and foolish, and nothing like that had ever happened to me before.”
Alex’s mouth was a thin line, but he was listening at least.
Daisy twisted the tie of her bathrobe between her fingers, staring at it before lifting her gaze again. She shrugged and told him helplessly, “I fell in love with you. It was a mistake, I admit that.” She laced her fingers in her lap and dropped her gaze to stare at them. If she looked at him, she’d realize that she was actually saying these things—and she didn’t want to be saying any of them.
She wanted her life back—the way it had been before she had gone to the dinner with him tonight, the way it had been before everything she’d worked so hard to build and hold together for the past five years had all come apart at the seams.
“When you walked out, I was humiliated,” she said. “I felt like an idiot. Sick.”
Alex’s jaw bunched. She knew he wanted to argue. He shifted uncomfortably. Daisy didn’t care. She was uncomfortable, too. They could suffer through this together.
“Weeks went by,” she continued. “Two, three, four—and instead of being able to put it behind me, I just felt sicker. And sicker. I started throwing up every morning. And that,” she said, lifting her eyes to look at him squarely now, “was when I realized that it wasn’t the memory of my idiocy that was making me sick. It was being pregnant.”
He flinched, then let out a slow breath.
“I didn’t even think about trying to find you,” she said levelly. “You’d made it quite clear you weren’t interested in any sort of involvement at all.”
“You could’ve —”
“No,” she said flatly. “I couldn’t.” She hesitated, then just told him the truth. “I was afraid you might want me to get an abortion.”
He stared at her, shocked. “How could you think—?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” she demanded. “You didn’t want to care! I was afraid you’d say, ‘Get rid of it before anyone cares.’ Well, I cared. Even then I cared!” She could feel tears stinging the back of her eyes.
“Jesus,” he muttered.
“Exactly,” Daisy said, understanding the desperation that made him say it. “I did a lot
