for telling things how they were, and this woman needed to take her husband’s balls in hand and give him an ultimatum.
He chuckled, looking forward to writing that letter. What had started as a dare six years ago when his friend from school was interning at the paper had become a large, important part of Quinn’s life. No one, aside from his friend, who had since moved on to a much bigger newspaper in Seattle, knew that he was the writer behind the popular Aunt Bossy column. All his exchanges with the local paper were anonymous and that was the way he intended it to stay. He could just imagine the ribbing he’d get if his older brothers ever found out about his secret side business, not to mention what women might think of it, but strangely he enjoyed this gig and felt like in some bizarre way he was doing good in the world.
He took another swig of his bourbon and picked up the next letter. He was halfway through reading about a woman who found herself unexpectedly pregnant, when something about the wording gave him pause. He went back a few lines and read it again.
I slept with someone I shouldn’t have—a sexy devil-may-care playboy who hasn’t had a steady girlfriend in as long as I can remember. And I’ve known him all my life.
No. It couldn’t be. He chuckled out loud at the absurdity of his thought, tossed the letter aside, took a sip of his drink and began to read the next one. But he read the first sentence about five times before he tossed it aside and went back to Pregnant with Mr. Wrong.
The paper starting to shake in his hand and his heart beating a mile a minute, Quinn read her letter again, over and over, and the more times he read it, the more he began to feel as if he knew the writer. Personally. Intimately.
His gut tightened as he thought back to that night in the warehouse when he and Bailey had consummated a relationship that wasn’t meant to be. Although Pregnant with Mr. Wrong didn’t go so far as to say she’d been engaged to the “good” brother, her descriptions of what happened fit his and Bailey’s situation to a T. Was the devil-may-care brother with commitment issues him or was he being paranoid?
He wasn’t offended by this label, as some might be—such an accusation would be true and he had good reasons for the way he was—but if it was him, there was a much bigger issue in play.
Bailey was pregnant. With his baby. He was going to be a dad. Something he had never planned on being.
His rib cage squeezing in around his heart, Quinn picked up his glass again and downed the rest of the contents. If he wasn’t in such a state of shock, he’d have gotten up and walked the short distance necessary to refill it, but his brain was too full with this news to send such messages to his legs.
A baby. He and Bailey had made a baby.
Or had they? How could she be certain it was his? How could he be so certain this letter was from her? They’d had sex one time—granted it had been more explosive than anything he’d experienced before—but they’d used a condom. It hadn’t broken, and he was pretty damn sure it hadn’t been out-of-date. Didn’t most people take months to get pregnant, even when they were actively trying?
This question was quickly forgotten as more of the letter sank in. In his heart of hearts he knew the letter was from her, which meant Bailey believed the baby was his and she wasn’t sure whether she should tell him or not. His fist tightened around his glass and he hurled it across the room. It smashed against the wall, scattering glass all over the carpet. Now he had a mess in his house to clean up as well as a mess in his life.
But who the hell did Bailey think she was, even contemplating keeping him in the dark?
She might be the incubator, but if he was the sperm donor, as she appeared to believe, no way was she going to cut him out of their baby’s life. So what if he prided himself on being the life of the party? So what if he didn’t believe in the institution of marriage? So what if he’d made a decision long ago that commitment to a woman wasn’t for him? That didn’t mean he would shirk his responsibilities and it wasn’t her right to decide he would. He thought of his brother Lachlan’s ex-wife, who had walked away from her son—he would never, could never, do that, and it riled him that had he not read this letter, Bailey might have made that decision for him.
What made her think she would be a better parent than he would, anyway? His dating history had no bearing on this issue.
Enraged, Quinn stood. Abandoning the other letters and the broken glass, he strode toward his front door, where he grabbed his leather jacket, helmet and motorcycle keys before storming out of the house. Thankfully he’d had only one drink, so he was safe to ride.
The bitter winter wind sliced into his cheeks, burning his skin, as he rode the short distance to Bailey’s apartment block on the other side of Jewell Rock, but consumed with anger, he barely registered it.
Just wait till he saw her. He revved the engine and took a curve fast, suddenly realizing just how much his life was about to change.
Late nights on the town would be exchanged for long nights walking up and down the hallway with a restless baby—he’d been around enough when his nephew, Hamish, was little to know what the future held. He could kiss goodbye to sleeping in on the weekends, and perhaps he’d have to exchange this bike for a more family-friendly vehicle, something that had room for car seats.
His chest tightening at the enormity of it all, he slowed the bike in front of Bailey’s town house and parked. Fueled by a weird cocktail of fury and fervor, he strode toward the building, ready to confront her—to find out if it were true that she was pregnant with his kid.
Moments later, he lifted his fist and rapped hard on her front door, tapping his boot on the floor as he waited for her to answer. That wait seemed like an eternity, but after a few minutes he finally heard footsteps approaching, and then the door peeled open. Bailey stood there in pink flannel pajamas, her eyes and mouth wide-open, as if he were the last person she expected to see, and her hair wet, as if she’d just stepped out of the shower.
“Quinn?”
If he’d had any doubt in his heart that Bailey was pregnant, one look at her eradicated that possibility. She looked utterly exhausted, yet at the same time she glowed. Bailey with her pale skin, cute button nose, sleek black hair and luscious curves had always been beautiful in a classic kind of way, but in this moment she took his breath away. He couldn’t think of any woman as gorgeous as she was and something shifted inside him.
“Quinn?” she said again. “What are you doing here?”
He opened his mouth to tell her that he knew and to ask her what the heck crazy game she was playing at. But the words caught in his throat as two awful thoughts struck. Confronting her would expose Aunt Bossy, but more important, did he really want his baby to be welcomed into the world by feuding parents?
His mind drifted to his niece and nephew. Or, more to the point, to his sweet niece, who because of her parents’ bitter divorce was shuffled between her dad, who lived in Jewell Rock, and her mom, who lived in Bend, while her twin brother lived permanently with his dad. Quinn didn’t want that conflicted life for his kid. He wanted only the best for his baby and that meant two parents, all of the time—even if that went against all the rules he lived by.
He rubbed the side of his jaw, racking his mind for a reply. However angry he might be at Bailey, however misguided she was, he understood one thing. And that was that her intentions were honorable—the desire to love and protect their baby. Two minutes ago he wouldn’t have considered marriage if someone had offered him a billion dollars, but now, seeing the vulnerability in her eyes as she stood in front of him, imagining
