rougher than she intended it to. But she didn’t know what to do, what to say, and her voice wasn’t fully under her control. No part of her was. She still clutched the counter as if her knees might fail her at any minute.
She wasn’t exactly a pro at situations like this. If her voice sounded tough, so be it. One thing was certain—she’d rather sound like an unforgiving bitch than a breathless beggar.
“Okay,” he said. “We’ll talk here. If that’s the way you want it.”
Want it? Want really didn’t come into this, but she let that go. “I take it you’ve received the test results.”
He nodded. “It’s conclusive. The baby is mine.”
She waited. Strangely, now that the moment had come, she no longer felt the slightest urge to say “I told you so.”
She was still angry, of course. Still hurt, still frightened. But she recognized his expression. That unique mixture of shock and dismay, and under it all, that blind, gutsy determination to find a way to face the unfaceable. It was exactly what she’d seen in the mirror the day she found out.
For the moment, anyhow, that expression bound them together, made them teammates in this dangerous game. So she didn’t say she’d told him from the start that of course the baby was his.
“I’m sorry,” he said simply.
She lifted her chin. “Sorry it’s yours?”
“Sorry I didn’t believe you.” He ran his hand through his hair. “And sorry that we’ve found ourselves in this situation. I know it’s just as hard for you as it is for me.”
That made her smile, and he understood the wry reaction instantly. He shook his head at his own stupidity. “No, I didn’t mean it like that. Of course it’s harder, much harder, for you. It’s your body that’s changing. Your life that’s completely disrupted—”
“My uniforms that need to be dry-cleaned.”
“Yes.”
Their gazes met. A welcome moment of harmony. It felt like an oasis in the desert of this difficult journey. Neither of them spoke right away, as if they were both afraid another word would make the feeling break like a mirage.
“Kitty—”
She held up her hand. “No, it’s all right, David. I know it’s hard to accept. Hard to believe. And you’ve got a lot of things to consider. I’m sure you’ll want to talk to your lawyer before you—”
“No.”
She stopped cold. “No?”
“No. I don’t need to talk to Colby. I don’t want Colby’s advice. I know what I want to do.”
She held her breath.
“I want to marry you.”
CHAPTER FOUR
KITTY FLUSHED, turning her face away slightly. “Don’t make a joke of this, David. We—”
“It’s not a joke. I want to marry you, if you’ll have me. We can work out the details with Colby and with your lawyer. We can consult every lawyer in San Francisco, if that’ll make you feel safer. I want to do this.”
She could tell he was serious. “But…why?”
The question seemed to surprise him. “For the baby, of course. It may be old-fashioned, but I don’t want my child to be illegitimate.”
“It’s the twenty-first century, David. Terms like illegitimate aren’t just old-fashioned. They’re dead. Why would you marry a complete stranger just because—”
“Because I think our child deserves a shot at having a family. I think he deserves a chance to have a mother and a father, both at the same time, not on alternate weekends. We created this child. Don’t we owe him something?”
She nodded, struck by the intensity in his voice. She knew how he felt. Once she wrapped her mind around the idea that she was going to be a parent, she saw all the terrifying power of that relationship.
She suddenly realized that, sometimes, all the clichés were true. As a mother, a woman would drag the evening star out of the sky for the baby’s first birthday candle if she thought it would make him happy. She’d work till she bled, and negotiate with God, and lie down on the proverbial railroad tracks. Well, not her mother, maybe. But normal mothers. And thank God, she already knew that she would be a better mother than her own. Her pregnancy had already triggered a ferocious, protective passion for her unborn child.
“We owe him everything,” she said. “But marriage won’t necessarily—”
“No, I know. It won’t necessarily fix anything. I have no idea if we can make it work. It’s a dark-horse long shot at best. But we should at least try. For a while—a reasonable try. We can put together a contract, so that you can be sure you’ll be protected.”
He drew a long breath and put his hands, palms down, on the counter. “What do you say, Kitty? Will you do it? Will you give this crazy thing a chance and marry me?”
She hardly knew what to say. What was the “right” answer?
She looked into his gorgeous blue eyes and remembered the feel of his hands on her naked skin. She thought of the baby, no more than a delicate pea inside her, waiting with an absolute, unthinking trust. Growing silently, preparing to be born and loved.
But she also thought of her restless mother and her wounded father. And all the barnacle men who came after, right up to the unspeakable Jim Oliphant. She thought of the dragon dad she’d just waited on, who wanted everyone to believe he possessed the model family, though his son had anxious eyes and his wife was afraid to talk back to him.
She thought of all the brutal dramas that were playing out right this very moment, invisible behind neat doors and elegant lace curtains.
What, in the end, did marriage guarantee? Especially a marriage without love?
Not a damn thing.
“No,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
His blank face told her how shocked he was. She almost laughed. He hadn’t even considered the possibility that she’d turn him down, had he? He’d come here so confident, like Prince Charming holding out the glass slipper. Every princess in town itched to wear it, so just imagine how ecstatic and grateful the little cinder maid would be!
And, in some ways, it was the fairy-tale ending. From unemployed bartender to lawyer’s wife. From sooty rags to society pages. Wasn’t that every struggling unwed mother’s brass ring?
But she wasn’t every unwed mother. How little he knew her!
That was, of course, the point. He didn’t know her, and she didn’t know him. They’d gone at this thing all backward.
At that moment, Cheyenne, her replacement for the evening, came in.
“Just
