It was like Clay to ask the toughest question first.
She collected her thoughts before replying. “The simple answer is I found out you and Jessica were back together and getting married. Showing up at the wedding and announcing I was carrying your child didn’t feel like the right thing to do.”
“That’s not reason enough. You denied me my son.”
“Yes, I did.” And she would do it again, given half the chance.
“Why?”
She wasn’t going to admit she’d fallen in love during their two-week affair and that the announcement of his marriage so soon after it ended had crushed her. Clay would sense her vulnerability, and she wasn’t about to give him any advantage.
“I denied myself my son, too,” she said.
“I don’t see how.” He glowered at her as if she were a criminal when what she’d really been was a victim—of his callousness and the Stevensons’ heartlessness.
“I didn’t learn I was pregnant until after Dad told me you and Jessica had set a date.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you myself.” Clay’s glower momentarily abated. “I owed you that much.”
He had. And admitting it almost two years too late didn’t diminish her anguish.
“I was never very regular,” she continued without acknowledging his apology. “It wasn’t until the flu bug I thought I’d caught didn’t go away that I finally considered the possibility I was pregnant. You have to understand what a shock it was. We’d used protection.”
“I do understand. But that’s still no reason to keep Jamie a secret.”
“I didn’t tell my family, either, not that it matters.”
“It does, actually. I was going to give Ethan and Gavin hell for not telling me.”
“Today was the first I’d heard you and my brothers were friends again.”
“More than friends. Gavin and I are partners in a mustang stud and breeding business, and Ethan works for me at the rodeo arena, breaking and training broncs.”
“Wow!” Friends and business partners and coworkers. It was a lot for Sierra to absorb all at once.
“You’d have known we’d reconciled if you’d ever talked to your family.”
“I deserved that.” She may have, but it still stung.
“I didn’t say it to be mean.”
Hadn’t he?
The glower had returned, raising her hackles.
“Regardless, at the time I found out I was pregnant, you and my family hated each other and had for years. Which is the reason we snuck around those two weeks.”
“I wanted to tell them about us, if you remember.”
“Right. Like I was supposed to say, ‘Hey, Dad, I’m dating Clay, the son of the man who sold the land that was in our family for four generations.’ They’d have disowned me.”
“That’s not true.”
“They wouldn’t have been happy. Dad despised your father.”
“For the record, I never agreed with what he did to your family. We’ve hardly spoken in years.”
“That’s too bad.”
“No, it isn’t.” Clay ground out the words as if they tasted foul.
Whatever had transpired between him and his father must have been quite ugly.
“He’s family.” Sierra was just now rediscovering how important family was, even when the parent was a soulless man like Bud Duvall.
“So is Jamie,” Clay said. “My family.”
They both looked at their son.
He’d grown bored with his pretend cave beneath the table and had crawled out. Before he could interest himself in an electrical outlet or a lamp cord, Sierra rose from the couch, located a ring of keys on the counter and gave them to him. Thrilled, he sat on the floor between the kitchen and living room and proceeded to investigate his new toy with avid concentration.
“I’d have taken care of you and Jamie,” Clay said.
“You would have.” His sense of duty was nothing if not strong. Unlike his father’s. “Jessica, I was pretty sure, might have objected to you having a child with another woman.”
He didn’t answer, letting her know she was right.
“I refused to be responsible for ending your marriage before it even began.”
“That was my decision to make. Not yours.”
“Blame the hormones. I was confused and—” she decided to be honest with him “—hurt. I wasn’t thinking entirely clearly.”
She’d also been depressed. Deeply depressed. Enough that her obstetrician had become concerned and prescribed private counseling along with a support group. Sierra’s health insurance didn’t cover counseling, and she wasn’t earning enough money to pay for it out of pocket. She did attend a support group. Three meetings. Talking with other single mothers in similar situations had only made her feel worse, not better.
Chronically sick, hormonal and at an all-time emotional low, she’d been an easy target for someone with a personal agenda. Like the Stevensons.
“I didn’t intend to hurt you, Sierra. Those two weeks we had together were wonderful.”
“Not wonderful enough, I guess.” The wound he’d left her with ached anew.
“You were going back to San Francisco. My job was here. If I led you to believe we had a future—”
“You didn’t.”
Sierra had been the one to hope for the impossible. Clay and Jessica had dated for years. Six, no, seven. They were constantly breaking up, only to reconcile days or weeks later. Sierra had been a fool to think he wouldn’t run back to Jessica the second she snapped her fingers.
“What made you decide to come home?” He’d gotten around at last to asking the second-toughest question.
She took her time, watching Jamie push the keys across the floor instead of answering Clay. It required all her willpower not to dash into the kitchen and grab Jamie. She didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to be having this conversation with Clay. What had made her think returning to Arizona was the solution?
“Sierra?”
“My brothers’ wedding, of course. And I realized I needed help. Raising a child alone isn’t easy.”
