secretary. You never called me back. Was I just supposed to show up? Plop a baby into your lap in court? Would they have even let me in the door?”
He opened his mouth, but she cut him off. She wasn’t about to give him the chance to charm his way out of this. “No, they wouldn’t have. And you know why? Do you remember the last thing you said to me? ‘Been good seeing you, Tanya. Have a nice life, Tanya.’ And then you drove off without a look back, like I didn’t mean anything to you.”
That was what had hurt the most. The fact that Nick had finished, zipped up and walked away without even so much as a how-do-you-do. That had hurt her worse than everything else combined. A lump tried to catch in her throat, but she swallowed, forcing it back down. No way in hell she was going to cry in front of Nick. “What part of that said, ‘Call me if you get knocked up’? What part of that said, ‘Call me’ at all? I’m not dumb. I know when I’m not wanted.”
“I didn’t say that.” The words were out fast—too fast. It was nothing more than a knee-jerk denial. “In fact, if I recall correctly, I asked you to come with me. You’re the one who said no. You’re the one who talked about our ancestors and our land. I’ve got news for you—this isn’t my land or my ancestors’ land. It never was. This is the worst land in the entire country—the bone the government threw to our ancestors because no one else wanted it. Why, on God’s green earth, you want to stay here and fight for this place is beyond me, Tanya. It always was.”
He was seriously going to make this whole thing her fault? “Get your facts straight, Nick—or is that no longer a requirement of the legal profession?” He snorted, but she wasn’t done with him yet. “You did ask me to come with you, but that didn’t happen two years ago. That was when you graduated from law school—or did you forget that, too? You didn’t ask me to marry you. Instead, you went on and on about the great place you were going to get and the cool car you were going to drive and all the things you were going to buy. You didn’t talk about us. Just about stuff. You made it sound like you were looking for someone to split the rent with. Why would you think I’d abandon even the worst piece of land in the country to be your roommate? You’re the one who thought you deserved the very best, Nick. Did it ever occur to you that I deserved the best, too? And that sure as hell wasn’t the kiss-off you gave me last time.”
“I was trying to give you a better life. It’s not my fault you didn’t believe I could really give you one. You’d already turned me down once—what was I supposed to do, keep asking so you could keep kicking me down?”
Wait, what? But before Tanya could process what he’d just said, he stormed on. “And I’ll have you know that under no circumstances did I tell you to have a nice life,” he repeated. His voice was firm, bordering on dangerous, but Tanya saw the doubt in his eyes. This wasn’t the knee-jerk denial—this was damage control.
He didn’t remember. He could talk a good game about never forgetting his first love and all that crap that was custom-built to make her think she was important to him, but she knew the truth. He had forgotten about her. She tried to say words to that effect, but that stupid lump kept moving up, so instead she just glared at him.
Still, it was nice to see that Nick was still capable of emotion. Right now, for instance, he looked guilty. Really, really guilty. That made her feel better. “You mean something to me, Tanya,” he offered up weakly. “You always have.”
Her anger bailed on her, and instead she was gripped by an overwhelming sadness. She couldn’t even glare at him. “But I don’t mean enough, Nick. Not as much as the big city and the big job and the big house means. Not as much as you mean to me.” Just saying the words out loud made that unavoidable truth hurt even more.
“Tanya, I’m—” His apology was cut off by the distant ringing of her phone.
Which was just as well. She didn’t want to hear his forced, halfhearted apologies. She scooped up her notebook and pen and walked out of his office with her head held high.
She loved him desperately. She always had, and she always would. But she would never ever be able to hold him. And that, more than the accidental pregnancy, more than life as a struggling single mother, was one of the great tragedies of her life.
Luckily, she was used to living with disappointment.
* * *
Tanya supposed she should have been surprised to hear a knock on her door two nights later, but by this point, she was fresh out of astonishment. She knew it was Nick by the way he knocked—three firm, hard raps that made it clear he wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.
Great. It wasn’t enough that Nick’s presence pervaded her working hours. No, he had to barge in on her family time, too.
He’s part of the family, a nagging little voice whispered in the back of her mind, but Tanya shut down that kind of thinking fast. He was the provider of a set of chromosomes, that’s all.
Before she opened the door, she took a deep breath and reminded herself that she was not to fall for anything Nick said or did. If he was here, he would probably try to sweet-talk her again, like he had the other night. But if he thought he was going to get a second kiss, he had another think coming. “Yes?”
Then she sucked in even more air. Nick the lawyer wasn’t on her front stoop. Instead of the button-up shirt and dress slacks, he was wearing a faded pair of blue jeans and a T-shirt that wasn’t skintight but was close enough to make her heart flutter. His hair wasn’t as slicked down either, but looked more tousled, like he’d been driving around with the top down.
Nick, part of her brain sighed in swoon-worthy fashion. The Nick she remembered. The only thing that was missing was the horse. Sure, those jeans had probably been made to look that broken in—for a heck of a lot of money, no doubt—but they rode low on his hips. She wanted him to turn around so she could see how they fit the rest of him.
“Hiya, Tanya.” The way he said it—low but in his old accent and with just a touch of teasing—made it clear that he knew what effect he had on her. She half expected him to ask her to go for a ride with him. It didn’t matter that she wanted to say yes, because that would be a mistake.
Even just standing here with a good three feet between them, Tanya could feel the pull of Nick’s body. All the fires she’d accidentally stoked with that ill-advised kiss last week began to heat her from the inside out.
Already, her mind was attempting to rationalize her undeniable attraction to Nick. Would one more time really be such a bad thing—as long as they used protection? Surely, two mature, careful people could take care of certain…needs together without things getting messy again. As long as she didn’t fall back into that hopeless, pining kind of love again, surely she could get a little physical relief. Scratch a Nick-sized itch, such as it was. And who better to help her out than the man who already knew what she wanted and knew how to give it to her? The very object of her fantasies? No awkward getting-to-know-you phase, no more ugly surprises. Just two consenting adults doing a little scratching. It didn’t have to be a big deal.
She shook herself. The last time she’d strained with this level of absurd justifications, she’d wound up with Bear. She couldn’t make that kind of stupid mistake again.
Nick was still standing there. She realized she had no idea how long she’d been lost in her own little world. Apparently long enough to make this awkward, because Nick said, “Is it okay if I come in?”
Tanya realized his arms were filled with bags bursting at the seams. “What is all that?”
He
