style="font-size:15px;"> “Were you going to tell me?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes.”
“When?”
“Soon. I just—” She paused, then shrugged. “I didn’t know what to say.”
Both his voice and his expression softened in response to her helpless tone. “I can understand that.”
She clasped her hands in front of her and looked down at them, unable to meet Andrew’s eyes just then.
His hands were gentle when they fell on her shoulders, but still her pulse raced in response to his touch. “Are you okay? You haven’t had any problems?”
She shook her head. “I’m in perfect health. And so is the baby.”
His gaze lowered then, focusing on her middle. He cleared his throat. “Is it—do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?”
“I’ll find out Friday.”
His eyes rose and she saw the emotions he’d concealed to this point. She had learned during their one night together that the rather stoic control Andrew usually displayed masked an intense, passionate nature. Memories of that passion made her catch her breath, her heart thudding hard against her chest. A muscle flexed in Andrew’s jaw and the slightest tremor moved his fingers against her shoulders, making her suspect the same images were flashing through his mind. She felt her cheeks warm in a way that had nothing to do with the hot afternoon temperature.
Andrew dropped his hands a little too abruptly, shoving them into his pockets. By unspoken agreement, they both shifted to put another couple of inches between them.
“Have you told your family? About me?” he clarified.
She shook her head. “They have no idea. I never even told them I saw you in Dallas in December.”
“I see.”
So much of that fateful evening had hinged on impulse. She’d been in Dallas for an annual holiday gathering with some college friends, and had dropped by Andrew’s office with the excuse of giving him an update about her ex-husband’s sentencing—which he’d already known, having kept up with the case. He’d politely asked her to dinner and they’d had drinks at her hotel afterward. One thing had led to another, and then …
Automatically, she rested a hand on her stomach.
“I guess Aaron told you I was pregnant.” She’d known that was inevitable from the moment she’d seen Aaron with Shelby.
Andrew nodded. “It slipped into our conversation earlier today. Needless to say, it threw me for a loop. I—well, I guess the precautions we took that night weren’t enough. I know there’s always a chance, but still …”
The awkwardness was unlike him, merely another sign of how shaken he’d been. “You didn’t say anything to Aaron about—”
He quickly shook his head. “I just threw some things in a bag and headed this way.”
Normally it was a four-hour drive from Dallas to the resort. Hannah suspected Andrew had made it in less today.
She twisted her fingers more tightly together. “You’re coming to the resort?”
“Yes.”
“Would you—could we not say anything to the family just yet? About your being the father, I mean. We’ll tell them,” she added quickly, when he started to frown, “just not until we’ve had more time to talk privately about … things.”
To her relief, he nodded to concede that she had a valid point. “We will need to talk.”
“Yes.” And she dreaded it. Everything was so complicated. “But it’s going to take a while. And I can’t do it now, the family will be wondering where I am. The way I rushed off without an explanation, they’ll be worried if I don’t go back soon.”
He didn’t look particularly pleased with the delay, but he didn’t try to argue. “So how are we playing this?”
“We’ll show up at the resort at different times so they won’t know we’ve already seen each other. You can go ahead, I need to stop by the store anyway.”
“And I suppose you’ll be completely surprised to find me at the resort when you get back.”
She shrugged, intending to play it exactly that way.
Andrew sighed and ran a hand over his hair. “Fine. We’ll do it your way. I’ll keep your secret. For now. But somehow or another we’ll have to find opportunities to talk, and soon.”
She nodded grimly, knowing his patience would last only so long. “We’ll talk.”
She turned toward her car, only to be stopped by his hand on her arm. “Hannah.”
Looking up at him, she whispered, “What?”
“It’s going to be okay.”
She moistened her lips. “I know.”
He smoothed a strand of hair away from her cheek. “I’ll see you at the resort.”
Nodding, she hurried toward her car, resisting an impulse to lay a hand on her cheek where his fingers had touched.
She drove straight to the grocery store. She had forgotten to bring a list and she was still so rattled from her brief meeting with Andrew that she could hardly think about what she needed. She drifted down the aisles of the store fifteen minutes after parting from him, staring blankly at the shelves and trying to focus on the task at hand rather than the challenges that lay ahead. With yogurt, fresh fruit and a bag of cookies in her cart, she turned a corner only to have her day take yet another downturn as she came face-to-face with her former in-laws, Justine and Chuck Cavender. It was the first time she had seen them since their son had been arrested for embezzlement and attempted extortion against Hannah’s family.
“Hannah!” Justine’s first startled reaction was pleasure. She and Hannah had gotten along well enough before the acrimonious divorce. But then her gaze lowered and her smile was replaced with a stricken expression. “Oh. You’re—”
Chuck had never been particularly fond of Hannah to start with—primarily, Hannah suspected, because he’d believed every lie Wade had told about what a terrible wife she’d been. Chuck had enabled, apologized for and deflected blame for his son for all of Wade’s life, which Hannah believed was part of the reason Wade sat in jail now. Wade could be charming, convincing and manipulative—her marriage to him was proof enough of that—but the streak of meanness that lay beneath his amiable mask came straight from his father.
Chuck snarled at Hannah, “Get out of our way.”
She scooted her cart as far to one side as she could. She almost apologized for being in his path, but she bit her tongue. She’d apologized too many times to both Wade and his father for things that had not been her fault. She was not sliding back into that pattern now. Chuck shoved his cart forward, almost slamming into hers despite the room she had left him.
Falling
