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The door opened and he saw her face.
Definitely not good. Definitely really, really bad.
‘Don’t worry.’ He didn’t know who he was trying to reassure more—her or him. ‘It’s going to be okay.’
Oh, hell, it wasn’t. She walked past him, handed him the thing that had ‘pregnant’ flashing on the tip—two of them, plus two that had the two blue lines. He’d seen enough movies to know what they all meant; he didn’t need the damn flashing neon signs.
Was this why he hadn’t been able to get her out of his head these past weeks? Was there such a thing as male intuition?
No. It was pure lust. All day, all night she was all he could think about, until he could fight it no more and he’d had to come and deal with it. He’d actually blown off his training and come back to finish what they’d started. That was nightmare enough, now it had turned into a full-on horror film.
His brain fast-tracked down another nightmare route. Had she known? She’d been cool when she first saw him—had she known she was pregnant but was never going to tell him? Would she ever have told him?
He stared at her. Of course she hadn’t known. No one could fake this kind of shocked reaction. But would she have told him once she found out? The question burned deep and he didn’t like it.
‘We can deal with this,’ he said into the silence, still trying to reassure someone—anyone.
She said nothing. Just looked stricken.
Problem solving. He could do that. He just had to figure out a plan. But he wasn’t thinking much at all at the moment other than—pregnant.
And then came the panic. The sheer, freezing panic as he thought about a baby and its birth and then about his own awful arrival into the world.
‘It is mine, right?’ his mouth blabbed before his brain could stop it.
She went rigid. ‘Right.’
Big mistake. But he had to be sure—because there were things she had to know. But not now—she was upset enough already. She didn’t need more to terrify her. Oh, hell, no.
‘I take full responsibility,’ he said urgently. ‘I was the one who?—’
‘I said yes,’ she interrupted fiercely. ‘I don’t blame you.’
Silence. Long, long silence. But doubts whispered inside and he, who usually had such formidable mental strength, now could not resist them. ‘Can I ask you something?’
She shrugged. ‘Sure.’
‘If I hadn’t come here tonight, would you have contacted me when you found out? Would I ever have known I might be a father?’
Kelsi didn’t think the evening could have got worse. But it just had. ‘We don’t know each other very well, do we?’ she said bleakly. ‘Of course I would have.’
She turned away from him and walked to the window. What a mess. But this was one she had to get control of really quickly. And freeing Jack was right up there on her priority list. Because he was a Jack-the-lad all the way. He lived for adrenaline and extreme sports and travelling the globe year round and he needed it like that. He wasn’t up for this, and she wasn’t up for him being trapped and resentful. Or for her having her self-respect decimated as her mum’s had been. Kelsi didn’t want someone who played so fast and loose wandering in and out of her life. Or her child’s. She didn’t want her baby disappointed every time its daddy didn’t turn up. And on top of that, his questioning if the baby was his hurt—he might play like that, she didn’t.
She flung back her head. ‘You know what? I’m not ashamed about what we did on the beach. I’m not going to be ever. I enjoyed it—you already know that. But it’s irrelevant. This is going to take some time to get used to.’ She swallowed. ‘I just want to think and decide what to do.’ She wanted him to go away and leave her free to do just that.
‘Do I get to have any say what that decision might be?’
She looked up at him again. ‘No.’
His gaze sharpened but she held her ground.
‘You don’t know me,’ she said. ‘You don’t know what decisions I might be contemplating.’
‘Then I suggest we get to know each other.’ He walked towards her. ‘Fast.’
Kelsi stiffened at the aggression in his voice and body. He’d better not be going to get all he-man and decisive. He’d better not get all controlling and telling her what to do. And he’d sure as hell better not be planning on ruining what little of her life there was left to ruin by forcing them into some kind of relationship when he’d never intended one before.
‘I’m not leaving, Kelsi.’ He spoke quickly, sounding all action man and making her think that was exactly what he was going to do. ‘I’m not ditching you in the face of disaster. I don’t operate like that. But we can work it out. We can?—’
