The Ruthless Caleb Wilde

She was, to put it nicely, a mess.

And she worried. A lot. The fact was, she worried all the time.

She had to find a safer place to live. That was priority numero uno. The second was to build up her savings. The pitiful amount she’d stashed away would never cover the expenses of the baby …

The baby.

Her baby.

When had those words gone from making her sick with fear to filled with hope?

She’d found out she was pregnant the old-fashioned way. First, no menstrual period. Then mornings spent bowed over the toilet.

Finally, she’d bought an early-pregnancy test kit.

“No,” she’d said when she saw the results.

Half a dozen tests later, she knew there was no sense in denying reality.

The man she despised most in the world had left her with a parting gift.

Her own fault: A, for sleeping with him—not that they’d done much sleeping, she thought, her throat constricting at the memory, and, B, for not realizing you couldn’t take a birth control pill on, say, Monday morning and then not take another until Tuesday late afternoon no matter how busy you were with auditions and work and classes …

But then, she hadn’t been on the pill for sex, she’d been on it to regulate her cycle.

And she had certainly done that.

Sage gave a strangled laugh, saw the attendant’s face in the mirror and changed the laugh to a cough.

“Summer cold,” she said.

The woman didn’t look convinced but then, she didn’t look convinced someone like Sage should be in these plush surroundings in the first place.

Once she’d known she was pregnant, she’d paced back and forth, night and day, a caged tiger searching desperately for a way out.

She couldn’t have this baby.

She had no money. No defined future. No plans beyond how to get through tomorrow.

That was the reasonable approach.

The unreasonable approach was that this tiny life was hers. It meant she’d never be alone again, meant she could bring up her child as she wished she’d been brought up, with love and hope instead of bitterness and despair.

Decision made.

She was going to have her baby.

Her baby. Only hers.

The child, the decision, had no connection to the stranger who’d made her pregnant.

Her knight-errant had turned out to be a vile, judgmental stranger, willing to think the worst of her, not even taking the time to let her explain.

Not that she’d owed him an explanation.

What had happened between them had been just—just a one-night adventure. Never mind that she’d never had a one-night adventure before, never mind that she’d hardly ever had sex before.

She was a grown woman.