The Ruthless Caleb Wilde

“Why?” she said. “Just answer that one question, okay? Why are you doing this?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do.”

“You didn’t think so yesterday.”

He smiled. “Maybe I’m a slow learner.”

“You mean it, don’t you?” she said, her voice filled with disbelief. “You’re really going to convince him

to leave me alone until after my baby is born.”

“Yes.”

“But why would you do that?”

A muscle knotted in his jaw. How could he have known what was real and what was a lie and have refused to admit it for so long?

“Because I think you’ve been telling the truth all along,” he said quietly.

Her eyes widened. He reached out, started to cup her face, then dropped his hands to his sides. The last time he’d felt like this—head clear, heartbeat spiking—he’d been about to drop into the darkness of an endless plain in Afghanistan.

It was, he knew, the way his mind and body prepared for whatever lay ahead.

“The baby,” he said, “isn’t David’s.”

Silence. Then Sage drew a shaky breath. “No.”

Caleb nodded.

“I asked you this yesterday,” he said. “Now I’m asking it again.” He reached out to her, cupped her shoulders. “Sage. Is the baby mine?”

He waited, knowing this was the question he should have asked from the beginning, not phrased it as a throwaway line the way he’d done yesterday but asked with concern and meaning.

“Tell me the truth,” he said softly. “Is this my child?”

Her mouth, the mouth he still remembered as tasting like the sweetest honey, trembled.

She sighed, and everything a man could dream or imagine or, dammit, fear, was in that soft, perfect sound.

“Yes,” she said, “it is. I’m carrying your child.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

CALEB had heard people describe transitional moments in their lives in ways that struck him as overblown, even foolish.

He knew that sayings like “the world stood still,” or “the earth shifted,” or that all-time favorite, “time stopped,” were metaphors.

Still, what logical man wouldn’t smile a little at such creaky old saws?

Now, hearing Sage’s sigh, seeing the darkness in her eyes, he knew that none of those phrases were overblown, and they certainly weren’t foolish.

They were accurate because if the earth hadn’t just shifted under his feet, Manhattan was in the midst of an earthquake.

He had asked a question he’d never imagined asking, and the answer was a life-changer.

He knew he was supposed to say something, but what? His brain was on hold, his tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth.

In a movie, he’d have said, “I love you, Sage. Marry me, and we’ll live happily forever after.” And she’d have thrown herself into his waiting arms and said, “Yes, oh yes, I will!”