The Child Who Changed Them (Parent Portal 5)

“I didn’t get this way by myself,” she said, kind of perplexed herself. She’d been prepared for disbelief. For him to be upset, even. But she wasn’t sure how to deal with this one-word reaction. Like he wasn’t part of the situation.

“Well, you certainly didn’t get there with my help, if that’s what you’re trying to tell me,” he said. As he spoke, he stood upright and then crossed his arms across the chest she’d been imagining naked moments before, as though for emphasis.

Or to shut her out.

Either way, she was shocked. In all of the numbers of ways she’d imagined him reacting, denial hadn’t been one of them.

“You need to get with whoever else you’ve been with,” he continued, his tone calm, assured. “Because I can tell you for sure it wasn’t me.”

What? A thousand times, what? “You’re the only man I’ve slept with in a couple of years.”

He shook his head. Was his gaze one of compassion? He felt sorry for her? “Give it up, Elaina. I’m not going to fall for this one.”

Fall for... She started shaking her head, too. It was like she’d been transported into some kind of twilight zone. A nightmare where things got all twisted up and didn’t make sense, but you couldn’t get out.

That was it. She just had to wake up.

“I’m not trying to get you to fall for anything,” she said, clearly, calmly, feeling as though she was outside her own body, watching the nightmare. Waiting for it to end. “I’m asking nothing from you. I planned to tell you that you have no obligation here. I’ll leave your name off the birth certificate so that you have no financial obligation. I just felt that, morally, you had a right to know.”

His frown grew until every inch of his face bore a portion of it. “Why are you doing this?”

How could she have thought she’d liked him so much? How could she have been friends with benefits with him, worked with him, for over a year and not have seen this jerk side of him? He was doubting her integrity?

“I’d like you to leave now,” she said. Pushing him out was the only thing left to her. She was too stunned, too hurt, to deal with him.

He shook his head again, dropping his arms, but otherwise making no movement—certainly not doing anything to get himself any closer to the front door. “I’m not the father, Elaina.”

“I’m not going to argue with you, and since I’m not asking anything of you, this conversation is over. I’ve done what I felt was the right thing to do. I’ve told you. Now I’d like to be left alone to get on with my life.”

Whether he noted her tone, a look in her eye, or was just plain ready to be done with her, she didn’t know, but when Greg gave her one last nod, and a long, somewhat searching look, then turned and let himself back out of her house, she was relieved to see him go.

And to lock her door behind him.

She and her baby would be just fine on their own.

Chapter Three

Greg didn’t get it. What possible reason could Elaina have for naming him the father of her child, but only in conversation with him...with no intention of getting something out of him?

The answer was none. Her actually being pregnant by him was a medical impossibility, and she apparently wasn’t after his money, so what reason could she have for making such a claim?

The irony was almost too much to bear.

Elaina was pregnant?

Shaking his head as he drove the fifteen minutes from her neighborhood to his apartment, Greg couldn’t get his short time at Elaina’s home out of his mind.

Couldn’t wrap his mind around it, either.

Elaina was drop-dead gorgeous. She didn’t need to snare a man. And he knew she just wasn’t the type to do so. To the contrary, she’d been adamant about going it alone whe

n she’d broken up with him. Something about having been blind to a neediness within her, with which she’d unknowingly prevented men from finding their own happiness.

Even minutes before, when she’d been telling him about his supposed baby she’d been all about going it alone. Asking for nothing from him.

Her reputation at Oceanfront was stellar. She was compassionate, yet completely able to get any job done, no matter how emotionally difficult it could be. She stayed late, came in early. Served on committees with such meaningful contribution that she was one of the first picks among staff when a new committee was formed.

She’d even been a dream in bed.