of him.
He’d been telling the truth when he told Morgan he knew what it was like to work too much and deny himself. He was an expert at that. But he couldn’t deny himself any longer. Not when it came to Morgan.
His hands roamed over her body, reacquainting themselves with the terrain that had changed some since he’d last touched it. Her breasts were fuller as he cupped one through her thin cotton T-shirt. He could feel the tight bud of her nipple pressing through the fabric of her bra as though it were reaching out for his touch. That much, at least, hadn’t changed. She had always responded to him like that.
Then he let his hand glide down her stomach. He wanted to keep exploring. To seek out the heat hidden beneath her slacks...but she tensed up beneath him. Suddenly, she was stiff as a board beneath his touch, bringing his worst fear to life. Her mouth jerked away from his, even as her hand caught his wrist and pulled him away from her belly.
“River, stop,” she said in a harsh whisper. The eyes that had been looking at him with barely masked desire were now wide and startled.
River immediately pulled back. “What’s wrong?”
Her gaze met his for only a second before she rolled away from him and got off the bed. He thought he saw a shimmer of tears in her eyes as she turned her back to him. “Nothing,” she said. “I have to go.” She rushed to the door and disappeared to the thumping sound of her feet pounding down the stairs. He heard the front door slam and knew she was gone.
What the hell?
He pushed himself to the foot of the bed, tugging his own shirt down and running his hands over his beard in exasperation. His groin was throbbing with interrupted desire as he turned to look at the rumpled comforter they’d lain on a moment before. He didn’t understand what had gone wrong.
And he got the feeling Morgan didn’t have any intention of telling him.
* * *
“What the hell do I think I’m doing?”
Morgan shook her head as she pulled away from the town house and left it, and River, behind. She’d come to sign paperwork. Just some paperwork. And yet, somehow, she’d ended up on her back and on the verge of giving everything away she’d tried so hard to keep secret.
She navigated through the narrow busy streets of downtown Charleston with an angry grip on the wheel, heading for the bridge that would take her over the water toward her parents’ home in Mount Pleasant. Her frustration lessened the farther she got from River, but the dull ache of need remained.
Making peace with him was a bad idea. Fighting wasn’t ideal, but it made it easier to keep her distance. Without that wall of resentment between them, she was just putty in his hands. She had thought that was okay. Her chat with Sawyer had convinced her she was a grown woman and could do what she liked. And that had seemed like a good idea. Until River’s hand ran across her stomach and the reality of her situation set in.
She and River may have called a truce on how their marriage ended, but she knew that would be short-lived if he knew everything. There were some secrets that needed to be kept. Especially if the Steele housing project was going to be completed smoothly this year. River couldn’t know the truth because it was so inflammatory, so damaging that it would hurt more than the lie.
That’s what she’d told herself ten years ago as she sat on her dorm room mattress, staring at a positive pregnancy test. She was pregnant with River’s child.
Up until that point, she had lived firmly in denial. There was no way she was pregnant because her father had wiped the past from the record books. She never married River, according to the state of Tennessee. They never had a honeymoon. So she couldn’t possibly be pregnant. There was no way she was carrying the baby of the guy who had hit her dad up for cash and disappeared from her life. Fate wouldn’t be that cruel. And as such, she ignored the signs, popping antacids and struggling to focus in her classes that fall.
Her dropping GPA wasn’t the only sign of trouble. Once Christmas break came around, there was no more denying the truth. Not to herself and certainly not to her parents. When her mother arrived to pick her up for the holiday, her gaze had immediately dropped to the rounding belly that Morgan was trying to hide beneath a USC sweatshirt.
From there, it was a whirlwind that Morgan almost didn’t remember. Her parents went into instant damage-control mode, and she was just along for the ride. No one was to know the truth, they decided. Not even her brothers. For her own protection and that of her reputation, of course. Her parents had successfully kept her short marriage a secret from everyone, and they were confident they could keep the baby a hush-hush topic, too.
They bought her older brothers a luxurious ski trip in Aspen for Christmas, sending them off to Colorado instead of having them celebrate at home that year. As far as anyone knew, Morgan had the flu and couldn’t attend any events with them. Her only outings were to the doctor for her checkups.
She hadn’t bothered to argue with them about it. Her spirit had been crushed when she lost what she thought she’d had with River, and nothing else mattered. Part of her wanted to keep their baby so she’d always have a piece of him with her, but she worried the child would only be a painful reminder of his ultimate betrayal.
Morgan hadn’t known what to do, but it was all a mess of her own making, so she decided that perhaps she’d be better served letting her parents choose the best course. She hadn’t been sure if they were going to send her off to Switzerland or something to have the child in secret and give it up for adoption, let her keep it, or raise it as their own, and she never did find out. Their plans ended up not mattering in the end.
At twenty-five weeks, just a few days after Christmas, something went wrong. She just didn’t feel right and went in to see her obstetrician. Morgan’s blood pressure was through the roof. She sat in a hospital room for a week, spending New Year’s Eve under the doctors’ careful watch while they tried to get it down. They hadn’t wanted to deliver the baby that early. It was risky. Too risky, even with the latest technology. But it was a dangerous situation for Morgan, too. Soon it became clear they didn’t have a choice or they would lose them both.
Dawn Mackenzie Steele had been born via emergency C-section and weighed a little over a pound. Morgan never got to hold her, but if she had, the tiny infant could’ve fit in the palm of her hand. She hadn’t known what she wanted to do until she saw her daughter covered in tubes and wires in an incubator. Then, more than anything, she wanted her baby. She didn’t care what her parents wanted or thought. She wasn’t concerned about scandal or what people would say. She just wanted Dawn to be okay. But that wouldn’t happen. The neonatal intensive care staff did everything they could, but Dawn’s little lungs just weren’t ready for the outside world.
Morgan didn’t realize she was crying at the wheel until the road started to blur around her. She pulled her car over into a shopping center and turned off the engine. She hugged her stomach like she had after Dawn was gone and rested her head against the steering wheel.
The tears flowed freely then. It had been a long time since she’d cried for Dawn. Years, maybe, as she’d tried to put her past in the past and focus on her future. That’s what her father had told her to do. He’d held her as she cried. She was his baby girl after all, and he hated that she was hurting. But he came from an upbringing that felt the best way to cope was to forget and move forward.
It was sad... It was unfortunate, he’d said, but perhaps this was her second chance at having the kind of life he’d always dreamed of for her. She was so young with so much ahead of her. He was certain she would have her babies some day in the future, with a good man who adored her and cared for her the way she deserved.
Trevor Steele’s words fell on deaf ears, although he never knew it. Then, and even now, there was a part of Morgan that never wanted to marry and have children. She’d tried it once and failed. She wasn’t sure her heart could take the pain of failing at all of it again. So she
’d focused on finishing school, concentrated on her work, made sure she was the good daughter they wanted.