Little Secrets:Unexpectedly Pregnant

Sage reached around him to release the emergency stop button. “As I told you, that’s not a problem. I don’t expect anything from you. You can carry on living your life as you always have.”

“You can’t do this on your own!” he said and for the first time ever Sage saw Tyce a little unhinged. He banged his fist against the stop button to prevent it from going any farther and the car’s shudder reverberated through her.

“I am young, healthy, have huge family support and ample resources to hire the help I need to raise this child,” Sage told him, pushing a finger into his chest. “I don’t need anything from you.”

A little support would be nice, a kind word, but wishing for either was futile. Tyce wasn’t the kind, supportive type. Hot and hard, amazing, fantastic sex? Yes. Warm and reassuring? No. She’d only told him because he had the right to know and not because she expected anything from him. She didn’t want anything from him...or from any other man.

She was fine, safe, on her own.

“Miss Ballantyne?” Sage jumped at the disembodied voice coming from a speaker above her head. “Is everything alright in there?”

She nodded at the camera in the top corner of the elevator. “Everything is fine, thank you. We’re just having a chat.”

Chat? They were having a life-changing conversation. There was nothing chatty about it.

“Okay then.” The voice sounded dubious. “Um? Do you think you could, um, chat somewhere else? There are people waiting for the elevator.”

Sage nodded, walked to stand between Tyce and the light panel and pushed the emergency stop again. She pulled in a large breath and turned to face Tyce, who was staring down at the mulberry-colored carpet. “Tyce.”

He didn’t lift his head, so Sage called his name again. He eventually looked at her with those intensely dark, pain-filled eyes.

“I’m letting you off the hook. Look, I’m presuming that your statement from three years ago—when you told me that you don’t do commitment—still holds?”

“Yeah.” It was a small word but a powerful response.

Sage nodded. “I’m very okay with that—I’m not looking for someone to nest with me. Take my offer to walk away. This child will be raised a Ballantyne. No one will ever have to know that he, or she, is yours. I’m giving you permission to forget about this conversation.”

Something flashed in Tyce’s eyes and Sage frowned, not sure what she’d seen. Before she could say any more, the doors to the elevator opened and they faced a bank of people waiting for the tardy lift. Sage pulled on her practiced, cool smile and stepped into the throng. She swiftly walked into the lobby and she nodded when the concierge asked her whether she wanted a taxi. Sage pulled on her coat and tried to ignore Tyce as he stepped up to walk beside her, a silent, brooding sexy mass of muscle.

She’d barely stepped onto the curb when a taxi pulled up and the doorman hurried to open the door. Sage climbed inside and sighed when Tyce crouched in the space between the open car door and her seat.

“We’re not done discussing this, Sage,” he said, his voice a low growl.

“We really are, Tyce.” Sage forced the words through her tight lips. “Don’t contact me again. We are over.”

“Yeah, you can think that,” Tyce said, standing up. “But you’d be wrong.”

The slam of the taxi door was an exclamation point at the end of his sentence.

Three

In his converted warehouse in Brooklyn, Tyce stood at the massive windows that provided perfect light for his studio, his forearm resting on the glass. He’d been home an hour and he was grateful that he’d fought the impulse to follow Sage to her apartment. Instead of acting impetuously, he’d fought his way through the shock to slow his thoughts down, to think this situation through. He needed time to let the fact that he was going to be a dad sink in, to figure this out.

Tyce walked away from the window to the far wall, to a row of canvases that were stacked against the wall. Sitting cross-legged on the paint splattered floor, he reached for the most recent canvas, a portrait of Sage at her workbench, her brow furrowed in concentration, a pencil in her hand. He’d painted the portrait from a photo published in an arts magazine and it was, he admitted, as lifelike as the photo. Bending his knees, Tyce stared at the canvas, thinking that his child was growing her belly, that his DNA was joining with hers to create a new life.