Michael’s mind locked onto Dylan’s words. PMS, pregnancy. He shook his head. Not pregnancy, he told himself. Maybe PMS, maybe anything, but not pregnancy. It had been just one night. One night full of making love. Hell, they’d made love at least four times, each time more uninhibited than the previous. Contraception had been the last thing on his mind. Losing himself and his hunger in Kate had been his driving focus.
Michael began to sweat. He’d just figured she wouldn’t get pregnant. After all, he’d never intended to be a father or a husband. It wasn’t part of his plan. He was cut out for neither role. It wasn’t part of his destiny. In fact, he’d nearly convinced himself he was genetically designed never to be a father.
“Earth to Michael, come in,” Dylan said, knocking on the wooden bar top. He laughed, but his eyes held a trace of concern. “Something you want to tell us?”
Michael thought of Kate and shook his head slowly. “No. Don’t mind me. I’ll do the research on the unwed teenage mothers’ home myself. I’ll see you guys later,” he said and rose.
“But your beer,” Justin said, clearly uncomfortable with the waste. “Dylan just ordered you another beer.”
“Thanks, but I’ll take a rain check. You can have it.”
“I don’t want it,” Justin said.
Dylan shrugged. “We’ll give it away.”
Justin shook his head. “You two take this charity thing too far.”
“It’s just a beer,” Dylan said with a smile tinged with glee. “You’ll be writing a much bigger check when the Millionaires’ Club makes its first donation.”
Justin’s queasy expression amused Michael despite his preoccupation with Kate. “You’re looking a little green around the gills, bud. You must be so full of money you need to get rid of some. Don’t worry, Justin. No cans of Beanee Weenees in your future. Later, guys,” he said, and as he left the bar his mind immediately turned to Kate. Was she pregnant?
He drove to his apartment, brooding all the way. He examined the possibility of her pregnancy, turning it around in his head first this way, then that. Walking into the apartment that was more a place to sleep than a home, he didn’t bother turning on a light. The dark suited his mood. Although pregnancy was a physical possibility, every time Michael seriously considered it, he felt a dull thud in his stomach.
Tugging the buttons on his shirt loose, he stood in the quiet dark and swore at himself in disgust. How could he have been so careless? So stupid? Potentially to bring a baby into the same single-parent situation that he’d faced as a child. Granted, Kate was neither ill nor uneducated, as his mother had been, but she was young and alone. A smoky visual of his mother just before she died slithered through his mind.
The memories were poison, he knew, and he deliberately closed his mind to them. Sleep, he told himself. Eight hours would clear his head, and if ever he needed a clear head, it was now.
Sleep, however, eluded him. He paced and turned the TV on. In no mood for late-night infomercials, he turned it off and tossed and turned. Finally, he drifted off. The gray images he’d successfully deflected during the day invaded his dreams.
Short flashes of turning points in his past, all seen through a child’s eyes, kicked him back in time. He might as well have been a six-year-old again.
“Your mother is dead,” the social worker said, patting his small, cold hand.
He tasted the metallic flavor of fear and terror and felt his thin body begin to shake.
“Do you have any other family?” she’d asked.
Unable to speak, he shook his head.
“Don’t worry, Michael. We’ll find someone to take care of you.”
The suffocating aloneness and loss of control wrapped around his throat like a vise. He couldn’t breathe. His mother couldn’t be dead. She was all he had. He ran from the social worker.
“Michael!”
He heard her voice calling after him, but he kept running. His hand connected with something hard. Glass shattered. Pain shot through him and he bolted upright in bed, his chest heaving for breath.
Disoriented by the darkness, he reached for the bedside lamp, but it wasn’t there. He groped for a flashlight in the drawer. The lamp lay on the floor in pieces. Perspiration dampened his skin and his heart pounded as if he had indeed been running.
The images of his childhood continued while he was awake. He’d always felt like an unnecessary visitor. For various reasons, three foster families had been unable to keep him longer than a year or so at a time. Too old for adoption, he’d made a home of sorts at the Granger Home for Boys. There was little possibility for forming any emotional connections. That suited Michael fine. But it was a place that fostered dreams. At night in a room with three sets of bunk beds, a boy could sleep. A boy could dream.
He’d dreamed of being a man in control of his life and destiny, a man of wealth and power. But he’d never dreamed of being a father.
Kate’s alarm rang at the regular time, waking her just before 6:00 a.m. She slapped the snooze button to quiet the morning deejay who sounded as if he mainlined coffee. She gently eased herself toward the edge of the bed for a shower to clear her head for work when it occurred to her that she no longer worked at CG Enterprises. She still wasn’t accustomed to the change in routine. At the thought of being unemployed, her heart raced. Then she remembered her stock options and breathed normally.
Her brain began to whirl like a scratched CD. Thoughts of Michael slid into her mind with the insidious ease of smoke, and the pain of her last encounter with him returned full force. Every time she thought of him, she felt like a fool. Although she’d had strong feelings for him, it hadn’t been love on either end. Thinking of him reminded her how much she’d fooled herself. She squeezed her eyes tight and told herself she had more important considerations now. Like the baby.
For the hundredth time Kate wondered how she would tell her parents. Kate had been what her mother called a change-of-life baby. As the long-awaited only child of a woman over forty, she knew she embodied all her parents’ hopes and dreams. She winced, picturing her mother fainting and her father’s face full of disappointment. Stall, she thought and wondered how she might stall for a year. She had a temporary respite since her parents had taken an extended RV trip to Branson, but that wouldn’t last forever.
Pushing back her worries, she rose from bed determined to forge ahead. After a shower and a breakfast of tea and toast, she heard a knock at her door. Neighbor, she thought, and opened it to Michael.
Her heart jolted at the sight of him. His grim expression etched a sharp contrast from the morning sunshine and spring flowers on the porch of her duplex townhouse. Kate read a lack of sleep on his face, but he still managed to emanate rock-hard strength. It was part of the reason she’d fallen for him. Something about him said he might fall, but he wouldn’t break and he would always get back up. He studied her for a long, uncomfortable moment before meeting her gaze head-on, and Kate felt the full power of Michael Hawkins’s undivided attention.
“Are you pregnant?”
Kate’s breath stalled. She felt as if she’d been hit by a train. His gravelly voiced question scraped over raw nerve endings. Off-guard, unprepared and rattled, she worked her mouth, but nothing came out. She eyed the door and thought about shutting it against him.
He must have read her mind because he planted his foot in the doorway. “Are you pregnant?”
Unaccustomed to having his undiluted intensity solely focused on her, Kate continued to struggle for balance. He stood too close to her. When she forced herself to take a breath, she inhaled his scent and her body softened in the same way it had the night they’d shared together. “Yes,” she said, more whisper than voice.
“We need to talk,” he said and entered her house.
Struggling to clear her head, she crossed her arms over her chest, hugging herself, and left the door open. Heaven help her, she wished she was better prepared. “I’m not sure I agree.”
He lifted a dark eyebrow of inquiry.
“You pretty much covered everything during our last discussion. You said you would be a rotten father and I shouldn’t count on you.”
He rested his hands on his hips. “That was before I had all the facts.”
“And how does having the facts change things?” she asked, refusing to give into her weakness for him. Her weakness for him had gotten her into enough trouble already. “Do you suddenly have the ability to be a good father now?”
He narrowed his eyes. “No. I may not be able to do much for this baby, but I can be financially responsible.” He paused a half-beat. “I can give this baby a name.”
“How?”
“We can get married,” he said with the same emotion with which he could have proposed buying a car.
Kate forced her brain to work. “Let me get this straight. You don’t love me, you don’t want to be a husband or a father, but you think it’s a good idea for us to get married so the baby will have a name and financial security?”
“I can provide well for this child,” he said with a steely resolve that surprised and unnerved her.
“Financially,” Kate said, holding fast to her resolve. “But children need more than money from moms and dads. A child needs security, attention, love, affection, instruction, laughter. A child needs to see that love is possible, and you don’t believe in love. Why should I marry you, Michael? You don’t—” Out of the corner of her eye a familiar vehicle caught her attention. “Oh no!” Kate watched in horror as her parents’ RV pulled into her driveway.
She glanced back at Michael. “You have to leave,” she told him. “We’ll talk later. Go away.”
He looked at her as if she’d sprouted another head. “Why?”
“It’s my parents. You have to leave,” she said, fighting panic and a return of nausea.
“You haven’t told them,” he concluded.