King Maker (King Maker 3)

My decision was already made. I’d learn soon enough if it was a foolish one.

“You don’t have to do this alone,” I said.

The first hint of a smile formed on her face until I said the next words.

“Whether Turner’s there for you or not, I will be. If you can accept my son, what kind of asshole would that make me if I couldn’t accept your child?”

“What?” she asked like I’d spoken in Gaelic.

Had I? “I still want to marry you.”

I held out my hand, not realizing I’d offered her the bloody one.

“Oh my God. What did you do?” she asked, running forward to inspect it.

“Stupid man,” she muttered and tugged on me to follow her back into the bathroom where she tended to my wounds.

With gentle strokes, she reverently cleaned them with a damp towel and said, “Remember that night before… everything.”

I wasn’t sure. Was she speaking of New York or her hometown?

“It was storming outside with freezing rain,” she said.

That night.

“You blew into Violet’s house like you were mad at the world.”

“I was,” I admitted.

“I had a choice. I could have sent you away.”

“But you didn’t,” I said.

Slowly, her head shook side to side as her eyes held mine.

“I thought it was going to be like every other time our passion consumed us.”

“You’d told me sometimes you needed slow and steady.” She nodded. “You cried. I saw your tears in the fire light. I thought you were telling me goodbye, and when you were gone in the morning, I knew you’d regretted it and chosen him.”

She licked her lips and looked away.

“I cried for the man I knew I’d hurt with my decision. He didn’t deserve it. You have to know I’ll always love him. But I’d chosen you until you treated me like you hated me.”

I rushed to clear up the misconception. “I was giving you space. You didn’t seem to need me or ask for me after we found you.”

“You stood so far away, and after I spoke to the nurse, you were gone. Then you didn’t seem to want anything to do with me. And I saw you kissing that woman in Scotland.”

“Who?”

“At your mother’s. That woman.”

“Keely. I didn’t—” Then I remembered when she’d come running up. “She kissed me, and if you’d waited around a second longer, you would have seen me push her off of me. Is that why you left?”

She lifted her chin and I chuckled.

“Lass, there has been no one in my bed other than you.”

Her jaw dropped.

“I swear it,” I said. “It’s you I want. You and your child.”

“Kalen,” she said. “This is your child too.”

“Yes.” Though apparently I didn’t get it.

“Don’t you remember you didn’t use a condom that night of the storm?”

It was starting to dawn on me. I hadn’t wanted to remember that night because I’d gone there to prove to her that I could be everything she needed. I’d left thinking she’d chosen him.

“This baby is yours. I haven’t been with anyone else either.”

“But Turner—” She shook her head no. “You haven’t kissed him?”

“Do you really want to know the details?” I didn’t. “The point is, it’s impossible for this child to be anyone’s but yours.”

I freed my hand from her grasp and placed it on her abdomen. “My child.”

“Yes.”

“Mo theaghlach,” I said, which meant my family.

“What does that mean?”

From the cradle of her belly, I moved my hand to her cheek. “It means agree to marry me and I’ll tell you.”

She moved my hand from her face back over the sink and poured something from a bottle that stung like hell. I shook my hand as I cursed.

“I won’t marry you because I’m pregnant,” she said obstinately.

The damn stubborn woman. “Didn’t you hear me before?”

“And then what? I’ll have to leave my career and everything I’ve built and move back to New York, Scotland?”

I hadn’t thought that far ahead.

“Work for me?”

Her eyes narrowed. “We’ve been through that before. Why don’t you move here?” She smiled like she’d won something. “Of course you can’t. King Enterprises is in New York.”

“We can figure something out.”

She stepped back when I reached for her. I moved in and took my shirt in my hand and let it fall open.

“See what I mean?” she asked, glaring at me.

My destroyed shirt parted to show the curve of her breasts and all of her lovely pussy.

“You think you’re going to change my mind by fucking me.”

I just stood there meeting her challenge. “Actually, I need my shirt to leave, but keep it.”

Her scent would be all over it and I didn’t need that if I planned to stick to my guns. Nothing would stop me as I moved to get my coat from her living room.

“Kalen,” she pleaded, but she’d made her position clear.

I closed my coat. Angry heat would keep me warm.