Cat Schield - The Heir Affair

Automatically going on the defensive certainly wasn’t fair to Kyle. Or herself. Or their baby.

“There’s no going back,” she said.

He shot her a curious look. “Do you want to go back?”

“You didn’t ask for this.”

“Did you?”

“You mean did I try to get pregnant?” Melody wasn’t sure how to take his question.

“I wasn’t asking if you deliberately became pregnant,” he said and then sighed. He reached for her hand. “I was merely reflecting your question back at you.”

His matter-of-fact reaction to their situation should be the perfect balm for her agitation, but for some reason she was finding his encouragement annoying. At the same time, his fingers gave a little squeeze and she found herself torn between wanting to fight with him and needing to give in to his attempt to connect with her.

“If I’ve learned anything in the last year it’s that it’s really hard to maintain relationships while on the road. I thought a lot about what would happen if I decide to take my career seriously. I’d be traveling a lot on tour and making appearances. That sort of life is hard on everyone.”

“And you’re worried that you can’t have your career and a baby.” He didn’t voice the obvious question: whether she’d intended to choose between her career and continuing her relationship with him. “I think you can do it all.” A pause. “If you want to.”

This was the decision she was dreading. Did she want it all? A family? A career? Her feelings for Kyle hadn’t changed, but things were so much more complicated these days.

“Do you want to give us another shot?” she asked, her heart thudding hard against her ribs.

“I think we owe it to ourselves to do so, don’t you?”

“I do.”

He didn’t seem all that happy with her answer, however. “Just tell me one thing. Would you have been willing to work things out if you weren’t pregnant?”

“Yes, because if I didn’t, there would always be something unfinished hanging between us.”

He waited a long time before answering. “That’s fair. But you should probably know I wanted you back before I knew you were pregnant.”

“Even though you didn’t trust me?”

And there was the crux of their whole problem.

“I was wrong to think you and Hunter got together.”

She could tell that declaration had required a great deal of effort, but it wasn’t enough. “And yet last night you were wondering if I knew which of you was the father of my baby.”

Three

Kyle knew he deserved her sarcasm and let it slide off rather than get defensive. “It was the roses and that weird card that threw me off.”

“It was pretty weird, but it was probably just a screwup on the florist’s part. Maybe they neglected to add the person’s signature to the card. It could be from any number of people.”

“You don’t think it’s unusual that someone sent you a dozen red roses?” The last thing he should be doing was arguing with her.

“Okay, it’s freaking me out that I don’t know who sent them. But it was a nice gesture.”

Melody might not think the roses came from Hunter, but Kyle was pretty sure he’d sent them.

“Can we forget about the flowers?” Melody continued, smoothing her hands over her knees. “I want to focus on this appointment. I’m really glad you came along today.”

“So am I.” But even as he spoke, Kyle recognized it was going to take more than accompanying her to a doctor’s appointment before the tension eased between them.

He would have to make an effort to put his doubts to rest and get back in Melody’s good graces. If that required romantic gestures like flowers and candlelit dinners, he would do whatever it took.

“You can take a right at the driveway coming up.” Melody pointed the way into a parking lot beside a plain five-story building.

“You’ve been here before?”

“A couple times.”

“So, you are planning to have the baby in Las Vegas.”

Melody’s mouth opened, but no words came out. She bit her lip and stared down at her hands. “It makes sense.”

“But your life is in LA. With me.” Or at least it had been before she’d gone on tour.

“We haven’t really lived together these last nine months,” she said.

“When I encouraged you to go on the tour, I thought you’d be coming back. All your stuff is still in my house.”

“I just need a little time.”

“How much time?”

“I don’t know.”

Kyle parked the car before responding. “I don’t like living in limbo.”

“Then maybe we should break up.”

This wasn’t at all what he expected her to say. “Where is this coming from?”

“I just don’t know where we stand anymore. We’re not dating. We’re not living together. Are we even still friends?”

Her bald statement of the facts as she saw them swept his feet out from under him. It was as if his world had tilted and his head connected with the pavement. His thoughts grew foggy and indistinct.

“My feelings for you haven’t changed.”

“You can’t seriously believe that’s true.” Melody opened her car door and slipped out, leaving Kyle staring at nothing.

She was halfway to the building before he roused himself and chased after her. “Okay,” he said as he caught up with her. “Maybe we’re not in the same place as we were before you left on the tour, but that doesn’t mean I’m done. I want you in my life. I want to be there for our baby. How do you see your future?”

“Honestly, I sort of go back and forth between wanting us to be a happy family and thinking it might be better if I raise this baby on my own.”

“That’s not going to happen.” His father hadn’t been there for him. Kyle intended for his child to have a loving, attentive father.

“Because it hurts when I think how much I love you and wonder if you’ll ever feel the same about me.” They stopped before the elevator and she gave him a long searching look. “I’m afraid to have my heart broken.”

Kyle wished he could tell her he’d never hurt her, but he already had when he’d assumed she’d hooked up with Hunter that night in New York City. And again just yesterday when he jumped to the wrong conclusion about the baby’s paternity. Why couldn’t he just put his faith in her and in their relationship?

Because he didn’t know how.

His parents hadn’t given him the emotional tools to be successful in a romantic partnership. His father had ruthlessly controlled all feelings good and bad, preferring to navigate through life’s up and downs with logic. Kyle’s mother on the other hand was a fearful, anxious woman who loved her son almost too much. Trapped between an emotional storm and an impassive granite wall, Kyle had stopped expressing how he felt and let everyone think he was okay all the time.

His teammates in school and then in the major leagues called him the Iceman because he was always chill. But it was a mask, not a true representation of how he felt. No matter how relaxed and unaffected he looked, inside he seethed with doubt, desire and sometimes disappointment.

But thanks to his father’s tutelage, Kyle’s first reaction to everything life threw at him was to slide on his aviator sunglasses and summon an enigmatic smile. No matter what the stakes, how bad the loss or how well he pitched, he was the Iceman. Even after his first no-hitter, he’d given only a sly smile to the mass of reporters who’d come to interview him in the aftermath.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Kyle said and meant it, but he knew he didn’t always behave the way she needed him to.

Sometimes it was as if what made him so happy in their relationship was the exact thing that caused him to regress back to the self-protective behaviors he learned in childhood. He retreated from strong emotion instead of owning it. These last few months since he’d thought he lost her to Hunter had been some of the worst of his life.