Cara Colter - The Pregnancy Secret

“But why?” she’d asked him when he had come and shown it to her. The high-priced car had seemed as if it should not be a priority to a recent university graduate.

“Because when I marry you, this is what we’re driving away in.”

And then he’d shown her the ring he couldn’t afford, either. Three months later, with the roof down and her veil blowing out the back, they had driven away to a shower of confetti and their cheering friends.

One of her favorite wedding pictures was of that scene, the car departing, a just-married sign tacked crookedly to the back bumper that trailed tin cans on strings. In that picture Kade had been grinning over his shoulder, a man who had everything. And she had been laughing, holding on to her veil to keep it from blowing off, looking like a woman embracing the wildest ride of her life.

Which marriage had definitely turned out to be, just not in the way she had expected. It had been a roller-coaster ride of reaching dizzying heights and plummeting into deep and shadowy valleys.

Jessica took a deep breath. She tried to clear her head of the memories, but she felt the painkilling drugs were impeding her sense of control. Actually, she did not know which impaired her judgment more: sitting in the car, so close to Kade, or the drugs.

She had always liked the way he drove, and though it felt like a weakness, she just gave herself over to enjoying it. The car, under his expert hand, was a living thing, darting smoothly in and out of traffic.

They pulled up in front of the house they had once shared. It was farther from downtown than her business, but still in a beautiful established southwest neighborhood with rows of single-story bungalows, circa 1950.

Oh, God, if getting in his car had nearly swamped her with memories, what was she going to do if he came into the house they had once shared? There was a reason she had asked him to meet her at her business.

“Kade,” she said firmly, wrestling the car door open with her left arm, “we need to get a divorce.”

* * *

Kade made himself turn and look at her, even though it was unexpectedly painful having her back in the passenger seat of the car.

He forced himself to really look at her. Beneath the pallor and the thinness, he suspected something .

“What aren’t you telling me?”

She wouldn’t look at him. She got the car door open, awkward as it was reaching across herself with her left arm.

“You could have waited for me to do that,” he said, annoyed, but she threw him a proud glare, found her feet and stepped out.

But her fighting stance was short-lived. She got a confused look on her face. And then she went very white. And stumbled.

He bolted from the car and caught her just as her legs crumpled underneath her. He scooped her up easily and stared down at her. And there he was, in the predicament he would have least predicated for the day—with Jessica’s slight weight in his arms, her body deliciously pliant against his, her eyes wide on his face. She had a scent that was all her own, faintly lemony, like a chiffon pie.

She licked her lips, and his eyes moved to them, and he remembered her taste, and the glory of kissing Jessica.

She seemed to sense the sudden hiss of energy between them and regained herself quickly, inserted her good hand between them and shoved. “Put me down!”

As if he had snatched her up against her will instead of rescuing her from a fall. He ignored her and carried her up the walkway to the house.

Their house.

He was not going to carry her across the threshold. The memory of that moment in their history was just too poignant. He set her down on the front steps and her legs folded. She sat down on the top stair, looking fragile and forlorn.

“I don’t feel well and I don’t know where my keys are,” she said.

He still had one, but he wasn’t sure if he should use it. It felt presumptuous. It didn’t feel as if he should treat it like his house anymore.

“I must have left my purse at the shop,” she said, trying to get up.

“Sit still for a minute,” he said.

It wasn’t an order, just a suggestion, but she folded her good arm over the one in the sling. He half expected she might stick her tongue out at him, but she didn’t.

“You’ve lost weight,” he said, watching her sit on the stoop.

“A little,” she admitted, as if she was giving away a state secret. “You know me. Obsessed about my projects. Right now it’s launching Baby Boomer. Sometimes I forget to eat.”

He frowned at that. She was always obsessed about something. Once, it had been about him.

“What’s your sudden panic to get a divorce?” he asked.

She choked and glared at him. “Over a year is not a sudden panic.”

“Have you met someone?” His voice sounded oddly raw in his own ears.

Jessica searched his face but he kept his features cool.

“Not that it is any of your business, but no.” She hesitated. “Have you?”

He snorted. “No, I’m cured, thanks.”

“I am, too!” She hesitated again, not, he guessed, wanting to appear too interested in his life. “I suppose you’re playing the field, then?”

“What? What does that mean, exactly?”

“Seeing lots of women.”

He snorted and allowed himself to feel the insult of it. Jessica was painting him as a playboy? “You have to know me better than that.”

“You live in that building. It has a reputation.”

“The condominium has a reputation?” he asked, astounded. “The building I live in? River’s Edge?”

“It does,” she said firmly. “Lots of single people live there. Very wealthy single people. It has a pool and that superswanky penthouse party room. The apartments are posh.”

“How do you know all that?” he asked.

She turned red. “Don’t get the idea I’ve been sneaking around spying on you.”

“That is the furthest from any idea I would ever get about you,” he said drily.

“The newspaper did a feature on it.”

“I must have missed that.”

“It seems like a good place for a single guy to live. One who is, you know, in pursuit of fun and freedom.”

That was what Jessica thought he was in pursuit of? Jeez. Well, let her think it. How could it be that she didn’t know him at all?

“Rest assured—” he could hear the stiffness in his voice “—I live there because it is a stone’s throw from work, which by the way is where I spend the majority of my waking hours.” He hesitated, not wanting to appear too interested in her life, either. “So are you playing the field?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said.

“How come it’s ridiculous when I ask but not when you ask?” And there it was, the tension between them, always waiting to be fanned to life.

“I already told you I’m obsessed with my business. I don’t have time for anything else.”

“So you are not in a new relationship, and apparently not looking for one. You want a divorce why?”

She sighed with what he felt was unnecessary drama. “We can’t just go on indefinitely like this, Kade.”

He wanted to ask why not but he didn’t.

“All those hours I spend working are paying off. My business is moving to the next level.”

He raised an eyebrow at her.

“I did over a hundred thousand in internet sales last year.”

He let out a low appreciative whistle. “That’s good.”

“I think it could be double that this year with the storefront opening.”

So she was moving up as well as on. Well, good for her. No sense admitting, not even to himself, how happy he was that her moving on did not involve a new guy moving in.

“My lawyer has advised me to tie up any loose ends.”