Maureen Child - Little Secrets

Just when she thought the shocks couldn’t be more earth shattering, he said something else that ripped away what was left of the earth beneath her feet. “Seriously?”

Moments ago, she’d worried about a custody battle, but in reality he wanted nothing to do with his own child? What kind of man was he?

He blew out a breath, shoved his hands into his slacks pockets and admitted, “I’m not asking you to understand—”

“Good,” she interrupted. “Because I don’t. If you don’t want me, then fine. I get it. But how can you not want anything to do with your own child? My God, who are you?”

“Still me,” he insisted, but she didn’t believe him.

When she first met him, he’d been more quiet than chatty, more solemn than happy, but there hadn’t been such a marked coldness about him. Now it was as if he’d submerged his old self under a layer of ice.

“Think whatever you like about me. Can’t change it. But I want my kid born into the Buchanan family.” His mouth tightened and the muscle in his jaw twitched as if he were grinding his teeth together. “After that, you can raise it.”

It. So impersonal. So distancing. Rita hadn’t wanted to know what her baby was, preferring to be surprised. But now, at her next appointment, she would ask. Because she wanted Jack to see their child as a person. But that was for later. “So you’ll just put your baby aside like you did me and move on, is that it?”

He scrubbed one hand across his jaw. “You’re putting words in my mouth.”

“Because you’re not explaining any of this.”

“Damn it, Rita, you don’t have to make this harder than it already is.”

“No, I don’t,” she said sadly. “Because you did that just fine on your own.”

“I’ll make sure you’re taken care of.”

Her eyes nearly popped out of her head at that insult on top of everything else. Rita had reached her limit. She walked around the edge of the counter, leading with her belly, and didn’t stop until she was standing in front of him. “You think I want money from you?”

He met her gaze and Rita would have given anything to be able to read what he was thinking, feeling. But there was no clue there for her. He was a blank slate. Deliberately. This new Jack had such a tight handle on his emotions, she couldn’t see past the facade.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I know you don’t want money.”

“That’s something, anyway,” she muttered, still looking up into his eyes, still looking for some shred of the man she’d loved.

“Do this, Rita,” he said quietly.

“Why would I marry you knowing you don’t want me?”

“Because I need it,” he admitted and it looked as though it cost him to give her that much. “I need to know my kid has my name. That I did the right thing.”

“The right thing.” She huffed out a breath and folded her arms across her growing middle. “This isn’t the ’50s, Jack. Single mothers do just fine on their own and so can I.” She didn’t believe in what he was saying, but Jack clearly did.

Rita knew she would be fine raising her child alone. She had her family’s support. She had her own business, a home and the strength to do whatever she had to do to succeed.

“It’s not a matter of that,” Jack argued. He picked up the biscotti again and when his hand fisted around it, let crumbs fall to the marble counter. “I know you could do it. I don’t want you to. I get you don’t owe me a damn thing and I’ve got no right to ask for this. Still, this is important to me, Rita. I don’t want my kid knowing his parents weren’t married.”

“Oh, for heaven’s—”

“Look, this is the best answer for all of us,” Jack said quickly.

“How is a meaningless marriage the best for anyone? You’re crazy.”

“That’s been said before,” he admitted wryly. “But not about this. This is important enough to me that I’m not going to back off or give up until you agree.”

She laughed shortly, turned her back on him and went back to boxing biscotti. “Good luck with that.”

“I’m a rich man, Rita,” he said and brought her up short.

Money again? What was he getting at? A tiny nugget of fear settled in the pit of her belly as, wary now, she asked, “How rich?”

“Very.”

She took a breath. He was watching her, waiting for her reaction and she wasn’t sure what that should be. Rita didn’t care if he had all the money in the world or nothing at all. So what was the point of this?

“Congratulations to you,” she finally said. “But why should I care?” Even as she asked that question, though, her brain was racing. A very rich man? She’d had no idea.

But then, there was so much she didn’t know about him. He hadn’t talked about himself a lot during their week together and she’d told herself that the information would come. That they could learn about each other in letters, phone calls. But that had never happened, so she was as much in the dark now as she had been then.

A very rich man, though, had power. The question was now, would he use that power to manipulate her, to take custody of her child?

“I can take care of the baby,” he said.

She stiffened. “So can I.”

“Rita, you live above a bakery,” he snapped. “I can get you a nice place. On the beach.”

“Are you trying to bribe me?” she asked, astounded at the turn this conversation was taking.

“No. Look, it’s my kid, too.” He took a moment to gather his thoughts and said, “We get married, I get you a house and after the baby’s born, we split up.”

“And if I don’t want to marry you?”

“You will.”

“Don’t take any bets on it.”

“I will bet on it.” He held out one hand. “Five bucks.”

“For a very rich man, you don’t have much faith in your ability to persuade me.” She shook his hand and deliberately ignored the zip of heat she felt. “Twenty dollars.”

“Even better,” he said and completely knocked her feet out from under her.

Even better. It reminded her of that first night, of his smile, his kiss, their eagerness to be together. And when she looked into his eyes, she saw a gleam of amusement and knew he was remembering, too. Her heart turned over at the tiny glimpse of her Jack. Maybe he wasn’t as lost as she’d thought. Maybe he was reachable.

He let go of her hand but the heat engendered remained. The tiny moment of shared memory was over, the hint of humor gone from his eyes and she was left with this gorgeous stranger again. How could he make her feel so much while apparently feeling nothing himself? How could she allow herself to marry a man for all the wrong reasons when she once would have given anything to marry him for love?

“It won’t work, Jack.”

“We’ll see, Rita.”

It took her only a week to surrender.

A week of Jack coming to the bakery daily, helping out, making sure she got off her feet. He ignored his own business and showed up in jeans, scuffed cowboy boots and T-shirts, making her heart skip just looking at him. He stacked pallets of supplies, carried trays of cookies, rang up sales and won Casey over. That last part wasn’t hard at all, Rita allowed. But as for the rest, he wore her down with his relentless pursuit and dogged determination.

“You owe me twenty bucks,” he said when she told him she’d marry him.

“This isn’t funny.” Should she have held out? Refused him? Possibly. But in the last week, she’d caught repeated glimpses of the old Jack, and though they were brief, they’d given her enough hope to think that just maybe it was worth trying to get past the ice he’d packed around his heart.

“No one’s laughing.”

“I’ll marry you, but I can’t get married without my family there,” she said. “They’d never understand.”