Tara Quinn - Second Time's the Charm

He’d spent a lot of nights away before the doctor’s pronouncement, too. Just not as many.

Kylie, the firm’s latest blonde receptionist, smiled from behind the massive, curved desk directly across from the elevator.

“Good morning, Mrs. Henderson,” she said in her lilting saccharine voice. “He’s expecting you.” Kylie’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes, but Lillie had never felt any animosity from the receptionist, who was likely a year or two older than Lillie’s twenty-three. What she felt coming from the other woman was more like pity.

She was sick of pity.

Kirk’s was the third office on the right—directly across from his father’s. His door was the only one closed. And, based on the rooms she’d passed on her way in and the morguelike silence of the space, his was the only one occupied, too. Not unusual for July in Phoenix. Half of the population left the scorching desert temperatures in the summer for cooler climates.

Standing in the hall in front of that closed door, her black Coach purse hanging from her shoulder, Lillie contemplated turning around and heading back the way she’d come. She was not a possession, or a pet, who had to perform on command.

It was possible Kirk wasn’t alone, but not likely. Kylie didn’t usually make mistakes.

That closed door was as deliberate as everything else Kirk did. As orchestrated as his smooth-talking charm had been during their senior year of college when he’d wooed her—an orphan without a home to visit during holidays—into his bed.

He was making her knock on her own husband’s door. Making her ask for permission to enter his abode. Treating her as little more than a stranger.

He was going to ask for a divorce.

She’d come because she didn’t want the conversation to happen at home, where she’d found a measure of peace.

Knocking, she thought about one of her patients, little Sandra, the six-year-old who’d recently undergone surgery to fix the damage done to her back in a car accident the previous spring. Employed by a local children’s hospital, Lillie had supported Sandra through every procedure since the accident, and had learned far more from the spirited redhead than she’d been able to impart as Sandra’s child life specialist.

No matter how much pain she was in, Sandra never lost the smile on her face—even when there were tears in her eyes. She never backed down from her willingness to take life head-on.

Kirk kept her waiting a full minute. She heard him clear his throat once as he approached from the inside.

“Lillie, come in,” he said, pulling open the door.

Without meeting his gaze, she entered, taking in the spectacular view, the pristine room and the uncluttered desk before settling in an armchair on the other side of the room. She’d be damned if she was going to be dumped sitting like a client in front of his desk.

Couldn’t he have waited until after the baby was born?

Her husband, dressed impeccably in the gray suit he’d purchased the summer before and a deep maroon shirt she didn’t recognize, stood, hands in his pockets, just to her right. He walked to the window and over to the bar.

“Can I get you something to drink? A glass of wine?”

Glancing at her stomach, at the evidence of the baby Kirk had already written off, she said, “I can’t drink. You know that.”

He had the grace to look chagrined—and she had a feeling that his remorse, the regret that shadowed his eyes, was sincere. “I just figured...you know...with the way things are, it wouldn’t matter....”

Her chin ached with the effort it took to keep her expression placid. “His heart is malformed, Kirk. He isn’t dead. Alcohol consumption could cause brain damage.”

This time the pity was in his eyes. “The doctor gave him a ten percent chance of living through gestation. And no chance at all of surviving more than a year outside the womb.”

“He also said they won’t know for sure what we’re dealing with until he’s born and they can run more thorough tests.”

As a child life specialist, a trained and certified child development advocate who helped children and their families through times of crises, she’d witnessed medical miracles. Some things weren’t up to professionals.

And he hadn’t summoned her to this lunchtime meeting to discuss their son’s fate. “I’d like some cranberry juice, if you have it.”

Nodding, he filled a glass with ice from the bucket on the bar and, reaching underneath, pulled out an individual-size bottle of juice, opening it to fill the glass.

Pouring himself a shot of Scotch on the rocks, he brought both glasses over to set them on the table next to her and sat in the armchair on the opposite side. Taking a sip of his drink—a stiff one even for him—he leaned forward, his forearms on his knees, hands clasped, and turned toward her.

“You know about Leah.”

His mistress. “Yes.” She’d suspected, when Kirk had started coming home late, that he had a lover. She’d confronted him about it and he’d told her the truth. He’d also told her that the woman meant nothing to him and that he’d already ended the affair. He’d sworn that he loved Lillie. That she was his life. He’d agreed to go to counseling. He’d had tears in his eyes.

She’d just found out she was pregnant.

And she’d believed him.

“She’s pregnant, Lillie.”

Pain shot through Lillie’s lower stomach. She stared at Kirk, her mind completely blank.

“The baby’s mine.”

“How far along is she?” She should be feeling something.

“Three months.”

He hadn’t ended the affair.

“I wanted you to hear it from me.”

She nodded. Made sense.

Braydon Thomas—named for Lillie’s father, who, along with her mother, had been killed in a car accident when she was nineteen—kicked against her, the feeling faint, almost like air bubbles, in spite of the fact that she was at thirty-two weeks’ gestation.

“She asked me to move in with her.”

“She knows you’re married.”

“Yes.”

The girl had no scruples. No ethics.

“I told her yes, Lillie.”

“You’re married,” she said again, numb. Fueled by whatever force it was that got her through the hard times, she sat there.

“I know.” His brows drew together and his eyes shadowed. “I feel horrible about this but she loves me and I love her.”

One usually asked for a divorce before falling in love and starting a family. She’d have liked to point that fact out to him, but didn’t see any good that would come out of doing so.

“Is that where you go when you don’t come home at night?”

She’d kicked him out of her bed when she’d found out about his affair—until she could welcome him back with an open heart.

“Yes.”

What more could she say?

“It’s not as if you’re head over heels in love with me,” he blurted into the silence.

He was right. She’d married him because she cared about him deeply. Because she loved his father and Gayle. The family they all made together. Because they had so much in common, enjoyed being together. Because they’d wanted the same things out of life. Because he’d been her first lover and she’d found him incredibly attractive.

She didn’t want her marriage to end. But she couldn’t live with infidelity. Couldn’t be in a relationship without trust.

She couldn’t settle.

“I’m not going to file for divorce,” Kirk was saying. “You’ll have full insurance coverage throughout the rest of your...term.”

He was having another baby. Presumably a healthy one.

“Leah has her own insurance,” he said, continuing to fill her silence with information she didn’t want.

And had to have.