Julie Miller - Nine-Month Protector

“Hell. Those things I can give you.” He turned and headed back toward headquarters, his long legs quickly putting distance between them.

Sarah hurried to catch up. “You’ve always been a good friend and I wanted to be up-front about it. Before my belly starts to show and people start asking questions. I didn’t want you to think I was hiding it from you.”

He whirled around and Sarah backpedaled to keep from running into him. “You slept with someone else.” His statement of fact sounded like an accusation. “Or was I the fling? Old Coop wasn’t good enough? Being together didn’t mean a damn thing to you, did it?”

Old? Try virile. Wonderful. Loving. Sarah tilted her head back to absorb every bit of hurt and accusation he hurled from those dark blue eyes. She tried to bring back the familiar kindness with the truth. “It meant everything. I needed you. I needed…But it was too soon. I wasn’t ready for emotions to kick in. I couldn’t handle anything serious. I may never be able to give you…to give anyone…”

Oh, God. Sarah’s strength faltered. Coop’s face swam out of focus and her stomach churned. She’d missed her morning snack, lunch was late, the growing baby made such demands on her body. Guilt made such demands on her soul.

She had slept with one other man. But they’d used a condom.

Squeezing her lips shut against the roiling protest in her stomach, Sarah opened her purse and fished for the bag of snacks she carried inside. She found the bag but couldn’t see the opening, couldn’t find the zipper, couldn’t get it open. “Damn it.”

She swayed. She was falling. She was going to be lying on the grass, losing her breakfast—and Cooper still wouldn’t understand the obvious truth. The hopeful truth.

“Sarah?” Strong hands grabbed her by the elbows and took her weight. Her cheek hit soft flannel, and a harder warmth underneath. “C’mon.”

Then she was twisting, floating. Sitting on a solid bench with two hands at her waist to steady her, and a firm shoulder in front of her to brace herself against. The spinning in her stomach calmed to a manageable level, and she blinked Cooper’s face into focus. He knelt in front of her, his angular features softened with cautious concern. Sarah pulled her hand from his shoulder and traced the line of his jaw.

“You have a good heart. You’d make a wonderful father.” But the honest observation turned his concern into a scowl. Feeling an imagined frostbite in her fingertips, Sarah quickly retreated and pulled the bag of fruit and pretzels from her purse. “I’m sorry. I’m not doing this on purpose. I need to eat.”

“You should have said something. Here.” He took the bag from her fumbling grasp. His fingers worked more surely than hers to open it and pull out a bag of pretzels and an apple. “Which do you want?”

He opened the pretzels she reached for and zipped the apple back into the bag. The salty snack was tasteless on her tongue and dry going down her throat. But the effect on her stomach was almost instantaneous relief.

Coop waited for her to eat a palmful before speaking again. The bite of sarcasm had left his voice, but an unfamiliar hardness shaded his eyes and aged his expression. “Look, I knew you were upset about sleeping with me. But I thought it was because you preferred to have me in your life as a brother—or you were worried about it messing with Seth’s and my working relationship. I had no idea you regretted it because you were already sleeping with someone else.”

“Stop saying that. I wasn’t seeing anyone. I mean, you weren’t…” Sarah stopped chewing and swallowed. No, no, no, no, no. She and Teddy had done it once. Thankfully, she’d made him use a condom. It had been embarrassingly quick. Awful. A terrible mistake. But accidents happened. She and Coop had thrown caution to the wind. It had been beautiful. Natural. Redeeming. Perfect. She curled her arm around her stomach and looked deep into those blue eyes, willing him to understand. This had to be Coop’s baby. “We spent all morning in bed, making—”

“I can’t father a child.”

Sarah shook her head, desperate to make sense of Cooper’s hurtful words. Tears stung her eyes, but she blamed the hormones and swiped them away before they could fall. “It has to be you.”

“I didn’t use protection because we didn’t need to.” Coop pushed to his feet and sat beside her with a resigned sigh. He pulled off his cap and rubbed his handsome, shiny head. Not a style choice. A consequence. “You know I had cancer, right?”

She nodded. “Sure. Seth talked about it. He said you were in college at the time—before he knew you. But he said you were okay. I mean, look at you. You’re a strong, strapping…” Suddenly stricken with real compassion, Sarah reached out and curled her fingers around his forearm. “Oh, my God. You’re not sick again, are you?”

He shrugged off her touch as if it repulsed him. “No. My cancer’s history. I take care of myself. I go in for regular follow-ups. I’ve been cancer-free for five years now. With surgery and radiation, I beat the damn monster. But not without some collateral damage.”

Sarah tilted her gaze to the top of his head. “So you can’t grow hair.”

“And I can’t make babies.”

Coop was raw inside. He never talked about this. But Sarah’s news hurt so damn much. It was like the army officers at the front door. The no-nonsense doctor in the tiny exam room.

Sarah wasn’t his—never had been. Still, he felt betrayed.

In a perfect world, he’d be the only man in her life. But there was nothing perfect about his dad being killed in action, then finding out the same month he had a tiny tumor growing in his prostate gland.

He’d had to beat the cancer. Not for his sake, but for his mother’s. And for Katharine, James, Grace and Clint, Jr. His family needed him to step up and be the man of the house. He had to be the strength, the financing, the discipline, the love and support in his father’s place. Sure, there were government benefits. Every Bellamy worked, from part-time jobs to paper routes. His dad’s older brother, Walt, now a retired professor from the University of Missouri, had sent money and offered help however he could.

But he had to be the man. He had to be there for the day-to-day stuff. Sacrifices had to be made. And Coop, a young man who hadn’t even reached the prime of his life yet, had done it willingly.

The urologist had warned him there’d be a change in his sex life. Oh, the plumbing all worked now, worked just fine. But there was something like a ninety-nine-percent chance he could never make the miracle of life happen. All his little Coopers had been sacrificed so that he could live.

To take care of his family.

To become a cop.

To love and lose out big-time.

Sarah needed to hear the truth. He needed to hear the reason why he’d kept his distance from a woman who seemed so crazy-right for him that, even now, he wanted to wrap her up in his arms and kiss some color back into her cheeks. But he wouldn’t be that much of a fool. He needed to remind himself why he should have walked away that morning instead of giving in to what he thought they’d both wanted. “I’m sterile.”

“Sterile?” she echoed. If possible, her skin grew even more pale.

“You may be pregnant…” Maybe some bastard had broken her heart. Maybe the father didn’t mean any more to her than Coop did. But the sympathy she wanted, the acceptance she’d expected, wouldn’t come. “But that baby isn’t mine.”

He brushed aside the first leaves to fall and splayed his fingers over the cold red marble that marked Danielle Ballard’s grave.

Washington Cemetery was a beautiful, tranquil place—except for that nosy groundskeeper who’d asked too many curious questions about his visit so late in the day. It didn’t matter that it was closing time and that that peon had been ready to shut and lock the gates. He’d come a long way to see Dani. To see the woman he loved.