Beginning With Their Baby

  “What?”

  “Being pregnant? All the changes that you’re going through, all the adjustments you’re going to have to make.”

  “No, not really. I mean, in two more months I’ll be back to normal. At least I hope so.”

  “I don’t just mean your body. What about the fact that you’ll be stuck in Austin, that your whole globe-trotting life will change.”

  “Globe-trotting life?” She giggled. “I’m not exactly Paris Hilton, you know.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know. But things don’t have to change completely, right? I mean, I’m not really stuck here. I can leave anytime I want.”

  Matt felt himself freeze at Camille’s words, at her calm acceptance that she wouldn’t be stuck in Austin forever. But what had he been expecting—her to change just because they’d made love?

  “Hey.” She twisted in the seat to get a better look at him. “You’ve gone awfully quiet.”

  “Just thinking.”

  “Well, do you think you could think about some ice cream? I’m still a little hungry.”

  “Sure, let me go see what we have.”

  “I think there’s some triple chocolate chunk in there—I bought it before I went to New Orleans.”

  “Triple chocolate chunk. Got it.” He stood up. “I’ll be right back.”

  As he headed into the kitchen, he shoved Camille’s words out of his head. There was nothing he could do about them, so there was no use ruining the rest of the day worrying. If there was one thing he’d learned six months before, it was that Camille was going to do what Camille was going to do and he really didn’t have a say, one way or the other.

  The baby was crying. High-pitched, pathetic wails that were just getting louder the longer they went on. Feeling like he was swimming through pea soup, Matt struggled toward consciousness. He had to get to the baby, had to—

  He woke up with a start, with a foggy brain and a too-fast heart. Drawing a deep breath into his lungs, and then another, he slowly got his bearings. Realized the only baby crying was in his mind.He was wrapped tightly around a still-pregnant Camille, his hand resting on her swollen stomach. Beneath his fingers the baby squirmed and kicked. For the first time, its movements didn’t reassure him.

  He glanced at the clock on the nightstand—it read six forty-five. They’d been asleep nearly seven hours. Strange that it barely felt like two.

  Careful not to wake Camille, he rolled away from her and sat up, planted his feet firmly on the floor. He told himself to just go back to bed for an additional hour, but he was still shaky and needed a couple of minutes to get himself together. In his head, he could still hear the baby sobbing.

  Was this what he was letting himself in for? Matt wondered as he got up, yanked on a pair of sweats. Letting his baby in for? The two of them wanting—and waiting for—a woman who craved freedom more than she did them? It was an uncomfortable thought, but one he could no longer dodge.

  I’m not really stuck here. I can leave anytime I want. Her words from the previous evening came back to him, as they had numerous times since their conversation on his patio. And they didn’t sit any better now than they had the first time he’d heard them.

  In fact, they sat worse.

  Is that how she saw their relationship? The life he wanted to build with her and the baby? As being stuck? After everything that had passed between them, they were right back where they’d started and it wasn’t a good place to be.

  He was sick of it. Sick of trying to please her. Sick of trying to hold on to a woman who didn’t want to be held.

  He’d even slept with his arms wrapped tightly around her, as if his subconscious was afraid she would bolt the first chance she got. He couldn’t do it anymore.

  Didn’t want to do it anymore.

  He headed down the hall to the kitchen, put on a pot of coffee. Then went outside to his patio and stared hard at Lake Travis.

  He loved Camille. He really did—he’d known it six months ago when he’d asked her to stay and he knew it now, as surely as he knew that it was his baby she was carrying. But sometimes love wasn’t enough. It hadn’t been enough for his parents, hadn’t been enough for Rhiannon and her husband, and it wasn’t enough for him, either. Not now, not with Camille.

  Maybe if the baby wasn’t on the way, if he wasn’t concerned about providing a stable home for his child, he could just go with it. Let her jerk him around for a few more months or a few more years as she flitted from place to place, never settling down. Never putting down roots.

  But there was a baby on the way and that baby did need stability. And, he admitted to himself as he watched the first boats cross the lake in the early morning light, so did he.

  He didn’t like change, didn’t like flying by the seat of his pants, but he would live with it if it meant he could have Camille. But he would never really have her—he could see that now. She would always be looking for the next great adventure, the next new thing. For him, loving her was adventure enough. But he could never be what she needed.

  He stood out there for a long time, watching the boats go by, their sails shifting with each new gust of wind. Their courses changing on a whim of fate. Of serendipity. Eventually he heard her moving around in the kitchen, fixing a cup of coffee for herself.

  He didn’t go in to join her.

  “Hey, you.” Camille’s arms wrapped around him from behind, her belly poking at his lower back. He closed his eyes, savored the feel of her against him for one second, two. Then slowly moved away from her warmth.

  “Hey, yourself. Did you sleep well?”

  “I did.” Her smile was nearly blinding. “Do you know what I was thinking when I was brushing my teeth—that we should go on a picnic today. I know, it’s Monday and you probably have to work, but you were in Japan for four weeks. Surely that buys you a little time off, doesn’t it?”

  “I have a couple of meetings today.”

  “So cancel them.” She crossed to him, brushed a soft kiss over his lips. “Come on, Matt, you know you want to.”

  He stiffened, annoyed beyond measure at her simple request. “I can’t just blow these people off, Camille. They’re clients and they expect to see me.”

  “Okay, then. How about a picnic dinner? Can you get off a little early? I’ll make something nice and we can go down to the edge of the lake and—”

  Because he could almost see the romantic meal, he was harsher than he needed to be when he said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Oh.” She reared back at his tone, forced a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Okay, then. Maybe some other time.”

  As she headed back into the house, she asked, “What do you want for breakfast? I’m starving, as usual, so I thought I’d make some blueberry pancakes and—”

  “Camille, don’t.”

  Even the fake smile faded. “Don’t what?”

  “I know it’s been more than two months since you moved in, but since I was in Tokyo…” He took a deep breath, tried not to feel like a total heel when he said, “I don’t think this is working out. I think you should move out.”

  CAMILLE FROZE, CERTAIN for a minute that Matt couldn’t possibly have said what she heard. Not after spending most of yesterday making love to her and cosseting her. He couldn’t possibly have just told her to leave.

  But the look on his face was grave, his behavior since she’d woken up indisputable. Still, she couldn’t believe it. “You don’t mean that. You can’t mean that.”“I’m sorry, but I do.”

  “But why? I don’t understand. After yesterday…”

  “Yesterday was great.”

  “Yet you want me to move out? What, is it your turn to blow me off, because of what happened before?”

  “No! Of course not.”

  “Then what is it?” She wanted to cross to him, to hold on to him, to make him tell her that this was all just a joke. A mistake. Something other than the complete and total devastati
on of the dreams she’d just begun to have.

  “We don’t want the same things.”

  “How do you know that? We haven’t even talked—”

  “Give me a break. We’ve done lots of talking these past months, maybe too much talking. You want a life that I can never be part of, a life that I’m afraid the baby won’t even fit into.”

  “That isn’t true.” She took a deep breath, tried to fight the sickness that was rising up within her. It was more than nervousness, more than panic—it was a terror that was so acute that she was actually physically nauseous with it. “I love you, Matt. I know it’s taken me too long to say it. I know I’ve been selfish and irresponsible and afraid, but I want to be with you, want to raise our baby with you. I’m still scared, but I want to try. Can’t we at least try to be together?”

  For a minute it looked as though he was softening, as though her words were getting through to him. But in the end, he closed her out—as thoroughly as she had once done to him. “I’m sorry. I am. But I can’t do this. Not now. Not ever again. I don’t love you—I won’t love you. I need you to leave.”

  She didn’t know what to say to him, couldn’t think of anything to say as his words ripped through her like the sharpest of knives. But in the end her silence didn’t matter—he had enough words for both of them.

  “I mean, obviously I’ll give you time to find an apartment. Take however—” his voice broke, but he continued on anyway “—long as you need. I understand that it isn’t easy to find one now, with the college students just back—”

  “Go to hell.” She stumbled backward, nearly hit her back against the sliding glass door.

  He swore, reached for her. “Be careful.”

  “Don’t touch me!” She jerked away, slammed the door open and ran inside.

  “Camille, don’t do this. Please.” He followed her. “I swear I’m not trying to hurt you. I just don’t see how this can work out between us.”

  “I get that. Really. You don’t need to keep saying it.” She rushed headlong toward her room. “Don’t follow me.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t. Follow. Me.” Her door slammed after the last word, leaving him standing there, staring after her, and wondering if he’d just made the worst mistake of his life.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CAMILLE LISTENED AS THE GARAGE door opened, then closed a couple of minutes later, signaling that Matt had finally left for work. She rose carefully from the side of the bed where she’d been sitting, feeling as if one wrong move would shatter her. Part of her thought the concern superfluous—she already felt as though she’d fractured into a thousand little pieces.

  Moving slowly, she opened up the suitcase she’d taken to New Orleans—it was already half-full, as she hadn’t bothered unpacking it the day before. Crossing to her closet, she pulled out her meager supply of clothes and stuffed them in the suitcase. Then opened a second suitcase and filled it with everything else she owned—shoes and jewelry, toiletries and sketch pads.Within ten minutes she was done. She still needed to gather her paints and canvasses, but that would probably take her a second trip. Her car wasn’t big enough to carry everything.

  As she rolled her suitcases down the stairs, her emotions threatened to choke her, but she bit them back. Tears were too small a bandage to put on the gaping hole inside of her, and giving in to them would only make her feel even more stupid.

  She’d known better, damn it. Had known that it was a bad idea to open herself up to Matt. Why had she thought he would want her, when no one else had? Why had she thought he would have faith in her after everything she’d done to him?

  She loaded the suitcases in the car, locked up the house and drove away on autopilot, unsure of where she wanted to go. All she knew was that she wanted to put as much distance between Matt’s house and herself as she could manage and still be in Austin.

  It was ridiculous, really, to be this upset. After all, she’d brought it on herself. She was the one who had walked out on him. She was the one who had told him over and over again that she had no staying power. So how could she blame him simply because he’d chosen to believe her? To believe the evidence?

  Because she’d wanted him to be different, had wanted him to see past her defenses to the woman she kept under wraps. Sure, she’d been unlovable her whole life. Certainly, she’d never let anyone close enough to see inside her before. Of course, there was something wrong with her. Something defective that warned anyone who might care about her that she wasn’t worth the effort.

  She just wished she knew what it was. She’d rip it out, destroy it. Try to start over before the baby got here and realized just how unlucky it had been in the motherhood lottery.

  She drove around for a while, got lost twice despite the fact that she had slowly learned the city over the past couple of months. But her concentration was shot and she found herself taking wrong turn after wrong turn.

  She finally ended up in a hotel near the Arboretum, where every suite had an efficiency kitchen. It wasn’t a perfect solution to her problem, by any means, but it would buy her some time as she figured out what to do. Without Matt, she had no real reason to stay in Austin, and a part of her wanted to take the baby and run as soon as she could.

  She knew thinking like that wasn’t fair to Matt, but she wasn’t in a particularly equitable mood at the moment. Did she understand why Matt had done what he did? Absolutely. Did she think he had a right to feel the way he did about her? No doubt. Was she angry as hell at him despite her understanding? Damn straight she was.

  She’d taken a chance on him. She’d let him in. She’d trusted him when she didn’t trust anybody and he had thrown that trust back in her face—after making love to her every way a man could love a woman. That was the part she didn’t understand, the part she couldn’t forgive. At least not yet. If he was going to toss her out on her ear, why had he made love to her first?

  For revenge? To humiliate her? To hurt her? If so, he’d accomplished all three—and then some. It would be a long time before she forgot the lesson Matt had taught her today—if she ever did. And it would be longer still before she let anyone else get a chance at her heart.

  It turned out that she’d been right all along—the lesson she’d learned when she was still a girl was actually dead-on. Love was a sucker’s game, and in the end, the last one standing was the winner.

  To hell with Matt and to hell with whatever she had hoped to build with him. When the dust had settled and everything had been cleared away, she would be the one still standing.

  BY THE TIME MATT GOT HOME that evening, he was suffering from a headache so intense he could barely see. All day he’d been going over his last conversation with Camille and feeling guilty as hell over the way he’d handled it. Sure, he’d thought a quick break was better, had figured telling her right away—before either of them got in too deep—was the way to go. But the sad fact was, he had been in too deep from the night he’d opened his front door to find her standing, beautiful and pregnant, on his doorstep.

  Blinded by the headache, he was in the house and calling Camille’s name before he clued in that her silly yellow car had been missing from the driveway. He was running before the knowledge had fully sunk in, checking out her room and her studio, only to find them both empty. Nothing remained of her—not a gum wrapper in the wastebasket or a paintbrush in the sink. It was as if the four months she’d spent living in his house had never existed.He hadn’t expected her to leave this soon, had figured it would take her a few days—or weeks—to find a decent place to live. It hadn’t occurred to him that she would just take her stuff and run, though looking back, he couldn’t imagine what else she might have done. Stuck around, until an awkward situation became downright untenable? Yeah, right. Why should she stick it out when it was so much easier to pack a suitcase and run—like she always did? The only surprising thing about her behavior was that she had taken the time to gather all of her things before fleeing.

&nbs
p; He wanted to rage about her running out without so much as a word or a forwarding address, but he’d never be able to look himself in the mirror again. He had driven Camille to this, had upset the delicate truce that they had arrived at by confusing sex and love. Again. He was the one who had pushed her into this corner and now he was the one pissed off because she had come out swinging. He never would have guessed he was such a damn hypocrite.

  Disgusted with Camille, with himself and with life in general, he prowled around the house, shocked at how empty it felt without her here. He’d thought it was bad those two days she was in New Orleans, but at least then he’d been able to head into her studio and look at her art. He’d studied her paintings and seen Camille’s unique, vibrant take on the world.

  Now even that was gone and all he was left with was himself. And he was lousy company.

  A hard knock on his door pulled him out of his reverie, had him racing to the door with only one thought in his mind—that Camille had come back. About halfway down the stairs he realized just how ridiculous that supposition was, but he didn’t turn back. He had a compulsive need to know, one way or the other, if she’d changed her mind.

  Not that it would do him any good, because he hadn’t changed his. Sure, he regretted the scene that had happened that morning between them, but that didn’t mean he thought things could work out between them. They couldn’t.

  Pulling open the door, he braced himself for whatever he would find on his front porch. But nothing had prepared him for the sight of Reece there, a six-pack of beer in one hand and a bottle of Lagavulin in the other.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded, too ornery to worry about being polite.

  “Planning on getting rip-roaring drunk. You want to ask me in?”

  Matt grunted, but moved aside to let the man in. “What have you got to get drunk about? I thought things were almost perfect over at the Sandler house.”

  The moment he said the words he regretted them—they made him sound jealous and bitter, when the truth was he didn’t begrudge his friend one iota of the happiness he had. He’d walked through fire to get it.