She tugged her hand free and covered her face. “Reid!”
“Tell me.”
“No!” She flung herself onto the pillow, arm over her face.
“Kara. How many?”
She nibbled on a nail, felt her face burn. And held up two fingers.
“Two? You slept with two guys before me?”
She shook her head.
He peeled the hands away from her face. “Kara. Are you telling me I am only the second guy you’ve ever slept with?”
Her entire body cringed. She flipped over, buried her face in the pillow and waited for the mortification to finish killing her.
But that didn’t happen.
Instead, her cell phone rang. Reid grabbed it before she could move, read the display, and cursed softly. He got up, tossed the phone to her.
“It’s Steve.”
He sat on Kara’s sofa, absently stuffed cold food into his mouth while the rain fell softly outside. In the bedroom, he could hear Kara’s soft voice, but not what she said.
Two men.
Christ, she was practically a virgin and he’d—He shoved the carton away in disgust. And now her ex was calling her on the same night they’d—
He cursed again and got up to pace the length of the living room. Kara’s voice was getting louder—she was pissed off, that was clear. He heard Nadia stir and squeak in her crib so he tip-toed to her room, peeked inside. She was standing up in her crib, blinking owlishly and looking as miserable as he felt.
He stepped over the gate across the door and lifted her up.
“Da,” she said and wrapped her tiny fist around his heart.
“Not—” He broke off, bit his tongue. “Not Daddy. Reid.”
“Eed.” She put her head on his bare chest and he sighed. Gene was right. It was too late. Entirely too late. He cuddled the toddler closer, noticed her heavy diaper.
“Come on, little miss. Let’s get you clean and dry.” He grabbed a fresh diaper from the stack on the dresser and gently put the baby down. He slid off her pajama bottoms, unfastened the wet diaper, gave her bottom a quick pass with a baby wipe and had the new diaper in place before she had time to squirm.
He was refastening the snaps on her pajamas when he felt Kara’s presence. Wisely, she didn’t say anything and risk waking Nadia up further. He put Nadia back in her crib, handed her the blanket and watched her curl up with it against her cheek.
He quietly stepped back over the gate and shut the door. Kara was waiting in the hall.
“I thought you left.”
He stared at her, unable to decide if that was what she wanted...or simply expected. “I’m not him.”
Her eyes popped and she put up a hand. “Thank God for that.” She took a step closer, eyes skimming his torso and stopping at that V muscle she’d admired just a few minutes earlier. “I only meant you seemed pissed off when the phone rang so I just thought—”
“Kara, I’m sorry.” He cut her off, gripping her shoulders. She’d put her clothes back on and his fingers burned for her skin. “I didn’t know he’d been your only.”
“My only,” she repeated and huffed out a laugh. “I think of him in more negative terms. My mistake. My biggest regret.” She pulled away, sank to her favorite corner of the sofa. “You think I’m comparing you to him and okay, I’m sorry, I am. I can’t help it. It was never—” she broke off, bit her lip and her face turned red.
Why the hell that made him want to kiss her was completely beyond his comprehension.
“He never...oh, hell.”
He knew she was trying to say that the sex was better with him than with Steve. But that didn’t flatter him as much as it should have. For the first time since Erin’s death, he wanted more. He swallowed hard and asked the question whose answer terrified him. “What did he want?”
“He wants to see me. Us. He wants to see Nadia. Next weekend.”
He was wrong. There was another question whose answer terrified him more. “What did you say?”
“I almost said no. When he told me Elena sent him a text message the day Nadia was born, I nearly hung up on him.” She got up, paced restlessly. “He knew! The son of a bitch knew he was a father for the past year and a half and said nothing until now.”
“Sperm donor,” he corrected quietly. “Anything else has to be earned.” He waited a beat. “You didn’t tell me what you said. Are you gonna meet him?”
“Yeah. I have to.”
Ah, right. Chicks and closure. He nodded. “Okay. I’m coming with you.”
She shook her head. “Reid, you’ve done so much for me already. I can’t ask you—”
“You didn’t ask. I said I’m coming.” He blocked her path, folded her into his arms. “He hurt you once. He won’t get another chance.”
Against his bare chest, he felt her laugh. “Your job is to prepare me to separate from you—” she laughed when he snaked a hand under arm and tickled her.
“Yeah, yeah, very funny. I’m still coming.”
She pulled back, eyes aimed at his groin. “I think you’re overstating things a bit.”
He shifted his hands, grabbed hold of her hips and ground himself against her. Her lips curled into a naughty grin. “Whoa. That was fast.”
“Catch up.” He picked her up, tossed her to the sofa and covered her with his body. Slowly, he traced her jaw line down her neck with his lips, and pulled aside her top to find those beautiful breasts again.
“Reid.” She urged him on but he only shook his head and smiled against her breast.
“Listen to the rain, Kara.” He lifted her hands, stretched them over her head. “I’m gonna be a while.”
She opened her mouth to protest so he took offensive action and covered it with his own. When he felt her hands stop straining against his, only then did he pick up where he’d left off.
Chapter Nine
“Whoa,” Elena said. It was Sunday morning and it was just the three of them for breakfast. Lucas was volunteering at the church soup kitchen and Reid was on duty. “Are you going through with it?”
Kara watched her daughter lick the syrup off a French toast stick. “I don’t want to. But I feel like I have to. She’s his daughter.”
Her sister snorted and sipped her hot chocolate. Elena’s taste buds had stopped maturing sometime around age ten. She despised coffee. Kara had no idea how she functioned. “So how’s Reid?” Elena asked with a little eyebrow wiggle.
Kara’s stomach did a long slow roll at the mere mention of his name. Her face burst into flame.
“Kara! You didn’t!”
Nadia said, “Eed!”
Elena pressed both hands to her gaping mouth. “Oh, my God, you did! And you didn’t tell me? So things are getting serious with you two?”
She wasn’t sure what things were between them. They had great sex. No, no. That wasn’t right.
They had mind-blowing, Earth-moving sex. Reid had spent the night Friday. And Saturday. Kara kept finding herself checking the clock, counting down the hours until the end of his shift.
“Kara, what’s wrong?”
She waved a hand. “I don’t know, Laney. I just...have a pretty bad track record where men are concerned.”
Elena snorted. “Sweetie, for you to have a track record, you to have, you know, an actual track. You were with one guy besides Reid and he turned out to be an ass.”
One guy. “Reid kind of freaked out over the one guy part.”
“What do you mean?” Elena angled her head.
“I think it scared him that he’s only the second guy I’ve ever... you know, been with.”
Elena gasped. “No way! You mean Steve Orland was your first?”
“Laney!” Mortified, Kara scanned the coffee shop, wondering if every person in the place just heard Elena’s announcement. Nadia knocked over her sippy cup and she dove under the table, grateful for the second or two of hiding time.
It was humiliating to ask sex advice from your younger sister. But if it
meant keeping Reid Bennett, she’d endure any taunting her sister wanted to dish out. “I don’t want to mess this up, like I usually do.”
“Whoa.” Elena put up both hands. “What do you mean, usually do?”
“Things with Steve were great until I got pregnant.”
Again, Elena put up both hands. “Sorry, Kara, you didn’t get pregnant by yourself. And things weren’t great with Steve. Honestly, they never were.”
Stung, Kara blinked at her sister. “I was in love with him, Laney. I moved out of state to be with him. I gave him my virginity.”
But Elena shook her head. “Kara, I love you like a sister—”
Kara threw a straw at her. “Ha ha.”
“I love you better than anyone and you love me. We’ve known each other since I was born. You know all my secrets.”
“Now I do.” Kara covered Elena’s hand, gave it a squeeze. There was a time when that hadn’t been true. But Nadia’s birth and meeting Lucas changed everything for Elena...and for Kara, too.
“And I can tell you that without a doubt, you settled. Steve Orland was never a prize, honey. He wasn’t even runner up.”
That stung a bit. “Elena—”
“Just listen.” Elena put a piece of toast on Nadia’s tray. “You have this kind of warped and rosy image of the guy, but that’s not how things really were.”
Kara nodded. Reid said the same thing about her mother the other night. “Selective amnesia?”
“Bingo.” Elena nodded.
“Bee oh!” Nadia agreed.
“Good girl, Nadia!” Elena applauded. “You don’t seem to remember the tears you shed over him. He forgot to pick you up at the airport that time, remember? You got home, found him playing video games. He never wanted to go out with us, only his friends. You spent holidays apart because he only wanted to spend them with his family. And SFG? Remember that?”
Kara’s stomach fell. She had forgotten all of that. SFG—September’s Families Guild—had come to mean the world to her. But Steve told her it was an organization made of people who wanted to exploit September 11th victims, not help them. When she reminded him that she was one of the families the guild helped, he shrugged and said she was the exception. All she could remember is the determined set to his jaw when he left after she’d learned she was pregnant.
“Reid’s lucky to have you. The only way you can mess this up is if you forget that and start obsessing over why he’s with you instead of every other girl in the world. Don’t go down that road. Don’t try to figure him out. Just let him be.”
Kara stared into her coffee cup and wondered how she was supposed to do that.
The week passed by at warp speed. Nadia continued to thrive in her new school, picking up new words every day.
Kara wished she had a word for whatever it was that she and Reid were doing. Friends was too weak. He was so much more than that. Lovers was too, well, sordid though Kara supposed it was certainly accurate. And partners was just too presumptuous.
She thought of her mother. Mom would have called it keeping company. She may have juggled millions of dollars in assets each day, but she could be hopelessly old-fashioned when it came to love and marriage, and living together? She’d have borrowed Aunt Enza’s wooden spoon if she’d known about Steve Orland.
But somehow, Kara had this feeling her mother approved of Reid... of what she was doing with Reid.
Whatever that was.
She hadn’t told him that because she didn’t want to freak him out. She respected his boundaries. He’d been clear from the beginning that he didn’t want to talk about the daughter he’d lost, and while her obsessive, anxiety-producing self might have worried how exposing her daughter to him could be perceived as an unhealthy substitute, there was always this peaceful sense of right that enveloped her whenever he was with them.
Mom’s influence. Definitely.
He wasn’t with her when she stepped through the door of the restaurant where she’d agreed to meet Steve and she felt his absence acutely. But he’d pulled an extra tour.
It had been over two years since she’d had any contact with the man she’d planned to marry, to spend the rest of her life with, and she was thinking about the guy she’d met weeks ago instead.
That had to be a sign.
She sat at the bar, ordered a soft drink, tried—in vain—to wait patiently. Five minutes passed, then ten. She grabbed her purse, intending to leave when a throat cleared behind her. “Um, hey, Kar.”
She’d hated that nickname. Her name had four letters and two syllables. It didn’t need shortening. She turned, set eyes on her daughter’s father. And felt absolutely nothing.
“Hey.”
He leaned in for a kiss but she dodged him. Was he kidding?
He cleared his throat again. “You look, um, different. Not so glamorous anymore, huh?” He waved a hand over the hair she’d cut since having Nadia.
He looked...old. Not just older. But old. His dark hair was showing some gray streaks at the temples. There were new lines on his forehead. The bright blue eyes her daughter had inherited were duller than she remembered.
“Have a seat.”
He managed half a smile and sat next to her, ordered a beer. “You didn’t bring her.”
Her eyebrows went up. “I thought it best that we speak first.” She lifted her glass.
He nodded like he completely supported that decision. “So, uh, Nadia, huh? Why did you pick that name?”
Her shoulders tensed and the glass froze halfway to her lips. “What do you mean, that name?”
Steve picked up his beer bottle, gave her a little shrug. “It’s just...so unusual, you know? Why didn’t you pick a normal name?”
Kara managed half a laugh and dropped her glass to the bar with a thud. “If you wanted a say in her name, maybe you should have stayed.”
And even as the words left her mouth, Kara realized she was happy he hadn’t. The thought was unsettling. What did that say about her judgment? About her values? She’d made a baby with this man. How could she have been so completely off-target?
Steve hunched over his beer. “She’s okay? Healthy, I mean?”
“She’s perfect. Would you like to see pictures?” Kara reached for her phone, but Steve stopped her with a hand over hers.
“Kar, I’m sorry. I really am. I know you don’t believe that but it’s true. I had reasons for not wanting to bring a child into this world. Good ones.”
“Yes, and I shot those plans to hell when I got pregnant all by myself.”
“I didn’t say that—”
A strong arm landed across Kara’s shoulders. “This him?” A terse voice demanded.
Kara’s heart lifted along with her spirits. She turned into Reid, saw he was in uniform. “Reid! You’re here. Are you still on-shift? You’re not going to get in trouble for this—”
“I’m on a meal break,” he replied, eyes stuck on Steve.
“Meal break,” Steve said with a knowing look at Kara. “Didn’t take you long to move on.”
She never saw Reid move.
One second, Reid’s arm was around her shoulders and the next, he had Steve pinned face first to the bar, arm twisted behind his back.
“Reid!”
Reid ignored Kara and leaned down, spoke directly into Steve’s ear. “Here’s how this is gonna work. You’re gonna speak to Kara with respect, not insults, or I’m going to tear you apart and then treat your wounds just so I can do it again. We clear?”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
Reid let Steve go, signaled the wary bartender who had one hand on her phone, and ordered a soft drink and a burger. “You hungry?” He asked Kara, but she shook her head. Her stomach was too twisted to eat.
Steve ordered the same and leaned forward. “Okay. I’m sorry for what I said. I didn’t mean to—” He broke off with a curse and started again. “I wanted you to move on. I wanted you to be happy and you obviously are.”
She waved a hand, impati
ently. “Why are you here? Why now?”
Steve grabbed his beer, slowly picked at the label on the bottle. “You know that scar I have here?” He jerked a thumb at his chest.
“Yes. You fell off your bike.”
He shook his head. “That was a lie. I never fell off my bike.” He snorted out a sad laugh. “I, uh, can’t ride a bike. I wasn’t allowed to when I was a kid.”
“So that scar was—”
“Surgery. I was born with a heart problem, Kara. My brother had it, too.”
Kara stared at him. “Your brother. The one who died when he was fifteen.” And then her eyes went wide. “Oh, God. You said he died in accident. Was that a lie, too?”
Steve nodded.
Kara crossed her arms and glared. “Why. Tell me why you would lie about a thing like that.”
“I swore I’d never involve you in this.” Steve scrubbed a hand over his face. “I was nine when David died. My folks had no idea he had a heart problem until it was too late. When we discovered I had it, too, my life came to a full screeching stop. My parents were reeling from losing David and then, the thought of losing me, too...well, it was too much for my mom. She pulled me out of baseball. She pulled me out of gym class. The following year, she decided to home school me.”
“You have no idea what it was like.” Steve paused, swallowed some beer. “I love my mother, Kar, I really do. But she...I don’t know. She just totally lost it after David died. There were nights I woke up and found her in a chair, just watching me sleep.”
Kara shook her head slowly. He’d never said anything. He’d never trusted her with this. “My God. Wasn’t there someone you could talk to? Your dad. Your relatives?”
Steve waved his hand. “My dad was no help. Whatever crazy things Mom came up with to ensure my health and safety were just fine with him. I had no life. I swear to you, if she could have put me in a plastic hamster ball, she would have. I never told anybody.”
“Not even me.”
“Especially not you. Kar, you have no idea how much work it took just to let her agree to let me go to college. I had to promise not to go too far away, to call her a dozen times a day, and to see whatever doctor she needed me to see. You were the first normal thing I ever had in my life since Dave.”