Читать книгу Wishing and Hoping - SUSAN MEIER, Susan Meier - Страница 9

“I’m pregnant.”

Tia Capriotti stood on the porch of Drew Wallace’s white French Colonial farmhouse, staring at the father of her child. His shiny black hair, usually hidden by his Stetson, was sexily disheveled and his dark eyes glittered sexily, but that was Drew. He was handsome. He was sexy. And she now knew he was out of her league.

The sounds of two stable hands leaving for the day alerted Tia to the fact that they might be overheard. She knew Drew realized that too when he grabbed her forearm and pulled her into his foyer, quickly closing the stained-glass door behind her.

“Say that again.”

She raised her eyes to meet his gaze. “I’m pregnant.”

“Oh, God!” was all Drew said as he sat down heavily on the fourth step of the stairway. His butt hit the soft carpet runner as his boots thumped on the hardwood floor.

Tia said nothing, giving him time to get his bearings, remembering, as he probably was, the night they had run into each other at a party in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, so far away from Calhoun Corners, Virginia, that he’d never expected to come across somebody from his hometown. He’d always known her as Isabella. So when their host introduced her as Tia—a nickname she’d picked up in college—without her last name, he hadn’t associated her with his formerly chubby, long-haired next-door neighbor, whom he hadn’t seen since she’d left for college six years before.

But she had assumed he’d recognized her because he didn’t ask her last name and flirted with her as if she were the love of his life—something she’d dreamt of through high school when she’d had a killer crush on him. She was thrilled when he’d accepted her invitation to come back to her house.

They hadn’t caught the misunderstanding until after they’d made love, but when he had discovered she was Isabella Capriotti, not just plain Tia-somebody-or-another-who-worked-at-an-ad-firm-in downtown-Pittsburgh, Drew had been furious. He’d felt she should have realized he hadn’t recognized her, if only because she should have known he wouldn’t have a one-night stand with the daughter of the man who had helped him build his horse-breeding business. And if that wasn’t enough, he didn’t sleep with women twelve years younger than he was.

After his outburst, Tia had stared at him mutely, thinking his understanding of romance was nonexistent. He had no qualms about jumping into bed with a total stranger, but he was upset about making love to her—mostly because he knew her.

Still, she had her pride. When they had made love, he’d believed she was somebody else. She couldn’t even remotely pretend the man of her high-school fantasies loved her. And the way he had scolded her had made her blood boil. She was an adult. She had a job and a house. A bank had considered her responsible enough to give her a mortgage. She hadn’t deserved to be treated like a little girl.

And that’s exactly what she had told him before she’d asked him to leave. When he’d walked out her door that night she had been convinced that she would never see him again.

She knew he wouldn’t be happy she was pregnant, but she was here to assure him he needn’t be concerned. She might be twelve years younger than he was, but she was a twenty-four-year-old woman who made enough money to support a child. She was ready to become a mom. He could have as much or as little involvement with this baby as he wanted.

“Don’t worry. I have everything under control.”

“What about me? Don’t I get any say in this?”

“I absolutely want you to be involved in our baby’s life, but there’s no pressure. You have the option to be as involved as you want to be.”

He gaped at her. “That’s your idea of having everything under control? To give me the ‘option’ of being involved in our baby’s life?”

“No!” Tia said, baffled by how he had twisted everything. “I have a job and my own house…”

“I’m not talking about finances. I’m talking about the personal end of things. A child should have its father’s name.”

He sounded exactly as her dad sounded any time he heard of a woman having a baby on her own, and Tia realized that this was probably why women didn’t date men too much older than they were.

“As far as I’m concerned the first thing we need to do is get married.”

Tia’s heart thumped at the possibility of being the wife of the man she’d fantasized about since she was fourteen. But she knew he didn’t want to marry her. And she didn’t think she wanted to marry him, either. Not after the way he’d reacted the night they’d made love. No thanks.

“I didn’t come here to extort marriage from you. The baby can just take your name. It doesn’t matter if we’re married when he’s born—”

“Maybe not to you, but it does to me and I’ll bet it does to your dad.” He paused and groaned. “Damn it! We have a bigger reason to get married than giving the baby my name.”

Not quite sure she trusted him, Tia peered at him. “And that reason is?”

“Your dad’s reelection campaign is in trouble.”

“Really?” she asked dubiously. Her dad had been mayor of Calhoun Corners since she was six. No one ever voted against him.

“For the first time in close to twenty years, your dad has an opponent. Auggie Malloy. His entire platform is based on the fact that your dad had a heart attack last year. Everybody knows he takes pills when he’s stressed and Auggie’s saying that makes him too sick to be mayor. And Mark Fegan agrees,” Drew said, referring to the editor of the Calhoun Corners Chronicle. “He’s been running editorials supporting Auggie.”

This time it was Tia who groaned. “Are you kidding me? By doing that he’s actually causing the stress that causes my dad’s chest pain.”

“And makes your dad look too weak to be mayor. But even so, the election isn’t our problem. Our problem is that your dad has enough stress already and God only knows how he’s going to react when we tell him I got you pregnant in a one-night stand and we’re not getting married because we don’t really know each other—but we had sex.”

Tia fell to the step just below the one on which Drew sat. She hadn’t intended to tell her dad the “circumstances” under which she got pregnant, but she understood what Drew was saying. With the stress her dad already had, there was a chance that any news that made him angry could be the stress that pushed him over the edge, and she didn’t even want to put into words what would happen then.

“What if we don’t tell him until after the election?”

“There are six months until the election. Do you think you’re not going to be showing any time in the next six months? Or that the stress of the election will lessen as we get closer to the day that everybody goes to the polls? If anything, the stress is going to increase. It’s better to tell him you’re pregnant now before the election stress is at its worst, when he really could have a heart attack.”

As Tia tried to think it through, Drew scooted off his stair to pace the foyer, his boots making a thumping sound on the hardwood with every step. But he suddenly turned and stood towering over her. Because it was a hot June day, he wore only jeans and a T-shirt that his chest and broad shoulders stretched to capacity. His penetrating brown eyes seemed to be able to see the whole way to her soul. He was so attractive it almost hurt to look at him. She swallowed.

“This doesn’t have to be complicated. If we tell your dad we’ve been secretly dating and you’re pregnant so we’re getting married, nobody will blink an eye. And it’s not like we have to be ‘really’ married. You work in Pittsburgh. I live in Virginia. We don’t even have to see each other except for a few weekends to make the situation look believable. We can divorce after the baby’s born and once again I’ll bet nobody will even blink an eye, if only because with you working in Pittsburgh and me living in Virginia everybody will say our marriage was doomed from the start.”

What he said made a lot of sense. They could pretend to be married without having to live together because of her job. Plus, not seeing much of each other was a built-in explanation for why the marriage would fail. Oddly enough, it was the perfect way to hide the bad part of their situation while revealing the good parts. Her parents didn’t have any grandchildren. A wedding and a baby right now might be a calming influence. At the very least, a baby and a wedding could make her parents happy.

“Okay. We’ll get married.”

“Okay.”

The foyer became incredibly quiet. They spent the next few seconds staring at each other and it sunk in for Tia that she was marrying the guy she’d dreamed about from the day she’d met him when she was fourteen. Unfortunately, the wedding wasn’t happening anywhere near the way she’d envisioned it. And, even more unfortunately, Drew Wallace wasn’t the Prince Charming she had imagined in her teenage fantasies. In fact, he was pretty much the opposite of the sweet, sincere gentleman she had pictured him to be.

Drew suddenly turned and grabbed his Stetson from a peg by the door. “Let’s go tell your parents.”

Her gaze jerked back to his. “Now?”

“If we don’t do this now, we’re both going to lose courage. Or we’ll try to talk ourselves out of it. Trust me. When it comes to ugly situations like this, I know exactly how to get out of them.”

A quiver of misgiving shuddered through Tia. She wasn’t so naive as to think that a man as handsome and sexy as Drew got to be thirty-six without being involved with other women. Maybe even lots of women. But she’d never thought of him as needing to “get out of things.” Worse, she’d never thought far enough ahead to consider that he might actually be involved with somebody right now.

She rose from the step. “I’m not about to be confronted by an angry woman for stealing her man, am I?”

With his hand already on the doorknob, Drew let out a gust of air and faced her. “You’re not stealing anybody’s man.”

“Because you don’t have somebody?”

“Because we’re not staying married.”

“So this marriage won’t even be a bump in the road for you?”

Drew looked at her as if she were crazy and she said, “Never mind.” She stepped out onto the porch ahead of him and ran down the steps to the sidewalk, knowing that for the next several months, maybe even year, she was stuck with the grumpiest man on the face of the earth. “This is going to be fun.”

“It doesn’t have to be fun. It doesn’t have to be much of anything since we only have to spend enough time together that your parents don’t suspect the marriage is fake.”

“As I said, sounds like a barrel of fun.”

After crunching across the gravel to the big black truck he had parked in front of his garage, Drew opened the door to the cab and gestured for Tia to climb inside. “And as I said, it doesn’t need to be fun. Only official.”

Tia walked past him. She was pregnant with his baby and had conspired to enter into a fake marriage with him, yet he was barking orders as if he still saw her as a child.

“I’ll take my own car, thanks,” she said, her voice prim and proper. “There’s no reason for me to drive back here just to pick it up.”

He slammed the truck door. “Good point.”

“Whatever,” she said, and marched to her little red sports car.

She got inside, closed her door with enough force to rattle the windows and had her vehicle roaring down the lane toward the main highway before Drew turned to walk to the driver’s-side door.

Anger ricocheted through Drew. He kicked both front tires of his truck on his way around each fender and slammed his door, too.

His only consolation was that he knew Tia wasn’t really driving too fast. Her sports car had a big engine that would roar anytime anyone hit the gas even slightly. But occupying his brain with anger about her driving was much better than thinking about telling his mentor and friend that his daughter was about to have a baby. His baby….

Drew paused and, dropping his head, let his forehead bump against the steering wheel. His baby.

Dear God. He was going to be a father.

Even as the thought filled him with an emotion that made his heart feel as if it was surrounded by warm oatmeal, it also struck pure terror in that same heart. Not because he thought he couldn’t handle being a dad, but because he knew he could not handle being married. One incredibly ugly divorce had taught him that lesson. His ex-wife had bled him dry. But that wasn’t the worst. The worst was discovering, after he’d literally sold his share of his first business to his partner to pay her settlement, that she just happened to be having an affair with that same partner.

Drew squeezed his eyes shut, angry with himself for thinking of things so far in the past, but he couldn’t stop the memories. Sandy hadn’t been his first love. He’d had girlfriends, been in love, and even lived with someone for a few months before he’d met Sandy, so he wasn’t naive. But Sandy had been special. She was funny, interesting, smart and one of the most wonderful women he had ever met. He remembered some nights just watching her sleep, totally grateful that she was his.

Her request for a divorce had come out of the blue and had blindsided him. When he had opened the envelope from the process server he was sure he and his partner were being sued by one of their contractors. That would have been stunning enough. But to see in print Sandy’s name and his name and the word divorce on the same page, when he hadn’t even known there was trouble in paradise, had paralyzed him.

Figuring that it might be a joke or a mistake, he had raced home to talk to Sandy, but she had coldly assured him that it was neither a mistake nor a joke. He had begged her to let him make it up to her—though he hadn’t really understood what he’d done wrong. She had handed him a suitcase, told him she was changing the locks and escorted him to the door.

And he’d stood there. On the front stoop of the brand-new house they were supposed to share. Probably for a half hour. Numb and confused.

After the divorce, he had wished he’d stayed numb. Because when he had learned his wife had kicked him out so she could marry his former partner, he had gotten so angry he’d punched Mac Franklin. That cost him a night in jail.

But even that wasn’t the worst. The worst had been loving somebody who didn’t love him. The worst had been living in the same town when the woman he loved and the partner he admired got engaged, then married. The worst had been looking at her happy pictures in the newspaper and wondering where the hell he had gone wrong. Wondering why she had fallen out of love, and when. Wondering what was wrong with him that she didn’t want him. Going over every second of their two years together that he could remember and coming up empty. Feeling he hadn’t done anything wrong and wishing, almost begging God to let him have done something—even something small—so he would know not to do it again. So he’d have some hope for the future.

But that mythical “thing” he might have done never materialized. He was the victim, the guy who had been wronged, yet he was still the one who had lost everything. And maybe that was the reason the whole deal never really settled itself for him. There was no lesson to be learned except that he wouldn’t ever trust anybody with so much of his life again.

And Isabella—Tia—had already tricked him.

Not intentionally, Drew reminded himself. As she’d told him after they had made love, she’d lost weight and cut her long brown hair immediately after she had graduated from college. It was her first step in trying to get people to see her as more mature, but Drew didn’t know that. Because she didn’t look like the Isabella who had gone off to college, and because she had been introduced as Tia, and because they were so far away from home that he wasn’t thinking about anybody from Calhoun Corners, let alone somebody he hadn’t seen in six years, he had never suspected she was his former neighbor.

The whole situation was a jumble of confusion, but it was a manageable jumble. What wasn’t manageable—or predictable or even something he wanted—was a long-term involvement with a woman. But just because he and Tia were parents, that didn’t necessarily mean they had to be “involved.” If he could endure being married for eight short months, all he had to worry about were the times he dropped off or picked up their child. And as he’d already pointed out to Tia, she lived in Pittsburgh. At best, throughout this marriage they’d see each other on weekends.

Everything would be fine.

He drove down her parents’ tree-lined lane, very much like his own, to the Capriotti horse farm. His house was a white French Colonial, built as a gift to himself for finally succeeding financially the way he had always known he could, but Tia’s parents lived in a redbrick farmhouse that had been updated and renovated several times. Long and regal, it somehow managed to look more like a home than any house Drew had ever seen.

But even as the site comforted him, Drew’s stomach knotted. Ben Capriotti had saved his sanity. After losing his half of the architectural firm to his wife, Drew wasn’t going into architecture again because he was sure that profession was bad luck for him. When he had explained that to Ben, Ben had laughed and agreed to teach Drew everything he needed to know about breeding horses, and getting involved in something so complex hadn’t left Drew time to think about his ex-wife or his ex-partner. Ben had kept his promise and helped Drew every step along the way, and Drew had repaid him by getting his only daughter pregnant.

If he could take one thing back in his life, it would be making love to Tia that night in May. But since he couldn’t, he would at least do the right thing.

He shoved open his truck door and joined Tia on the front porch. Apparently over her anger with him, or maybe because she knew they needed to present a unified front to her parents, she quietly said, “Ready?”

Without hesitation or thought, he took her hand and caught her gaze. Bad move. The combination of those pretty blue eyes and the smoothness of her skin shot arousal through him. But Tia didn’t seem to have the same problem. She didn’t gasp or shiver. Her eyes didn’t darken with desire or even simple awareness. Instead, her expression grew puzzled.

Thanks. That was great for the ego.

He sighed and raised their joined hands. “If we’re going to get away with this lie, there are a couple of things we’ll have to do.”

He tried to ignore the electricity sizzling between their clasped hands, but he couldn’t. Though it had been more than a month since they’d been together, the heat they had generated that night was alive and well and giving him the kinds of thoughts that could get a man arrested in some states, reminding him of something he’d forgotten to even consider. How the hell did he expect to be married to this woman without sleeping with her?

Through sheer force of will. Tia was the only daughter of his mentor, which meant Drew had only one real concern. Making sure he didn’t push Ben Capriotti over the edge of his stress limit. To do that Drew only had to pretend to like Tia. He did not actually have to like her. When it came to common sense and sheer force of will, Drew knew he was the best. There would be no problem with his self-control.

“Holding hands is the easiest way to immediately clue them in that we’re more than friends.”

When Tia’s tongue came out to moisten her lips and she gazed into his eyes for a few seconds too long, Drew almost groaned. Not because the sexy gesture reminded him of just how difficult ignoring her was going to be, but because the lip-moistening demonstrated that she wasn’t nearly as unaffected as he had thought.

Well, whatever. He hadn’t met a woman he couldn’t cause to dislike him. Even Tia had kicked him out of her house the night they’d made love. In a few weeks he could have her absolutely hating him. And he would. Right after they convinced her parents they were crazy in love and getting married.

“Don’t take anything I say in here personally,” he said, then turned and opened the front door, leading her into her parents’ house.

When they entered the foyer, Tia called, “Mom? Dad?”

“In the den, honey,” her mother answered. “Come on back.”

“Okay,” Tia said casually, but Drew’s stomach plummeted. He considered giving himself a minute to calm down, but knew things weren’t going to get any better with the passage of time, so they might as well get this over with.

“Let’s go.”

With a slight tug on Tia’s hand, he led her into her father’s den. Her parents were seated together on the old tan leather sofa, reviewing the records for the farm.

As they entered the den, her mother glanced up. Drew knew Tia had gotten her size and shape from her mother, an average-height brunette with pretty green eyes. But her dark brown hair and blue eyes came from her dad.

“Drew?” Elizabeth Capriotti’s gaze skittered over to Tia, then unerringly honed in on their joined hands. “Tia?”

“Hi, Mom,” Tia said, then—probably because she was as nervous as he was—she unexpectedly blurted, “Drew and I are getting married.”

Her dad put down the computer printout he was holding. Looking totally baffled, he rose. “What did you say?”

“We’re getting married,” Drew said, squeezing Tia’s hand and hoping she got the message to let him handle this. “Tia wasn’t supposed to just drop that bomb on you like that.”

Her dad took two steps toward them. “How exactly would you suggest my daughter…my only daughter…my baby daughter…tell me that she’s about to marry a man who is ten…no, twelve…years older than she is?”

“I know this looks bad,” Tia began, but Drew lightly squeezed her hand again, reminding her to let him be the one to speak. Their whole purpose in getting married was to downplay the problem, and Drew was an expert at that.

“Ben, the news Tia and I have gets worse before it gets better. Since she started the ball rolling by blurting out that we’re getting married, I’m going to put all our cards on the table and tell you she’s pregnant.”

Tia’s dad gasped, stumbled then clutched his chest. Tia cried, “Dad!” snatched her hand back from Drew and rushed to her father.

“Ben!” Elizabeth shouted, jumping from her seat and running to the big mahogany desk to grab her husband’s pills.

But Ben waved Tia away as he turned to call his wife back. “Don’t, Elizabeth. I’m fine. But you two really are getting married,” he said, turning back to Drew and Tia. “And this pregnancy stays a secret until after the election. I’m contending with enough right now without adding the gossip of your shenanigans to the mix. Understood?”

Drew said, “Understood,” as Tia simultaneously said, “I understand.”

Ben shook his head. “No, you don’t understand, Tia. You live in Pittsburgh. You haven’t been reading the paper, seeing how Mark Fegan’s keeping conversation focused on my damn heart condition so Auggie Malloy doesn’t have to deal with real issues—” He waved his hand. “Hell. Forget it. The campaign’s my problem. I’ll handle it.” He pointed a stern finger at Tia and Drew. “But you two get married, and I mean right now.”

With that he returned to the sofa, sat and began going through the bills on the coffee table, dismissing Tia and Drew. Elizabeth hurriedly motioned for Tia and Drew to follow her out of the room.

As she closed the den door she said, “We didn’t even know you were dating.”

“We didn’t date long,” Drew said, silently congratulating himself for his cleverness. He hadn’t lied, but he also hadn’t admitted that they’d had a one-night stand.

“And we are happy,” Tia said.

Knowing that wasn’t at all true, Drew could only guess Tia had said that because it was the one thing her mother wouldn’t argue about. Elizabeth might be upset about her daughter marrying someone older, but she wouldn’t argue with her little girl’s happiness. He gave Tia points for recognizing that and decided that maybe, between the two of them, this wouldn’t be too godawful difficult to pull off, after all.

“Do you think Daddy’s okay?” Tia asked softly.

Elizabeth nodded. “He’s fine. Parents deal with unexpected babies and weddings every day of the week.” She blew her breath out on a long sigh. “It’s the election that’s making him nuts.”

“We’re sorry that this comes at such a bad time,” Tia said.

“When do you plan to get married?”

Drew said, “I thought we’d just get a license and go see a judge…”

Elizabeth’s eyes rounded with sorrow. “No wedding?”

“Sorry, Elizabeth,” Drew said, “but we’re a little pressed for time. As Ben said, we won’t announce that Tia’s pregnant for a few months, but the quicker we get married, the better.”

“I could put something together in two weeks,” Elizabeth insisted. “That would be the first of July. You could get married in the gazebo in the backyard and we could have a small reception under a tent.” She gazed at Drew imploringly. “It wouldn’t be any trouble.”

“Elizabeth—” Drew began.

But Tia interrupted him. “I think that’s a great idea, Mom. A wedding will be something fun for all of us. Maybe give Dad a break from the election for a day. As long as we keep it to a little wedding in the backyard.”

“That’s perfect,” Elizabeth said. “Nothing fancy. Just something small.”

Tia turned to Drew. “Unless you want to help Mom and me make wedding plans, you can go now.”

It took a second before Drew understood she was telling him his work here was done. When he got it, everything inside him melted with relief and he said, “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Elizabeth echoed. “You’re leaving?”

“I’m not much on girlie stuff, Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth looked at Tia. “But you’re staying?”

“To help you plan—”

“All night?” Elizabeth said, but as she spoke her puzzled expression changed to a shrewd-mother smile. “Tia? What’s going on here?”