Evie's Bombshell - By Amy Andrews Page 0,28
with state secrets instead of a bun in the oven. ‘You’re not very approachable, Finn.’
He looked at her for a long moment. ‘I don’t know how to be a father.’
Evie sucked in a breath at the bleakness in his blue eyes. He suddenly looked middle-aged. ‘You think I know how to be a mother?’ she asked. ‘My mother was an absent alcoholic. Not exactly a stellar role model.’
Finn snorted. She had no idea. Her poor-little-rich-girl upbringing had been a walk in the park compared to his. ‘I think you’ll figure it out.’
‘I think you will, too,’ she said, feeling suddenly desperate to connect with him. To make him understand that she knew it was daunting. But they could do it.
Finn’s pager beeped and he was grateful for the distraction as he absently reached for it and checked the message on the screen. It was Khalid.
‘I have to go,’ he said.
He needed to think. To get away. Life events had robbed him of a lot of choices and now even the choice not to burden some poor child with his emotionally barren existence had been snatched away.
‘Okay.’ She nodded, pushing down the well of emotion that was threatening as she watched him turn away from her.
He needed time and she had to give him that. It had taken her months to adjust and accept and she wasn’t Finn. A man who didn’t express emotion well and never let anyone close.
She had to give him space to come to terms with it.
So she sat there like a dummy as he walked out the door, despite how very, very much she wanted to call him back.
CHAPTER FIVE
FINN WOKE UP at nine on Saturday morning, his head throbbing from one too many hits of his very expensive malt whisky the previous night.
It had been a good while since he’d overdone the top-shelf stuff. For years he’d used it to dull the physical pain from his injuries but since his recovery and his move to Beach Haven he’d only ever indulged in the odd beer or two.
He’d forgotten how it could feel like a mule had kicked you in the head the next day. Which might actually be worth it if it had come with some sort of clarity.
It hadn’t.
Just a thumping headache and the very real feeling that he’d woken up in hell.
He stared at the ceiling as the same three words from last night repeated in his head—Evie is pregnant. Each word pounded like a battering ram against the fortified shell surrounding his heart with a resounding boom.
Evie. Boom! Is. Boom! Pregnant. Boom!
He was going to be a father. Some tiny little defenceless human being with his DNA was going to make its arrival in four short months. He was going to be Daddy.
Whether he liked it or not.
And it scared the hell out of him. Being a parent—a good parent—required things life just hadn’t equipped him with. Like compassion, empathy, love.
There’d been so little love in his life. From the moment his mother had abandoned him and Isaac to a childhood in institutions to his regimented life in the army, ruled by discipline and authority, love had been non-existent. Sure, he’d loved and protected Isaac and Isaac had loved him, but it had been a very lonely island in a vast sea of indifference.
Add to that the slow fossilising of his emotions to deal with the horror and injuries witnessed in far-flung battlefields and the death knell to any errant tendrils of love and tenderness that might still have existed when Isaac had died in his arms and the product was the man he was today.
Ten years since that horrifying day and still he felt numb. Blank. Barren.
Emotionally void.
He hadn’t loved Lydia, his brother’s widow, with whom he’d had a totally messed up affair and who had needed him to love her no matter how screwed up it had been at the time.
He operated with the cold, clinical precision of a robot. Always seeing the part, never seeing the whole. Totally focussed. Never allowing himself to think about the person whose heart he held in his hands or the love that heart was capable of. Just doing the job. And doing it damn well.
He hadn’t felt anything for any of the women he’d slept with. They had just been pleasant distractions. Something different to take to bed instead of a bottle of Scotch. A momentary diversion.
Apart from Evie. Whom he’d pushed and pushed and pushed away and who knew what he was