Dance Away with Me - Susan Elizabeth Phillips Page 0,115
to suck up to you.”
“That’s not true.” It sounded more like a question than a statement. “She . . . We have our values. We . . .” He made a helpless, halfhearted gesture. “I’ve had plenty of chances, but I’ve never once screwed around on Kelly. All these years. I’ve given her everything she could possibly want.”
Ian wouldn’t back off. “Just a wild guess, but did you think of asking her what she wanted or did you only tell her? You’re a bully, Winchester. You’ve bought into the bullshit about your own self-importance. You’re the guy with the money and the connections. But now somebody you care about has pushed back, and you can’t hack it.” Winchester flinched, but Ian wasn’t done. “Man up, dude. Take some fucking responsibility.”
The town’s most prominent citizen collapsed in on himself. “All I want is my wife back. How am I supposed to do that?”
“Hell if I know,” Ian said. “You’ll have to ask Kelly.”
Winchester rose unsteadily from the couch. Without a backward look at either of them, he stumbled out.
And Tess had barely said a word.
“That,” she told Ian, “was awesome.”
He smiled. “More awesomeness awaits.”
“What do you mean?”
He gazed at the baby in her arms. “Wren, do you want to see my tree house?” He bent close to her face, as if he were listening. “Yep. She does.”
And so they climbed to the tree house together, the three of them, Wren in Ian’s arms. Tess sat on the edge, her legs dangling. Ian settled next to her. Wren was all big eyes, fascinated by the play of sunlight through the frail spring leaves beginning to open above her.
Tess braced herself to ask the question that had been tormenting her ever since Ian had left. “Tell me what you found out.”
“None of Bianca’s friends and ex-friends knew any more than we do, so I drove out to Queens. I’d had her things shipped to a storage facility until I figured out what to do with them, and I decided to take another look.”
“You found something.”
He nodded. “Inside an old makeup case from her modeling years. I almost missed it.”
“What was it?”
“The Holy Grail.”
Wren sneezed.
“I found paperwork,” he said. “From a sperm bank.”
It took her a moment to comprehend. “Are you telling me . . . ?”
“Wren is a sperm donor baby.”
Tess’s hand flew to her mouth.
“I took the documents right to my attorney. Everything is legal. For once in her life, Bianca did it all right.”
“Oh, Ian . . .” Her heart stretched so wide in her chest that it squeezed out everything else. Bianca had no family, and Ian’s name was on Wren’s birth certificate. Her child’s eyes sprang open as a tear landed on the baby’s cheek. Tess sniffed and swiped the back of her hand over her own eyes. “Is it really over? Is she really mine?”
He nodded. “You have everything you want. Not only Wren. After last night, I think you have your career back.”
It was true. Tess had safely delivered a healthy baby under difficult circumstances without losing the mother, but was that enough to break through her paralysis, or was she going to keep running away?
Never again. Bianca’s death would always be with her. She couldn’t imagine delivering a child without experiencing that tug of fear. But she’d do it. She’d worked through it last night, and she’d work through it every time. She was a midwife. That was her identity.
A bird fluttered in the branches over her head. She’d have it all. Her career. Her child. The mountain that had become her home, and the town that both embraced and challenged her. Everything except Ian North.
She gazed out at the treetops. “Now we don’t have to stay married.”
He shifted next to her. “There’s no rush, but . . .” He rubbed his hand over his jaw. “I’ve gotten an offer for the schoolhouse.”
She swallowed. Looked straight ahead. “Are you going to sell?”
“I don’t know.”
She made herself say the obvious. “It isn’t as though life here has worked out for you.”
“No, it hasn’t.”
She rose from the edge of the platform. “I need to pick up Savannah at the hospital.”
“The ladder’s steep. Give Wren to me.”
“I can handle her.”
“I know you can, but . . .”
She was already maneuvering down the rungs. At the bottom, she hesitated. He stood above her at the top of the ladder. She needed to say something, and she needed to say it now while she had her clothes on and was thinking