In Name Only (Pine Falls #2) - Jennifer Peel Page 0,7
couldn’t hold off reality any longer. I padded across the house toward the garage entrance. There I found Brock impatiently waiting for me in his Audi SUV. His look of exasperation had my eyes tearing up. What had happened to the gentleman who always stood ready to open my doors? Or the man who had held my hair while I vomited into the toilet when I was away at school and sick with the stomach flu? It hadn’t mattered that we’d never had a romantic relationship. He had been my best friend—always the first one to call on my birthday and bring me my favorite spiced cupcakes. The annoyed man staring at me now, though, was not my Brock. His former self would have had words with the man who waited impatiently in the car for his wife to come out. Was he going to start honking at me next? If he did, he was going to find himself waiting for forever.
Brock didn’t even wait for me to buckle my seat belt before he started backing out of the garage.
“You don’t look good,” Brock grumbled.
I leaned my head against the cool passenger seat window and stared out at the passing neighborhood, not really focusing on anything except trying not to vomit. “Thank you,” I growled.
“You know what I mean,” he replied, the bite in his tone obviously reined in.
“I’m happy not to go if you’re worried I’ll embarrass you.”
“Damn it, Dani, you know that’s not what I’m worried about.”
“Don’t swear at me.” I did a terrible job of hiding the emotion in my voice. I still wasn’t used to the callous way he treated me, and I hated that I couldn’t hide my vulnerable state from him.
After several seconds, he let out a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry,” he reluctantly offered. “I shouldn’t swear at you.” He paused. “I’m worried we won’t be able to keep your . . . your state a secret much longer.”
State? I wasn’t Montana. I was pregnant. Which did make me worry, but for many other reasons. Thoughts like, What if I ran away to another country and changed my name? started creeping in. Was that even a possibility? How far was John Holland’s reach? More than likely, farther than I could imagine. I raised my head off the glass, feeling defeated, and curled into my seat. “You’ve been back long enough . . . well, long enough for us to be pregnant.” How I wished it was us. “Maybe we should start—”
“If we tell people now, they’ll know it happened before we got married.”
If I weren’t so sick and tired, I would have laughed. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate his traditional views on the subject, but the brilliant doctor knew better than anyone how gestation worked. “Even if we fudge the due date some, there will be no hiding that,” I reminded him. The silver lining in all of this, if you could even call it that, was that besides Brock being the closest genetic match possible to Brant, he had come home only ten days after the, uh, event I regretted every minute since it had happened. That is not to say I regretted my child. I never would.
Brock stewed on that while he stretched his neck from side to side.
While he ruminated, I thought back to the day of his return. At his request, I’d flown to Washington, DC with his family to welcome him home. He was torn and battered, but despite his injuries, he hobbled straight to me as soon as he came off the plane. Not to his mother, father, or brother. Me. We fell into each other’s arms. He held on to me for dear life. Our tears wetted each other’s cheeks, and his salty kisses healed my soul. My other half had returned.
Brock never left my side for the first few days. As wonderful as that was, my conscience began to nag me, even before I knew I was pregnant. It only got worse when he started talking about our future. It caught me off guard. We had never discussed our lives in terms of us being a couple. When he had returned, though, he’d just assumed we would be. His harrowing experience had him seeing life differently. And though I wanted nothing more than to be with Brock in every way, I knew I had to tell him what had happened between Brant and me. Brant and I both knew we had to, but we didn’t