tone. She wanted so badly to be natural, to share the enthusiasm she was feeling...
“Come in.” He pushed back from the desk and indicated the wingback chair a few feet across from it. “What is it?”
Settling into the chair, Sloan knew her chance to change the cool tide of the conversation had come. All she had to do was put warmth into her abrupt tone, let her feelings show...
But it was as if she had lost voluntary control of her actions. She didn’t tease, she didn’t torment, she didn’t leave the chair and force herself into his lap, curling her arms around his neck, as she longed to do. She blurted her information almost brusquely.
“You’re getting your part of the bargain, Wes. I’m pregnant.”
A barrage of emotions flashed through his eyes in less than seconds—then they were guarded, opaque. His dark lashes swept over them, and Sloan suddenly felt as if she were facing a stranger.
“Are you sure?” His brows were knitting into a frown. “I didn’t think it was possible to know so quickly—”
“It isn’t quickly,” Sloan interrupted, feeling a flush steal over her face. Absurd that she could still blush in front of him, after all they had shared. But what she had to say went back to Belgium, a time when she would have doubted they could have even come to this strange, touching-but-not-touching existence. Her own lashes fell over her eyes. “I conceived on our...honeymoon.” She didn’t mean it to sound bitter, she really didn’t—but it did.
Wes was silent for a long time. So long that she began to think he didn’t care anymore, that his request of a week ago had merely been another way to taunt her...But no, she didn’t believe that; Wes had been too sincere when they did speak. He was honest with her. He did love her; she knew that and clung to it—even as she knew through his admission that it would take time for him to trust her.
She couldn’t know that he was silent because he was busy berating himself. A child, their child, and she was offering the wonderful information as part of a “bargain.” Because of him. Because he had come back so determined to keep her, and weld her to him, that he had forced her to do so. What a damned idiot he had been—it was almost as if fate laughed at him. If he had said nothing...if he hadn’t come upon her like a bear...she might be coming to him differently now. She might have come into the room full of the joy and enthusiasm...He never needed to force her into a bargain...she had been pregnant with his child at the time...
“Are you sure?” he asked huskily.
“Positive,” she answered, still afraid to risk a meeting with those opaque eyes again. But he was going to force the issue.
“Sloan, look at me.”
She did so finally, hands clasped tightly on her lap, her posture rigid with tension.
“Are you happy?” he asked softly.
Her nod was jerky; she could feel tears hovering behind her eyes and bit down hard on her inner lip to prevent them. “Are you?” she managed to ask.
He stood with an easy movement and made his way around the desk, his eyes never leaving hers. And then the opaqueness was gone; he was kneeling down beside her, taking her quivering hands into his. She glanced at him, suddenly feeling the tears drip down her face as he finally replied, “I’m not happy, my love, I’m ecstatic. That is, if you are.”
Sloan nodded as he touched her cheeks, brushing away the dampness with a gentle finger.
“Why are you crying?” he demanded gently.
Sloan shook her head; she couldn’t explain. “Because I’m pregnant, I guess,” she told him, star sapphires seeming to gleam in eyes that were wide and liquid. She didn’t realize that she now looked to him with ardent appeal—and an aching need. “Women are supposed to be highly emotional at this time, didn’t you know?”
He chuckled. “So I’ve heard.” His voice went very low in answer to her appeal. “I don’t mind ‘emotional’ at all, just as long as you are happy beneath it. I love you, Sloan.”
Suddenly she felt as if the barriers were gone—she hadn’t erased mistrust, but she was comfortable in the belief that Wes was trying, that his love was great enough to eradicate the mistakes they had both made in the past.
“I love you, Wes,” she echoed, eyes beseeching that he believe her. She was always so afraid to