“You aren’t pregnant. You’re lying. You just don’t want me to marry her.”
She threw up her hands. “Are you kidding me? Why is it you take her side over me every time and on everything? She tells you she’s pregnant and you believe her. I tell you I’m pregnant and you call me a liar.”
She grabbed his hand and marched him straight through her bedroom into her bathroom. “You want proof. Fine.”
She opened the drawer and pulled out one of the pregnancy tests. She pulled down her pants, sat on the toilet, and peed on the stick.
“Marti, for God’s sake. This is ridiculous.”
She capped the stick, put it on the counter, wiped, and flushed the toilet. She pulled up her pants, faced him, glaring.
She took out the other three tests she’d already taken over the last few days and held them up to him.
“Sometimes we need to be reminded good things can happen, even when we’re in the worst of circumstances.”
She put the first test down on the counter.
“Sometimes we need to be reminded even when there is death, life brings us hope.”
She put another test on the counter.
“Sometimes we need to be reminded when someone makes us feel like we’re worthless, another can make us feel like a god.”
She put the test on the counter. She pointed to the test she’d just taken.
“Sometimes we are reminded people are willing to tell the truth and back it up, no matter what the cost.”
He stared at all the tests. They all had two lines indicating she was pregnant. Beyond stunned, he had no words. He’d called her a liar to her face.
He’d put that hurt look on her face again.
“Don’t worry, Cameron. She was pregnant first, so you just go ahead and marry her. Your child with her will have the full time father it deserves. My baby will be just fine having a part-time dad, because he’ll have a mother who wants him and loves him. Shelly doesn’t want to be a mother. You know it, and I know it.”
She took a steadying breath. “You wanted me to prove I’m pregnant and I have. I wouldn’t lie to you. I thought you’d know that much about me. Now, I see just how little you really do know about me, and it makes me sad. How can you love me when you don’t even know me? The answer is you don’t.”
She put her last pregnancy test box on the counter.
“Why don’t you make her prove it? In all this time, you never once thought to make her take a test you can pick up at the drugstore.”
She turned and left the room, grabbing her purse from her bed and left the house.
Cameron, rooted to the floor, stood in the bathroom staring at all the pregnancy tests when he heard her car engine rev up and she drove away. Her words echoed in his mind. She thought he didn’t love her. He’d called her a liar. She didn’t want him to marry her. She thought she came second because Shelly had gotten pregnant first.
She doesn’t think I love her.
It kept ringing in his mind. She doesn’t think I love her.
She was gone and he didn’t know if she’d be back. He didn’t even know where she would go. He didn’t know how he’d find her.
She was having his baby and he didn’t know her last name.
Chapter Forty
* * *
JENNA MARCHED INTO Cameron’s office to demand some answers for why the president of the company had canceled all his appointments, wasn’t taking any calls, and had essentially locked himself in his office. She wanted to yell, but when she saw him, she couldn’t. The devastated look on his face and the desolation in his eyes stopped her cold.
“Cameron? What happened?”
“She’s pregnant.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Not Shelly, Marti.”
“Yes, I know.”
He waited for her to explain.
“Who eats apple pie with chocolate sauce, whip cream, and olives? You’re an idiot.”
“That’s what you and Elizabeth meant yesterday. It was right in front of my face, and I didn’t even see it.”
“Shelly has been right in front of your face, is she pregnant?”
“She swears she is. She showed me the lab report.”
Jenna waved away that last statement. “Those things can be faked.”
“She goes to the appointments. She says all the right things.” He rubbed the back of his neck.
“Marti obviously told you she’s pregnant and you believed her.”
“I called her a liar, told her she was only saying it so I wouldn’t marry Shelly, and