He stared at her, then laughed. “Right. So tell me. What’s going on?”

She sighed. “I’m not kidding. I’m pregnant.”

He didn’t speak, didn’t react. Instead he just sat there, looking at her. She tried to read his expression, but she couldn’t.

“When?” he said at last.

She wasn’t sure if he was asking when she’d gotten pregnant or when she’d found out. Neither was going to please him.

“I’m about seven weeks along. It must have happened the first night we were together.”

He stood up and very deliberately pushed in the chair. Tension tightened his body and his face. His mouth got pinched, his eyes narrowed.

“Pregnant?” he asked, his voice low and disbelieving. “You’re having a baby?”

She nodded. “I know this is a shock to you—”

“A shock?” He paced to the far counter, then leaned against it, his arm folded across his chest. “A shock? How the fuck did this happen?”

The attack shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did. She gripped the table. “The usual way.”

“We used a condom.”

“I know. I was there.” Something occurred to her. “Are you doubting that this child is yours?”

“Of course not. I don’t think you’ve been sleeping around, if that’s what you’re getting at, but holy hell, did you have to go and get pregnant? Isn’t having Kelly drop into my life enough for one month?”

She’d known he wouldn’t be happy, even though that had been her fantasy. She shouldn’t be surprised he was upset. Neither of them had wanted this. Except after she’d recovered from the shock, she’d found that she liked the idea of a baby—especially Sam’s baby.

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” she said. “I would say we have equal responsibility here.”

He shook his head. “I know. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to blame you. But a baby. Now. I didn’t want…”

His voice trailed off, leaving her to fill in the rest of the sentence. He hadn’t wanted Kelly and he certainly didn’t want a baby? Was that it? Or was it even worse? He didn’t want to tell her he refused to have anything to do with their child?

“I’ll be fine,” she said as she rose. “You don’t have to be involved.”

He frowned. “I’m not going to abandon my responsibilities here.”

His responsibilities. Because of course he didn’t want the baby.

“How long have you known?” he asked.

She was so caught up in feeling rejected that she spoke without thinking. “About five weeks.”

The quality of the stillness in the room changed to something dark and dangerous. Francesca instinctively took a step back.

Sam didn’t move, but that didn’t mean he was still the same caring man she’d grown to love. He seemed to get bigger, angier. Whatever last hope she might have clung to died when his expression of frustration and confusion turned to loathing and contempt.

“It’s not what you think,” she said quickly. “Dammit, Sam, don’t give me that look. I’m not the enemy here. I didn’t tell you because Kelly had been in your life all of two or three weeks. You were still in shock and you didn’t need one more thing to worry about.”

“The words sound right,” he said, his voice low and almost silky. “Tidy, reasonable. You were thinking about my feelings. I really appreciate that.”

“Stop it,” she demanded. “You don’t need to be sarcastic.”

“Then tell me what I need to be. You lied to me. You betrayed me.”

She knew the danger in him thinking that. “I didn’t lie.”

“You withheld the truth. In my book, there’s not much difference.” He glared at her. “You’ve been lying for weeks. I let you in my house, in my life, in my bed. I made love with you. I thought you were different. I thought you weren’t anything like Tanya, but damn if I wasn’t wrong. Looks like I picked another winner.”

The unfairness of the accusation froze her to the bone. “No! That’s not true. I’ve been here for you. I’ve been good to you and to Kelly. I don’t deserve this.”

“What made you finally want to tell me? Do you need money?”

She felt as if he’d slapped her. “How dare you say that to me?”

“I can say anything I damn well please. When I think about all the times I’ve listened to your advice. Like you knew what the hell you were talking about. Like you weren’t in it for yourself.”

He moved toward her, which made her walked backward until she bumped into the stove. He stopped less than a foot from her and loomed over her.

“You’re nothing but a liar, and if you think for one second you can use this against me, you’re wrong. I don’t care what it takes, but you’ll never get a piece of me or my daughter again.”

Horrified didn’t begin to describe what she was feeling. What about their baby? What about her feelings and his? He cared about her—she’d been sure of it. How could that have died so quickly?

“You’re wrong,” she said. “About me, about all of it.”

“Get out.”

He turned and walked out of the kitchen. Francesca stared after him. She didn’t know what to do, and then it didn’t matter because she couldn’t be in this house one second longer. She ran to the foyer, where she found her purse by the front door. After picking it up, she raced outside and vowed never to return.

Kelly carefully held on to the stair railing. Her ankle throbbed, but that wasn’t the reason she couldn’t seem to move. Nothing was right. Maybe nothing would ever be right again.

She’d started to come downstairs to apologize to Sam and Francesca. She’d wanted to make everything right. But instead she’d heard them fighting. It had been bad. Way worse than anything that had happened with Tanya and her boyfriends.

Francesca was pregnant. Kelly had figured out that much, and if Francesca was going to have a baby, then she didn’t need Kelly to be a part of her family. Not when she was going to have a child of her own. And Sam had thrown Francesca out. Which meant they weren’t going to get married. And if Sam found someone else, she might be as horrible as Raoul. He might decide that his new fiancée wouldn’t want a twelve-year-old hanging around, and then he would send her away.

He would send her away, and she didn’t have anywhere else to go.

20

S am didn’t sleep. He spent the hours until midnight pacing downstairs, then around one in the morning he started walking the grounds. By the time the sun came up, he was exhausted, sore, and not completely convinced he’d handled the situation with Francesca as well as he could have.

She’d lied. He was still having trouble reconciling what she’d done with the woman he’d grown to love. If she had been anyone else, he would have dismissed her from his life and never thought of her again. That’s what he’d done with Tanya, with the other women he’d met. Even with his mother, after she’d died. He turned his back on bitter memories and had vowed never to make that mistake again.

Until now he’d succeeded. He’d kept his relationships superficial. No one had gotten under his skin, no one had mattered, and no one had betrayed him.

He’d wanted more of the same with Francesca, but that hadn’t happened. Kelly had shown up, throwing his life the kind of curve designed to show the measure of his character. He figured he’d succeeded as much as he’d failed with her. And any part of his success was due to Francesca.

Damn her hide, but she’d made him look at things he hadn’t wanted to see. He and Kelly might have a long way to go before they had something close to a normal father-daughter relationship, but if not for Francesca, they would still be spending all their time screaming at each other.

Francesca had taught him to listen, to be calm, to look at Kelly’s side of things. Francesca had given him hope that he could learn how to be a good father. She’d made him believe in himself, in her, in them.

He’d fallen in love with her. Only to find out she was just like all the rest of them.

But he couldn’t get his mind around that last thing. That she was like Tanya. Because Tanya had never cared about anyone but herself. And his mother had only been interested in manipulating those around her, using whatever means she could to manage the outcome. He’d known women who were in it for the money, the house, the family business, or the name. So what was Francesca in it for? A baby?

He shook his head. No. He would bet his soul that she hadn’t gotten pregnant on purpose. They’d used protection and it had failed. So he wasn’t angry because of the baby, but because—

He stopped in the middle of the garden, cold, damp with dew, and barely able to see straight. The first fingers of pink light had barely crept over the house. They were going to have a baby.

He’d heard the words when she’d said them, but he hadn’t internalized them. Not until that second. A baby. An infant.

His brain filled with pictures of diapers and blankets, of rocking chairs and car seats. Of a baby smile, a toddler, of a first step, a first word. All the things he’d missed with Kelly. No, not missed. All the things that had been stolen from him.

He clenched his hands into fists and raised his face to the sky. If there was one woman in the world he would have been willing to have a child with, Francesca was the one. He loved her. Had loved her. And she’d betrayed him.

Why had she kept it a secret? Five weeks. Not a couple of days or even one week. Five. She’d made love with him, knowing she carried his child. She’d laughed with him, smiled at him, held him close, all the while living a lie.

How could he reconcile what he wanted with what he knew?

There weren’t any answers. At least not here in the garden. Tired beyond words, he headed for the house and walked into the kitchen. Maybe a couple hours of sleep would make things more clear. Maybe he would wake up and find out this was all just a bad dream and that it was still okay to trust and give his heart.

Didn’t anybody on the planet carry cash anymore? Kelly wondered angrily as she tried yet another key in the door of Security International. The third one worked, the lock giving way with a loud click.

It was nearly six-thirty on Friday morning. She figured she had a couple of hours before office staff started showing up, but she wasn’t taking any chances. Not when there was so much on the line.

Sam had been up all night. She knew because she kept checking his room. Finally, just after dawn, she’d heard him go into his room. He’d been snoring when she left fifteen minutes later.

She really hated that she’d had to come to the office first, but when she’d gone through his wallet around midnight, she’d found all of twenty dollars. Not nearly enough to allow her to run away and not ever be found. Which meant she needed more cash, and she knew only one place to get it.

After carefully closing and locking the front door behind her, she made her way to Sam’s office. There she went through the key ritual again until she found the one that unlocked his desk. She pulled out the key that would open the cabinet holding the petty cash box and crept down the hall.

She didn’t want to steal. Not really. But what choice did she have? It wasn’t like she had her own credit card anymore. And not having a credit card had meant having to look up the bus routes and then take the right one to get her to the office. She’d lost a lot of time. But she had a plan. Once she had the money, she would take a bus to San Francisco. She figured a bus was really safe because Sam would assume she was taking a plane. While he was busy checking first-class reservations, she would disappear into the city.

She walked into the storeroom and opened the cabinet. She was in the process of counting out the bills when a hand dropped onto her shoulder. She screamed and the money went flying. When she turned, she found her great-grandfather standing right behind her.