In fact, the whole house looked cozy, he thought, giving the room a quick going over. It had stood there for centuries and the interior of the farmhouse had the softly shabby look that spoke not of neglect, but comfort. Familiarity.
He stood over her. “You’re taking shots at me. I get that. My point, though, was that a lot of people leave messages for me. It’s not that surprising that yours got lost or misdirected or—” He threw his hands up in frustration.
“And how many of those messages were from women telling you they’re pregnant?” She glared up at him with sparks flashing in her eyes. “Because if there’s a line of us, you can tell me now, Jefferson. I won’t be part of your herd. And my child won’t be one of dozens of your bastards.”
“Stop it.” He leaned down, planting both hands on the arms of the chair, caging her neatly. The scent of her drifted to him and he inhaled it deeply. God, he’d missed her more than he’d wanted to admit, even to himself. Now, her eyes were wild with rage, but there was hurt there, too, and that bothered him.
“There’s no one else. I don’t have any other children. I didn’t know about your pregnancy. If I had, I would have been here. Would have talked to you. Done—”
“What?” she asked, a little less battle-ready now. “What would you have done?”
“I don’t know. Something.”
She looked up into his eyes for a long second or two, then finally nodded. “I believe you. You didn’t get the messages. You didn’t know.”
“Thanks for that, anyway.” He pushed up and off the chair and moved away from her.
He was going to be a father. A hard thing for a man to consider. To accept. There was anticipation inside him, even excitement. But there was also uncertainty. He had to make plans. They had to make plans. Hell, he didn’t even know where to start.
“Now I know how Justice felt,” he mumbled.
“Justice?”
“My brother. The one on the ranch.” He glanced at her and gave her a wry smile. “His wife, Maggie, didn’t tell him they’d had a son together until Jonas was six months old.”
“Why not?”
“Because she thought Justice wouldn’t believe her.” To stop her from asking why again, he said, “It’s a long story. The point is, at the time, I thought Justice overreacted to what Maggie had done. He was furious with her and I thought he should just get over it, deal with the new reality. But now I get it.”
“Is that right? So now you’re furious, are you? Well, join the club.”
“No.” He laughed out loud, enjoying her mercurial nature. Had there ever been another woman like her? Smiling one minute and fierce the next. She was a tangled web of emotions that a man had to be crazy to want to explore. Well, sign him up to be committed. “I’m not furious. Just…wondering where the hell we go from here, that’s all.”
“Well then, when you’re finished doing your wondering, you know where to find me, don’t you?” She stood up out of the chair and headed for the bank of windows overlooking the front yard.
“Maura, I’m not leaving until we settle this.”
“I don’t want you here.”
“Too bad.” She could push him away all she liked, he was going nowhere until he was good and ready. And that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. “I’m staying until we figure this out.”
“There’s nothing to figure out.” She looked at him briefly over her shoulder before turning her face back to the window and the view beyond. “I’m pregnant. You’re not. Go home.”
“No.”
She lifted one hand and laid her palm on the rain-streaked pane. “Tell your movie people they’ll have no more trouble from me or the village. I’ll see to it.”
“Thanks. That takes care of one problem.”
She stiffened. “I’m not a problem, and neither is my child.”
“I didn’t say that, either.” God, she was a minefield and he was walking through it blindfolded.
“You might as well have. It’s in your mind. Your heart.”
“So you read minds now, too?”
“Yours is easy enough,” she told him.
He caught her reflection in the glass and hated that her eyes were shining with unshed tears. He realized he’d never seen Maura cry and he damned well didn’t care for the fact that he was behind those tears now.
“Go away,” she said softly. “Please.”
Jefferson heard the click of nails on wood, so wasn’t surprised when her huge black dog entered the room and walked toward her. Automatically, she dropped one hand to the dog’s head and stroked her fingers through its fur. The two of them looked like a painting together.
At the moment, Jefferson thought, there was no place for him there. Maura had drawn a line to close him out. Maybe he couldn’t blame her.
That didn’t mean he was going to let this go, though, and she’d better get used to that idea real fast. But for now, he’d leave, gather his forces and come back when he had things settled in his mind. He knew what needed to be done. From the moment he first heard about the baby, he’d known.
But he needed time to work out the details.
Then he’d be back and Maura Donohue would see that a King never walked away from his responsibilities.
With that thought in mind, he turned to leave, as she’d asked him to. Before he walked out of the room, though, he promised, “This isn’t over, Maura.”
Chapter Seven
A few hours later, Cara asked, “Then what did he do?”
“He left.” Maura lifted a week-old lamb, cradled it against her chest, then held a baby bottle out for it. Instantly, the tiny, black-and-white creature latched on to the rubber nipple and began tugging at it. Maura smiled even as she tried to ignore her sister’s interrogation.
Naturally, Cara wouldn’t leave the thing alone even when Maura insisted she didn’t want to speak about it. The only thing she could do now was hope to finish the conversation as quickly as possible.
“He just left? He didn’t propose?”
Maura laughed at that notion, more to cover up her own disappointment than anything else. Until that very afternoon, she’d had dreams. Fantasies you might say, during the weeks when she was trying so futilely to get hold of the Great One himself. She’d imagined him going down on bended knee, here in this very barn. She’d pictured him proposing and, in her frustration with his ignoring her or so she’d thought, she’d pictured herself telling him no. After all, he’d been ignoring her for months, so she’d imagined the stunned surprise on his face as she told him what he could do with his belated proposal.