LITMIR.BIZ

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her voice and drew him to his knees at her side. He wrapped his arms around her, elbowing the plate out of his way. “I never meant what you heard. I was afraid I’d hurt you, but if I could take it back, I would.” He pressed his lips to her forehead, breathing in her sexy, clean scent, sliding his mouth over her lustrous hair. “I don’t talk like this. I’ve never let anyone mean so much to me that I can’t walk away, but, Sophie, I’m trying to walk toward you, if you’ll just let me.”

      She dashed tears from her eyes and pried her damp hair away from her cheeks. She looked weary down to the fine bones of her strained face.

      He finally understood her fear. She was trying to protect herself and their child, and she believed he’d betrayed her.

      “You’re worth whatever I have to do,” he said.

      Her mouth was straight and thin, and the loss of joy she’d worn back in that orchard wounded him. “I’ve never trusted anyone who lied to me the first time.”

      He stroked her shoulder and then passed her the glass of milk. “I won’t hide anything from you again.”

      “Good.” She looked into the glass as if she was reading a murky crystal ball and then set it down. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

      Immediately he rose, his hands clenched. He hated feeling helpless. “What can I do?”

      “Wait here and don’t bust into the bathroom to help.”

      He nodded as she stood, growing paler by the second. All the life in this small house seemed to follow her when she left the kitchen.

      Mindful of his promise to stay out, he washed their dishes. He was drying the last fork when Ethan Calvert knocked briefly and entered the house.

      “Soph?”

      “Back there.” Ian assumed she didn’t want her father’s help either. “You should probably wait.”

      Ethan searched him suspiciously. “What’d you do now?”

      He couldn’t blame the man. “She’s in the bathroom. Morning sickness.”

      Ethan grabbed the back of the nearest chair. “Let me promise again I will kill you if you hurt my daughter. And if you get yourself killed and leave her stranded with a child, I’m still coming after you.”

      Ian tried not to laugh. Ethan was serious, and Sophie would be better off if he and her father got along. “I was trying to take care of her when I married her.”

      “I wouldn’t say that too loudly.” Ethan glanced over his shoulder. “She’s pissed off with you for doing right by her.”

      “I know.”

      “Doing the right thing isn’t enough.” Ethan released the chair. Out of habit, Ian kept an eye on his restless, angry hands. “My daughter deserves better.”

      “I know.” And he’d begged forgiveness in every humiliating way he could think of. Ian wanted to ask Ethan what made Sophie so unwilling to offer a second chance. Just in time, he remembered Sophie was his wife, not a subject who’d hired him to protect her. Grilling her father about her personality wasn’t permissible. “I’m serious about our marriage and this baby.”

      “I remember what her mother’s and my divorce did to her, and I don’t want her to feel responsible for creating a long-distance relationship between her child and you if she cared enough to marry you in the first place.” Ethan came around the table, taking the dish towel from Ian’s hand. “But I’ll be watching you, and I’m not forgiving like Sophie.”

      Forgiving? Sophie? Not even her father knew her. “You have nothing to worry about, sir.”

      “Why are you worried, Dad?”

      Ian turned, and Ethan jumped guiltily.

      “Dad, were you threatening my husband?”

      “Absolutely,” Ethan said.

      She rolled her eyes. Her smile trembled in a pale face, but she met Ian’s gaze with a hint of her old joy. “He’s probably serious.”

      “I assume he is.”

      She went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of water. “I’ve held enough of a grudge for both of us, Dad.”

      Ethan moved past Ian to put his arm around her. “Take the time to figure out what you feel for him.”

      She wrenched the cap off the bottle and stared at Ian as she sipped. He felt like a patient she suspected of malingering. Turning, she rubbed her hand across her belly, provoking a surge of possessiveness that startled him. “Anger is no tool for starting a family.”

      Ian bit the inside of his cheek. He could have pointed out her mistaken assumptions about his motives. But with both Calverts staring at him as if he’d stolen a family heirloom, it seemed smarter to just shut up.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      A MONTH LATER Sophie waited while Gran unlocked the small cabin she and Ian were to share on the grounds of The Mom’s Place. A less anxious woman might have called the cabin her home, but Sophie felt like running every time she looked at the moving van they’d rented. Their stuff intermingled in there as if they were any normal married couple.

      And Gran was no help with her delight in the show. “Your husband’s no coward.”

      With a sense of foreboding, Sophie followed her glance along the gravel driveway, which was overrun by unruly weeds. Ian carried a box bulging with dishes around the van just in time to meet a throng of pregnant women laughing together on their morning stroll up Bardill’s Ridge. As they parted to walk around him, their voices floated on the light breeze, and Ian froze. He’d never wavered since that day at her father’s house, but the women, with their rounded bellies, surging hormones and burgeoning life, turned him to stone.

      “You have to give him points for courage,” Gran said.

      “Because he’s terrified?” A deep flood of relief actually thinned Sophie’s voice. Ian’s postreconciliation conviction had begun to rub her the wrong way, as if she was slacking because she couldn’t stop worrying about their future.

      “Because he agreed to take this cabin, anyway. Living up here is scary stuff for an anxious father-to-be.”

      Sophie could afford to laugh since Ian’s look of near panic made her feel less alone. “Gran, he makes his living walking in front of bullets.”

      “He’s never had to raise any of those bullets to be responsible citizens.” Gran unlocked the door and ushered her inside. “How did this happen to you, anyway? I assume you know about the birds and the bees?”

      As far as Sophie could tell, they’d been rough with a condom in their haste. Gran wouldn’t want to hear about that, and it wasn’t information she felt comfortable sharing. “A mistake,” she said. “Are you sure you won’t need this place for a guest?”

      “Let me think…reserve a cabin for a possible guest, or give it to my new partner, who’s willing to live on site with our patients—or patrons, as the accountant calls them.” Gran switched on a light in the cabin’s entrance. “I say welcome home.”

      Behind them, Ian stumbled over the threshold. Sophie caught the sides of the box to steady him.

      “Everyone in this place is…” He broke off, looking from her to Gran as if one of them might call on her dad and his power tools.

      “Pregnant?” Sophie said. “That’s the point. It’s a retreat for women whose husbands have gone away or women who need a break.”

      “Or want to be pampered,” Gran said. “Or for the girls who have no other place to go.”

      “I saw a group of teenage girls collecting leaves down by the bridge. I couldn’t believe they were old enough to date, much less have children.”

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