LITMIR.BIZ

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herself with. She’d say the words, Blake would walk away, and she could move on to the next step of the rest of her life.

      With Cole’s support.

      “Cole says you’re crazy.”

      Blake’s words interrupted Annie’s thoughts. Obliterated her confidence in fact. It seemed as if he’d always had the ability to make her doubt herself. It was something she wasn’t crazy about in him.

      Probably the only thing she wasn’t crazy about in him. And it wasn’t even his fault.

      The rest of it—his long absences, his inability to be there when she needed him— she understood. She just hadn’t been able to live with it.

      Or him.

      “My little brother has always had a problem with exaggeration,” she said now.

      “So what’s this about?”

      Right to the point. That was Blake. No “How you been these past two years?” No “You’re looking good.” She knew better than to even hope to get an “It’s good to see you.”

      It wasn’t good.

      For either of them.

      Seeing him hurt. A lot. Far more than she’d expected, and she’d had a glass of wine and a big hug from her best friend, Becky Howard, to prepare herself before she’d set out on tonight’s mission.

      “I’m going to have a baby.”

      The startling words got her firmly back on track. She’d identified her goal, and for the first time in her life she felt absolutely, completely sure about the decision she’d made.

      “Why do I need to know this?” His words were cold; the tone of his voice spoke volumes.

      Blake wasn’t just angry, he was hurting, too. Damn Cole for insisting on this. As big as his heart was, sometimes Annie’s brother just didn’t know when to stop believing in things that could never be.

      “The only way Cole would agree to stop trying to talk me out of this was if I asked you to be the father.”

      THE COOL AIR WAS SUPPOSED to have cleared his mind. But Blake’s thoughts were fuzzy, and there was a very loud humming in his brain.

      “So…you aren’t pregnant?” He could feel a headache coming on.

      “Not yet.”

      There was no reason for him to be relieved at the news. No need to care.

      The cords at the base of his neck loosened just a little, and he tried to think.

      “But you plan to be.”

      “I’m determined to have a child, yes.”

      Blake eyed his ex-wife as well as he could in the darkness. Was Cole right? Had she lost her mind?

      Thoughts of the baby she’d lost surfaced. The child that for four long years, Blake had imagined himself raising. Along with the thoughts came the sharp pain that lived in his chest most of the time. While he’d grown somewhat used to the discomfort, its sting was much worse when he thought about Annie suffering from it, too.

      “You can’t bring back what’s been taken from you, Annie.”

      “I have absolutely no plan to try.” Her words were tough enough. The vigor in her tone gave him a hint of the determination she was holding in check.

      Life should never have done this to her. She didn’t deserve it.

      He was to blame.

      “I don’t want to spend my life alone, Blake. I’m lonely, and I’m missing something important. I want to be a mother, and I believe I can be a good one.”

      “Of course you’d be a good mother.” Blake was scrambling to make sense of all of this—to be a good friend to Cole, and to extricate himself as rapidly as possible. “You more or less became Cole’s mother when you were barely thirteen, and he turned out great.”

      She blinked and looked up at Blake, as if he’d surprised her. Her curly hair was longer than it had been when they were married, longer than it had been when she’d met his flight in San Antonio two years ago.

      Had she expected him to tear her to ribbons? To hate her for choosing to stay with the husband she’d married two years after Blake’s disappearance when he’d been presumed dead, instead of coming back home with him?

      “I’ve had the magic.” Her words were soft, but her gaze was steady as she continued to look him in the eye. He felt as if he’d been kicked when he realized she was speaking of him. “I took the risk and trusted that marrying the love of my life would be enough, and then I crashed so hard I was afraid I wouldn’t ever recover.”

      This was why he couldn’t be around her. Couldn’t even see her. Did she think he didn’t know all this? That he didn’t torture himself with the same knowledge every time he thought about her? Four years of captivity had been a cakewalk compared to the pain he had suffered daily since his return home.

      “And I’ve played it safe, too,” she continued, as if completely unaware of the hell going on inside of him. “After you, I married a man I’d known all my life—one who’d loved me for most of it. I chose security and reliability over passion. And I not only ended up still just as unhappy, but I hurt someone else horribly. I’ll live with that for the rest of my life.”

      They had that in common.

      “I’m not going for strike three, Blake. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have a family of my own.”

      She’d clearly given her future a lot of thought. And she made a good point.

      Her idea might be crazy, but Annie was not.

      “So…will you be the father?” She was good for her word. She’d told Cole she’d pose the question and she had.

      “What do you plan to do when I say no?”

      “I’ve already started looking around.”

      “For a sperm bank?” Was that how these things were done?

      Annie’s head dropped—something that had happened a little too often during their time together. And always when she was suffering from the low self-esteem, the doubts, that had plagued her since her father’s death.

      But what did her father’s suicide have to do with this?

      “I can’t take that chance,” she said, quietly but firmly. And then she looked up. “I’ll have to know the man,” she said adamantly. “I’ll have to know that he’s emotionally strong.”

      Blake could understand. He really could. But… “Annie, you can’t just go up to a man on the street and ask him to give you a baby. In the first place, you have to think of him, too. What role is he going to play? And do you want the father of your child to be someone who’d be willing to father a child and then walk away?”

      The problems with her plan were numerous, coming at him from all directions.

      “Are you planning to use artificial insemination?” he asked before she could respond to his first set of objections. “Because I don’t think you’re the kind of woman to have casual sex with a man and then walk away. And even if you were, you’d have to hope he either had a very understanding significant other or that he was completely unattached. And that he would remain unattached for the length of time it took to get you pregnant. Because your chances of getting pregnant on one try are pretty slim…

      “And what if he does have a wife or partner? What if she decides she wants to have a part in raising his child?”

      Annie shaking her head brought him back to reality. This was none of his business.

      He didn’t care what she did. He hoped she’d be safe. Happy. And that was all.

      “I’ve

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