LITMIR.BIZ

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to the three million-dollar payments she’d received for her silence—after his father died. Not to mention that he’d already been providing for her to have quite a healthy living while he was still alive. Emerson couldn’t have been more than twelve at the time. Julian had barely been ten. Garrett had been fifteen and Landon eighteen.

      If their father hadn’t died, Emerson would be walking the streets without the Gage brothers ever knowing he existed.

      Maybe they should have tried to contact him. Maybe Emerson resented that, too. But just seeing the grief on their mother’s face had been enough to make them want to keep him as far away from the family as they could.

      Maybe, all hell would break loose when Mother once again realized they were dealing with him. But Landon had said that he’d take care of Mother. Enough time had passed that hopefully she’d look beyond her dead husband’s transgressions at this point. And their mother was shrewd when it came to business, too.

      “Will you meet with me and my brothers to discuss our business proposition? We really need your help.”

      Impatient, Garrett waited for Emerson’s answer, but his half brother only glared at him as he slowly headed over to resume his place behind his desk.

      Emerson was more rugged than all his brothers, and even with his well-groomed appearance in that gray suit, there was an air of isolation around his tall figure that made Garrett somehow relate to him. He knew that Emerson was somewhere between Julian and Garrett in age, so that put him around twenty-eight or twenty-nine. His hair was dark as Garrett’s, his face as square and tan, but personality-wise, he seemed to be a wild card.

      “I’ll give you a half hour,” Emerson finally conceded, his expression unreadable as he dropped into his chair and powered on his computer. “But not today. I have too much to do.”

      “Fine,” he agreed. “Tomorrow then. Be at the Daily at nine a.m.”

      “No can do. I’m afraid I can only do it Friday.”

      Friday wasn’t ideal. It was three days from now and only a day before the wedding. But Garrett ground his molars, shut the hell up and took the offer. Something in Emerson’s angry expression when he looked up and gestured at the door to signal the conservation was over told Garrett this offer was the best he’d get from him.

      “Don’t be late,” Garrett growled as he left.

      * * *

      “Kate, I’m calling and calling and no answer, then I come to get the things for the shower and they’re not even baked! What is wrong with you? It’s ten in the morning and we have work to do. This is our last gig before we’re swept away with all this wedding stuff. You didn’t talk to anyone all weekend. What’s the matter? It’s Tuesday. A new day awaits!”

      Kate groaned when a chirpy Beth yanked open her bedroom curtains and a shaft of sunlight sliced between Kate’s eyelids. She waved a weak hand in the air and rolled onto her stomach.

      “Go away, Beth.”

      “No, I’m not going away. You, my sleepy little chef, will stand up, take a shower and—”

      “I’m pregnant,” Kate groaned.

      “—get to work. What did you just say?”

      Kate covered her face with the pillow and screamed into its feathery depths while kicking off the sheets tangled around her ankles. “I’m pregnant. God! I’m such a fool. Fool, fool, fool.”

      “You’re pregnant as in...you’re with child?”

      Kate sat up and cracked open her puffy eyes. “Three tests, Beth. Three. And they all agree on the fact that I’m preggo. What am I going to do?”

      Sighing in misery, she covered her face with her hands, refusing to answer the string of startled, quick-fire questions Beth bombarded her with next. “Well, whose is it? When did this happen? Why didn’t you tell me? When did you find out, damn it? Are you sure?”

      Oh, Beth. She was like a bright little shooting star today—a bright little shooting star in Kate’s dark gray world.

      Was Kate sure? Yes, she was sure. The test stick couldn’t get any pinker! The two lines, almost neon in their brightness, had been clear enough to spin Kate into a whirlwind of despair all through the night.

      While miserably pondering what to do, Kate heard Beth shuffle around the room, no doubt in search of the pregnancy tests. Beth was big on evidence and that sort of thing. This came from being married to a douche bag before she’d fallen in love with Landon.

      When her friend couldn’t seem to find them, Kate muttered, “They’re in the trash, Beth.”

      “Oh.”

      Beth disappeared into the bathroom. Kate glumly wondered what Garrett would do when he eventually found out she was carrying his baby. She remembered how handsome he’d looked two Sundays ago at brunch. He had been thoughtful and dark as sin, and staring at her so intently and so intimately, Kate had barely been able to eat anything. She’d felt eaten by him. He’d stood to follow her when she’d gone to pretend to fill her plate at the buffet, and she’d felt his hand at the small of her back. “You all right?” he’d murmured.

      “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

      “You’ve been so busy with work, I keep wondering if you’re avoiding me.”

      “I’m sorry. We can talk at the rehearsal dinner...that is, if you don’t...if you’re not bringing...”

      “I won’t bring anyone if you won’t,” he said, staring at her intently.

      “I won’t,” she assured him.

      “Then I won’t,” he said back.

      And oh, how she wished she had the courage to say she was sorry for what she’d said to him that day in her apartment, but the continued talk she heard from Molly and Beth regarding the Clarks and Gage wedding was driving her insane with jealousy and anger.

      It killed her. How could he? How dare he tell her he wanted her in his bed while he was planning his brilliant and very convenient wedding? The desire that had whipped them up like tornadoes had now dropped them hard on land, and the whirlwind and the emotions in the air had been reduced to nothing.

      Nothing but a one-night stand, that’s what it had been.

      But of course, good ol’ Murphy’s law had come for a visit and made sure Kate got pregnant.

      And now they were going to have a child together.

      “Yes. You’re pregnant,” Beth agreed when she came back out of the bathroom.

      A silence settled bleakly in the room.

      You’re pregnant....

      Her chest gripped with yearning. Along with the inexplicable fear of dying alone, without a family or anyone to love her, Kate had harbored another kind of fear for years. It was one of those little fears that took root in you and you never really knew why you had them—only that you did.

      She’d feared she’d prove infertile when she grew up, and that she’d never be able to have the family she’d always longed for. She’d imagined, on her best days, that if she ever got pregnant, the thrill she’d feel would obliterate anything else.

      Now, maybe a little kernel of thrill had taken up residence somewhere, in some quiet, motherly part of her, but it was too hidden to recognize.

      Kate had proven fertile, yes. Physically capable of having a family, yes.

      But she had conceived this baby with Garrett Gage.

      And her considerable pride already smarted like hell since she knew she would have to tell him. Especially after this past month, when they’d both pretended at the family Sunday brunches that they were still just friends.

      Kate saw that Beth had her cell phone in her hand

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