The Pregnancy Secret

She could feel her heart begin a familiar and hard tattoo at all that had once meant, and at all she knew about this man, the delicious intimacies that only a wife could know.

That he had ticklish toes, and loved the smell of lemons, and that if you kissed that little groove behind his ear, he was putty—

Jessica made herself stop, annoyed that she had gone there so swiftly. With everything between them, how was it she could feel this when she saw him? As if she had made the slow, chugging climb up the roller coaster and was now poised at the very summit, waiting to plunge down?

With everything between them, it felt like a betrayal of herself that she could feel such a deep and abiding hunger for the familiar feeling of his arms around her, for the scrape of his cheek across her own, for his breath in her ear, for the gentle savagery of his lips claiming her lips and his body claiming her body.

Her husband.

She felt weak. Where was her newfound sense of herself when she needed it most? Where was her fledgling self-respect? Where was her feeling that her life was working, and that she could have dreams she had set aside when Kade had walked away from her?

Jessica had discovered she could be responsible for her own dreams. It was really much easier without the complications of a man! In fact, she had decided the things she was dreaming would be so much more attainable without a man, especially one like him, who was just a little too sure that he knew the right answers for everybody.

Jessica was certain Kade would not approve of the secret she held inside herself. It was a secret that gave her pure joy, just as once an ultrasound picture tucked in a pocket close to her heart had. She had made a decision to adopt a baby.

It was at the very initial stages, little more than a thought, but she wanted things between her and Kade finalized before she even started the application process. She reminded herself that she needed to be strong for this meeting with Kade, and she despised the unexpected weakness of desire.

She’d rehearsed for a week before she’d called him, striving for just the right all-business tone of voice, planning this morning’s meeting so carefully...

Of course, being caught in the middle of a breaking and entering had not been part of her plan! She could not believe, in all the chaos, she had totally forgotten he would be coming.

That was it. That explained the way she was feeling right now. She’d just had quite the shock. The pain in her arm was throbbing mercilessly, and despite denying it to the medic, it was possible she’d hit her head in the scuffle. Maybe, just maybe, a tiny bit of weakness in the department of her husband was acceptable.

Except right now she needed to be strong around him, not weak!

She stole another look at him. There was no missing how ill at ease the store made him. Something in his closed expression even suggested anger. At that realization, that he was angry, something in her hardened. She had known he might react like this when she’d invited him here.

And she had told herself firmly that it was a test she needed to pass. Divorcing Kade, not just on paper, but with her heart, would involve not caring what he liked or didn’t like about her choices.

Her lawyer was absolutely right. It was time to tie up some loose ends in her life. And the lawyer was not even aware of all the reasons why it had become so important. Her lawyer knew only about her thriving business. Her decision to adopt was a secret, for now.

But it was a secret that required her to acknowledge that Kade Brennan, the husband she had been separated from for more than a year, was one gigantic loose end!

“What happened here?” Kade asked, but typical Kade, he wasn’t asking. He was demanding, ready to take charge.

And she was never going to admit what a relief it would be to let him. “Really, Kade, it’s none of your business.”

The female officer, in particular, looked taken aback at her tone. “I thought he was your husband,” she said again, almost plaintively.

“We’re nearly divorced,” Jessica explained, trying for the cavalier note of a career woman who didn’t care, but she had to physically brace herself from flinching from the word.

Divorced.

She’d rehearsed that word, too, trying to take the bitter edge out of it, the sense of loss and finality and failure.

“Oh.” If she was not mistaken, Officer—Jessica squinted at her name tag—Kelly took to that information like a starving hound scenting a bone.

“What happened here?” Kade asked again.

Jessica glared at him. To her relief, the medic announced they were ready to go, and she was wheeled out past Kade before having to give in to his demand for answers. Behind her, to her annoyance, she could hear the police officer filling him in on what had happened. She glanced back to see the female officer blinking helpfully at Kade and checking her notes.

“She came in to do paperwork this morning, six o’clock. Someone broke in around seven thirty.”

“Don’t come to the hospital,” Jessica called over her shoulder, feeling a childish desire to get in the last shot. “I don’t need you.”

She glanced back one more time just as they crossed through her doorway to outside, where throngs of people seemed to be gathered in front of her house. But she didn’t really even notice. What she noticed was that her arrow had hit home.

Kade looked momentarily stricken by her words.

That she didn’t need him.

And instead of feeling happy that she had drawn blood, she felt sick about it, and some little demon inside her had to try to repair it, and let him know he was needed after all.

“Actually, Kade, can you find a way to secure everything? Please?”

Really, after her remark that she didn’t need him, he should tell her to go get stuffed. But he didn’t.

“And if you could put up a closed-for-the-day sign over that broken window I’d be most appreciative.”

He snorted, but didn’t say no.

“I can’t just leave things. The door is broken. He could come back. Anybody could come in and just start helping themselves to everything in here.”

All her hopes and dreams. It was a strange twist that she was being forced to ask Kade to rescue them.

“Never mind,” Jessica said, appalled that she had even asked him. “I’ll call someone.”

She didn’t need him. She didn’t! Why was she giving him this mixed message: “I need you. I don’t need you.” She had the stunning realization she was not as clear of her soon-to-be ex-husband as she thought she was!

“I’ll look after it,” he said.

She should have protested harder, but there was no denying what a relief it was to have Kade Brennan, her husband for a little while longer, say that he would look after things.

CHAPTER THREE

JESSICA WAS WHEELED out to the ambulance, and Kade prowled through her shop looking for items to repair her door. Finally, in a back drawer in a tiny kitchen area he found a hammer and regarded it thoughtfully.

“This isn’t really a hammer,” he muttered to himself. “It’s more like a toy, a prop for one of her fake nurseries.”

In a dank cellar, he found some old boards. Thankfully, they had nails in them that he could pull and reuse. Why did women never have the essentials? Nails, screwdrivers, hammers, duct tape?

He boarded up the broken front door and found a square of thick wood to write a few words on.

He had to nail it up over the broken window because of the lack of duct tape. A determined thief could still get in, but the repair, though not pretty, actually looked quite a bit more secure than her old door with its paned glass.

He surveyed his work briefly, and recognized it as temporary but passable. Then he called his personal assistant, Patty, to tell her he would be very late today, if he made it in at all. “I need you to find me a simple surveillance system. I think there’s a kind that alerts to your phone. And then could you find a handyman? I need a door fixed, a window replaced and that surveillance system installed. Have him call me for the details.

“And also if you could have my car dropped at Holy Cross Hospital? Whoever brings it can just give me a call when they get there, I’ll meet them for keys.” He listened for a moment. “No, everything is fine. No need for concern.”

Kade walked out to Memorial Drive and was able to flag a cab to take him to the hospital.

He found Jessica in a wheelchair, in a waiting room in the X-ray department.

“How are you doing?”

It was obvious she was not doing well. Her face was pale, and she looked as if she was going to cry.

He could not handle Jessica crying. There was nothing he hated more than the helplessness that made him feel. To his detriment, he had not reacted well to her tears in the past.

He felt ashamed of the fact that she felt it necessary to suck in a deep, steadying breath before she spoke to him.

“They’ve done an X-ray. I’m just waiting for the doctor. It is broken. I’m not sure if they can set it, or if it will need surgery.” She looked perilously close to tears.

Kade fought an urge to wrap his arms around her and let her cry. But he’d never been good with tears, and it felt way too late now to try to be a sensitive guy. It would require him to be a way better and braver man than he knew how to be.

She knew his weaknesses, because she set her shoulders and tilted her chin. “You didn’t have to come.”

He shrugged. “Your store is secure,” he told her. “I put up a sign.”

The struggle—whether to be gracious or belligerent—was evident in her eyes. Graciousness won, as he had known it would. “Thank you. What did it say?”

“Baby bummer, temporarily closed due to break-in.”

A reluctant smile tickled her lips, and then she surrendered and laughed. “That’s pretty good. Even though it’s a major bummer, not a baby one.”

Kade was pretty pleased with himself that he had made her laugh instead of cry.

“It could have been a much more major bummer than it was,” he said sternly. “Tell me what happened.”

* * *

Jessica couldn’t help but shiver at the faintly dangerous note in Kade’s voice. She could not be intimidated by it!

“Isn’t it fairly obvious what happened?” she asked coolly. “I was doing some paperwork, and there was a break-in.”

“But he came through the front door.”

“So?”

“Is there a back door?” Kade asked. That something dangerous deepened in his tone.

“Well, yes, but we just surprised each other. Thankfully, I called 911 as soon as I heard the glass break.”

“Don’t you think you could have run out the back door and called 911 from safety?”

Jessica remembered what she didn’t like about Kade. Besides everything. She needed a good cry right now and she was sucking it back rather than risk his disapproval. On top of that, he was a big man at work. It made him think he knew the answers to everything.

Which was why she didn’t even want him to know about adoption. He was certain to have an opinion about that that she would not be eager to hear.

“Hindsight is always twenty-twenty,” she informed him snootily.

“How did you end up hurt?” Kade asked.

Jessica squirmed a bit.

“Um, we scuffled,” she admitted. “I fell.”

“You scuffled?” Kade asked, incredulous. “You scuffled with a burglar? I would have thought it was hard to scuffle while running for the back door.”

“I was not going to run away,” she said.

“That is nothing to be proud of.”

“Yes,” she said, “it is. Don’t you dare presume to tell me what to be proud of.”

From their shared laughter over the bummers of life just moments ago to this. It was just like the final weeks of their marriage: arguments lurked everywhere.

“Why are you proud of it?” he asked, that dangerous something still deepening in his tone, that muscle jerking along the line of his jaw that meant he was really annoyed.

“I’m proud I took on that scrawny thief,” Jessica said, her voice low, but gaining power. “I lost my mother when I was twelve. I’ve lost two babies to miscarriage.”

And she had lost Kade, not that she was going to mention that. In some ways the loss of him had been the worst of all. The other losses had been irrevocable, but Kade was still there, just not there for her.

“Sorry?” he said, reeling back slightly from her as if she had hit him with something. “What does that have to do with this?”

“I am not losing anything else,” she said, and could hear the tautness in her own voice. “Not one more thing.”

He stared at her, and she took a deep breath and continued.

“You listen to me, Kade Brennan. I am not surrendering to life anymore. I am not going to be the hapless victim. I am making the rules, and I am making my own life happen.”

Kade was shocked into silence, so she went on, her tone low. “So if that means scuffling with someone who was trying to take one more thing from me, then so be it.”

“Oh, boy,” he said, his voice low and pained. “That’s not even sensible.”

“I don’t care what you think is sensible,” she said with stubborn pride.

Though, she did plan to be more sensible soon. Naturally, there would be no more scuffling once she had adopted a baby. She would think things all the way through then. She would be the model of responsible behavior.

She hoped there were no questions about how one would handle a break-in on the adoption application.

“So you weren’t running for the back door,” he deduced, regaining himself. “Not even close.”

“Nope.” The new Jessica refused to be intimidated. She met his gaze with determination. She was not going to be cowed by Kade. She was not one of his employees. She was nearly not even his wife. In a little while, they would practically be strangers.

At the thought, a little unexpected grayness swirled inside her—she was willing to bet that was a result of her injury, a bit of shock—but she fought it off bravely.

“I was not letting him get away,” Jessica said. “The police were coming.”

For a moment he was stunned speechless again. He clenched that muscle in his jaw tighter. She remembered she hated that about him, too: the jaw clenching.

His voice rarely rose in anger, but that muscle, leaping along the hard line of his jaw, was a dead giveaway that he was really irritated about something.

“Are you telling me—” Kade’s voice was low and dangerous “—that you not only scuffled with the burglar, but you tried to detain him?”

“He was a shrimp,” Jessica said defiantly.

“In case you haven’t looked in the mirror recently, so are you. And he could have had a knife! Or a gun!” So much for his voice rarely being raised in anger.

“I wasn’t going to stand by and let him steal from me!” At the look on Kade’s face, she backed down marginally. “Okay, so maybe I didn’t think it all the way through.” Something that was definitely going to have to change once she embraced motherhood.

“Maybe?”

She was not sure why she felt driven to defend herself, even when she knew Kade was right and she was wrong. Not just defend herself, but goad him a little bit.

“Break-ins started on this block a few nights ago. No one can sleep at night. We all go down there and check our businesses. That business is everything to me now. It’s my whole life.”

He heard the unspoken, she was sure. That the business had replaced him as her whole life.

The jaw muscle was rippling beneath the line of his skin. She watched it, fascinated despite herself. He was really angry.

“You’ve been going down there in the middle of the night to check your business?”

It didn’t seem nearly as clever now with Kade glaring at her.

“Yes, I have,” she said, refusing to back down. “And I’ll probably do it again tonight, since he got away.”

Well, actually, she probably wouldn’t, but there was no sense Kade thinking he could order her around, could control her with even a hint of his disapproval. Those days were over.

“You are not going down there tonight,” Kade said. “For God’s sake, Jessica, haven’t you ever heard of security cameras?”

“Of course I’ve thought of security cameras. And security companies. But the options are many and the selection is huge,” she said. “I’ve been trying to figure out what is best for me and my budget. Not that that is any of your business. And you don’t have any say in how I decide to handle it. None whatsoever. You and I only have one thing left to discuss. And that is our divorce.”

And unbidden, the thought blasted through her that that was a major bummer.

And the doctor, a lovely young woman, chose that moment to come out, X-rays in hand, and say, “Mr. and Mrs. Brennan?”

Mr. and Mrs. Brennan. That should not fill her with longing! That should not make Jessica wonder if there would ever be another Mrs. Brennan taking her place.

It was over. Their brief marriage was over. They were getting divorced. Kade’s life was no longer any of her business, just as hers was no longer any of his.

She would probably change her name back to Clark. She could be Ms. Clark instead of Mrs. Brennan. The baby would be a Clark.

She wasn’t thinking about a first name. She knew better than that. Or at least she should know better than that. A memory knifed through her: Kade and her poring over the baby-name books. Deciding on Lewis for a boy and Amelia for a girl.

And then the first miscarriage. And somehow, she could see now, in retrospect, what she had not seen then. From the moment Kade had asked her not to name that little lost baby, a crack had appeared between them.

No, she was determined to enjoy the success of her baby nursery design business and her new storefront as a means to an end. She could have it all.

She could fill her life with the thrill of obtaining those adorable outfits no other store would carry, those one-of-a-kind over-the-crib mobiles, those perfect lamb-soft cuddly teddy bears that everyone wanted and no one could find.

And someday, maybe sooner than later, the outfits would be for her own baby. She would design a nursery for her own baby.

“Don’t,” he’d whispered when she had started painting the walls of their spare room a pale shade of lavender the second time. “Please don’t.”

But now she didn’t need his approval. She could do it all her way. She could finally, finally be happy. All the pieces were in place.

Weren’t they? If they were, why did Jessica feel a sudden desire to weep? It was that crack on her head. It was the throbbing in her arm. It was her day gone so terribly wrong, nothing according to her plan.

“Mr. and Mrs. Brennan?” the doctor asked, again, baffled by the lack of response.

“Yes,” Kade said.

“No,” Jessica said at the very same time.

He looked stubborn, a look Jessica remembered well.

She didn’t think she should admit a sudden urge to kill him in front of the doctor, so she shrugged. “We’re nearly divorced,” she informed the doctor. “He was just leaving.”

Kade gave her a look, and then got to his feet and prowled around the small waiting area.

“Well, if you could come with me.”

Jessica stood up from the wheelchair to follow the doctor. She wobbled. Kade was instantly at her side.

“Sit down,” he snapped.

Really, she should not tolerate that tone of voice from him, that tendency to bossiness. But the sudden wooziness she felt left her with no choice.

Kade pushed her down the hallway with the doctor, and they entered a small examining room. The doctor put the X-rays up on a light board.

“It’s not a complicated break,” she said, showing them with the tip of her pen. “It’s what we call a complete fracture. I’m going to set it and cast it. I think you’ll be in the cast for about four weeks and then require some therapy after to get full mobility back.”

Four weeks in a cast? But that barely registered. What registered was that this was her arm with the bone, showing white on the X-ray, clearly snapped in two. Her wooziness increased. She had to fight an urge to put her head between her knees.

“Is it going to hurt?” Jessica whispered, still not wanting Kade to see any sign of weakness from her.

“I wish I could tell you no, but even with the powerful painkiller I’m going to give you, yes, it’s going to hurt. Do you want your husband to come with you?”

Yes, part of Jessica whimpered. But that was the part she had to fight! Aware of Kade’s eyes on her, she tilted her chin. “No, I’m fine. Kade, you don’t have to wait.”

CHAPTER FOUR

YOU DON’T HAVE to wait was not quite as firm as you can leave now. Jessica forced herself not to look back at him as the doctor took her to a different room. But she had to admit she felt grateful that he did not appear to be leaving.

A half hour later, her arm in a cast and immobilized in a sling, with some prescription painkillers and some instructions in her other hand, Jessica was pushed by a nurse back to the waiting area. Her feeling of wooziness had increased tenfold.

Because she actually felt happy that Kade was still there. He sprang from a chair as soon as he saw her, and then shoved his hands into his pockets.

“You didn’t have to wait,” Jessica said in stubborn defiance of the relief.

“I’ll make sure you get home safely,” he said. “I had someone from the office drop off my car for me while I waited. I’ll bring it around to that door over there.”

And then, before she could protest on a number of fronts—that she didn’t need him to drive her and that she was going back to work, not home—he was gone.

She didn’t want to admit how good his take-charge attitude felt sometimes. By the time he’d arrived at the door, she’d realized there was no way she was going to work. She was also reluctant to concede how good it felt when he held open the door of his car for her and she slid from the wheelchair into its familiar luxury. Moments later, with the wheelchair returned, he put the car in gear and threaded through what was left of the morning rush with ease.

Why did she feel glad that he didn’t have a different car? She shouldn’t care at all. But he’d bought the car after they’d graduated from university, well before he’d been able to afford such a thing.

“But why?” she’d asked him when he had come and shown it to her. The high-priced car had seemed as if it should not be a priority to a recent university graduate.

“Because when I marry you, this is what we’re driving away in.”

And then he’d shown her the ring he couldn’t afford, either. Three months later, with the roof down and her veil blowing out the back, they had driven away to a shower of confetti and their cheering friends.

One of her favorite wedding pictures was of that scene, the car departing, a just-married sign tacked crookedly to the back bumper that trailed tin cans on strings. In that picture Kade had been grinning over his shoulder, a man who had everything. And she had been laughing, holding on to her veil to keep it from blowing off, looking like a woman embracing the wildest ride of her life.

Which marriage had definitely turned out to be, just not in the way she had expected. It had been a roller-coaster ride of reaching dizzying heights and plummeting into deep and shadowy valleys.

Jessica took a deep breath. She tried to clear her head of the memories, but she felt the painkilling drugs were impeding her sense of control. Actually, she did not know which impaired her judgment more: sitting in the car, so close to Kade, or the drugs.

She had always liked the way he drove, and though it felt like a weakness, she just gave herself over to enjoying it. The car, under his expert hand, was a living thing, darting smoothly in and out of traffic.