The Soldier's Baby Bargain

“It was a few months before the crash. She found me through my veterinary practice’s website,” she said. She set down her spoon and met Ryan’s stare. “I’m just thankful that I happened to open the emails that morning. Often, Jane does it before me.”

Ryan shut his eyes briefly. Pain flickered across his hard face and was gone. “They had the most volatile relationship. Jesse and Melanie were either fighting like cats and dogs or they were—”

He stopped abruptly. Their stares held as she finished his sentence in her mind.

“When Melanie first wrote me, she was in quite a state,” Faith said after a long pause. “Apparently she’d discovered that Jesse had slept with a lieutenant who trained airmen on computers at the airport. Melanie was pretty upset by it.”

Ryan grimaced. “Damn. I can’t believe Melanie did that.” He exhaled heavily. “Strike that. I can. She’d get herself into a real state at times, when it came to Jesse. I suppose she had herself convinced she was doing you a favor by pouncing on you with the news?”

Faith nodded. “Bingo. You’d think we were blood sisters, both betrayed by the devil.”

Ryan grunted. “When in reality, Melanie was feeling furious and rejected by what Jesse had done. She ran blabbing to you because she knew it would hurt Jesse. She never gave a thought or care about what she was doing to you. I’m sorry, Faith.”

“It’s not your fault. You have nothing to apologize for.”

A muscle flickered subtly in his cheek. She shook her head sadly.

“You are not responsible for Jesse’s actions,” she stated the obvious.

“I’m responsible for my own.”

Faith swallowed uneasily. Is that how he thought of her and the baby? A responsibility? A burden?

“What was Melanie like?” she asked shakily after a moment, trying to divert his attention.

Ryan shrugged and poured some cream into his coffee. “A good chopper pilot. Volatile. Bit of a daredevil. Feisty exterior with a vulnerable core,” he mumbled succinctly.

“She was…pretty?”

He glanced up, pausing in the action of setting down the small pitcher. “Some men might have found her attractive,” he said with what struck Faith as forced neutrality.

She stared at the snowy-white tablecloth. Much to her surprise, given the topic, she wasn’t that upset. She’d suspected all along she wasn’t as devastated by the news as she should have been that Jesse was unfaithful. She’d been hurt. Jesse had been her husband, after all, and she’d planned to spend the rest of her life with him—before she’d discovered his infidelities.

But deep down she knew that if Jessie’d been the love of her life, that email from Melanie—and Jesse’s eventual admission that Melanie’s accusations were valid—wouldn’t have just been an unpleasant shock. It would have been a lancing, debilitating blow to her spirit.

Jesse had been so full of life. She’d often reflected after she’d learned of his infidelity that she didn’t want to be Jesse’s wife anymore, but she would have wished him well. Always. It hurt, to think of him not out there in the world somewhere…raising hell, warming someone with his smile and his jokes, hopefully finding the happiness she couldn’t give him.

She became aware of Ryan’s gaze on her—warm, concerned, wary. So, he had known all along about Jesse’s womanizing. How did that knowledge factor into their impulsive, impassioned tryst on Christmas Eve? How would it play into the fact that they were going to have a baby to-gether? It was becoming increasingly clear that Ryan felt some sort of misguided responsibility toward her.

“Don’t pity me,” she said.

“I don’t pity you,” he said, his eyebrows pinching together in apparent bewilderment at her quiet forcefulness.

“No?” she asked, calmly removing the chamomile tea-bag from her cup. “You don’t have some kind of knight in shining armor syndrome going on for the scorned wife? You said that you visited me last Christmas Eve because you wanted to make sure I was okay…safe. Now that I’m pregnant, I don’t want you feeling regretful, Ryan. I need a father for my baby, not a guilty lover. I don’t want you to feel sorry for me.”

The spoon he’d been using to stir his coffee fell several inches to the saucer with a loud clinking sound. “That’s insulting.”

She met his stare levelly, difficult though it was. His eyes blazed like black fire. “Then why did you act so guilty about Christmas Eve? I’m not the fragile victim you’re imagining. If that was part of the appeal that night, you were misguided,” she said quietly.

He placed his forearms on the table and leaned toward her, his nostrils slightly flared. “I didn’t know whether or not you knew about Jesse and Melanie on Christmas Eve. For all I knew, you were still grieving the love of your life. I wanted you so much, I went ahead and did what I did anyway. So much for the idea that I’m pitying you.”

The anger clinging thickly to Ryan’s words didn’t have quite the effect on her that she would have thought. For some reason, the memory of their fevered joining chose that moment to bombard her consciousness like rapid-fire bullets—Ryan’s hands moving over her in carnal worship, his mouth closing over the tip of her breast and the answering sharp pain of longing in her womb, the feeling of him filling her until she was inundated by him, ready to burst with her desire.

By slow degrees she became aware that the blend of voices and clanking cutlery and china had become a distant buzz in her ears. Ryan blinked as if awakening from a trance and sat back in the booth.

“I am far from thinking that you’re a weak victim.” His gaze flickered up to meet hers. “I like you. I have from the first time Jesse ever read me one of your letters. I liked you even more when I finally met you. I respect the way you’ve built up your business and your life, even though you were a military wife and alone a lot of the time. I admired how you always managed to be so cheerful…con-vey so much warmth. I used to get resentful when Jesse didn’t return your letters regularly. I used to get resentful toward Jesse for a lot of things,” he mumbled under his breath, looking angry…torn.

“Can I bring you any dessert?”

Both of them blinked and stared at the waiter like he was an alien.

“Faith?” Ryan asked.

“No, nothing for me,” Faith said.

Ryan also declined and the waiter left. Faith took a long drink of her ice water.

“That all still sounds like you’re feeling sorry for me, Ryan,” she said shakily.

“I don’t pity you, but I do feel bad about some things that have happened,” he said quietly. “I feel like a heel for barging in on you and laying you down on a couch and having unprotected sex with you after I’d been in your house for all of a half hour.”

Her mouth fell open at his blunt words. Once again the remembered images and sensations swamped her awareness.

“Let me get this straight,” she said slowly. “You like me, and you respect me, but because you wanted to have sex with me that night, that’s a problem. Is that because you usually don’t like and respect the women you sleep with? Attraction and respect don’t go together in your mind?”

“That’s a hell of a thing to say.”

“Jesse used to imply that you liked female companionship, but weren’t much for a serious relationship with one woman.”

Realization subtly settled on his features. His eyelids narrowed. Faith caught an edge of the diamond-hard focus that had made him such a valuable officer and pilot. “Are you implying I’m like Jesse?”

She tilted her chin up, refusing to be intimidated. “Maybe.”

“Well I’m not,” he stated flatly. “I’m not saying Christ-mas Eve was a mistake because I’m a womanizer. I’m saying it was a mistake because it was so abrupt…strange…irrational…”

Mind-blowing, Faith added in her private thoughts. His gaze flickered up to meet hers, as if she’d spoken aloud.

After a tense moment she exhaled and sagged in the seat. “I’m sorry. It’s not my place to judge you one way or another. That part of your life is none of my business.”

She glanced up in surprise when he reached across the table and grasped her hand.

“Just because I haven’t found the right woman yet doesn’t mean I haven’t been looking. I don’t thrive on conquest. Christmas Eve was not about that.”

She couldn’t look away from his eyes. His hand tightened on hers, his fingers brushing her wrist. She wondered distantly if he could feel the throb of her pulse.

“What was it about then?” she whispered.

Something flickered across his rugged features she couldn’t quite identify. “I’m not entirely sure. It just felt…unstoppable. Like I said that night, all that emotion must have been building.”

“You do hear about it happening after a tragic death,” Faith admitted. “Stuff builds up and then…bang. A lightening strike.”

They stared at each other across the table. Was he, like her, recalling what it’d been like as the electric desire blazed in their flesh, enlivened them, fused them?

“We’re going to have a baby together,” he said. “All of my life is your business now. Fate has seen to that. Whether we planned it or not, whether you like it or not, we’re family now, Faith.”

Chapter Three

When they walked out onto Eighth Street later, the sun was setting.

“How about a drive? There are a few things I’d still like to talk to you about,” Ryan added when she gave him a doubtful sideways glance. He’s sensed her wariness ever since he’d said that thing about them being family.

“Okay,” Faith replied, although she looked uncertain.

He grabbed her hand and gave it a small squeeze as they walked toward his car. He waited for her to look at him.

“Why are you so uncomfortable around me? Is it just because of the baby?” he couldn’t help but ask.

“You’re not entirely comfortable around me, either, Ryan. I think we both know this situation is…unusual.”

He grimaced slightly. He’d been more than a little confused about his feelings for Faith for a long time now. Finding out she was carrying his baby only amplified his bewilderment along with a lot of other emotions.

He’d never been able to tell anyone he had a sort of se-cret…thing for Jesse’s wife for years now. It was too mild to be a crush. Ryan had secretly found his partiality for news about Faith or hearing her letters a little amusing in a self-deprecating sort of way. His feelings for her had never gone anywhere beyond admiration.

But as he drove through picturesque downtown Holland with Faith in the seat next to him, he’d have to admit it in hindsight that he’d been a little envious of Jesse for having a wife like Faith. It wasn’t just that Faith was beautiful in the natural, girl-next-door, very sexy kind of way. He was drawn to her freshness, her intelligence, and most of all, her kindness.

He’d been highly irritated at Jesse for proving time and again that he didn’t deserve her.

The fact of the matter was, until Christmas Eve, he’d never given his admiration for her much thought. She’d been off-limits for almost the entire time he’d known her. Maybe Jesse wasn’t the ideal husband, and perhaps Ryan had questioned his judgment as an officer for getting involved with women during deployments, but Jesse had never done anything overtly to make Ryan question his ability to do his job. As a matter of fact Jesse had been a fine pilot, and in the friendship department at least, loyal to the bone.

The sun blazed bright orange, about to make its fiery plunge into the silvery waters of Lake Michigan when Ryan pulled the car into a lot at Laketown Beach. Because of the dunes, they were on a high vista. The beach itself was at the bottom of a long staircase. He shut off the ignition and glanced at Faith. He found the black leather, calf-hugging boots she wore extremely sexy, but wasn’t so sure the heels were walking-friendly.

“There’s a paved path along the bluff. Are you up for a walk?”

“Yes,” she agreed.

She smiled at him a moment later when he came around the car to meet her. “I know you spent your summers in Harbor Town, but you seem very familiar with Holland, too.”

He shrugged as he zipped up his jacket. There was a cool breeze coming off Lake Michigan. “My mom and dad used to bring us to Holland occasionally for dinner or a day at the beach.”

“I think you said your parents have passed?” she asked softly. He recalled he’d mentioned to her that his parents were no longer living at one of those Air Force picnics, but hadn’t given her any details.

“Yeah. They died while I was still at the Air Force Acad-emy in Colorado. Dad used to like to explore the area when he’d come down on the weekends from Dearborn, so Mari—that’s my sister—and I have seen pretty much every beach on the Michigan shoreline. I’ve done some exploring on my own in Holland for the past couple months, though,” he said as he took her hand and they made their way down the sidewalk that trailed along the edge of the bluff. “When Deidre comes in for an overnight visit, I stay at a hotel near the airport.”

“Deidre is the client you fly to this area?”

“Yeah, Deidre Kavanaugh Malone. When we were kids, the Kavanaughs lived on the same street as us in Harbor Town.”

He glanced around in surprise when Faith suddenly came to an abrupt halt.

“Deidre’s not Brigit Kavanaugh’s daughter, is she?” Faith asked.

“Yeah. Faith?” he prompted, slightly alarmed when he saw her flattened expression.

“But that means…Ryan, was it your parents that were killed in that terrible car wreck all those years ago?”

Ryan inhaled slowly. “Yeah. How did you know?”

“I know Brigit Kavanaugh.”

“How?”

“She’s a member of the Southwestern Michigan’s Wom-en’s Auxiliary. It’s one of their missions to offer deployed military family members support. She came to visit me after Jesse died last year, and we’ve become friends.” He saw Faith’s throat tighten as she swallowed. Her face looked stricken. “She told me about her husband getting drunk and causing that accident. She told me that a couple had been killed that had lived just down the street from her. Oh, Ryan,” she finished in a whisper. Tears filled her green eyes. “I’m so sorry. We heard about that crash here in Holland when I was a teenager, but I didn’t recall any specific details. Brigit never mentioned names. I never re-alized…your parents.”

“It’s okay, Faith,” he said, concerned by her pale cheeks and obvious distress. He didn’t have to think twice about taking her into his arms. She came willingly, hugging his waist as if to give him comfort. He lowered his head and pressed his mouth to her hair. He inhaled the achingly familiar scent of citrus and flowers. “It happened a long time ago,” he murmured, lifting his head and willing her to look up at him. When she did, he used his thumb to gently wipe off several tears from her cheek.

“But you and your sister were so young. Did you have other family?”

“Only an aunt in San Francisco,” Ryan murmured distractedly as he continued to touch her cheek. Her skin was incredibly smooth and soft. “She passed away a few years ago, though.”

“I’m so sorry, Ryan,” she said in a choked voice.

His heart squeezed a little in his chest. She seemed genuinely pained by the news that his parents had passed away almost seventeen years ago. He stopped drying her cheeks and palmed her delicate jaw.

“You’re an amazingly nice woman, do you know that, Faith? Jesse never deserved you.”

She blinked. Ryan realized how intense he’d just sounded. He hadn’t meant to speak his thoughts out loud, but seeing Faith’s lovely, troubled face and experiencing her compassion had caused the words to pop out of his throat. He regretted it when she released her hold on him and took a step back. A lake breeze whipped past them and Faith tightened the belt on her coat.

“Maybe we ought to skip the walk,” Ryan said.

“No. No, let’s walk over to that bench and watch the sunset,” she said. “It’s funny,” she said a moment later as they sat side by side on the wooden bench next to the path. “I grew up watching these sunsets, but I never get tired of them.”

“Kind of hard to get tired of something like that,” Ryan agreed. For a few seconds they both watched silently as the ball of fire began to dip below the horizon, shades of magenta, pink and gold splashing across the sky in its wake.

“It’s not too hard to believe you’re pregnant,” he said, studying her delicate, lovely face cast in the pink and gold shades of the sunset. Her face didn’t “glow” like the stereotypical pregnant woman, but there was a sort of soft luminescence to her that he found compelling. “You’ve never looked so beautiful.”

The pink in her cheeks wasn’t caused by the sunset, he realized. Another breeze whipped past them, this one chillier. He leaned back on the bench and put his arm around her. Much to his satisfaction, she let her head rest on his shoulder. For several seconds they watched the sunset in silence. He felt entirely aware of her in those moments, of her firm, curving body, of her sweetness, the scent of her hair, the lock that fell just next to the pulse at her white throat. He brushed away the lock, stroking her skin in the process. Her shiver vibrated into his flesh. He braced himself for her reaction to what he was about to say.

“I can’t leave you alone here, Faith,” he said gruffly.

She lifted her head and studied him dazedly. “What do you mean?”

“I respect the fact that you want to raise the baby in Holland. It’s your home. But I’m not comfortable with living three thousand miles away while my child is here.”

Regret swept through him when he saw alarm flash into her eyes. She straightened, breaking the contact of their bodies.

“What do you plan to do?” she demanded.

“I’ll move back to Michigan,” he replied simply.

She blinked. “Ryan, you can’t be serious. You’ve lived in San Francisco for years now. You started your new business out there. You can’t expect to just pack up and move to Holland.”

“It’ll take some doing, I’ll grant you that. But it’d be better to do it now, before the business grows any larger. I can even rent hangar space at Tulip County Airport. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought since this afternoon. It might be better for me to be centrally located versus on the West Coast, given the nature of my business. Actually, the beach area of Michigan is an ideal location to serve business people in Detroit and Chicago, and I’ve already make loads of contacts out west.”

Faith stared at him like he was slightly mad as he spoke his thoughts out loud. “Ryan, that seems so…sudden. Im-pulsive.”

“Despite all the evidence against me from Christmas Eve, I’m not an impulsive person. But I do trust my instincts.” He traced the line of her jaw with his forefinger.

She met his stare. He didn’t bother to guard his desire for her. Her eyes widened slightly, and he knew she’d seen it. Was she, like him, thinking of those ecstatic moments when they’d both acted on glorious instinct? He hoped so. He wished like hell those memories had been permanently scored in her brain like they had been in his.

“I think we should talk about it more,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper. “I’m not so sure instinct is the wise guiding principle for the future, given the fact that a baby is involved.”

“I think it’s the perfect principle.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It got us here, didn’t it?”

She stared at him in mute amazement.

Ryan scowled at the sound of voices in the distance. He turned his head and saw another couple approaching on the walk.

“Come on. It’s almost dark,” he said. “We can talk more in the car.”

Faith’s mind was a confused hodgepodge of thoughts, feelings and concerns as Ryan drove through the now dark streets of Holland. While they waited at a red light, Ryan turned toward her.

“You’re vibrating with worry over there. Why don’t you vent some of what you’re thinking?”

She met his stare. His rugged features looked shadowed and compelling in the dim light.

“Are you really serious about moving back to Michi-gan?” she asked in a voice that sounded unnaturally high to her own ears.

“Is it really that unbelievable?”

“I just…I just hadn’t expected that you might want to do that.”

“Why not?” he asked, looking slightly puzzled. The stoplight turned green and he began to drive. “Did you really think I was going to be blasé about the fact that I was going to have a child?”

“I don’t know,” Faith stated honestly. “I guess I just assumed you’d…”

“Be satisfied seeing the baby a few times a month and on half the holidays?” Ryan asked when she faded off uncertainly.

“Well…you’re a pilot,” she said, as if that explained something.

“And?”

“Pilots are always on the go. One place is as much home as another. I just assumed you wouldn’t consider the distance between Holland and San Francisco as significant as most people would.”

He came to a stop at an intersection of a quiet residential neighborhood. “Family is very important to me, Faith. It always has been. That value was instilled into me a long time ago by my parents.”

Her throat grew tight. “And then you lost them at such a young age,” she whispered feelingly. Of course family was important to him.

“Besides, if I move back to Michigan, I’ll be closer to my sister and her family. Mari is in Chicago. She’s going to have another baby, too.” He blinked as if in realization and gave her a small smile. Her heart seemed to throb as if in answer. “As a matter of fact, she’s only a few months ahead of you.”

“The baby will like having a cousin of the same age,” Faith said, returning his smile.

The moment stretched as they sat there in the running car in the silent neighborhood, staring at one another and considering the future.

Ryan finally cleared his throat and resumed driving.

“You never told me if you knew the sex of the baby,” he said.

She shook her head. “Not yet. I hadn’t decided yet if I wanted to know or be surprised. Do you?” He glanced at her quickly. “Want to know?”

She watched as his expression went blank. He looked almost grim as he stared out the front window.

“I don’t know,” he said hoarsely after a moment. “One second, I think this whole thing has settled in, and the next I feel…”

“Overwhelmed?” she wondered.

He nodded once.

“I understand. It takes a while to fully absorb it,” she said quietly. She studied his profile as he drove, wondering over the fact that she was sitting in the car with Ryan Itani—her former husband’s good friend, the father of the child that grew in her womb…one of the most magnetically attractive and masculine men she’d ever encountered.

Maybe she was still overwhelmed, as well.

He pulled into her driveway a few minutes later. Faith studied her hands in her lap as he put the car in Park. She needed to banish this pervasive nervousness. She needed to get used to dealing with Ryan, with being around him.

“Would you like to come in and have a cup of coffee?”

“Yes.” The bluntness of his reply made her head come up. In the dim dashboard lights, she could see him studying her. “But I’m going to say no, nevertheless,” he added.

“Why?”

He abruptly turned in the seat as far as he could, given his big body and the confining space of the car. He took both of her hands in his. Spikes of pleasure prickled up her arms when he caressed her wrists with slightly calloused thumbs.

“I still want you, Faith. I think it’s only fair to tell you that.”

She started, shocked by his bold statement. She stared out the window to her neat, attractive ranch house, trying to gather her thoughts. It was hard with him stroking her skin and what he’d just said echoing around in her brain. She reached wildly for the threads of logic spinning around with a vortex of doubts and desire.