Christmas at the Cove. Rachel Brimble

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      Carrie closed her eyes as the corridor walls drew in on her until she thought she would scream out loud.

      * * *

      SCOTT SAT AT his kitchen table, frustration curling his hands tighter on his coffee mug. Any man who ran his own business, paid mortgage payments on a three-bedroom detached house and owned a car, as well as his beloved bike, should be able to have a quiet cup of coffee with some good eggs while he contemplated his day ahead. Well, that was no more the case the morning after he learned he was father to a two-year-old little girl than it was any other day.

      He glowered over the rim of his coffee cup. Once again, his three sisters had turned up uninvited, kissed their mother at her seemingly permanent position at the stove and then taken seats at his table waiting to be fed. The loud, and too often brash, tirade of conversation bounced from the walls and Scott squirmed as the hardened veneer that sealed in his frustration threatened to splinter.

      Once again, the pressure of his familial obligation rose hot and heavy in his chest, burning and clawing at his need to escape. He worked hard and as he earned more money, he planned to be free of the responsibility his absent father had dumped in his lap years before. He planned to help his mother and youngest sister get their own places so he’d have his solitude back. He planned to employ someone else to manage the garage so he’d be free to travel the world, if and when he chose to do so.

      Now it was possible that he was a father. The responsibilities had just gotten a whole lot worse.

      He curled his fingers tighter around the handle of his coffee cup. A father. The simple fact was, if what Carrie said was true, it was his own fault. They’d made love once with a condom; the second time protection had been the last thing on his mind in his eagerness to have her. He couldn’t remember her injecting any sanity or responsibility into the moment, either...

      He closed his eyes as the noise and his sisters’ presence clawed at his nerves. He took a gulp of his coffee and glared at each of them in turn.

      As much as he hated it, the perpetual feeling of suffocation gathered strength. He didn’t want his mother or sisters to change. He loved them and adored the unbreakable bond they held with each other—and him. Yet today, more than ever, he felt like a fraud.

      The resentment he harbored toward his father fought its way to the surface. He had to find a way to separate himself once and for all from the man who sired him.

      All the effort he’d put into not getting involved, not hurting a woman when she might want more than he could give...and now this.

      A father to a baby conceived in the week he’d never forgotten...with the woman he’d never forgotten. How could he deny the suffocation didn’t ease every time Carrie looked at him since she came back? She must be telling him the truth about the baby. She had no reason to lie. There was a little girl out there who’d never known him as he’d never known her.