To Have And To Hold: Made for Marriage / To Wed a Rancher / The Mummy Proposal. Helen Lacey

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      She took a breath. “Hi.”

      He looked at his hands. “I need to wash up.”

      Callie followed him through one pool gate and then another until they reached the patio. She waited while he slipped through the back door and then returned a few minutes later, cleaned up and in a fresh T-shirt and carrying two cans of soda.

      He pulled the ring tab and passed her one. She took it, desperate to touch his fingertips, but she didn’t. “Are you playing truant today?”

      “Just working off steam.”

      Callie suspected she was the steam he needed to work off.

      He put the can down on a nearby table. “Why are you here, Callie?”

      She held her breath. “I saw your sister today.”

      His brows came up. “Did she embarrass me?”

      “No.” Callie stepped back on her heels. “But she said something. She said … she said you’d never invited a woman here … to be with the kids. Before me.”

      “She’s right.”

      Another breath, longer, to steady nerves stretched like elastic. “Why not?”

      He pulled out a chair for her to sit on and then one for himself. Once Callie was seated he did the same. Finally, he spoke. “When you’re treated badly, when the person you’ve committed yourself to walks out the door and says she doesn’t want you, she doesn’t want your children, she just wants to be free, it breaks something inside you. It broke something inside me,” he admitted. “I have no illusions about the kind of marriage I had. Most of the time it was a disaster. She’d left once before—the second time I told her that was it, no more. She had to make a choice. And she chose freedom.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees.

      Callie stood and walked across the patio. She looked at the pool and the immaculate garden and the timber cubby house she knew he would have built himself. When she’d gathered the courage to say what she come to say, she turned. He was still seated.

      “I’m so sorry, Noah.” Callie inhaled heavily. “About what I said the other day. I know I … I hurt you.”

      He didn’t move.

      Callie took a deep breath. “The way it came out, the way it sounded. That’s not what I wanted to say. And certainly not what I meant.”

      He stood up and walked toward her. “So what did you want to say?”

      She placed her hand on his arm and immediately felt the heat of their touch. “That your kids are amazing.” She swallowed hard and kept her hand on him. “What I’m feeling, it’s not about them. It’s about me.”

      Noah covered her hand with his. “What are you feeling, Callie?”

      Callie looked at him and her eyes glistened with moisture. She inhaled deeply, taking as much into her lungs as she could. “The reason I feel as I do … the reason I push people away …” She paused, felt the sting of tears. “The reason I push you away … it’s because I lost someone.”

      Noah’s grip on her hand tightened. “Your fiancé?”

      She met his gaze levelly. And the tears she’d been fighting tipped down over her lashes. “No, not Craig.”

      “Then who? What do you—”

      “My son,” she whispered. “My baby.”

       Chapter Eight

      “You had a son?” The shock in his voice was obvious.

      Callie shuddered. “His name was Ryan,” she said and felt the hurt right through to her bones. “He died when he was two days old.”

      She watched Noah think, absorb. “How long ago?”

      “Three years,” she said quietly and inhaled. “Ten months … one week … three days.”

      He swallowed hard. “How? Was he sick?”

      She shrugged and turned, wrapping her arms around herself. “I was in an accident.” She hesitated, took a long breath and then looked at him. “A car wreck.”

      Noah clearly knew what that meant. “The same one that killed your fiancé?”

      “Yes.”

      She watched as the pieces of the puzzle came together in his head. “You lost them both?” He turned her back around and rubbed his thumb along her jawline. “Why didn’t you tell me this before now?”

      She looked down, taking a breath. “Because I don’t talk about it. And we haven’t known one another very long and I didn’t … couldn’t … Well, being responsible for someone’s death, it isn’t exactly the kind of thing I want to talk about.”

      Noah didn’t try to hide his shock. “How were you responsible?”

      “The accident,” she replied. “It was my fault.”

      “Were you driving the car?”

      She shook her head. “No, Craig was driving.”

      “Then how could—”

      “I distracted him,” she admitted. “I made him lose concentration. And I shouldn’t have. I was angry because we argued.” She didn’t say anything for a moment. She looked up and around and then back to him. “Craig didn’t want the baby.”

      “He didn’t?”

      “No. He didn’t want anything other than to use me. I fell for him when I was seventeen,” she explained quietly. “I moved in with him, wanted to be with him. Craig trained me, taught me everything I know. He was a gifted rider. I thought he loved me. But I found out too late that he only cared about his career. Our career, as he called it.” Another breath. “We’d worked hard, trained hard, put in hours and used all our money. The Grand Prix Championships were at our fingertips—and after that, the big one, the Olympics, every rider’s dream. But I got pregnant and everything changed. I couldn’t ride, I wouldn’t risk riding. Craig was furious. I’d never seen him like that. We argued about it for three days. In the end, he told me I had to make a choice.”

      She paused, took a long breath, gathered herself and blinked away the fresh tears in her eyes. “He wanted me to end it. The pregnancy.”

      Noah’s mouth thinned. “What did you do?”

      “Moved back in with my mom.”

      “And then?”

      “I decided to get on with my life. When I was about five months along, Craig came back. He said he wanted to try and work things out. He said he’d changed his mind about the СКАЧАТЬ