Secret Surrogate. Delores Fossen

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СКАЧАТЬ promise she’d made to herself. Kylie would always feel the need to make things right with Lucas.

      “If I could undo everything that happened,” she said to him, “I would.”

      He turned. An agile shift of his body. His gaze rifled to hers, a little maneuver that robbed her of what breath she’d managed to recoup. There it was, in the depths of his saddle-brown eyes. The accusations.

      The pain.

      God, the pain.

      Lucas combed his hostile gaze over her face, hardly more than a split-second glance. Then he took that methodical scrutinization lower, to her body.

      Kylie trembled.

      Waited.

      She didn’t have to wait too long. Lucas actually did a double take when he noticed her stomach.

      Not that it helped, but Kylie adjusted her robe again. Seconds passed slowly, crawling by, until the silence settled uncomfortably around them.

      “Are you…” But he obviously couldn’t even finish the question. Instead, he swallowed hard.

      Since it would be absurd to lie, Kylie had no choice but to admit the obvious. “Yes. I’m pregnant.”

      He fired a few more of those nervy glances around the house. “I didn’t know,” he finally said.

      The words were void of any emotion. He’d done a better job of that than she ever could have. Because down deep, below the words, even deeper than his eerily calm demeanor, she figured this discovery had to be killing him.

      Or maybe he wasn’t affected at all because, perhaps, he truly didn’t care. Maybe she was a nonentity to him. Nothing more than a 911 call on a frosty January night.

      She shook her head, moistened her lips. “Not many people know about the pregnancy.” And because she feared other questions, both those spoken aloud and left unsaid, Kylie went on the offensive. “I doubt those men are still out there. But just in case, I’ll lock all the doors, keep my weapon nearby. I’ll call you if I see anything else suspicious.”

      He nodded, turned and headed for the door. Lucas didn’t even look back, which shot to heck her nonentity theory. She wasn’t a nonentity to him, definitely not, because he still hated her.

      However, as deep and as potent as that hatred was, Kylie knew that Lucas would hate her even more if he learned the truth—

      That the baby she was carrying was his.

      Chapter Two

      Lucas couldn’t get out of Kylie’s house fast enough. It took every ounce of his willpower not to break into a run, and he was certainly thankful when he made it outside onto the porch.

      He immediately pulled in a long, hard breath. Since it was just below freezing and the ice crystals seemed to burn his lungs, it should have cleared his head, as well.

      It didn’t.

      But then, nothing would.

      It didn’t seem…fair.

      There. He’d let the thought fully materialize in his head. Yeah, it was petty. Beyond petty, really. It was spiteful. But it put a rock-hard knot in his gut to know that the woman responsible for the deaths of his wife and unborn child was having a child of her own.

      What’s wrong with this picture? he wanted to shout to the powers that be.

      “Are you okay?” he heard Kylie ask. Definitely not a shout. Practically a whisper.

      Lucas laughed. But it wasn’t from humor. Damn the irony of this. And damn the flashbacks and the nightmarish memories of that day when his world had come crashing down around him.

      “I’m fine,” he lied.

      “Hmm.” She paused. “You know, if I were wearing a BS meter, it’d be going nuts about right now. Because you don’t look fine.”

      He shot her a glance over his shoulder to let her know it wasn’t a good time to push this. But then, it was never a good time to push this particular subject.

      What he should do was just leave. He should get the heck out of there. Off Kylie’s porch. Off her property. Away from her. Miles away. Unfortunately, his legs wouldn’t cooperate. They’d seemingly turned to dust. So he stood there and pretended to do a routine surveillance of the yard and the surrounding woods.

      However, it was anything but routine.

      Seeing Kylie again, especially a pregnant Kylie, was like ripping open all the old wounds. Wounds that would never heal. Even though, until tonight, he would have sworn that he was getting on with his life.

      And he was.

      Well, for the most part.

      He would probably never be able to fully recover from the deaths of his wife and unborn baby. Lucas considered that a moment and took out the probably. No full recovery for him. He wasn’t coming back from that.

      But he had a future now. Heck, in four and a half months he’d even get to experience fatherhood. Finally.

      No thanks to Kylie.

      That thanks belonged to the anonymous surrogate he’d hired through an agency in San Antonio. Only because of her would he get a second chance at having a life.

      Hugging her faded blue bathrobe tightly to her body, Kylie stepped out on the frost-scabbed porch. She kept a safe distance, but somehow it still felt too close.

      “You’re upset because I’m pregnant,” she said.

      Leave it to Kylie to lay it all out there. That was one of the things he’d always admired about her—her frankness. Oh, and her honesty. Unfortunately, he wasn’t in the mood for either tonight.

      “How am I supposed to feel?” Lucas replied. And he actually hoped she had the answer. Because he was having a heck of a time sorting it all out.

      “Confused. Hurt,” she promptly supplied. Her warm breath mixed with the cold air and created a misty haze when she spoke. Against her pale ivory skin, it had an almost otherworldly effect. As if this were all just a dream. He wished to hell it was. “And you’re probably mad at yourself for feeling those things since you’re not a mean-spirited man.”

      Lucas scowled. “You’re sure about that last part? Because I don’t think it’s my imagination that I’m feeling a little mean-spirited here.”

      The scowl obviously didn’t put her off. The right corner of her mouth temporarily lifted before it eased back down.

      “Lucas, you’re stubborn, inflexible and prone to bouts of misguided stoicism. I blame that last part on your cowboy roots. You can’t help yourself.” Kylie shook her head, sending a lock of her honey-blond hair slipping onto her forehead. “But you don’t have the heart to be mean-spirited.”

      Probably because it was too close to the truth and because he didn’t want this weird СКАЧАТЬ