The Right Reason To Marry. Christine Rimmer

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      On the top floor of the house, in Sten’s quiet kitchen, Karin brewed a cup of raspberry leaf tea. As she waited for it to steep, she stood at the slider that opened onto the wide upper deck and watched the layers of clouds over the water. The waves slid into shore and retreated, leaving the wet sand smooth as glass in their wake.

      “Karin.” Liam spoke from directly behind her.

      She stiffened in surprise and turned to face him. His hair was kind of standing on end and his eyes had a haunted look. “Hey. I, um, didn’t hear you come in.”

      He stared at her for several seconds with a numbly disbelieving expression on his face before he finally said, “Your dad. He told me to just go up.”

      “That’s fine. Great. Let’s sit down, why don’t we?” She gestured toward the sitting area.

      “No, thanks.” He blinked at her. “I’d rather stand.”

      “Maybe some tea or something?”

      “No. Nothing.” He turned on his heel and strode away from her. When he reached the hallway that led to the bedrooms, he turned again and came back, halting in the same place he’d been before he stalked off. “You’re pregnant.”

      Hadn’t they already covered that? “Yes, I am.”

      “I can’t... I don’t...” It was just like at Safeway. The poor man seemed incapable of completing a sentence. “I mean, uh, you said it was...”

      “Yours, Liam,” she gently confirmed again. “Yes. The baby is yours.”

      “And you’re due...?”

      “In a week.”

      “A week.” The wild state of his hair made more sense as he put both hands to his head, got two fistfuls of hair and pulled. “Mine. Wow. Mine.” And off he went again, his long legs carrying him swiftly past the table, on through the sitting area to the hallway that led to the bedrooms. Next to the hallway, stairs led down to the lower floor. For a moment, he just stood there, his head going back and forth, as though he couldn’t decide whether to run down the stairs or set off along the hallway.

      Karin didn’t know what to do, either, so she just waited by the slider. Eventually, he turned and came toward her again.

      “A week,” he repeated when he stopped a foot away from her. “I’ll be a dad in a week is what you just said.”

      Excuses weren’t going to cut it. She offered them anyway. “I’m so sorry, Liam. I was going to tell you earlier, but I didn’t really even know where to start. And there’s not much you could do at this point, anyway. So I thought I would just wait until after the birth.”

      “You thought you would just wait...”

      “Yes. Liam, I promise you, there’s no pressure. You can think it over, decide how much involvement you want to have.” Okay, yeah. No matter what he decided, eventually, she would be after him to spend a little time with his child. And he would have to cough up some child support, too. But it felt beyond rude to hit the poor guy with all that today when he seemed so completely torn up to learn there was a baby on the way.

      “No pressure,” he echoed blankly.

      “That’s right. There’s no big rush to make decisions. Truly, you can just take your time, figure out what works for you.”

      He raked his hair back with both hands. “But...married, maybe? We should get—”

      “What? Wait.” Now she was the one frantically blinking. “Married? Us?”

      “Well, uh, yeah.”

      She needed to nip that terrible idea right in the bud. “No, Liam. Don’t be silly. Of course not.” No way was she getting married just because there was a baby coming. Been there, done that. Bought the T-shirt, saw the movie. Lived through the heartbreak. Never. Again.

      And dear God in heaven, could she have made a bigger mess of this?

      “Listen,” she said. “After the birth we’ll do DNA. You’ll have plenty of time to deal with this. You really will—and you know, СКАЧАТЬ