Her Soldier's Baby. Tara Quinn Taylor

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       CHAPTER THREE

      LILY ELIZABETH MCCONNELL had been married thirty years. “Not long enough,” the fifty-something, salt-and-pepper-haired woman told Pierce as she stood, a china plate holding a couple of Eliza’s miniquiches in her hands. “You take it for granted, you know?”

      Her eyes were glassy with emotion, but her voice was calm. Pierce respected the control. “I do know,” he said wholeheartedly. “Sad, isn’t it, that you have to lose something to realize what it meant to you?”

      He hadn’t meant to speak that last bit out loud. But the woman’s need tapped into the vulnerability he normally had buried so deep he could pretend it didn’t exist.

      He was always a bit off when Eliza was gone.

      The well-dressed widow tilted her head. “You’ve lost someone, too?” she asked.

      He’d walked right into that one.

      Music played softly from good-quality speakers resourcefully hidden among the genuine antiques that filled—and garnished—the room. Classical piano. He recognized Pachelbel’s Canon only because it was Eliza’s favorite and she had what seemed like a million renditions of it.

      He didn’t want to offend the guest, but he wished the couple in the corner enjoying the free wine were more open to socializing. Or that the families he’d been told had checked in would come downstairs.

      “I have,” he told Mrs. McConnell, taking a sip from the glass of iced lemon water he’d poured before leaving his and Eliza’s private section of the mansion to do his duties as host.

      There. They could have mutual understanding, as the strangers they were, and move on. Glancing over her shoulder, he noted the still-empty stairway. No families coming down yet.

      Lily Elizabeth McConnell seemed as interested in his hand as he was in the staircase.

      “You’re wearing a wedding ring,” she said when she caught him noticing her stare.

      Awkward. And the reason he hated these things.

      “Yet you’re here alone. Did you lose your wife?”

      He knew how to parry a come-on. And did. Every single time he was faced with one. This wasn’t a come-on. If the woman’s tone hadn’t told him so, the pain in her eyes did.

      “No,” he said. No playing with fate on that one. “I just assumed everyone here knew... Eliza’s away being a contestant on Family Secrets every weekend this month. This is our home, but the bed-and-breakfast, that’s all her doing. I’m strictly support staff when it comes to Rose Harbor.”

      He helped her with the books, too. She ran all decisions by him. But the house was hers. Eliza had been running the successful B and B long before he’d come back into her picture.

      Mrs. McConnell nodded. Looked down at her sensible, almost flat black shoes. He wasn’t the most sensitive guy around, but even he could tell that her pain, in that moment, was acute.

      “What about kids?” he blurted. People her age relied on their kids. Didn’t they?

      She shook her head. And he’d have gladly escaped to keep from saying anything else that didn’t help. “We... Harley and I...we never had kids. It wasn’t that we didn’t want them. It just never happened. And neither of us wanted to pursue other avenues. We figured if we were meant to be parents, we’d get pregnant.”

      Were it him, he’d have pursued every avenue there was and any dirt lane, too. But this wasn’t about him. “I get what you mean about not being meant to be a parent,” he said before realizing that they’d ventured outside guest-welcoming territory.

      “You and your wife don’t have children?” she asked. And he just stood there. Staring at her.

      Eventually he shook his head.

      And as though fate had stepped in to save him for once, footsteps bounded down the stairs. Mrs. McConnell took the interruption as an opportunity to move back to the food station that Margie, Eliza’s assistant for the past ten years, had laid out.

      Maybe she thought he and Eliza had lost a child. He had, after all, told her he’d lost someone.

      Lord knew why he’d said that. He’d never lost anyone he was close to.

      His mother had taken off before he was old enough to remember her. His old man was gone, but since he’d been drunk so much of Pierce’s life, that hadn’t been a big surprise. At least he’d been a nice drunk.

      Pierce had had no reason to commiserate with the woman’s loss as though he understood. Living without Eliza all those years—that had been his choice. He’d consciously opted not to contact her when he’d gotten back from the war in Iraq, a changed man. One who’d been hit by an explosive device that left him sterile.

      After going by her place in Savannah, where they’d grown up, finding out that she’d moved to South Carolina the summer he left and that her folks were in Florida, he’d gotten on with his life. A life without her. Except for keeping tabs, just to make certain she was thriving. That’s how he’d known she was at Harvard while he finished his time in the marines as a cop at Quantico.

      And known that she’d graduated and was running a bed-and-breakfast when he’d married a fellow marine shortly after getting out. And that she was still there three years later, when he married his second wife. A waitress from the coffee shop where he had breakfast every morning.

      The woman had a young son. Pierce had fancied himself a father.

      He just hadn’t been a good husband. Too distant. Too many nightmares. No desire to spend his off time with the woman he’d married.

      Turned out, he hadn’t been a great father, either.

      Nope, he hadn’t lost anyone. He’d made conscious choices.

      And would probably make them again if he had a second go at it. Including the one that had resulted in an inability to father children. Some days he figured he’d deserved that. He’d still choose to join the army, too. If he was going to make anything of himself, get away from the reputation he’d earned as the son of the town drunk, get any kind of education, he’d have had to join up. He’d had no money for СКАЧАТЬ