Desiring the Reilly Brothers. Maureen Child

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      “Tina, what in the hell were you thinking?”

      “I just told you.”

      “Uh-huh,” he muttered thickly and moved past her, grabbing up his jeans and tugging them on.

      “Your biological clock ticks and the alarm goes off on me?”

      “For God’s sake, Brian,” she said, gathering up her sheet and holding it even tighter around her body, “you don’t have to act like I pulled a gun on you and forced you to have sex with me.”

      His head snapped up and he pinned her with a look that would have terrified a lesser woman. But Tina was used to the Reilly temper. And had one of her own to match.

      “You tricked me,” he said.

      “I tempted you,” she corrected, clinging to that

      distinction.

      “You knew damn well what you were up to and didn’t tell me.”

      “Oh, please,” she said, pushing her stupid hair back out of her eyes again. He was dressed now. So unfair. He had the advantage here. Hard to fight for your rights with dignity when you’re wearing a pale green toga. “Don’t act like some poor little virgin who was taken advantage of. You were more than willing, thanks to that idiotic bet you and your brothers made.”

      He stopped. “You know about the bet?”

      “Yep.”

      He scowled. “Liam.”

      “Yep.”

      He lifted one finger and pointed it at her like a physical accusation. “So you set this up deliberately. You caught me at a weak moment.”

      One dark eyebrow lifted. “And your point is?”

      Furious now, Brian buttoned up his jeans, planted both hands at his hips and glared at her. “You should have told me.”

      All of the air left her lungs in a rush and she almost felt like a balloon deflating in the hands of a greedy child. Hindsight was always twenty-twenty, she reassured herself. And he might have a tiny, tiny, point. “Maybe.”

      “No maybe about it, babe.”

      Tina winced. Funny. He’d called her “babe” all night and it had sounded sexy, titillating. Now it sounded cold and dismissive. “If I’d told you, you wouldn’t have cooperated.”

      “Hah!” He grinned victoriously. “Exactly my point.”

      Sighing now, Tina felt regret pool in her stomach and spread cold tentacles throughout her body. How sad it was, she thought, that the two of them had come to this. How sad that so much fire was now only an empty chill in a shadowy room. “Brian, I don’t want anything from you.”

      “No, why should you?” He threw both hands high and let them slap down against his thighs again. “You’ve already gotten what you needed from me.”

      From outside, the roar of a jet streaking by overhead thundered through the room and Tina felt a hard jolt. Soon enough, she’d be home again in California, alone, and praying for the existence of the child Brian didn’t want. And Brian would be here, flying those jets, preparing to step back into danger at a moment’s notice.

      She’d thought she could come into town, sleep with Brian and make a baby, then slip right back into her world. But the truth was, she would never really be free of Brian. It was the plain and simple truth.

      No wonder none of the men she’d dated over the years had been able to touch her heart. Her heart had always been here, in Baywater with her ex-husband. She couldn’t fall in love with anyone else when she still loved Brian Reilly.

      As if he, too, felt the sense of misery creeping into her heart, he said, with regret rather than temper, “Don’t you get it, Tina? I don’t want to be a part-time father.”

      “You don’t have to be, Brian,” she said and wondered if he knew what it cost her to say this. “I’m not asking you to be an active parent. You can be as involved or as distant as you choose to be.”

      “Oh,” he said quietly, “now I get a vote?”

      “Yes,” she said, just as quietly, “when I told you not to worry, I meant it. If you want to, you can never speak to me again.”

      “Just like that.”

      Okay, she was willing to admit that maybe, maybe, what she’d done had been a mistake. Unfair to him. But she wasn’t going to stand here and let him pretend that he’d rather things were different between them. “Yes, Brian. Just like that. It’s been five years, remember? And we’ve talked maybe three times in all that time.”

      “This is different,” he snarled. “What’s between you and I is one thing. What’s between me and a child I created, is something else altogether. You think I could let my child not be a part of my life?”

      “That’ll be up to you.”

      “Gee, thanks.”

      Despite the already growing heat, Tina felt a chill snake along her spine and she wished fervently that they’d never had this conversation. She should have waited to see if there was a baby before confronting him with the possibilities.

      “There’s no point in talking about this anymore,”

      she said suddenly, turning as she spoke to head for the door. “I’m going back to the house.”

      “What about locking yourself out?” he said, sarcasm dripping from every word.

      She stopped, one hand on the doorknob, and shot him a look over her shoulder. “I lied.”

      “Big surprise.”

      Her shoulders hunched as his words slapped at her. “I’m sorry you’re mad, Brian,” she said, never taking her gaze from his, despite inwardly flinching from the fury she saw written in his eyes. “But I’m not sorry about last night. And I’m not sorry that we might have made a baby.” She opened the door and paused again. “I am sorry that you are, though.”

      Then she stepped through the door and closed it softly behind her.

      Brian stood alone in the growing patch of sunlit warmth and had never felt so bone-deep cold in his life.

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