A Camden's Baby Secret (14 page)

“Would it have changed anything if you had?” Livi asked.

He chuckled wryly. “Fair question. I don't know. I guess I would have been a lot more careful to make sure you knew what you were doing, and wouldn't hate yourself—and me—in the morning.”

She smiled sheepishly. “I have to admit that there was some of that,” she confessed.

“So I'm kind of worried about what it all means for you now. You were drinking in Hawaii, but since then I haven't seen you drink so much as a glass of wine. Did you swear off alcohol because of what it led to in Hawaii? Is that part of the ‘keeping your wits about you' thing you said tonight?”

“No. After Hawaii it's probably not easy for you to believe, but I've never been a big drinker.” Which was true.

“It isn't because you're afraid, and staying supersober to ward me off? I'm wondering if I've been pushing you, if I have a lot to apologize for—last Sunday night included. If maybe that's why you made yourself scarce this past week...”

Apparently he'd done a lot of thinking—and worrying—himself.

Livi shook her head firmly. “No, that's not true,” she said. “There's nothing for you to apologize for.” Although she liked that he had enough conscience to be concerned.

“Yes, I was drinking in Hawaii,” she said then. “And I'm not sure I would have done what we did if I hadn't been. But that isn't on you—it's on me. And last Sunday night...” She shook her head again and tried to repress the surge of desire at the memories.

But she wasn't sure how to finish that sentence now that she'd started it, and all she could come up with was, “It takes two.”

“So you aren't looking at me and seeing a wolf in sheep's clothing who's been preying on you?”

Oh, she was looking at him all right. And seeing a hot hunk in well-tailored clothing. That she wanted to rip off him.

But she said, “No, I don't think you're a wolf in sheep's clothing. That's actually what you've been worried
I
am, isn't it?”

He laughed. “Yeah, I guess that does fit what I think Mandy would be worried about with you, doesn't it?” He paused again, then returned to what he'd been saying. “I just want to make sure that we're okay. That I can think back on Hawaii and not feel like some kind of slimebag who took advantage of you.”

“Nothing about you makes me think for a minute that you're a slimebag,” Livi said honestly. “I mean, I did, when I thought you'd just run out that night in Hawaii. But now I know what happened, and leaving the way you did is understandable. Anyone would have done the same thing.”

“So is it okay if I do this?”

He kissed her, just a simple meeting of their mouths with gentle care. But soon his lips parted and drew hers along, and that kiss became potent enough to wipe her thoughts clean.

Then he stopped, and she said, “Oh, you're good at that...”

“Does that mean it's okay?”

She offered herself the option to say no. Knowing that he would accept that answer and that likely everything would halt between them—the times alone when they got to talk. The kissing. The touching. Everything. And they would become nothing but the passing acquaintances she kept telling herself they
should
be.

She could go back to just being Patrick's widow.

But in that moment, even in that house that had belonged to her and Patrick, even still loving Patrick and cherishing everything he'd been to her, Livi knew with sudden but absolute certainty that living in the past was no longer what she wanted.

But another night with Callan was.

And maybe if she allowed herself that, it
would
get it out of her system, so she could think more clearly about whether or not to tell him she was pregnant with his child.

“It is okay,” she heard herself whisper, looking into those dark eyes of his. “I'm not really sure why it is, but it is.”

He searched her face as if to read in her expression whether or not he could trust what she was saying.

Then he said, “I hope so. Because I don't think I've ever wanted anything as much as I want you, right now.”

He brought his other hand to her cheek and guided her into a second kiss that was instantly more heated than the first, instantly more intimate. Lips parted, and tongues sought each other out with an all new fervor.

No more fiddling with her hair; Callan wrapped his arm around her instead. He pulled her closer while his kiss increased in power and passion, fueling every hunger and need she'd been fighting this past week. The kiss was so intense it wiped away all thoughts and left her awash in nothing but sensations and desires and excitement.

Her hands were in his hair, down his neck, across his broad shoulders and then splayed on his back, as she again imagined tearing off his clothes.

But now there was nothing to stop her.

So she brought her hands around to his front, where she began to unbutton his shirt, not pausing until she'd pulled the tails out of his tuxedo pants and had the whole thing laid open.

Then her palms traveled from impressively honed pectorals up and over his shoulders to push his shirt as far off as she could get it.

She felt him smile even as they kissed, and he let go of her so that she could take his shirt completely off.

When she'd done that, he reached around her to unzip her dress.

Livi was just as thrilled with the prospect of getting rid of her own clothes as she was with getting rid of his. But maybe not in her living room.

So before he got her zipper down too far she ended their kiss.

And Callan yanked his hands away and held them up and out to the side as if he was being arrested. “Changed your mind?”

She laughed. “Yes,” she said out of pure orneriness, before she took one of those upraised hands and tugged him with her off the couch and to the stairs toward her bedroom.

“You're sure?” he asked, when they got there.

She was and she told him so, leaving him while she went to her nightstand and turned on the small lamp there so that a faint golden glow lit the room.

She'd wanted total darkness in Hawaii. She didn't want it tonight. And now that she could truly see Callan, shirtless in the lamplight, she realized what she'd missed.

And she had missed out, all right! Because it wasn't only his great hair and strikingly handsome face that were stare-worthy, so was his torso—sculpted and chiseled and buff.

When he bent over to take off his shoes and socks, she was hoping that his pants would be the next to go.

But all he did was unfasten his waistband, whetting her appetite, as he glanced around at the room she'd refurnished and redecorated a year ago to make it completely her own.

She didn't know if Callan was looking for ghosts, but that was the impression she had. He wouldn't find one, if he was. Packing away all Patrick's things had been one of the moving-on projects Jani and Lindie had talked her into. And although Livi kept several framed photographs of Patrick on her nightstand, she'd put them in the drawer earlier tonight when she'd been getting ready. Just in case this happened.

“Have
you
changed
your
mind?” she asked, when he continued scanning the room.

His espresso-colored eyes settled on her and he grinned. “Not on your life.”

He closed the distance between them in three steps and pulled her to him with caveman force, claiming her mouth again in a kiss that was all primitive hunger while he found her zipper once more, wasting no time opening it.

He left her dress in place, though, only snaking his big hands inside, massaging her back and making her ever more pliable as his mouth plundered hers.

Her breasts had ached all week long for more of his touch, and the longer he denied them, the greater the ache became.

Livi raised her hands to his pecs and demonstrated what she wanted even as she reveled in the feel of him. She hadn't realized just how blurred and blunted by alcohol everything in Hawaii had been. Because now everything was sharper and clearer and so, so much better. So much more real. Now every sense, every awareness and response, every nerve ending seemed finely tuned and turned on.

Callan brought his hands up and over her shoulders, and down came her dress, to the beginning swell of her breasts.

But it was quite a swell. Her black lace demi-cup bra barely fit breasts that pregnancy had apparently increased a size.

He deserted her mouth to kiss the side of her neck, the tip of her shoulder and then those breasts where they spilled out of their confines.

He placed the lightest of kisses there, and still it felt so good that her breath caught in her throat.

And that was nothing compared to what followed.

He moved her dress down farther until it drifted to the floor around her ankles. And once it was gone he nuzzled one of the bra's cups below her breast and took that breast into his mouth.

Another breath caught, and as she sighed it out she heard herself moan, “Oh, you're good at that, too...” because, oh, he was! And coupled with the pregnancy benefit of heightened sensitivity that she'd discovered on Sunday night, it was almost enough to make her lose her mind. It was most certainly enough to give her the courage to reach for the zipper of his tuxedo pants, easing down those well-tailored trousers and the boxers he had on underneath.

He stepped free of them, ended the delights at her breast and scooped her up into his arms to swing her onto the bed, before returning to his slacks to extract a condom from his pocket.

But Livi barely noticed anything but him. Gloriously naked and magnificent and so clearly wanting her.

Then he came to the foot of the bed and with a devilish half smile began to slowly roll her thigh-high nylons off—first one, then the other—getting his own fill of studying her body before he crawled onto the mattress.

He again captured her mouth, ravishing it while his hand reached the breast that was still exposed above the bra's cup, tormenting her diamond-hard nipple for a while before he reached around and unfastened her bra, taking it off so both breasts were free.

His mouth went from hers to her breasts again, giving them both equal time while that big hand of his trailed down her stomach and dipped between her legs.

Oh. Things were more sensitive there, too. When he slipped a finger into her, Livi's back came up off the bed and a high-pitched little groan accompanied it.

She wasn't going to be able to contain herself. The pleasure was too keen already and building in her by the minute.

So she reached between
his
legs, encasing him, sliding from base to tip and back again, driving him as mad as he was driving her, bringing him to the same brink.

That was when he paused to make quick work of putting on the condom he didn't know they didn't need. Then he did what everything in her was screaming for—he repositioned himself over and above her and came into her in one lithe move.

Never had Livi felt quite what she did then, as he began to thrust slowly in and out, picking up speed as he went. She kept up, rising to meet him and then drawing just enough away to tempt him back again.

Her hands were again pressed flat to his back, her fingers digging into him, holding tight as he took her on a wild ride that just got faster and faster and more intense as it went.

Until bliss engulfed her and him at once, wrapping them in a whirlwind of primal, exquisite euphoria that suspended everything for that one endless moment, unmatched by anything that had come before.

When it passed, the sensations depleted her so totally that she nearly collapsed into Callan's waiting embrace, not having realized that somewhere along the way they'd come to their sides and were not only joined but entwined together. It was impossible to know where one of them began and the other left off.

There were a few moments of settling. Of calming. Of her pulse slowing back to normal, her breathing doing the same. Of wilting against the big, strong, muscular body wrapped around her.

“Amazing,” Callan whispered in awe.

She couldn't refute or improve upon that, so merely murmured in response.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Ohh...yeah. Are you?”

He gave a throaty, replete laugh. “Ohh...yeah,” he parroted back. Then, holding her a little tighter, he said, “Can I stay?”

It hadn't occurred to her that he might not. “I thought you would.”

“Great,” he said with an exhausted sigh, fully relaxing. He got up to dispose of the condom, and then settled back in beside her. She felt him tense as something else seemed to occur to him.

“The whole night,” he added, as if he suddenly needed that specified. “I want to be here the whole night.”

“I wasn't planning to kick you out as payback. Or disappear myself, to teach you a lesson,” she said with a small laugh.

“I'd have it coming.”

“The whole night,” she confirmed sleepily.

Maybe he'd realized she was about to drift off, because he said, “Can I wake you up after we nap a little?”

She moaned, liking that idea a lot. “You can.”

“Good,” he said, resting his head atop hers as she nestled into his chest. He held her close as she felt him falling asleep.

And as she drew nearer and nearer to slumber herself, she suddenly had a moment of crystal clarity.

A moment in which she knew exactly what she had to do.

She had to tell him she was pregnant.

Chapter Ten

“A
re you okay?”

This time Callan wasn't asking the question after a round of runaway lovemaking. He was asking it through Livi's bathroom door, after morning sickness had sent her running for the second time.

Sure, she'd decided to tell him she was pregnant, but she'd wanted to be able to choose the right moment, the right setting. Right now, just after he'd listened to her throwing up, really wasn't it. But she didn't seem to have much of a choice.

They'd had an incredible night together. But fearing what happened every morning, after their third round of lovemaking at nearly 5:00 a.m. on Sunday, Livi had tried to persuade Callan that he should go home before the Tellers or Greta got up and realized he'd been out all night.

He'd listened to and acted on all her other suggestions for this role he'd taken with his makeshift family. But not that one. And lying warmly, snugly, in his arms had felt so good she hadn't insisted.

Instead she'd fallen asleep, willing herself to wake up feeling fine. But just like every other day, at nearly the stroke of seven, nausea woke her up.

The everyday illness had settled into a pattern, though. After the second upchuck she knew she would be able to hold down a few soda crackers, and would be left with an upset stomach for only the next couple hours.

So she called back to Callan in answer, “I'm okay. I just need a minute.”

Then she brushed her teeth, rinsed with mouthwash, pressed a cool cloth to her face, ran a brush through her hair and wrapped herself in her robe before going out.

To face the music.

“You don't look okay,” Callan greeted her, frowning, sounding caring and compassionate.

Sick or not, Livi smiled weakly and wondered how he could look as good as he did right out of bed with his hair tousled and a scruff of beard shadowing his face. He'd pulled on his tuxedo pants and the shirt he'd worn the night before—left untucked and unbuttoned so a strip of his glorious chest and rock-hard abs peeked out, distracting her.

But right now she had to focus, to respond to his comment on her appearance. “Thanks,” she said facetiously.

“You're beautiful, but you don't look well,” he amended. “What's going on? Do you think you have the flu? This isn't some kind of extreme morning-after regret, is it?”

Livi laughed slightly. He'd clearly meant it as a joke, but sounded a little worried that there might be a grain of truth to it.

She went to her nightstand and took a sleeve of crackers from the drawer. Turning back to Callan, she offered him one.

“Crackers? In here? Now?” he said, after he'd declined the offer.

Livi took a few for herself and returned the sleeve to her drawer. Apparently his ex-wife hadn't suffered morning sickness—or maybe Callan just hadn't been around enough during the pregnancy to know about the remedy that Livi's obstetrician had recommended.

“Keeping crackers in here and eating them first thing is not something I've done until lately,” she said, thinking that waiting until now to tell him about the baby really did make it even harder to do.

But she knew she had to.

So she said, “The nausea
is
a morning-after thing, but not from last night.” Taking her crackers, she went to sit on the end of her rumpled bed before she nibbled on one.

Callan came to stand in front of her, frowning down at her. “What does that mean?”

“I honestly didn't know whether to tell you this or not,” she said with a sigh.

Then she took a steeling breath, shored up her courage, met his eyes with hers and said, “Remember that broken condom in Hawaii?”

She watched the color drain from his face. But he seemed at a loss for words as he just stood there, staring at her.

On the off chance that he might not have understood, she made it very clear. “I'm pregnant, Callan. A little over two months now.”

“Pregnant...” he echoed, sounding thunderstruck.

Livi nodded. “I did a home test and then saw my doctor to confirm it.” She told him her due date and saw him swallow.

The expression on his face wasn't merely a frown anymore. It had darkened into something more serious, something that reminded her of a gathering storm.

“Two and a half months,” he repeated. “You've known for that long. You knew through this...” He pointed with a raise of his chin to the bed they'd shared all night.

“At first, I just couldn't face that it might be true. I've only
really
known and been able to accept it for a couple of weeks.”

“A couple of weeks.” More parroting, but with some outrage around the fringes. “The same couple of weeks we've been seeing each other, talking to each other... But again—we got all the way here last night without you telling me?”

He was definitely not happy.

But before Livi had the chance to say anything else, something seemed to dawn on him and make his ire grow. “Oh, my God, this is it, isn't it? This is really why you came around wanting contact with Greta! It wasn't to make up for what your family did to hers. That was just the cover story. You came to get to me. Mandy was right about you Camdens!”

Livi hadn't expected that.

“No! I was in Northbridge to see Greta. I knew she had a guardian, but I didn't have any idea it was you. I didn't even know your last name. And everything to do with Greta is completely separate from you or any of this—it was from the start, it is now and it will be from here on, regardless of what's going on between you and me. I was completely stunned to see you in Northbridge.”

“Come on,” he said skeptically. “Admit it—you realized you were pregnant and did something to figure out who the guy you'd spent the night with in Hawaii was, didn't you? You knew,” he said accusingly. “You just put on a show when I walked into the Tellers' house that day. I'll bet your cousin Seth gave you the heads-up that the guy you were looking for was right there under his nose, and you all hatched some plot to get to me through Greta.”

“That's not true,” Livi insisted.

Callan huffed in disgust. “And just when I honestly thought the Camdens might be all right, after all. That Mandy would have been wrong to think of you in the same category with the Camdens who screwed over her dad. Just when I actually thought maybe you could be trusted...”

“There's no conspiracy, Callan. My family didn't even know until this past week—I told them Friday night, and Lang and Beau lectured me then, saying I needed to tell you. They were talking from your perspective, and I guess it sank in that you would
want
to know. But what you're saying now doesn't even make sense. Why would I need to use Greta to get to you? If I had known—or found out—who you are, what was there to keep me from just going where you live or work? What possible purpose could there be for doing it through Greta?”

Callan didn't have an answer for that, but he wasn't readily conceding to her reasoning, either. He still just stood there, his dark eyes boring into her suspiciously.

“Maybe I shouldn't have told you,” she said then, thinking out loud.

But that just seemed to send him off onto a new path of anger. “I should have been the first to know—after you,” he declared. “I sure as hell shouldn't have been the last. But then the end of the line does seem to be where I always am in these things.”

Livi knew he was referring to his ex-wife's deception. “You aren't at the end of the line. My brother didn't know he was a father until Carter was two, and my cousin didn't find out that he'd gotten his high school girlfriend pregnant until just recently.”

“Is that supposed to make this better?”

Livi's stomach lurched and she spent a moment waiting to see if she needed a third run for the bathroom, after all.

Only when she knew she was going to avoid throwing up again did she take a deep breath and say, “I know you already have your hands full with Greta and the Tellers. I wasn't sure you could handle more on top of it, especially when family is not really your thing. Not that you aren't trying, but still...” She took another small bite of the corner of a cracker to keep back the bile that seemed to be building again.

Then she said, “But Beau and Lang convinced me that you
could
handle it—that you
had
to know. So now you do. But if you want, you can just forget it.”

“Forget it?”
Callan shouted.

“I have a good support system,” she went on, trying to reassure him. “I won't be alone in this. I don't need anything financially. If you don't want to see me again, then I can make that happen. We didn't see each other all last week. I can go on meeting with Greta the way I did, and you can go on about your business as if you were none the wiser. You can just concentrate on dealing with what you already have on your plate. It'll be fine. I'm giving you knowledge, not another obligation.”

He released a huff filled with a combination of astonishment and fury and frustration and confusion—so many things that Livi went on to say, “I know this is huge. And believe me, it took me a
long
time to face it, to admit even to myself that it's happening. You need some time with it... I just want you to know up front that there are no expectations of you—”

He pressed all ten fingertips to his head as if to keep it from exploding, his eyes closed.

Livi had the sense that everything she was saying was making it worse—but she didn't know how to make things right.

Then he opened his eyes, took his hands away from his head and held them palms out. “I do have to wrap my head around this,” he said, as if he didn't trust himself to say any more.

He started to button his shirt faster than she'd ever seen it done.

“Do you need me for anything right now?” he asked as he did. “Is there something I can do for the...sickness? Make you tea? Get you water? Something?”

It was the most irate offer to do something nice that she'd ever heard.

Livi shook her head. “I'm fine. I do this every morning. It passes.”

And why on earth did she feel as if she was about to cry? Of course she hadn't fooled herself into believing that he would embrace this news and be thrilled with it the way Patrick would have been.

But rage and accusations, followed by Callan not being able to get away fast enough? Not only was it all a bad reaction, it was also an awful ending to the night they'd spent together. She wished they were still lying in bed, that she was wrapped in his arms, both of them just savoring the afterglow. But that couldn't happen now. Maybe it would never happen again. Instead she was sick and he was fuming.

They really didn't do the morning-after thing very well...

“You're sure there's nothing you need?” he asked.

“Positive,” she said, struggling to keep her voice from cracking, to show him nothing but strength and proof that she could do this on her own.

“I need to think,” he told her, as if he'd forgotten they'd already determined that.

She nodded and agreed. “You do.”

She thought he would leave then. But for another moment he went on standing there, looking cross and confused and frustrated and helpless all at once. She didn't know why he didn't just go.

“It's okay,” she assured him, sounding impatient in her attempt to conceal her own bewildering emotions. “Leave!”

She wasn't sure why that had come out so harsh, but it had.

Callan snatched up what remained of his discarded clothes and went to her bedroom door. But even once he reached it, with his hand on the knob, he didn't rush out.

Instead he paused there, looking back in her direction, but at the floor.

“You were right to tell me. But not to wait until now.”

Livi didn't say anything. She couldn't. Not with a throat full of tears.

After a moment of only silence from her, Callan opened the door and went out. Moments later, she heard her front door open and slam shut.

And that was when she recognized the feelings she was having.

Feelings she hadn't ever expected to have again.

The same feelings she'd had when it had sunk in that she'd lost Patrick.

Only this time they were all about Callan.