Make Mine a Bad Boy (18 page)

Her eyes narrowed as two words came out of her mouth. Two words he couldn’t quite make out over the buzzing in his ears—a buzzing that grew louder as he stared down at the woman in front of him.

For a second, he wondered if he was dreaming—if he had nodded off during the twin fantasy and would wake up in the morning, sighing in relief. But then a foot stomped down hard on his toes and the dream bubble burst.

“Are you listening to me? I’m pregnant!”

The sudden increase in volume had him dropping her wrists and pressing his fingertips to his temples. Or maybe it was the words that had his head throbbing.

“Well, aren’t you going to say anything?” she asked.

Lifting his head, he looked into those fear-filled eyes
for one brief moment before he turned and walked over to the mini bar. After switching on the light above the cabinet, he started searching. Wine. No. Vodka. No. Whiskey. Most definitely. He poured a good two fingers and downed it in one gulp before he poured another one and did the same.

“Great,” she spoke from behind him. “My child’s father is a drunk.”

He might’ve poured himself a third if the entire “child’s father” thing hadn’t brought the whiskey back up his throat. With a hand braced on the bar, he swallowed hard as his eyes stung like hell.

“Now you see how I felt,” Hope said. “Except you didn’t have to find out the news while two women stared back at you.”

Colt turned around. “Shirlene and Faith?” What girls did at slumber parties took a mean curve. “But why would you…”

“Faith thought she might be pregnant, so your sister pulled out her entire drugstore of pregnancy tests. I was supposed to be the constant in her little experiment.” Her laughter held no humor whatsoever as she flopped down on the sofa. “Some constant.”

“But those things aren’t foolproof. Are they?”

“Ninty-seven percent accurate.” She looked up at him. “One percent less than your raincoat.”

“Shit.” Colt ran a hand through his hair as he paced over to the sliding glass doors that led out to the pool. The pool was closed for the winter, but it didn’t matter. He couldn’t see anything beyond his own disbelief. He turned back around. “Maybe you should take another one—just to be sure.”

“I did. After Shirlene and Faith fell asleep, I used up her entire inventory. I’ve now been told I’m pregnant by blue lines, green dots, and one very annoying word.” She swallowed hard. “Pregnant.”

The air left his lungs in one long rush, and his knees finally gave out, and he flopped down in the closest chair. There were a thousand things to say, too many for him to dissect at the moment, so he chose to say nothing. He just sat there with the whiskey churning in his stomach and his eyes pinned on the swirls in the rug beneath his bare toes.

Pregnant? He could understand getting the news after being in a serious relationship, but one quickie in a hotel room didn’t seem worth the burden that had now been placed on his doorstep. Of course, most of the blame was his. He was the one who had gone looking for her after Shirlene had called, worried because she hadn’t heard from Hope in weeks. He had been the one who rented the hotel room close to the club where she worked so he wouldn’t have to make the long trip back to his house on Hermosa Beach so late at night. And he had been the one unable to control his desires long enough to consider the consequences of fumbling around in the dark with a condom that had been in his wallet for a good month and had endured more than its fair share of road time.

“Aren’t you going to ask if its yours?” Hope spoke almost as softly as her sister. Colt looked up. In the dim light put out by the mini bar, she looked small and childlike, all curled up on the couch in those silly pig pajamas with the crooked tiara.

“It’s mine,” he stated without hesitation.

They stared at one another for a few seconds before
they both turned away. The front door stood open, and only the occasional chirp of crickets broke the thick, heavy silence. He didn’t know how long they sat there, both lost in their own thoughts, before he finally spoke.

“So what do you want to do?”

She fiddled with one of the buttons that ran down the front of the pajamas. “I don’t know, but I don’t think I can get an abortion. What do you want to do?” she shot back.

The question shouldn’t have taken him by surprise, but it did. Probably because the shock had yet to wear off. A baby. His baby.

He swallowed and tried to think. Do? What did he want to do? A variety of things popped into his head. Drink the rest of the whiskey and move onto the vodka and wine. Sue the condom company. Stomp over to Shirlene’s and yell at her for asking him to check on Hope in L.A. in the first place. Hop on his bike and pretend this never happened.

Except it had happened, and there was no way to pretend otherwise.

So what did he want to do?

He didn’t have a clue. The only thing he knew for certain was he didn’t want to have a baby. He wasn’t ready for something like that. Like Hope said, he was an irresponsible motorcycle bum and proud of it. A motorcycle bum who spent half the year in a garage and the other half touring the country on a custom chopper that only had room for one. One lone rider, who stopped when he wanted. Not when a woman needed to take a pee, or a kid screamed for release from the confining contraption he’d been buckled into.

That was the way it was and that was the way Colt liked it.

There were a few times he felt lonely, but certainly not lonely for a baby. But now he didn’t have much of a choice. There was a child—his child—therefore he needed to give Hope an answer. Or if he couldn’t come up with one, he needed to at least be honest about that.

He ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. I haven’t ever really thought about babies.”

“And you think I have?” Her words held a lot of anger, no doubt because he’d taken so long to answer.

Feeling a little tense himself, his gaze snapped over to her. “Come off it, Hope. That’s all you and Shirlene talked about when you were growing up. Weddings and babies.”

“With Slate! Never with some motorcycle bum who can’t keep a foolproof condom in his wallet!”

Just like that, the situation turned nasty.

He tipped his head. “Funny, but you didn’t seem to be too worried about that in the Motel 6.”

“Because you seduced me!”

“Seduced you?” He arched a brow. “Was that before or after you sucked my tongue down your throat?”

“You ass!” Hope jumped up. “I should’ve known it was useless to come here expecting you to take any kind of responsibility for your actions.” She started for the door, but he got up and blocked her way.

“Oh, I take full responsibility for my actions. I had no business taking you back to my hotel room, but I’ll be damned if I take full responsibility for what happened after. You were just as hot as I was for it, baby. And don’t you ever forget it.”

“How can I? I’ll carry that mistake around for the next eight months!”

The word
mistake
caused his temper to flare. “And that’s what really chaps your ass, isn’t it? It will be hard to pretend to the people of this town that you hate my guts with my child growing in your stomach.”

“Your child?” She tapped her chest. “You mean, my child.”

“So now you’re going to claim immaculate conception?” He snorted. “The people of this town are stupid, but I don’t think they’re going to fall for that.”

“Well, they certainly won’t think you’re the daddy! Sandra Bullock won out over you!”

“Then why are you here?” Colt finally released all his anger and frustration. “If you’re going to walk around pretending I’m not the father, what the hell are you doing asking me what I want to do? If that’s the case, you can damn well figure it out on your own.”

“I hate you, Colt Lomax! I hate you so much!” She shoved him out of the way. “And I will figure it out on my own. I don’t need anything from you.”

The door slammed closed behind her, and Colt stared at it as he whispered, “No. And you never have.”

I
N THE TIME
it took her to cross Shirlene’s lawn and slip back into the dark house, Hope’s anger had turned to a hard knot of anxiety. Needing to do anything to prevent complete hysteria, she felt her way to the kitchen, where she rifled through the drawers until she found a pen and pad. Switching on the lights over the breakfast bar, she sat down on a stool and started writing.

Reasons I’m Not Pregnant

1.
My period is always late.

2.
I’m not sick in the mornings.

3.
My breasts are not tender.

4.
I feel exactly the same as I did two months ago.

5.
—

She paused for only a brief second before writing the next sentence, pressing so hard it tore the paper.

It was only one time! One measly time that I haven’t even given a second thought to!!!!

But even as she dropped the pen and flopped her head
down upon her folded arms, Hope realized it was a lie. She’d given more than a second thought to that night in L.A. As much as she’d tried to forget it, it had been carefully preserved in her brain like a Turner Classic, waiting for just such a moment of weakness to be pulled from the vault and replayed in all its digitally mastered glory.

“See ya, Sweetie,” Phoenix, one of the strippers at Tittly Wink’s, called out before she climbed into her brand-new Porsche.

“See ya.” Hope waved as she hurried across the parking lot to her old beat-up Chevy truck. In her haste to get back to her apartment after the long night on her feet, Hope hadn’t even taken the time to remove her blonde wig, something she didn’t realize until the cold breeze blew the short strands across her face.

“Got any change?”

Hope almost jumped out of her black sports bra when a man materialized out of the darkness.

“Geez, Marty.” She held a hand to her chest. “You scared the crap out of me.”

“Sorry, Hope.” He pushed back his long, greasy dreadlocks with a dirty, sun-damaged hand. “I figured you saw me.”

She probably should have. In his flowered board shorts and parka, he was hard to miss.

“It’s not a big deal,” she said as she searched through her purse for some change. Unfortunately, all she came up with was a linty orange Tic-Tac. Even Marty looked disappointed as he stared down at her open palm. But his eyes lit up when a ten-dollar bill suddenly appeared over Hope’s shoulder. Grabbing the ten, Marty popped the
Tic-Tac in his mouth and offered up a “God Bless You” before hurrying off.

Hope turned to thank the man who offered the bill for his generosity, and ended up looking into a pair of cool, steel gray eyes she remembered well.

“Living dangerously, honey?”

After five years of walking through a parched desert of surfer dudes and arrogant actors, the familiar twang blended with the husky male timbre poured over her like a cool West Texas rain shower. But she only had a moment to drink it in before the implications of Colt Lomax finding her working at a dump of a strip club smacked her right between the eyes.

If Colt knew, so would the entire town of Bramble.

Hoping it was all just some weird coincidence, Hope tried to bluff her way through it.

“Did you need something, sir?” She mimicked the hard tones of all her California neighbors.

His eyes narrowed. “Yeah, I need something all right. I need you to tell me what the hell you think you’re doing!”

She swallowed hard and tried to keep her eyes off the chest muscles that strained against the black cotton of his T-shirt. Muscles that had gotten much more pronounced in the last eight years.

“Doing? I don’t know what you’re talking about. You must have me confused with someone else.” She went to walk past him, but he grabbed her arm.

“Cut the shit, Hope.”

“Hope?” She stared down at the sexy tattoo on his arm. “I’m afraid I don’t know anyone by that name. My name is… Pumpkin.”

The name popped out before she could stop it. Damn Shirlene and her theory that the best stripper names were made up using the name of your first pet. What was the matter with her? What if he remembered Pumpkin? Her pony had been very cute and very memorable.

“Fine. We’ll play it your way.” He jerked a twenty out of his pocket and slipped it in the front of her sports bra. His eyebrows lifted at the extra padding. “I think that’s the going rate, isn’t it?”

Before she could say a word, he bent down and hefted her over his shoulder.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she yelled, as she pummeled his hard butt with her fists.

“I’m collecting my lap dance.”

“But I’m off work!”

“Consider it overtime.”

His long strides made it much harder to land a punch, although that didn’t stop her from trying. While she flailed her arms aimlessly, she looked around for one of the many bouncers who worked at the club. Unfortunately, they were all inside, having their usual after-hours drink with the boss. And while she had been searching for change to give Marty, all of her dancer buddies had left. Which meant there was no one to stop Colt but Hope.