Loves Me, Loves Me Knot (14 page)

He gave a snort. Like that was possible. Unless they trapped their kids in a bubble and never let them out of their sight, there was no way a child could go through life without coming in contact with outside influences.

Bullying started as early as preschool. Drugs could creep in soon after. Molestation could happen anywhere, at any age. Peer pressure, petty larceny, low self-esteem that led to anorexia, bulimia, cutting . . .

It was enough to make a man willingly castrate himself. And how any woman could want to bear a child with those odds stacked against her, he had no idea. The shock was that Jenna and the rest of society didn’t see it that way.

But then, they hadn’t seen what he’d seen, had they?

No, he was right and he knew it. Which meant that if Jenna really did turn out to be pregnant, he was up shit creek without the proverbial paddle.

He would be forced to deal with impending fatherhood, deal with raising a baby in an environment no child should be subjected to. There was always house
arrest and armed guards, he supposed. Maybe a tracking device embedded in the back of his or her neck.

Not a bad idea, and he knew where he could get one.

But he didn’t need to resort to CIA tactics right away, he thought, straightening on the bed. Pushing to his feet, he took a deep breath and made a conscious decision not to borrow trouble just yet.

He had time to figure out what to do if one of those tester sticks turned positive. And with any luck, it wouldn’t.

With a little luck—and maybe a few fervent prayers—this would turn out to be just a minor blip on his radar, and a lesson learned about accepting a cold beer late at night from an ex-wife with ulterior motives.

“Come on, pick up. Pick up.”

As soon as Jenna had escaped from her dead-end argument with Gage, she’d headed downstairs and straight to the phone. If anyone could rescue her from her ex-husband’s heavy-handed caveman routine, it would be Grace and Ronnie. After all, they’d led the charge to get her into this, they could certainly help get her out.

It took six rings, but finally Ronnie answered her cell phone with a muted, “Hello?”

“Help,” Jenna said frantically, “I’m being held hostage by a raving lunatic who doesn’t want a baby, but doesn’t want me to have one, either.”

“What happened? Are you all right?” Ronnie asked. She continued to whisper as though she didn’t want anyone else to overhear her conversation.

“I’m fine, at least for now. But Gage got loose right after we talked this morning and threw a fit. No less than I expected, I guess,” she admitted in a somewhat deflated tone. “Then he left, and I thought the worst was over, but
he’s back
. He’s back, Ronnie, and he’s moving in. He says he’s not leaving until I take one of
the home pregnancy tests he brought with him and he knows for sure whether or not I’m knocked up. Of course, if I am, he may
never
leave. I may be stuck with him for the rest of my natural life!”

She made it sound like a fate worse than death, but deep down, a tiny voice was asking if that would be so bad. Would it really be so horrible to be stuck with Gage, possibly married again, raising a child together?

And the long and the short of it was no, it wouldn’t be so bad. It might even be nice. That hadn’t been her reason for jumping on board Grace’s “baby, oh, baby” plan, but it might be a nice side benefit. After all, if Gage hadn’t changed horses in midstream by declaring he no longer wanted to have children with her, they would probably still be married and she’d be bouncing baby number two or three on her hip by now.

But somehow this felt more disappointing than she’d expected. It wasn’t the thrill and excitement of a couple wanting a child and celebrating its conception together. What had she been thinking trying to rope him into a life she wanted, but he definitely didn’t? Oh, yeah, now she remembered. She
hadn’t
been thinking; the tequila had.

“Are you okay?” Ronnie wanted to know. “Has he hurt you or are you afraid he’ll hurt you?”

“Of course not,” Jenna answered automatically. Gage would never hurt her—not physically, anyway.

“Then . . . I hate to do this to you, sweetie, but you’re on your own. We’re in the middle of a major meltdown over here.”

Jenna jerked slightly in surprise, her pulse kicking up in concern. “Why? What’s wrong?”

If possible, Ronnie’s voice dropped even lower. “We
drove to Columbus to surprise Dylan and Zack, just like we’d planned. Except Grace was the one who ended up getting the biggest shock. She walked into Zack’s room and found another woman in his bed.”

Jenna gasped, her mouth falling open in disbelief, but before she could say anything, Ronnie went on.

“She was understandably upset. Insisted we leave, so we drove back home. She’s spending half the time sobbing and half the time raging. I’m seriously worried she’s going to hurt herself, hurt someone else, or make herself sick with grief.”

“Oh, no,” Jenna moaned. “This is terrible. I can’t believe he did this to her. What a jag-off.”

“To say the least,” Ronnie grumbled. “You should hear the creative names Grace has been calling him. I knew she had a mouth on her when motivated, but she’s been
really
imaginative today.”

“Where are you? Your place or hers?”

There was an uncomfortable pause on the other end, and in the background Jenna could hear the sound of crying, punctuated by the occasional screech, peppered with thumps, bumps, and crashes. And once in a while, the deep, heartfelt bellow of Bruiser, Zack’s mammoth Saint Bernard.

“Actually,” Ronnie responded after a moment, “we’re at Zack’s place. She wouldn’t let me take her anywhere else. And as soon as we hit the parking garage . . . she completely destroyed his Hummer, Jenna. Took a baseball bat to it. I should have stopped her. I tried a couple of times, but an armed and angry Grace Fisher is kind of intimidating.”

“Good God,” Jenna muttered.

“I hope there were no security cameras down there,
or we’re both going to jail. And don’t think less of me for saying this,” Ronnie went on, “but part of me thinks the bastard deserves what he gets. The other is just downright worried about Grace. She’s acting crazed, Jenna. I’ve never seen her like this.”

“Yeah, well, she’s never had a fiancé cheat on her before.”

“True. I’d probably feel the same way if Dylan ever cheated on me. And I’d go straight for all his dearest, most prized possessions.”

Maybe it was shallow and petty, but Jenna concurred.

“I’m on my way. Don’t let her hurt herself, Ronnie. If she starts going off the deep end or things get truly scary—”

“Why do you think I haven’t left her alone? I can’t decide if I should worry about her committing suicide or homicide. If Zack were here, I swear he’d have a skate blade buried between his eyes by now. Or his groin.”

Jenna would have liked to laugh at that, but it simply wasn’t funny.

“Give me half an hour,” she said before disconnecting and racing back to the dining room to grab her purse.

After three steps, she came to a screeching halt and yelped in surprise. “Good Lord, Gage. Give a gal some warning next time, would you? Stomp your feet or whistle or something instead of sneaking up on me like that.”

He raised a brow. “I didn’t sneak. You just weren’t paying attention. What’s with the phone call?” he asked, indicating the cordless phone she’d left on the kitchen island.

It was clear he’d heard most, if not all, of her side of
the conversation, and she was so thoroughly offended with Zack on her best friend’s behalf that she’d morphed immediately into “all men are scum” mode.

“Your
friend
”—she spat the word like it was cursed—“is an asshole.”

Despite her charge and bitter tone, his face remained impassive. “Which one?”

“Zack, the two-timing dickweed. Grace showed up at his hotel to surprise him and found another woman in his bed. I’m headed over to help talk her down before the police show up.”

She took a step forward and grabbed her purse, swinging the strap over her shoulder on her way to the front door. “They should arrest Zack for being a lying, cheating bastard,” she muttered, somehow deciding that if she couldn’t take out her derision on Zack himself, the nearest male—namely Gage—would do.

But when she banged out of the house, sans the satisfying slam of the front door, she frowned and turned around to find Gage standing on the porch behind her, gently closing the door she’d intended to rattle.

“What are you doing?” she wanted to know.

“Going with you.”

She made a completely unladylike noise somewhere between a scoff and a snort. “I don’t think so.”

A slow, humorless smile stretched his lips until two rows of straight white teeth were visible in the glow of the porch light. Jenna took a breath, her heart skipping a beat as she realized he looked eerily like a rabid wolf, baring its fangs just before going for the jugular.

“I do,” he replied, his tone remaining soft and perfectly regulated. “When I said I was sticking around
until I knew for sure whether or not you’re pregnant, I meant I’m sticking to
you
. Consider me your new best friend.”

“I already have a best friend,” she countered, crossing her arms beneath her breasts and belatedly realizing she’d forgotten to grab a jacket.

Not that she’d attempt to get past him and back into the house now. Not even if they were in the middle of a blizzard, in Antarctica, and her nose had just fallen off from frostbite.

“Two, in fact, but neither of them follow me around like my shadow day and night.”

“A shadow,” he repeated. “That’s better. Consider me your shadow until you get your period or the stick turns blue, whichever happens first.”

She narrowed her eyes, but couldn’t think of a logical retort to his argument. Considering the determined tilt of his jaw, it wouldn’t have mattered, anyway. Nothing she said would budge him, not when he got like this.

“Fine,” she said, trying not to let it sound too much like a huff, even though she was frustrated enough to kick him.

Turning back toward the car, she slid behind the wheel, then stifled a grin as Gage struggled to climb into the passenger side and find a comfortable position.

He was so tall, his head brushed the roof of her tiny VW, and even after pushing the seat back as far as it would go, his legs were still bent nearly to his chest and bumping the dashboard.

“We could take my bike, you know,” he told her, sounding slightly aggrieved.

“But you’re
my
shadow, not the other way around,
and I don’t drive a motorcycle,” she quipped, turning the key in the ignition and putting her little Volkswagen in gear.

For several long moments, Gage didn’t say anything, but she could almost feel him mentally grumbling. Good, it served him right. If he planned to follow her around for the next few days, making her life an abject misery, then she deserved to make him moderately uncomfortable from time to time, too.

She zipped down the gravel lane and picked up even more speed when she hit the main road. She didn’t go over the speed limit, but she wasted no time in getting back to the city, wanting to reach Ronnie and Grace as quickly as possible.

Her mind was still spinning over the fact that Zack had cheated on Grace. Oh, he was handsome, and a jock, and famous to boot; and she knew professional athletes had gorgeous women hanging on them practically everywhere they went. But she’d thought Zack was different. She’d thought he’d sewn his wild oats already and was truly in love with Grace, ready to settle down and be a one-woman man.

Instead, it turned out he’d been leading Grace on. He apparently wanted to have his cake and eat it, too. Have Grace as his beautiful, clueless wife to make him look good in the press and with the home-and-family crowd while also continuing to lead a fast-and-loose bachelor lifestyle.

The jerk.

All men weren’t selfish bastards, were they? There had to be a few decent fellows wandering around. A few guys who knew what it meant to be faithful.

Gage had been one of those men. One of the good
guys, who understood love and respect and monogamy. At least until—

A sudden thought popped into her head and she immediately scowled. Fingers tightening on the steering wheel, she cranked her head in his direction and demanded, “Did you cheat on me while we were married?”

Startled not only by her accusing tone and the question itself, but by the unexpected break in the silence of the car, he jerked his gaze to look at her, brows creased in the center of his forehead.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Splitting her attention between him and the road, she said, “I want to know if you ever cheated on me while we were together. Is that why you suddenly pulled away and decided you didn’t want kids with me? Was there another woman you wanted to be with instead?”

Is there another woman now?

It shouldn’t matter. She shouldn’t care. They were divorced, for God’s sake. It was none of her business what he did or who he did it with.

She shouldn’t care, she shouldn’t care,
she shouldn’t care
. But deep down inside, a teeny-tiny part of her did, dammit.

She didn’t want to think about him being with other women.

Didn’t want to think about him making another woman laugh, the way he used to do with her . . . A dirty joke, a funny face, a slight tickle while they were watching a movie.

Or another woman being the recipient of his romantic gestures . . . Flowers for no particular reason. A phone call in the middle of the day telling her to dress
up and meet him somewhere after work for a surprise date. The occasional piece of jewelry or simply a soft kiss pressed to her cheek or temple out of the blue.

Yes, he’d been one of the good guys. Maybe not the perfect husband, but then, she probably hadn’t been the perfect wife. They were both only human, after all, complete with their own individual foibles and insecurities.

But Gage had always made her feel loved and cherished and secure in their relationship . . . right up until things had started to go downhill. Was that because he’d found someone else? Because his loyalties had been divided?