Montana Reunion (14 page)

But she could be honest about her
priorities, and if the time had ever been ripe, it was now.

“Sheila, I appreciate every
opportunity you’ve given me.
”
Maddison
cleared her throat, nervous. She was still feeling
queasy, on the verge of dizzy, but she was determined to speak her mind for
once. “But I just can’t keep working at this pace with
no
break, with no room to prioritize my family. I need to take a
vacation,
and a proper one this time.”

“What, exactly, are you trying to
tell me?”

Zoe was looking at her over their
boss’s shoulder, eyes wide, shaking her head like she wanted
Maddison
to stop while she still could. But there was no
going back from this. She had to stand up for herself, because if she didn’t do
it now she never would.

“I’m saying that I need some time
off to be with my family. It doesn’t change how I feel about my career, but I
need at least the next two weeks off work completely. No phone, no email, just
me having some time to myself.”

Sheila shook her head, her mouth
drawn in a tight line. “A few days
is
the most I can
give you. Three tops.”

Maddison
took a deep breath.
She’d taken less than
three weeks off in a total of five years.
“You’re certain?” she forced
herself to ask.

Her boss nodded. She’d made it
clear that there was no room for negotiation.

Heat flooded
Maddison’s
face, not from embarrassment but from the woozy feeling in her belly that she
couldn’t shake. It was making her hot and clammy.

“Then I’m sorry, but I’ll have to
tender my resignation.”

She held her head high, refused to
be belittled by the woman who’d ordered her around for the past half-decade.
Now wasn’t the time for her to back down.

“You walk out that door,” Sheila
said, her voice cool, “and I’ll make sure your career in event planning is
over.”

Maddison
smiled and nodded at Zoe, who had tears in her eyes and a terrified expression
on her face, before turning on her heel and walking away. Only she didn’t head
for the exit but for the restroom instead.

She hauled open the door with as
much dignity as she could muster, made it to the toilet, and vomited. Her
stomach felt like it was curdled, her body was exhausted, but she forced
herself upright, cleaned up, and left the building.

Fear knotted within her, bound
tight like a snake curled over her eggs.

And it wasn’t her job that she was
worried about.
Because she knew.
This wasn’t nerves.

If she wasn’t mistaken, she was pregnant.

Tears were burning her eyes, but
Maddison
managed to keep it together. She didn’t even know
if was possible to get this queasy so early in pregnancy. She’d only be back in
L.A. two weeks.

Her doctor walked back into the
room, smile on her face. “Great news,” she announced.

Maddison
bit down on the inside of her mouth. The last time she’d been here, she’d been
talking to her doctor about fertility, excited about going off contraception
and planning a family.
Of course she’d
presume that a baby was good news.

“You’re pregnant.”

Holy shit.

“It’s not usual to feel sick so
early, and it may just have been the smell of the alcohol, but it’s certainly
normal.”

She instinctively touched her hand
to her belly. It was Jack’s
child,
there was no other
possibility, which meant she was only
just
pregnant.

“You look shocked?” Her doctor’s
smile had turned into a frown.

Maddison
blew out a big breath. “I just wasn’t expecting it. Not now.”

“You’ll both make great parents.
Every new mom is daunted when they find out, even those who’ve been trying a
long time.”

She smiled and stood, taking a card
her doctor passed to her. “This is the number of a great OB-GYN. I highly
recommend you make contact with her.”

Jack
was going to be furious with her. Jack was going to hate her.

Because
the one thing that made her different to him was that he trusted her. And now
she’d made the one thing happen that terrified him the most, because what if he
thought she’d planned this?

They’d made love in the heat of the
moment. For the first time in her life she hadn’t even thought about
protection, hadn’t even considered pregnancy. But she’d been off contraception
for a few months, and now she was pregnant by a man she loved more than she’d
ever admit.

And
who’d made it clear that he never, ever wanted to be a dad.

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

JACK walked in the door, not
bothering to knock since it was already propped open. He could hear talking and
laughter, and he wished he’d made it over sooner. He should have collected
Maddison
from the airport himself, even though he would
have had to fight her sister for the honor.

“There you are.” Her mom came down
the hall and he bent to kiss her cheek. “I knew you’d be here in time for
dinner.”

Jack laughed as she took him by the
arm to haul him into the kitchen. It didn’t take him a second to lock eyes with
Maddison
, leaning perched on the edge of the table.

“Hey,” he said, nodding to her dad
and sister as he walked toward the woman who was going to be his wife.

She gave him a shy smile, a smile
he didn’t recognize, but he hadn’t exactly expected her to throw herself at him
in front of her family. He crossed the distance between them, touched her
shoulder as he placed a kiss to her cheek. He could have paused for longer,
would have preferred to show her what he’d
like
to do to her now she was back.
But
that could wait until they were alone, because he had every intention of taking
her home with him tonight.

“How was work?”

Maddison
grimaced. “Great.”

He raised an eyebrow, not sure he
caught her meaning. Her groan told him it was nothing good.

“Sarcastic?” he asked.

She laughed.
“Unless
you count me telling my boss where to stick her job as great.”

Jack sat on the edge of the table
with her, slinging an arm around her shoulders. Maybe it was just her work
getting to her, but she seemed different. Even before they’d decided on the
whole marriage thing,
Maddison
would have accepted
his touch. Would have moved closer to him or at least acknowledged him. Now she
was stiff as a board, even though he could see she was trying to make an
effort.

“Is the damage irreparable?” he
asked, smiling his thanks as her mom passed him a beer.

“It’s a complete disaster. I should
have kept my mouth shut, I guess, but at the end of the day I couldn’t put up
with it anymore.”

He placed his hand over hers,
liking that she turned her palm to link their fingers. “Life’s too short to get
treated like shit.”

There was silence. She was probably
thinking what he was thinking.
That being
treated like shit was exactly what he’d put up with most of his life.
The
only difference was that he’d done it to secure his heritage, for his mom.

“Are you going to sell your condo?”

Jack looked up as her dad spoke. He
was sitting in the old armchair closest to the kitchen, looking more tired than
Jack had ever noticed before.

She shrugged in response. “I guess.
I love that place but, well.”

Maddison
cleared her throat and pulled her hand away from his.
There was definitely more to this than just her losing her job.

“If you need help financially,” he
said in a low voice, watching her face.

The smile she gave him was happy
mixed with sad. “Thanks Jack,” she said. “But I think I need to sell it, given
the fact that I’ve been told I’ll never work for anyone in the industry again.
I’ll buy something smaller, maybe an investment.”

Anger made him steel his jaw. “Let
me get this right, your boss
told you
that
?”

Her frown told him he was right.
“More of a bitch than even I realized.”

“Dinner’s ready,” her mom
announced, marching toward the table with an enormous plate of something that
smelled delicious.

“You’re going to be a married
woman,” Charlotte called out, walking to the table. “You’ll be too busy playing
the good housewife and making babies to even worry about work.”

Jack stayed silent, but he did
glance at
Maddison
. Her cheeks were flushed and she
looked like she might bolt.

He took her arm and walked them
both a few steps away, leaning in close. “Are you okay?”

Maddie
nodded. Jack wasn’t convinced.

“Can we talk later?”

He stared into her eyes, saw pain
there,
wished
he could take it away.
“Sure thing.
We’ll head to my place after dinner.”

Jack let her walk ahead of him,
pulled out her chair and sat by her side.

Only
he could have been half way to Texas for the distance that stretched between
them.

“So you two
lovebirds make any more wedding plans?”

Maddison
had never been so scared in her life. Nothing compared to the terror of sitting
beside the man she was supposed to marry, the man who meant more to her than
anyone else in the world right now,
because
he was the father of her child.
Only she knew that the way he was looking
at her right now? He might
never
look
at her again like that. Not after he heard the news.

“We were thinking of watching a
movie.
You two up for it?”

She smiled at her sister as they
stood to clear the table. “I think we might head to Jack’s for a while,” she
said, glancing over her shoulder.

“So in other words you two are
going to leave me with the old folks?”

They both laughed. “Sorry.”

Her mom took over for her then,
giving her a gentle push back toward Jack. “You two go enjoy yourselves. It
won’t take long to clean up.”

 
Maddison
breathed
deep, went to touch her stomach then stopped herself.

“Jack?”

He looked up, finished what he was
saying to her dad before taking her hand and standing.

“Ready to call it
a night?”

She just smiled and squeezed his
hand. They said their goodbyes and headed for the door.

“You sure there’s nothing else
troubling you?” Jack asked her.

Maddison
kept hold of his hand as they walked to his car. Part of her wished she could
just run back to her house, tuck up in a ball on her bed and not deal with
anything
that was going on. But she knew
it was impossible, that she had to deal with this.

“Jack, there’s something I need to
tell you,” she blurted out.

He stopped walking, reached for her
other hand and dropped a kiss to it. “Before or after I take you back to my
place?” Jack winked and she couldn’t help smiling, even though she knew his
grin was soon going to be replaced with a very surly frown, at best.

“How about we walk for a bit?”

Jack shrugged and let go of one of
her hands. They walked down the driveway toward the stables, wandering slowly.
She ran everything through in her mind again, tried to prepare for how and what
she was going to say, but there was no way to soften the blow.

“Jack,” she said, stopping and
waiting for him to turn, holding his hand so tight it must have been hurting
him.

He waited, watched her,
tucked
a loose strand of hair behind her hair where it
belonged.

“Just tell me,
Maddie
.
It can’t be that bad, unless you’ve taken your gay ex-fiancé back?”

“Jack, I’m pregnant.”

Tears flooded her eyes but she bit down
hard on her bottom lip, forced them to stay and not fall. Because she couldn’t
turn into a blubbering mess, not when she was telling Jack something so bad,
something he had been so certain he didn’t want to happen. This wasn’t bad news
for
her,
it was bad news for
him
.

Even in the half-light she could
see the pulse, the tick at the top of his jaw as he clenched it. His eyes had
left hers, were staring above her head, and when his gaze returned it wasn’t
the soft, playful expression in his eyes she’d become so used to. This Jack was
looking at her with soulless, angry eyes that could chill her to the bone.

“Is it mine?”

Her own
anger rose to the surface. She snatched her hand back from his, fisting both at
her sides. “Of course it’s yours.”

Jack was silent, his fury like
another person standing between them, keeping them apart and making his
feelings clear.

“I trusted you.” His words were
final, so cold.

So
he did think she’d done it on purpose.

“That night, I never even thought
about… I mean, it all happened in such a…”

“You never thought about it? Give
me a break,
Maddie
.” He yanked his fingers through
his hair, turning to walk away before spinning back to her. “You expect me to
believe that you went from being desperate to be a mom to suddenly not thinking
about it
at all
when we had sex?”

Now she was angry. Her blood was
pumping so hard it was thumping in her ears.

“We’re both adults, Jack, and
we both
had unprotected sex. Remember?
So let’s not make this completely my fault. It wasn’t like I forced you to do
it”

If she hadn’t known Jack, she’d
have been scared by his anger, but no matter how furious he was with her, how
much he hated her, he’d never hurt her.