She blew out a breath, lifted her head and stared through the windshield at the store in front of her. A sinking sensation opened up in the pit of her stomach as she thought about why she was there. What she’d come to buy. And the fact that if she was right, everything was about to get much more complicated.
Jackson tried to talk to her when she got home, but she breezed right past him as if he weren’t there. So he decided he’d give her a little space. A little time. Work things through in her head, then he’d talk to her again and she’d damn well listen.
He’d just spent the longest damned afternoon of his life, talking to his brothers and Mike Sullivan, pretending nothing was wrong, when he couldfeel Casey’s misery hanging over him like a black cloud dripping rain. No one else had noticed, of course, because she’d plastered a smile on her face and had done just what she’d set out to do. Kept everyone else in the dark about what had happened between them.
“But what exactly did happen?” he muttered as he stared through the living room windows at the night beyond. “She found a ring I didn’t use. Big deal. It didn’tmean anything,” he argued with himself, his voice a low mutter of disgust. “I told her I broke it off with Marian, why can’t she understand that?”
Logic was lost on women, he thought. They were too busy being hurt or wounded or angry to listen to reason. Well, he told himself, she’d listen tonight, whether she wanted to or not.
He listened hard and heard Casey singing to Mia as she bathed the baby then put her to bed. Then he listened to the sounds of Casey moving around and realized for the first time that the reason he’d never spent much time in this house before now was that it had been too quiet. Too big for one man. Too filled with a silence that only seemed to get bigger when a man had time to think about it.
But with Mia and Casey here, the house seemed alive, somehow. And so, damn it, didhe.
He finally gave up on trying to work out a new flight schedule, assigning pilots to fill in the gaps left by Dan, who had indeed quit right after the birth of his son. He’d worry about the logistics of flight time tomorrow. Jackson was definitely going to need to hire someone else, but until he did, he himself would have to pick up some of the slack.
Since Mia and Casey had come into his life, flying had taken a back seat. He hadn’t been on a run himself in weeks and up until that very minute, he hadn’t even realized it. Hadn’t missed it.
Maybe his brothers were right, he thought suddenly. Maybe he should ask Casey to marry him. It would sure as hell solve a lot of problems. They shared Mia. And they shared an incredible chemistry that would make living together no hardship at all.
He smiled to himself as he warmed to the idea. Hell, Adam and Travis might have hit on the solution he needed. A marriage of convenience. But with theright woman.
“Jackson?”
His head whipped around and he jumped to his feet. As if his thoughts had conjured her, Casey stood in the open doorway of the living room. He hadn’t heard her come downstairs because he’d been lost in his own thoughts. But now that he saw her, standing there in the wash of golden lamplight, she looked pale and her eyes seemed huge. Wide and shocked.
“What’s wrong?” Before he even realized he’d taken a step, he was moving toward her.
“Nothing—” she waved him away, but he wouldn’t be put off.
Dropping one arm around her shoulders, he steered her to a chair, pushed her down into it and tried to ignore the fact that she’d been so stiff and unyielding beneath his touch. Still mad, then. Well, fine. He could bring her around. In fact, as soon as he told her his idea, he had the feeling that she’d be so damn happy, all thoughts of this afternoon’s confrontation would fall away.
He fell to a crouch in front of her and looked up into her eyes. Eyes that were swimming in a sheen of tears she was fighting desperately to keep at bay. Worry rose up in him, nearly choking him and Jackson pushed his own plans to one side for the moment.
“Damn it, Casey, something’s wrong,” he said. “I can see it on your face. If this is still about what happened earlier, I want to talk to you about it. I’ve been doing some thinking and if you’ll just hear me out—”
“Stop.” Casey shook her head, scrubbed both hands over her face and then met his gaze with a grim determination that filled Jackson with a kind of dread he’d never known before.
“What is it?” he asked, reaching out and taking one of her hands in his. She was trembling. Damn it, what was going on? “Just say it, Casey.”
“I’m pregnant.”
Casey watched as shock, then wonder, then relief flashed across his eyes. She pulled her hand from his and sat quietly, waiting for him to saysomething.
Taking the home pregnancy test half an hour ago had solidified for her what she’d begun to suspect only that afternoon. Talking with the other women about babies and pregnancies, Casey had realized with a start that her period hadn’t arrived on schedule. There had just been so much going on in her life lately, she hadn’t paid the slightest bit of attention to the fact that her period simply hadn’t shown up. And even if she had, she wouldn’t have worried. After all, a doctor had told her that it would be nearly impossible for her to conceive the old-fashioned way. That’s why she’d gone to a sperm bank in the first place. Why she’d had an in vitro procedure. How she’d come to be here, with a man who didn’t love her.
The father ofboth of her children.
“I thought you said—”
She nodded, knowing what he was going to say. “My doctor told me it would be nearly impossible—” She laughed shortly and felt the sound scrape at her throat. “I guess the key word in that phrase isnearly. ”
“So that first night when we—”
She nodded. “Apparently, your little swimmers have no trouble finding my womb.”
He almost looked pleased, but maybe that was just her imagination working overtime.
“How long have you known?”
“Since about a half hour ago.” She jumped up from the chair, suddenly unable to sit still a moment longer. Rubbing her hands up and down her arms, she paced aimlessly around the room. She couldfeel Jackson’s gaze on her, and wished more than anything that she could throw herself into his arms and celebrate this…miracle.
She’d had no one but Dani to celebrate news of her first pregnancy. And this one was such a triumphant thing, such a one-in-a-million shot, that she wanted to shout, to laugh, to cry. But this time, she would do all of that alone, despite the fact that the baby’s father was in the same room with her.