The Late Bloomer's Baby. Kaitlyn Rice
He did stop.
And he grabbed Callie’s left hand. “You’re still wearing your wedding ring?” he asked, his expression incredulous.
Damn. She’d forgotten about the ring.
She wore it mostly for convenience. Whenever she took Luke out in public, people approached her to comment on her baby’s dimpled grin or thick hair or bright eyes. She wanted those folks to picture him with a perfect home life, with parents devoted to each other and to him.
The way she’d imagined her life with Ethan.
But part of her reason, too, was that she hadn’t found the heart to remove it. The impossibility of a reconciliation didn’t keep her from clinging to that old dream, as if it were a long-comatose loved one on life support.
She couldn’t tell Ethan any of this.
“I don’t think about it,” she said, shrugging. “But I’ve always thought it was pretty.”
“Your boyfriend doesn’t mind?”
Callie held Ethan’s gaze for an endless time. When the floor didn’t swallow her up, chair, beer and all, she decided she’d have to keep talking to him.
She couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
Ethan tipped up his beer, finishing it, then said, “You don’t have a boyfriend at all, do you?”
She shrugged.
“You’re trying to evade men’s interest,” he said. “You’re using the ring as protection.”
He wasn’t too far off target, and his words hurt because he knew her so well.
He knew her so well, yet he’d left her.
“It’s none of your business, is it?” she said. “It’s my ring. Go away and let me live my life.”
Callie got up and wound her way through the crowd. As soon as she’d left the bar, she broke into a jog. She’d almost made it to the car when he caught her elbow.
“Let go of me, Ethan.”
He did, and she turned around. She hoped he’d attribute her flush to anger rather than humiliation. Women who were over their exes didn’t wear the man’s ring, did they? Her mother hadn’t worn her father’s. Here Callie was, the woman Ethan had left, wearing his wedding ring two years later. He’d suggested that she wore it to hide from other men, but he might also wonder if she was pining away for him. She could hardly explain that she wore it for their baby’s sake, damn it.
“I just want to know why,” he said. His attention traveled from her eyes to her mouth to her neck.
Her blush flowed downward, until she was hot everywhere.
“Why, Callie?”
Sweet heaven, she couldn’t think when he looked at her that way.
She didn’t want to think.
She had so much to lose if she got involved with him again. Why not kiss him one last time—really kiss him—while she had the chance?
She grabbed his T-shirt and tugged him nearer.
Before his chiseled lips touched hers, he parted them. He tasted sexy, like cold beer and hot, wild seduction. As his warm breath flowed into Callie’s mouth, the reminder of their lusty early days hit her, hard.
Her knees wobbled. Her breasts ached. Her womb opened.
She wanted nothing more than for Ethan to touch her, long and lovingly, everywhere she ached.
That could never happen again.
Still, she didn’t move away from him. The unaccustomed alcohol in her system had probably made her reckless. It also didn’t help that they were standing in the same parking lot where she’d first learned how to love a boy in every way. His hands settled low on her hips, and she leaned into him. She’d always loved it when he pulled her to him and flaunted his body’s need for her.
But this time, he propelled her backward.
His expression showed confusion, but Callie could still feel his passion down to her bones. She could still see it in the flash of his eyes and in his quick, deep breaths.
Man, she’d missed that look.
In the end, when they were battling over everything from laundry duties to where they should live, she’d stopped seeing any signs he wanted her. She’d thought his desire was gone forever.
It needed to be gone forever.
And Callie needed to think her way through this situation. Of course, their reunion reminded her of the good things. Ethan had made Callie feel beautiful, once.
He’d made her feel alive.
As much as she’d missed him—as much as it tore her heart out to let this man go again, even for a moment—she couldn’t forget the reason for the separation.
Leaving had been his choice. A thousand wishes hadn’t brought him home, and now Callie had a baby she couldn’t fathom losing.
A baby whose identity she couldn’t risk revealing.
Fisting her hands to keep them from trembling, Callie perched them against her hips and said, “What would your fiddle player think if she realized we still have that level of heat between us?”
He scowled.
“That’s why, Ethan. That’s why you have to go away and leave me alone.”
“I wanted to talk to you about unfinished business tonight, Callie. About our marriage. I didn’t intend to start anything else.” He shook his head. “Maybe we need a chaperone.”
She glanced around. They were alone out here, but someone might come or go at any time. “We aren’t going to discuss anything in Mary’s parking lot.”
“I didn’t plan to have the discussion out here.”
“You followed me out.”
His jaw tensed. “You get your way, don’t you, Cal?”
She didn’t think so. She might have maneuvered her way out of a conversation tonight—she hoped so—but she for damn sure hadn’t gotten her way.
She felt an almost frantic desire to keep Ethan near, but she couldn’t. Not if she wished to raise Luke in the way every child deserved—in one home, by the person who had nurtured him from his first second of life.
“Cal?”
She shrugged, pretending this wasn’t hell for her, too. “Guess so.”
He sighed. “I’m suddenly in no mood to talk tonight, but get it in your head that we will have this conversation very soon. Deal?”
She lifted her chin and didn’t answer.
Ethan looked at her for another few seconds. Then he finally strode across the parking lot. He got in his car, started it and drove away. Callie watched until he turned right onto the highway and traveled out of sight.
She stood in the same spot for a few minutes afterward, imagining that sweet, lost desire and something else she missed just as much: feeling safe enough to be honest with Ethan.
But losing him had taken a lot out of her. Sharing her days with their sweet baby kept her whole and peaceful. If she lost her little boy, she might become bitter.
She might become her mother.
For the life of her, she couldn’t take that risk.
A WEEK LATER, Ethan sipped his water and watched the breakfast crowd at Wichita’s Beacon Restaurant. After it had become apparent that his odd working hours and Lee-Ann’s weekend concert bookings weren’t always going to mesh, they’d taken to meeting here on the Saturday mornings he didn’t have to