The Right Reason To Marry. Christine Rimmer

      On the top floor of the house, in Sten’s quiet kitchen, Karin brewed a cup of raspberry leaf tea. As she waited for it to steep, she stood at the slider that opened onto the wide upper deck and watched the layers of clouds over the water. The waves slid into shore and retreated, leaving the wet sand smooth as glass in their wake.

      “Karin.” Liam spoke from directly behind her.

      She stiffened in surprise and turned to face him. His hair was kind of standing on end and his eyes had a haunted look. “Hey. I, um, didn’t hear you come in.”

      He stared at her for several seconds with a numbly disbelieving expression on his face before he finally said, “Your dad. He told me to just go up.”

      “That’s fine. Great. Let’s sit down, why don’t we?” She gestured toward the sitting area.

      “No, thanks.” He blinked at her. “I’d rather stand.”

      “Maybe some tea or something?”

      “No. Nothing.” He turned on his heel and strode away from her. When he reached the hallway that led to the bedrooms, he turned again and came back, halting in the same place he’d been before he stalked off. “You’re pregnant.”

      Hadn’t they already covered that? “Yes, I am.”

      “I can’t... I don’t...” It was just like at Safeway. The poor man seemed incapable of completing a sentence. “I mean, uh, you said it was...”

      “Yours, Liam,” she gently confirmed again. “Yes. The baby is yours.”

      “And you’re due...?”

      “In a week.”

      “A week.” The wild state of his hair made more sense as he put both hands to his head, got two fistfuls of hair and pulled. “Mine. Wow. Mine.” And off he went again, his long legs carrying him swiftly past the table, on through the sitting area to the hallway that led to the bedrooms. Next to the hallway, stairs led down to the lower floor. For a moment, he just stood there, his head going back and forth, as though he couldn’t decide whether to run down the stairs or set off along the hallway.

      Karin didn’t know what to do, either, so she just waited by the slider. Eventually, he turned and came toward her again.

      “A week,” he repeated when he stopped a foot away from her. “I’ll be a dad in a week is what you just said.”

      Excuses weren’t going to cut it. She offered them anyway. “I’m so sorry, Liam. I was going to tell you earlier, but I didn’t really even know where to start. And there’s not much you could do at this point, anyway. So I thought I would just wait until after the birth.”

      “You thought you would just wait...”

      “Yes. Liam, I promise you, there’s no pressure. You can think it over, decide how much involvement you want to have.” Okay, yeah. No matter what he decided, eventually, she would be after him to spend a little time with his child. And he would have to cough up some child support, too. But it felt beyond rude to hit the poor guy with all that today when he seemed so completely torn up to learn there was a baby on the way.

      “No pressure,” he echoed blankly.

      “That’s right. There’s no big rush to make decisions. Truly, you can just take your time, figure out what works for you.”

      He raked his hair back with both hands. “But...married, maybe? We should get—”

      “What? Wait.” Now she was the one frantically blinking. “Married? Us?”

      “Well, uh, yeah.”

      She needed to nip that terrible idea right in the bud. “No, Liam. Don’t be silly. Of course not.” No way was she getting married just because there was a baby coming. Been there, done that. Bought the T-shirt, saw the movie. Lived through the heartbreak. Never. Again.

      And dear God in heaven, could she have made a bigger mess of this?

      “Listen,” she said. “After the birth we’ll do DNA. You’ll have plenty of time to deal with this. You really will—and you know, you look awful. Liam, come on. You need to sit down.” She reached for his arm.

      He jerked away before she could make contact. “I’ll stand.” They just stared at each other.

      She cast desperately about for something meaningful to say. “Liam, I really am so sorry to—”

      “Stop.” He actually showed her the hand.

      And then he spun on his heel again and paced off toward the stairs, shaking his head as he went, turning right back around and coming toward her once more, halting stock-still a few feet from where she waited. He looked wrecked, ruined, but he held his broad shoulders straight and proud. “Last March, when you broke it off with me, did you know you were pregnant then?”

      She wanted to lie to him, make herself look a fraction less like a complete jerk for the way she’d handled the situation. But she didn’t lie. “Yeah. I knew then.”

      His forehead crinkled in a frown. “You broke it off, but you didn’t bother to tell me you were having my kid?”

      “I felt awful. I couldn’t make myself admit to you that we were having a baby. I mean, why me? How many women have you been with?”

      He fell back a step. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

      “Liam. I know you. I grew up with you. We were in the same grade at school. We even went on two dates in high school, remember?”

      “Of course, I remember.”

      “My, um, point is, you’re hot and easy to be with. The women have always loved you and you have loved them right back. How many of those women did you get pregnant?”

      “Karin.” He was pulling his hair again. So strange to see him like this, at a loss. Undone. “Come on, now. Where is this going?”

      “The answer is none of them, right—not until me?”

      Now he looked worried. “Why do I feel like anything I say right now is going to be wrong?”

      “Oh, please. No. You are not wrong. This is not your fault—it’s not my fault, either, though. Or at least, that’s what I keep telling myself. But I also can’t help asking myself, why does the condom fail only for me? Why couldn’t I have sense enough to get back on the pill—or better yet, get a contraceptive implant? But every time you and I got together, I really thought it would be the last time. What was the point, I asked myself? I wouldn’t be having sex with anyone again anytime soon. But then I would get a free evening and I would remember how you said to give you a call anytime—I mean, think about it. Four times, we got together.”

      That first time had been last December, at Christmastime. Then there’d