Page 18 of Julian

“And you’re going to go?”

“I don’t really have a choice,” Julian said. “If I don’t go, I’m out of a job.”

“Duncan would fire you?”

“He said he would.” Julian shrugged. “And he’s usually a man of his word.”

“I’m surprised.”

“I was too, but such is life.” He sounded very resigned.

“I’ll be leaving for rehab as soon as we get married,” he said. “Provided you agree to the marriage.”

Kiara had a lot of thoughts tumbling through her mind. But there was one question that kept coming to the forefront.

“Do you lose your job if we don’t get married?”

The hesitation before Julian responded hurt more than it should have. “He didn’t say that specifically. His focus was on the rehab.”

“Do you want me to say no?” she asked. “To tell Duncan I don’t want to get married?”

Julian's eyes widened slightly at her question. For a moment, he looked almost… relieved? The expression vanished so quickly that Kiara wasn't sure she'd seen it correctly.

“I'm not asking you to say no," he said carefully. "I'm trying to do the right thing here."

Kiara twisted her hands in her lap, the pressure of the decision weighing on her shoulders.

Marriage to Julian Burke. It was surreal—like something from one of her romance novels—but she couldn’t allow herself to view the situation that way. This was obviously something that was being forced on Julian, and he clearly wasn’t happy about it.

"What will happen to the baby if we don’t get married?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

"I'd still support the baby financially. I'm not going to abandon my responsibility.”

The irony was that she didn’t really need his financial support. Thanks to Duncan’s generosity, she had plenty of money to support herself and the baby.

Maybe she should have left the estate as soon as she found out she was pregnant so that she could have avoided all of this. But she hadn’t done that, so now she had to deal with the situation and Duncan and Julian’s attempt to address it.

Silence was heavy between them as her thoughts went to the baby.

What would be best for them?

In this particular case—since Julian was a good man—it would be better for the baby to have two parents in their life, regardless of what path they took. But would it be better for them to know that their parents had been married when they were born, even if they divorced later, than for them to have never been married at all?

Deep down, Kiara didn’t want to have to tell her son or daughter that they’d been born as a result of an alcohol-fueled bad decision. She’d rather they think they’d been conceived in love, even if the marriage hadn’t ended up working out.

Maybe that was delusional reasoning, but she didn’t want her child to have any reason to feel unloved or unwanted.

She thought of the prayer Angie had prayed with her not that long ago and wondered how this scenario fit into God’s plan, and which decision would be an answer to that prayer.

In the end, she had nothing to go on but what she thought was best for the baby.

“Let’s get married.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Once the conversation had died off between him and Kiara, Julian left the solarium. Not wanting to have another conversation with Duncan, he’d sent him a message to let him know the wedding was a go, and that he was dealing with jetlag and needed to take a nap.

What he really wanted—besides a nap—was a drink, so he headed for his room.