Page 78 of Whispers

“Take it any way you want, Weston, but why don’t you do everyone a favor and go back to college early?”

“Why?”

“I don’t like the way you treat Tessa, okay?”

“Maybe I’d treat you better.”

Stunned, she lost her voice for a second, then, when she realized what he was suggesting, she felt sick inside. “Go to hell.”

“You’d rather I’d continue seeing Tessa.”

“I’d rather you drop dead.” She started for the car again, hot sand squishing through her bare toes. The nerve of that guy! He had the morals of a street dog.

“Miranda?”

She didn’t turn, wouldn’t give him the time of day.

“I think these are yours.”

“What?” She glanced over her shoulder and he tossed a bottle into the air. With a sickening feeling she realized before she whirled around and her fingers curled over the plastic that he’d found her vitamins, that he knew she was pregnant.

“Congratulations.”

Bile rose in her throat.

“You know, if Riley doesn’t take the news well, you can always come and see me.” His smile was pure evil. “I’d make an honest woman out of you.”

“I’d die first.” She reached the car, threw the bottle of pills through the open window and onto the driver’s seat, then scooted behind the wheel. Her stomach was in knots, her mouth filled with saliva, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of watching her vomit. No way. She took off with a squeal of tires, turned onto the highway while gunning the engine, and didn’t stop until she rounded the corner and turned into a private lane where she threw open the car door and lost the contents of her stomach in a dry ditch filled with bleached weeds and empty beer bottles.

“You’re sure?” Hunter’s voice was quiet, barely audible over the crackle of the fire. They lay together after making love, and Miranda’s announcement that she was pregnant hung between them in the rustic cottage.

“I went to the doctor today.”

“Jesus,” he whispered, staring at the ceiling where the golden shadows of the flames played upon the old plaster. “A baby.”

Miranda’s chest constricted. “Yes. In March.”

He rolled off the bed stark naked and shoved both hands through his hair. “A baby.”

Refusing to let the tears clogging her throat free, Miranda sat up and drew the old sheet over her breasts. “I know it’s unexpected . . . and inconvenient.”

“Unexpected?” he repeated. “Inconvenient?” His shoulders sagged, and with the fire as his backdrop, his body, tall and lean, was silhouetted against the shifting flames. “It’s a damned sight more than that.”

“Oh, God, you don’t want it.”

“No . . . Yes . . . Hell, I don’t know.” Letting out a long breath, he walked back to the bed and stared down at her with eyes that were dark with concern. “I can’t think straight. A baby?”

She nodded, her throat so thick she could barely breathe.

“And I take it from your reaction that you want to have it.”

“Oh, God, yes.”

“You won’t consider an—”

“Don’t even say it.” She grabbed his forearms, her fingers tightening in desperation. “Please, Hunter, I always thought I could make that kind of decision easily, but I can’t. Not when it’s my baby. Not when it’s yours.”

His lower lip rolled over his teeth, and he shook his head slowly from side to side. “This is gonna be tough.”