“I figured. Are you going to yell at her?”
“Probably.”
Nicole sighed. “Not a great way to start the conversation. You might try listening.”
“She has nothing to say that I want to hear.”
“Then why talk at all?”
He didn’t have an answer for that. Nicole shrugged, then headed upstairs. A few minutes later, she returned, without Brittany.
“She’s refusing to come out.”
“What did you tell her?” he demanded.
Nicole’s expression hardened. “Absolutely nothing, but please, feel free not to believe me. Go up and yell through the door. She’ll tell you herself.”
She turned away, then faced him again. “I swear, if I thought I was strong enough, I’d shake you. You do know that I’m on your side, right? Does it occur to you that I understand a little of what you’re feeling? I’m not the enemy here. I am not in favor of them getting married. They’re both too young and unprepared. I don’t even know if they should keep the baby. But hey, go ahead. Yell at me. I’m an easy target.”
He felt stupid and ineffectual. It wasn’t a comfortable combination. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t expect any of this. She told me she and Raoul weren’t having sex.”
“And you believed her?”
He nodded. “She’s never lied to be before. I thought she’d tell me.”
“Not a smart assumption.”
“I know.”
She sighed. “So you’re done yelling at me?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
She still looked annoyed, but he had a feeling they were going to be okay.
She was nothing like Serena, who had always deferred to him. Nicole did things her way and didn’t take any crap from anyone. He kind of liked that.
She led the way into the living room and pointed at the sectional. “Have a seat. This is going to take a while.”
He shook his head and paced to the window. “At least I’m done having kids. I always told myself I was glad I’d had my family early and this only reinforces my opinion.”
Nicole smiled a wicked smile that had him bracing himself. “What?” he asked.
“You’re going to have to learn to like kids a little.” She paused. “You’re going to be a grandfather.”
He swore under his breath, walked to the sofa and sat down. He could feel his hair turning white as he considered what her words meant. “My baby is having a baby. How is that possible?”
“Your mom didn’t have that talk with you?”
“This is not funny.”
“You’re going to be a grandfather, Hawk. It’s a little funny.”
He ignored that. Brittany pregnant? He’d heard the words before, but this was the first time he understood what they meant. She would be a mother. She would have responsibilities for the rest of her life. Everything had changed.
“I can’t do this,” he muttered.
“You don’t have a choice.”
Simple words that reminded him of another time and another conversation much like this one. Only he had been the optimistic, slightly defiant, terrified teenager.
“My dad died when I was pretty young,” he said. “I don’t remember much about him except he always made my mother cry and she was a strong woman. She raised me herself, teaching me that I had to work for what I wanted and how important it was to dream big. She was always proud of me. The only time I disappointed her was when I told her Serena was pregnant.”
He still remembered the way she’d looked so sad, as if all her hopes and expectations had been crushed. He’d been determined to prove to her that he hadn’t screwed up entirely.
“We made it without asking her for anything,” he said quietly. “I wanted that more than anything.” Proving himself to her had meant a lot. Did his opinion matter as much to Brittany?
“Where did I go wrong?” he asked.
Nicole sighed. “I don’t have an answer. I want to say you trusted her too much, but maybe it would have happened no matter what. It’s what teenagers do. At least some of them. Jesse discovered boys when she was about fifteen. I was horrified, but short of chaining her up in her room, I couldn’t stop her. I tried curfews, grounding her, phoning the parents of all of her friends to find out if she was really where she said. But she found a way.”
She leaned back on the cushion. “I can’t tell you the exact moment things went wrong and believe me, I’ve tried to look. I wanted her to have everything she wanted but our definitions of that were different.”
“My mom would be really disappointed by this,” he said. “I don’t know what would hurt her more. That Brittany screwed up or that I didn’t stop her.”
“Were you listening?” Nicole asked. “How were you supposed to stop her? You had no reason not to trust her.”
“I should have known.”
“Beating yourself up doesn’t solve the problem.”
“Meaning don’t make it about me.”
“Something like that.”
He barely knew the questions, which meant he wasn’t going to find answers anytime soon.
“You’re probably going to tell me not to go up there and break in her bedroom door so she has to talk to me.”
“Yes.”
He looked at the ceiling. He’d never not been able to talk to Brittany. They’d always been able to work out their problems. Why did this have to be different?
“I’m still pissed as hell at Raoul,” he muttered, “but I’m losing energy for killing him.”
“I’m sure he’ll be excited to know that.”
He leaned forward and rested his forearms on his thighs. “I don’t know what to do.”
“You don’t have to do anything right now. Give it a little more time.”
Walking away went against everything he believed, but short of physically dragging Brittany home, did he have a choice?
“I’ll give her another day,” he said. “Then she’s going to have to face me.”
“That seems fair.”
He stood and walked to the door. “You doing okay?”
“No, but I’ll survive. Sheila’s puppies are a good distraction.”
“More babies.”
She nodded. “Just to be clear. As soon as she’s done nursing, I’m getting her fixed.”
NICOLE HAD BEEN DEALING with a headache on and off since Brittany had walked out with the stick that told the world she was having a baby. Now she popped a couple more ibuprofen with a big glass of water, all the while wondering if chocolate or ice cream would make the better chaser.
“I need a vacation,” she muttered, thinking that doing her quarterly taxes for the bakery had never looked so good. Math might not be her thing, but she understood it and it never talked back, slammed doors or glared at her.
She went upstairs and knocked on Brittany’s door. “He’s gone,” she called. “You can come out now.”
Brittany pulled her door open. Tears streaked her face. “He left? He didn’t try to talk to me?”
“You said you weren’t going to speak to him. He believed you. Kind of the way he did when you told him you weren’t sleeping with Raoul.”
Brittany folded her arms across her chest. “You can’t talk to me like that.”
“It’s my house, honey. I can talk to you any way I want. I’m cutting you some slack because this all just happened, but the next time your father comes over, you
