A breathless laugh escaped her, but Millie only lifted her chin a millimeter more and said nothing.
“I wish you could see the expression on your face, Millie. Your eyes tell me everything.”
“Do they?” She wet her lips. “And what do you think they’re saying?”
“Please don’t give up on me, Ty,” he said in a low, taunting voice. “Please keep chasing me. Please kiss me. Fuck me. Love me.” Her breath hitched on the last one. “And I want to.” He took her hand and pressed her palm to the front of his shorts. He was hard as a rock and ready to roll here and now. Up against the wall. All she had to do was say the word. “All you have to do is tell me what you want, Millie. Say anything, and I’ll give you everything.”
“Ty, I can’t give you a baby,” she blurted, throwing her hands up in frustration.
He opened his mouth, but whatever he was about to say was chased clear out of his head by a jarring blast from his cell phone.
“Goddamn it!” he growled, pushing away from the wall and yanking the offending instrument from his pocket with every intention of smashing the phone into a thousand pieces. He almost did when he saw his ex-wife’s smiling face beaming out from the screen.
Millie saw the photo too and took the opportunity to put some space between them. Sidling a couple of steps down the hall, she gestured to the phone. “She’s been calling and calling. Why don’t you find out what she wants?”
Steaming with anger and pent-up frustration, he leveled a finger at her. “Stay.”
She flipped an entirely different finger back at him, but she didn’t make a break for the door.
Keeping a wary eye on her, he swiped his thumb across the display to accept the call and snapped a gruff, “What?”
“Ty?”
He rolled his eyes, the sound of Mari’s voice screeching down his spine like fingernails on a chalkboard. “Yeah. What? What do you want, Mari?”
“I want to talk to you. I need to talk to you.”
“There’s nothing more to say.”
“But it’s important,” she insisted. “Can we meet somewhere?”
He blinked, confused by the request. The last he’d heard, his ex was shacked up in Los Angeles with her boy toy. “Meet? How? Aren’t you in California?”
“I’m here. In town, I mean.”
Millie took a step back, her eyes narrowing enough to let him know she’d heard Mari’s answer and was wary too. Annoyed by both the intrusion and the stricken look on Millie’s face, he hit the button to send the call to speaker. He had nothing to hide, and he’d be damned if he’d let the stubborn woman standing outside of arm’s reach slip away because she imagined something might be going on between him and his ex.
“Sorry if you came all this way to talk to me, but I really don’t have anything more to say. You got what you wanted, Mari. Now I’m trying to move on with my life.”
“But this isn’t what I wanted,” she wailed. Impatient and unwilling to be drawn into whatever melodrama Mari had created for herself, his thumb hovered over the button to disconnect. He was about to say goodbye when she hissed, “You’re the one who wanted a baby.”
“A baby?” The question popped out of his mouth, but he stared at the glossy screen as if the image might tell him he’d misunderstood what she’d said. His head jerked up, and he spotted Millie standing at almost military attention.
“I’m pregnant,” Mari snapped.
Her announcement startled him so much the phone spurted from his hand and clattered to the floor, but they both still heard her last words clear as a bell. “And the baby is yours.”
Chapter 16
Millie knew hearing Mari claim she was pregnant should have sent her running for the door. But it didn’t. She should be clocking record time booking it to her car. But she wasn’t. Because this was what she was made for—crisis control.
She remained standing in Ty’s house, her eyes locked on him. He was shocked into stillness, his fingers frozen in a classic horror movie curl. His stillness scared her. This wasn’t the calm, happy Ty she’d come to know. This stillness had a sinister feel.
She needed to break the spell, do something, anything, to disrupt the horrible tableau they seemed to be trapped in. Stark panic drew Ty’s handsome features tight. Every line and groove screamed the need for help. Her help.
“Ty,” she whispered urgently enough to jolt him into looking at her.
His eyes met hers, but they were clouded with confusion. Raising her hand to eye level, she ignored the wheedling calls for attention coming from the now-forgotten phone. Taking a cautious step toward him, she popped up one finger. Then another. At the third, she raised an inquiring eyebrow.
“Is it possible?” she asked with a quiet calm that was the polar opposite of the upheaval roiling inside her.
“Huh?”
She closed the rest of the space between them, gently resting her hand on his chest to reassure him. His heart thrummed against her palm. Holding his gaze, she leaned in close. “Think back. You haven’t seen her in more than two months, right?”
He blinked, and she decided to take his nonanswer as a yes. His blank expression set hope and wariness to war in her chest.
“Ask her how far along she is,” she prompted.
Ty cocked his head as if she’d suddenly started speaking Hungarian. “What?”
This was her turf—a problem. Something that could be spun, if not fixed. “How pregnant is she? People don’t have to wait three months or more to find out if they are anymore.” Anyone who watched daytime programming knew medical testing had advanced enough that she could pee on a stick within days of missing her period. “If you haven’t been with her since things blew up, then we’re looking at more than two months. Three if things were rocky between the two
