The lab tech rambled on about percentages and likelihoods, but Ty couldn’t tear his gaze from the small smile that curved Mari’s lips. And his blood ran cold. He didn’t know exactly what Mari would do when he failed to pony up whatever it was she expected from him, but he was fairly sure he’d never know peace as long as he was shackled to her. And neither would anyone else in his life.
He bit his lip and leaned on the steering wheel as he refocused his attention on the neat, little cottage where Millie lived. The lawn was barely bigger than a postage stamp. The oversized flowerpots boasted a few hearty stragglers but served mainly as repositories for clumps of fallen leaves. She’d painted the shutters a bright cranberry color. He smiled when he realized they were almost the exact same red as her hair.
Knowing he’d delayed long enough, he opened the car door and stepped out. His gaze was drawn to those jarringly red shutters like a pyro to fire. He was halfway up the brick walk before he realized the front door had opened.
First he saw her only in silhouette. Tousled hair. Slender arms outstretched, one braced on the door, the other hand on the opposite frame. A shadow made womanly only by the subtle curve of her hip and dip of her waist. Her endless legs were covered in loose pants, but she wore something snug on the top. She shifted her weight to one foot and blocked enough of the light for him to make out red and pink lipstick kisses covering her pajama pants. He vaulted the shallow steps and drew to a breathless halt, summoning the last shreds of his inner strength to keep from staring at the way her taut nipples pressed against the ribbed fabric of her tank top.
Instead of feeling winded, a mantle of calm settled over him when he stepped into the stream of light spilling from her home. “Hey.”
She didn’t lower her arms and beckon him in, but her smile was warm and affectionate. “Hi, Ty.”
Greetings exchanged, he found himself without the slightest clue how to proceed.
Thankfully, Millie was feeling merciful. “Would you like to come in?”
He nodded. “Thank you. Yes.” Following her into the tiny entry, he had to duck to miss hitting a lower branch of the funky, sixties-style chandelier. “Oh. Uh, hey.” He chuckled as he sidestepped a frosted glass square suspended by filament wire. “That’s cool.”
She smiled as she swung the door shut behind him. “I swiped it from my stepmom’s house. She and my dad had one of those mid-century modern ranch houses that made you think Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack might be dropping by for a stiff one at five o’clock.”
Ty grinned, taken by the image her description evoked. “So it really is cool, then.”
“The coolest, man.” Her bare feet whispered over varnished oak hardwoods. She walked backward as she led him toward the kitchen. “You look like you could use a drink. Hard day at the office?”
“You could say.”
“I can offer you premixed margarita, some wine that has been open a little too long, or some rum.” She paused. “If you’re lucky, I might have a Diet Coke to go with the rum.”
“I’m okay, thanks.”
A big, fat lie, but as much as he could have used a drink, he needed to be stone-cold sober to say what he needed to say. Bracing himself, he stepped into the kitchen and came to an abrupt stop.
The room was so perfectly Millie it made his chest hurt. The appliances were newer models made of sleek stainless steel. The countertops had been replaced with some kind of speckled solid-surface material. The walls were stucco plaster and painted rich, buttery yellow. But the cabinets looked to be original, the glass panes wavy on a couple, one sporting a clamshell chip out of the corner. Other people would have painted them a glossy white, but Millie wasn’t other people. No, she’d gone with an aqua so vivid it reminded him of a tiny inlet on an even tinier Greek island.
The place where he thought he’d found peace.
Now, he knew his peace resided in the woman across from him. A woman so vivid he had a hard time tearing his gaze from her.
But he did.
There were things to be said, and he needed to get on with it.
Ty drew a steadying breath and continued his inspection of her place. After all, who knew if he’d ever be invited into her inner sanctum again?
In addition to the bold color choices, she’d finished the room off with the kind of homey touches he’d never think to make. A shallow glass bowl held fresh fruit. A Snoopy cookie jar. The fridge was peppered with whimsical magnets from a variety of destinations and printouts of Wolcott Warrior team schedules. The lacrosse team had a match the following day. She had a number of the games on the football schedule highlighted in neon green. A photo of Kate Snyder in a bikini had been printed on plain copier paper. Someone wrote the words money shot across the top with a magic marker. The photo held a place of pride in the center of the melee.
Swallowing the dull ache in his throat, he tore himself away from his study of her natural habitat and forced himself to face the inevitable. “The baby is mine.” He spoke the words bluntly but found himself unable to meet her eyes. “At least, that’s what the prenatal test shows.”
He pressed his lips together tightly, hell-bent on having this all out in the open now. Quickly.
