“Yeah, but that’s the choice I’ve made.” Brodie picked up a banana from the fruit bowl and slowly peeled it. “I know it’s ironic that I, commitment-phobic as I am, own a matchmaking service.”
Kade put his hands behind him and gripped the counter. “Okay, so why do you?”
Brodie looked across the loft to the rainy day outside. She took a bite of the banana, chewed it slowly and then placed it on the side plate next to her half-eaten toast. Should she tell Kade? Was she brave enough to open up a little more? She rarely—okay, never—spoke about Jay. She had trained herself not to think about him. But Kade was the father of her baby and she almost trusted him. Well, as much as she could.
“In the car crash, I didn’t only lose my parents, I lost my best friends, as well. Chelsea and Jay. We were all in the car. I survived, and they didn’t. We were like you and Mac and Quinn—inseparable.” Brodie swiped her finger across the program to close her calendar. “Jay and I always knew that, one day, we’d move on from being best friends. Three weeks before the crash, we finally admitted we loved each other. We started sleeping together, everything was new and bright and wonderful.” Her voice cracked and Brodie cleared her throat.
Kade took a step forward but Brodie held up her hand to stop him. If he touched her she would start to cry and she had clients to see. “I lost my world in the space of three minutes. But I was so loved, Kade. So damn much.”
“And you don’t want that again?”
“I can’t lose that again. I’ll have this child and that’ll be enough. This child arrived by sheer fluke and I’ve accepted that the baby is life’s way of forcing me to love again. To love in a different way.”
“And will that be enough?”
Brodie lifted one shoulder in a tiny shrug. “It has to be. It’s all I’m prepared to risk.” Her smile felt a little shaky. “I am going to be the best mother I can be. I am going to be your friend, your lover, for as long as that works or until you meet the woman you can’t live without.” Brodie rubbed her hands across her eyes. “I hope you find her, Kade. I’d like you to. I think you deserve her.”
“And I think you deserve the same.”
“I wouldn’t be that lucky, not twice. Life doesn’t work that way.” Brodie pushed her tablet into its case and sighed. “I have to go. Busy day.”
“It’s barely seven, Brodie, and I need to talk to you about something else.”
Brodie frowned at his tone. Being bossed around so early in the morning really didn’t work for her. “Okay, what?”
“So gracious.” Kade walked across the kitchen to take a mug from a shelf. He jammed it under the spout of his coffee machine and pushed a button. Brodie tapped her fingers against the counter, listening to the sounds of the beans grinding. She was feeling exposed and hot, like her skin was a size too small for her body. That’s why she didn’t usually talk, she reminded herself. It made her feel sad and funny and...weird.
“I’m going to need to tell the press something about us and soon.”
“Why?”
Kade looked at her over the rim of his mug. “We spend a lot of time together and someone is going to realize that. And when you start showing, they’ll go into overdrive. Wren suggests we hit them with a press release and cut off the speculation. So what do you want to be called? My girlfriend, my partner, my common-law wife?”
Brodie grimaced as he said the word wife and Kade scratched his head. “Okay, so not wife. What?”
This was far too much to deal with so early in the morning. “I don’t like titles. I don’t believe in them. We are what we are...”
“I’ll just tell the press that. It’ll work,” Kade said, sounding sarcastic.
“I don’t know, Kade!” Brodie cried. “Tell them we are friends, that we intend to remain friends, that we are having a baby together! That’s all the information they are entitled to. That’s all the information we have.”
“They’ll make it up if we don’t give them more. Or they’ll dig and dig until they find more,” Kade warned.
She couldn’t control their actions, Brodie thought. She could only control her own. And right now she had to get to work or else she’d be late for her breakfast appointment. Besides, she really didn’t want to talk about this anymore. With Kade or the world. “I’m not ready to say anything yet. And I’ve got to go.”
“Dammit, Brodie! We have to deal with this at some point.”
Yeah, but not now.