Take Me On

And then she’d have to give up everything she was working toward if she wanted to be with him.

Damn him. It wasn’t as if there weren’t other options. She’d asked if he would be willing to move back, find his own place, get his old job back if he had to, just to be close to her.

“Well, babe, I always had to have roommates before to make it there. I don’t want to do that again.”

But he could stay with her a lot of the time, she’d suggested.

“You don’t need to be worried about someone finding out I’m staying there.”

Her family wasn’t going to stake out her place, for God’s sake. They weren’t the Andrewses. Besides, they were three f**king hours away. So she’d asked when he thought he could come see her.

“It’s been like unbelievably busy. I’ll ask Brian when he can spare me.”

Did he really think she couldn’t check up on that? Brian had told her it hadn’t been any worse than usual; Ian could take off any time he asked.

So it was pretty much official, wasn’t it? She was pregnant and alone. Even her friends here had somewhat drawn away…maybe that was only her imagination, but it sure felt like it. She couldn’t meet them for drinks—well, she could, but what was the point?—and she was sick of calling one of them up only to hear about what they all did the night before. Even Tina, one of her bridesmaids, her refuge when the shit had hit the fan, suddenly seemed too busy to have any time for her. Maybe she was tired of having such a needy friend.

That was fine. Gabby would make it just fine by herself.

As she passed car after car and finally spotted her own, she was even more certain that some transgression in a past life had come back to bite her on the ass. A man leaned casually against the driver’s side door, his attention currently focused down on his cell phone.

Dr. Mark Easton. Former fiancé, almost-husband.

He looked as handsome and cool as ever, as if sweating was too undignified for him. His khakis were perfectly pressed along with his dark blue shirt and tie. He always styled his dark blond hair back in a way that made him look as if he’d stepped off his boat after a day of sailing—effortless and windblown. It was beginning to thin the slightest bit on top, a fact Gabby knew unnerved him but didn’t take away whatsoever from his striking good looks.

Her first impulse was to flee. Hide out and watch until he grew tired of waiting and left. Her second was to hit her panic button and watch him lose that carefully cultivated cool when the blaring horn scared the shit out of him. No sense in the first, though—he would only come back again, and besides, she was melting. She needed to sit, and she needed her car’s air conditioner. She was prepared to go through him, if need be, to attain those things.

As for the second impulse, well…it was beneath her, even if it would be damn funny.

“Well, lo and behold,” she said loudly, making sure he found her glaring at him when his head snapped up. “Mark Easton finally shows up.”

That might’ve been somewhat beneath her too, but…whatever.

If she’d expected a sheepish reaction from him, she was disappointed—if anything, his expression became even smoother and more remote.

Gabby proceeded to the door of her car as if he weren’t standing there, but he didn’t seem to have any intention of moving.

“Gabriella, please,” he said, blocking her way. “Give me five minutes.”

“I remember you not giving me that same courtesy a few months ago. That was all I needed, you know, about five minutes of your time.” She dodged to the right a bit, trying to get a grip on the door handle. His hand gently caught her arm.

“I know you’re pregnant.”

Freezing in his light grip, she let her gaze climb up to his familiar, once-beloved face. The distinguished features, laugh lines, bright blue eyes. Seeing them this close again was a jolt to her senses, but it couldn’t compete with the face that haunted her dreams every night now.

“And how in the hell do you know that?” she asked, though she figured she already knew. Her mother was going to get a very angry phone call later, once Gabby cooled off enough that she thought she could get through it without flinging mindless curse words.

“That isn’t important.”

“It’s not? Did you call her, or did she call you?”

Sighing, he dropped his hand and looked away. “If you must know, I called her. I wanted to make sure you were coming back.”

“Checking to see if you completely crushed all my dreams, or just the one?”

“It was never my intention to crush your dreams. Any of them. I only thought we needed more time.”

“You thought you needed more time. I knew exactly what I needed.”

“You had become so obsessed with the wedding, Gabby, that it was no longer about the marriage.”

Look at that, a shiny new excuse pulled right out of his ass. How long had it taken him to come up with that one? “Oh, bullshit, Mark!”

“Please lower your voice—”

“That doesn’t even make any sense. Yeah, I wanted the show. I wanted the whole princess-for-a-day thing. But my heart was always set on you. On our future together. If the whole thing wigged you out that badly, you could have spoken up, you know. You said nothing to me about any of it.”

“I realize that, and I take full responsibility for my lack of communication. It seemed easier to let you handle all the details because of my schedule, and you wanted to do it. You became so immersed in it, though. When the time came, I couldn’t go through with it. It didn’t even seem to be about us anymore.”

“Mark, it’s two hundred and eighty-nine degrees right now. I’m not going to stand here in this oven and retread the same ground we’ve been over and over already. There’s no point in it, and I’m about to pass out. You’re not going to wear me down. I’ll never forgive you for what you did. Ever. End of.”

“Let me take you to dinner.”

“I’m in a relationship…” Her voice choked off into pathetic, heartbroken silence. Because the relationship she was in, apparently, was only in her head. She missed Ian so much, so desperately, that her throat had closed up, and she realized her hands had gone reflexively to her stomach at the thought of him. Her belly had the slightest little pooch now, and she wanted Ian to see it so badly, where their child grew bigger and stronger every day. This was killing her.

“Honey, I know you’re working yourself to death, and I can’t even imagine how worried you are about being pregnant. And alone. Where is he now, by the way?”

“Back home,” she said dully, in place of none of your freaking business.

He must’ve surmised from her tone it was a touchy subject. “Getting away for an evening and having a nice meal will do you good. I know how you are when you’re stressed, so I doubt you’re eating well. We don’t have to argue. We don’t have to talk much at all if you don’t want to.”

I know how you are. He’d said a lot, but her brain was stuck on that. There was so much comfort in those words: someone who knew what she needed when she needed it. For the most part, Mark had—except for the one thing she’d needed from him more than anything else. To show up and commit to her.