She sat across from him, all wide-eyed and scared. He doubted she could look more embarrassed or uncomfortable and guessed she wanted to be anywhere but here, which was exactly how he felt. But despite the awkward situation, he wasn’t going to walk away from his responsibilities.
He’d always been the one to take care of his brother when they’d been younger and clean up Jimmy’s messes when they were older. But a baby…
“You were dating my brother,” he said.
She nodded without looking at him. “We’d been going out a couple of months when he joined the army. He said I should see other people after he went away, but I didn’t want to, so when he came home on leave, he said…” She swallowed. “We talked about getting married.”
Dev remembered being twenty and interested in a girl, and he knew his brother. If discussing marriage was what it took to get her into bed, then that’s what Jimmy would have done.
“I thought…” She toyed with the buttons on her jacket. “He was really sweet and fun and he was going to a dangerous part of the world. He said he might not come back.”
Dev held in a groan. Not just for the overused line, but with the realization that not only had his brother gotten a girl pregnant, that she might have been a virgin.
“Your first time?” he asked bluntly.
Noelle hunched over so her long, pale blond hair covered her face, but he saw her nod. Disbelief blended with anger. If his brother had been alive, Devwould have beaten the crap out of him. But Jimmy was gone. One way or another Jimmy had always managed to make his problems Dev’s problems. This time, under circumstances that were still filled with grief. Painwarred with guilt but neither won. And there was still Noelle to deal with.
He figured it would be insensitive to boot up his computer at that moment so he could get into the per sonnel files there. Without them, he knew very little about her. She worked for his assistant. She’d been with the company a little less than a year. She’d had minimal office skills when she’d arrived, but she’d worked hard and now Katherine claimed she couldn’t exist without her.
Sometime over the spring, Jimmy had met her and they’d started dating. But who was she and what the hell was he supposed to do now?
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Noelle said quietly, still not looking at him. “I thought I loved him, but I wasn’t sure. And he was so sweet…But I knew I should wait. Only then he was killed and I thought I’d done the right thing. I felt so horrible for him and for you. I know you’re his only family. And then I thought everything would be okay. Except I was late and a couple of days ago I realized I might be…you know.”
She stopped and sucked in a breath. It was then he figured out she was crying.
He stood and walked into the bathroom, where some mystery cleaning person always left a fresh box of tissues. After handing them to her, he perched on the edge of his desk.
“How old are you, Noelle?”
She took the tissues and wiped her face with one, then blew her nose. “I’ll be twenty in a couple of weeks.”
Still a kid herself, he thought. “You go to college?”
“Community college. I’ll start my second year in the fall.” She wrinkled her nose. “I know, I know, I should be at UC Riverside, but early in my senior year of high school I was skiing with the youth group.” She looked up and actually gave him a little smile. “I had a close encounter with a tree. I usually do better than that. Anyway, I broke my leg and messed up some ligaments, which meant surgery and physical therapy and more surgery. My mom homeschooled me and I was able to graduate with my class, but I missed out on a lot of activities and the SATs. I wasn’t even able to apply to a four-year college. So I’m doing it this way, which is good because it saves a lot of money. I mean, there are four of us and it’s not like my parents are rich or anything.”
Too much information, he thought, not sure where to go first. “You still live at home?”
“Yes. I’m one of four girls. The oldest.” The humor in her blue eyes faded. “Talk about setting a bad example.”
“What do your parents do?”
“My dad’s the pastor at our church and my mom works in the office.”
Dear God, Jimmy had slept with a minister’s daughter?
“What do you want to do when you finish college?”
“Go into nursing, specializing in pediatrics.” She held up her hand. “I beg you, do not give me the ‘be a doctor instead’ lecture. When I was in the hospital, the people who made a difference for me were the nurses. That’s what I want to do—take care of kids and help them be less scared while they’re sick.”
“No lectures,” he promised.
Now what? The young woman was pregnant with his brother’s child, and that made her his responsibility. But how to handle things? If Jimmy were still alive, he could insist they get married. He could…
Jimmy wasn’t alive, he reminded himself again and he, Dev, was the reason.
The ever-present guilt coiled around him like a large, deadly snake. He willed himself not to react. The more immediate problem was Noelle’s pregnancy and what to do about it, and her.
Noelle shifted uncomfortably in the chair. While she appreciated how nice Mr. Hunter was being, she didn’t know what, exactly, he wanted from her. He wasn’t the father of her baby, so this wasn’t his problem. Still, at least he hadn’t questioned her for saying Jimmywas the father and she didn’t think he’d thought anything bad about her.
A baby. She touched her hand to her stomach. It didn’t seem possible that there was a child growing inside of her. Sure, she’d always wanted a family, but not like this and not so soon. Except, with Jimmy dead, the baby was all that was left of him.
She wondered what he would have said if she could have told him. Despite his emotional proposal the last time he’d been home, she wasn’t sure he would have wanted to go through with the marriage. She wasn’t even sure she would have. Everything had happened so quickly. They’d been dating and having fun, then he’d been gone and they’d kept in touch with letters and e-mail and then he’d been back for just a short period of time. She hadn’t been able to think.
“We should get married.”
At first Noelle was sure she hadn’t heard the words correctly. She looked at Mr. Hunter, trying to figure out if he’d really spoken.
“Excuse me?”
His gaze never left her face. “We should get married as quickly as possible. Jimmy was my brother. That makes the babymy responsibility. I’m only doing what hewould have done. The difference being, we aren’t involved.”
His responsibility? Technically hewas the baby’s uncle, she thought frantically, but in reality he was Mr. Hunter, her boss’s boss and someone she didn’t know at all.
“I’m suggesting a marriage of convenience,” he added calmly. “Something temporary for, say, two years. Long enough for you to get on your feet and get used to being a mother. Then we would divorce. You’d get what Jimmy would have inherited, if he’d lived. I would like to continue to have contact with the child and see him or her raised as a Hunter, but otherwise you would be free to live your life.”
“You’re suggesting marriage and divorce,” she said, amazed she could speak at all. Her brain whirled and twirled until she was so dizzy she couldn’t imagine standing ever again. This was not happening. Mr. Hunter proposing? “You barely know me, Mr. Hunter. I don’t know you at all. We can’t get married.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not trying to seduce you,