The Bride’s Baby Of Shame. Caitlin Crews

she would deserve them.

      “Renzo,” she said, very carefully, lest she jog something inside and send all these terrible, unwieldy things spilling out into the dirt between them. “There’s something you need to know.”

      “I know everything I need to know.” His words were terse. His judgment rendered. It only surprised her that she’d imagined he might be different. “What I cannot forgive is that you made me an unwitting part of your dishonesty. A vow means something to me, Sophie, and you made me break one.”

      She smiled, though it felt brittle. “What vows did you break?”

      “I made a promise to myself many years ago that I would never, ever take something that belonged to another,” he told her with a kind of arrogant outrage, as if she’d twisted his arm.

      “You’re right,” she said then, because something broke inside of her. She hugged herself as she stepped back, away from him and his car and all these messy emotions she should have been smart enough to leave behind her in Monte Carlo. “I should never have come here tonight.”

      “These are games children play, Sophie,” he told her, fury and condemnation and all that righteousness making his accent more pronounced.

      “You’re the one making threats,” she pointed out.

      “You can consider it a courtesy. One you did not extend to me when you decided to entangle me in your sick, sad little marital games.”

      She could do nothing but nod her head, everything within her swollen painfully and near to bursting—but she couldn’t let herself give in. She couldn’t show him more of herself. She couldn’t allow him to hurt her any more than he already had.

      Because the truth was, she didn’t think she could survive it. She had been frozen solid all her life. Renzo had melted her, it was true, but Sophie hadn’t understood until tonight that the ice had been her armor.

      “Marry your earl or do not,” Renzo said with dark finality. “But leave me out of it. Or I will assume you are inviting me to share the details of our night in Monaco with the world.”

      She swallowed, which was hard to do when she felt as if the tears she refused to shed were choking her. “I understand.”

      He didn’t say another word. He stalked around to the driver’s side and climbed into the car with a grace that should not have been possible for a man his size.

      And Sophie stood where she was for a long time after he’d gone, driving off with a muscular roar.

      She wanted to cry, but didn’t allow herself the weakness.

      He’d treated her like a naughty child but the truth was, Sophie thought she’d just grown up.

      At last.

      She already hated herself, so what was a little more fuel to that fire? She would marry Dal tomorrow, as planned. She would carry on with the life that had been so carefully plotted out for her. She would force herself to do her wifely duty and Dal would either do the math or he wouldn’t.

      Babies were born early all the time.

      Her stomach heaved at that, but Sophie shoved the bile back down.

      She’d made her bed and now she would have to lie in it. Literally.

      Something in her eased at that. There was a freedom in having no good choices, she supposed. If Dal found out, it wasn’t as if it would turn a good marriage bad. Their marriage was a business affair, cold and cruel at its best.

      If she was lucky, he might even set her free.

      That would have to be enough.

      The child she carried might not be Dal’s. It might never know its real father. But no matter what, no matter what happened, it would be hers.

       Hers.

      And Sophie vowed she would love her baby enough, with all that she had, so that it would never know the difference.