He rubbed his jaw. “Is that all?”
“No.” Time for brutal honesty. “I wanted you to succeed. And I thought I could help. No matter how hard you tried to pretend differently, I knew you hated feeling—”
“Stupid,” he interjected with some heat. “The word you’re looking for is stupid.”
She stared at him, taken aback that his intelligence still seemed to be a sore spot for him. “Good grief, Dylan. You’re a successful, respected businessman. You work for a living even though you don’t have to. You’ve made the Silver Dollar Saloon into something special. Why does it matter now that you struggled in school? We’re not kids anymore. You’ve more than proven your capabilities.”
His jaw clenched, his eyes stormy, though somehow she knew his agitation was not directed at her. “And what about you, Mia? What do you do?”
“I’m a medical researcher. Over in the Raleigh/Durham area. My team has been working to prove that the standard series of childhood vaccines is safe for everyone.”
“And I sell beer for a living.”
“Don’t be flip,” she said, her temper starting to rise. “It’s not a competition.”
“Of course not. I was never competition for you. How many languages do you speak?”
His sarcasm nicked her in ways she couldn’t explain. She hadn’t asked to be smart. In fact, there had been many days in her life when she would have given almost anything to be the epitome of a dumb blonde joke. She glanced at Cora, who was still sleeping peacefully.
“I should go,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean to stir up the past. It was nice seeing you again.” A chill of disappointment clenched her heart and brought back unpleasant memories of being out of step with the world.
She and Dylan stood at the same moment.
His face registered consternation and shame. “Don’t leave. I’m being an ass. It’s not your fault you’re a genius.”
“I’m a woman,” she said flatly. “And will it make you feel better to know that I’ve made an absolute mess of my life?” Her voice broke on the last word. Tears she had worked so hard to keep at bay for the past several hours burst forth in an unattractive sobbing mess.
Inside her chest, a great gaping hole filled with uncertainty and fear made it hard to breathe. She didn’t feel smart at all. What she really felt was panicked and desperate.
She put her hands over her face, mortified that Dylan was here to witness her inevitable meltdown.
Without warning, she felt his warm hands on her shoulders. “Sit down, Mia. Everything’s going to be all right.”
“You don’t know that,” she said, sniffling and, as usual, without a tissue.
“Here. Take this.” The pristine square of white cotton he pulled from his back pocket was still warm from his body. She blew her nose and wiped her eyes, feeling hollow and shaky.
Dylan tugged her down beside him on the sofa, both of them glancing at Cora automatically to make sure she was in no danger. The baby was oblivious. “Don’t worry,” she said, trying to laugh. “I’m not going to have a nervous breakdown.”
He grinned, revealing the slightest hint of a dimple. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got all night.”
The genuine concern in his eyes disarmed her, despite her embarrassment. It couldn’t hurt to have an impartial opinion. She was at a crossroads, and perhaps she was too close to the situation and too sleep-deprived to make a rational decision.
“Okay,” she said. “You asked for it.”
“Start at the beginning.” He stretched a muscular arm along the back of the sofa, making her uncomfortably aware of his masculine scent and closeness. His khaki slacks and navy knit polo shirt with the bar’s name embroidered on the chest fit him in a way that emphasized everything about him that was male.
Her hands shook, so she clasped them in her lap. “After I turned twenty-nine, I realized that I wanted a baby. A cliché, I know, but my biological clock was ticking so loudly, I couldn’t ignore it.”
“Did the man in your life agree?”
“There was no man at that moment. Well, there was one. For about fifteen minutes. But we were a terrible match, and thankfully we both recognized it before we did anything irrevocable.”
“So who did you have in mind for a daddy?”
“Nobody,” she said simply. “I was well educated and financially secure. I decided that I could raise a child on my own.” She couldn’t fault the skepticism she saw on his face. In retrospect, she had been both naive and overly confident in her abilities.
“There’s still the matter of sperm.”
His droll comment made her cheeks heat again. “Well, of course, but I had that all figured out. As part of the scientific community in Raleigh, I possessed a working knowledge of what was going on in most of our experimental labs. And of course, fertility research was and still is a majorly funded arm of study.”
“Still no sperm.”
“I’m getting there. Once I found a doctor and a facility that I trusted, I had all the initial tests to see if I was healthy and ovulating well.”
“And were you?”
“Definitely. So I knew the timing was right. Then all I had to do was visit a sperm bank and select the proper donor.”
“Who, I’m assuming, would be a doctoral student with intellectual capabilities matching your own.”
He was entirely serious.
She shook her head vehemently. “No. Not even close. I would never do that to a child of mine. I wanted a normal baby.”
“Good Lord, Mia. You mean to tell me you deliberately tried to make little Cora less smart than her mother?” The baffled shock on his face gave her a moment’s pause.
“I wouldn’t say that.” She heard the defensiveness in her words and winced inwardly. “But I selected a candidate who was a blue-collar worker with average intelligence.”
“Why?”
“I wanted her to have a happy life.”
* * *
Dylan honestly didn’t know what to say. I wanted her to have a happy life. Those eight words, quietly spoken, told him more about Mia than if he’d had her résumé in front of him. For the first time, he understood that even if his school career had been painful and difficult, Mia’s had also, but in an entirely different way.
The knock on the door saved him from having to respond to that last, heart-wrenching statement. Soon he and Mia were enjoying appetizers and burgers. Based on the drinks she had ordered downstairs, he avoided anything alcoholic and instead opted for Cokes to accompany their meal.
Mia ate like she hadn’t eaten in a week. “This food is amazing,” she said. “Thank you so much. I’ve been living off frozen dinners and frozen pizza for days. My mom helped out for the first week and a half, but the baby exhausted her, so I finally encouraged her to go home.”
He lifted an eyebrow, helping himself to another handful of French fries. “You’ve left me hanging,” he said. “Finish your story, please.”
“I was hoping you’d lost interest. The whole sorry tale doesn’t put me in a very good light.”
When she wiped a dab of ketchup from her lower lip, to his surprise, he felt