“Man, you’re sweating like a marathon runner. You shouldn’t have gone through with the ceremony. Sophie’s going to kill you.”
Brought up short, she recognized the voice. Jock, who judging from that statement knew her better than Ian.
“I promised I’d marry her. She’s carrying our baby. Backing out wasn’t an option.”
Ian, in decisive mode, usually turned her legs to Jell-O and her mind to mush, but just now her brand-new groom sounded like a man who’d looked the executioner in the eye and gone under a blunt blade.
He’d lied to her to convince her to marry him.
She was nearly sick right there on the floor. As she slammed her hand over her mouth, Ian came around the corner, his expression wary. He knew he’d screwed up. Unlike most of his overly buff, iron-pumping colleagues, Ian was lean and long, agile and—right now—furious.
As if she’d lied to him. As if she’d married him under false pretenses.
“What are you doing?” Shock made his voice too harsh to recognize.
She eased her hand just beneath her lips. “Hiding behind a marble column, listening to you end our twenty-minute marriage.”
“I don’t want to end—”
“I need a bathroom. I’m gonna be sick.”
He pointed down the hall, and she ran, her feet smacking the marble. Just in time, she flung open the door and bolted into a stall. Thank God Ian wasn’t chivalrous enough to follow.
At last, with her stomach as empty as her heart, she braced her hands on the stall and stared at the tile through watery eyes. Longing to sink to the floor, she plucked up enough pride to stay on her feet.
Her idiotic tears were a side effect of being ill and pregnant and hormone ridden. Nothing more. It wasn’t as if she loved Ian.
She stumbled to the pedestal sink and twirled a squeaking handle imprinted with an old-fashioned H for hot. Nothing happened, but C for cold worked.
The hinges on the washroom door squeaked in a long, low protest as someone slowly entered. Someone. Who was she kidding? Ian couldn’t pass up a chance to lope to the rescue.
Bending farther into the sink, she splashed cold water on her face. Long legs in black gabardine appeared in her peripheral vision. Straightening, she turned off the water and met his I-dare-you-to-face-the-truth stare.
“This is the women’s room.”
“Men’s, actually.” He jerked a thumb toward the far wall where three urinals hung in a row. “I’ll bet the faucets work in the women’s room.”
His dry sense of humor had seduced her from day one. Not tonight.
She grabbed a paper towel that protruded from a black plastic holder, jumping as she glimpsed her mascara-streaked face in the mirror. “Where’s Jock?” She wiped her hands and concentrated on sounding as if she didn’t care, as if nothing too terrible had happened.
“He went home.”
She took refuge in patting water off her cheeks. “Ian, I won’t stay with you.”
“You heard something I never would have said to you.”
She considered pulling the sink off its pedestal and throwing it at him.
He licked his lips as if he couldn’t get enough saliva and went on, “I have to protect you and my child, and I agreed to something I actually didn’t believe in, but I am committed.”
“You don’t get it.” She had believed they might come to love each other, and she’d only married him because she’d thought he’d felt the same.
Turning away from him, she ended up in front of the mirror, facing their reflections. Neither of them looked familiar.
He was clearly scared. She was too furious to think straight. And whacking him with a bathroom sink might not help.
She held on to the anger, a nourishing, healthy rage that would keep her on her feet and make her a strong mother for her child. Since her own mother had left home, Sophie had vowed never to need anyone. “I didn’t ask you to marry me. I don’t want your pity, and I despise your sense of duty.”
He reached for her, his long fingers curling into nothing as she moved away. “I protect people. Why wouldn’t I protect you?”
She grabbed the edge of the sink. Unfortunately, it didn’t budge. Misunderstanding her urge to brain him, he moved closer and pressed his palm against the small of her back.
“Are you still sick?” he asked.
She shook her head, unable to speak over a lump in the back of her throat. Who knew the truth could hurt this much? She wanted—no, she needed to be far away from Ian Ridley. She danced out of his reach again.
“You only had to admit you didn’t want the baby. I’m twenty-nine years old, and I’ll take care of myself and my child.”
“We’ll take care of our baby,” Ian said. A sound from outside the rest room turned his head toward the door. On the alert, twenty-four hours a day.
Even so, she had a nasty surprise for him. “We’re not staying together,” she said as she wadded the paper towel into a ball and shoved it through the flap of the waste container. “If you’d told me the truth an hour ago, instead of telling Jock after we were married, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Now we’re going to have to find a way to annul our marriage when I look pretty damn consummated.”
“Sophie, don’t swear in church.” He smiled, no doubt to persuade her he was teasing, but the twist of his mouth looked more like a bloodless threat.
“I’d like to commit murder in a church. I’m only holding back on the off chance that killing you here would make you eligible for sainthood.”
She had to run before she started to reconsider. Start saying things like. We can try to make the best of this. We care about each other. Our child matters most. We can be parents. We can make marriage work.
Claptrap. He’d only married her because she was pregnant. She refused to be rescued. “I’ll never thank you for doing the right thing.”
He looked confused, but that was because he knew next to nothing about her. She’d caused her own parents’ divorce because she’d come home early from school one day and walked in on her mom making love with a stranger, and then she’d asked her father who her mother had been wrestling. When he’d confronted her mom, Nita had tried to lie. She’d accused Sophie of making up a story, and her father had tried to believe his wife. Wanting to believe lies was her family’s flaw.
They’d failed, of course, and her parents’ split had been unbearable for Sophie. She’d felt abandoned.
She’d never been vulnerable in another relationship until she’d let herself care for Ian. If he’d only married her because she was pregnant, he didn’t care as deeply, and she couldn’t allow herself to be the one with the most to lose. Better to leave Ian before he left her.
She clasped the mound of her belly with both hands. God help her, she was willing to sacrifice her child’s chance at a family to save her own soul.
“My feet are cold.” She pointed at her cranberry toenails as if she had no deeper care. She pulled open the door. “Get in touch if you want to know about the baby,” she said over her shoulder. “E-mail me, or call my office.”
She reached the hall before he caught a handful of her sweatshirt. “Wait a minute. I made a mistake, okay?”
“Several.” She tugged, but he held on tighter.
“Tell me you’re more sure than I am,” he said. “You only looked twice at me because your aunt wanted time to talk to James Kendall alone. Otherwise,