A Camden's Baby Secret

As bad as the last two months had been for Livi, this was worse. This was excruciating. It felt like a brush-off. As if he was telling her that even though they’d slept together, he didn’t want there to be anything more between them than that.

And while she certainly didn’t, either, it was still a rejection. This made it seem as if she expected something from him that he was letting her know he wasn’t on board for.

I belong to Patrick! she wanted to tell him in no uncertain terms.

But she resisted the urge. Instead, she tried to rise above what felt like an insult and said, “Hawaii is already forgotten.”

Liar, liar, pants on fire...

“And we can just do...whatever...for Greta and go on?” Callan asked.

“Sure.”

“Not that Hawaii wasn’t something damn memorable...” he said, as if giving credit where credit was due, his eyebrows raised in what looked like appreciation.

“But it’s over and done with. Finished. On to a new chapter,” she said curtly.

This time it was Callan who nodded in acknowledgment. “Yeah, I guess,” he said, though now he sounded a little confused. And perhaps a little offended. “But maybe we should actually get to know each other...for Greta’s sake.”

Was that what he’d been trying to say? Livi didn’t have any experience with any of this, and was running on high-octane emotions. Maybe he wasn’t being a jerk—even if it still felt that way.

She took a deep breath and tried to look at things from a calmer, less sensitive perspective.

She’d been as responsible as he had been for them spending the night together in Hawaii. And though he had left, he’d had a good reason.

Now here they were, but he’d inherited a nine-year-old—and apparently two geriatrics on top of it—and had his hands full. It stood to reason that romance was the last thing he needed at the moment. And yet he and Livi would still have to spend time together, for Greta’s sake, so it made sense to settle things between them.

And it wasn’t as if her own thinking was any different than it had been before she’d met him in Hawaii. Livi still couldn’t imagine herself in a relationship with anyone other than Patrick.

Take away her newest worry, and Callan was right that they just needed to wrap up Hawaii and stuff it in a compartment. That they just needed to start over as nothing more than they actually were—two strangers brought together over the welfare of a little girl.

Thinking about it all like that helped Livi calm down.

“Hawaii is history,” she decreed. “Let’s wipe the slate clean and just move on.”

Those words again. Only it was her saying them this time.

But in this instance she meant them. She just hoped that they could move on freely and with a genuinely clean slate. If they couldn’t—if that pregnancy test came back positive... But she refused to think about that yet. She’d wait to deal with that hurdle when she’d actually taken the test and knew for sure what was going on.

There was certainly no need to tell Callan before then.

“So we’re okay?” he asked, sounding sincere.

“We’re okay,” Livi confirmed, with more bravado than confidence.

“Good,” he said, as if he was relieved.

“Good,” she parroted, not relieved at all. Then she inclined her head toward the house, told him she needed to get going and wanted to say goodbye to Greta.

“Sure,” Callan said, bending over to pick up those gloves, putting them on again.

Onto those hands that Livi suddenly recalled the feel of on her body.

Until she forced that memory out of her head, took a long pull of fresh air and turned to go to the farmhouse.

Chapter Four (#ulink_159b3c86-d726-5b3e-a9cf-9df3a5ae93cb)

It was positive.

Livi took the home pregnancy test first thing Tuesday morning and stared at the display on the stick until it showed the results.

But a positive reading didn’t necessarily mean the test was right.

There were false positives, weren’t there?

Or she could have done it wrong.

Dazed, feeling as if everything was spinning out of control, she reread the instructions.

Then she stared at the display again, willing it to show her something different.

And at the same time thinking that this would have been such happy news if Patrick was still alive.

They’d wanted children, had tried for them. She’d even had a plan for how to tell him.

But this?

She just couldn’t face it happening like this.

So she wasn’t going to, she decided.

She wasn’t going to fully believe it until a doctor told her for sure.

Especially when she was hardly sick at all this morning.

She’d go to the doctor. The doctor would say this happened sometimes—an imbalance of hormones that was delaying her period and causing a false-positive test, but she wasn’t pregnant.

She couldn’t be pregnant.

The doctor would clear it all up.

The sooner the better.

So she called her gynecologist in Denver and made an appointment, trying desperately to stay in a state of denial.

* * *

Livi was surprised—and not particularly pleased—to find Callan at Greta’s school when she went for Greta’s going-away party that afternoon.