Free Up Close and Personal by Maureen Child Page A

still held in her hand.
    He had the door opened, her inside and the door slammed shut again in under a minute. Only then did he release the grip he had on her arm. He released her instantly, relieved to see he hadn’t marked her fair skin, but damned if he had calmed down any. Standing feet braced widely apart, he barred the door with a stance that silently told her there would be no escape.
    “Fine,” she told him flatly. “We’ll talk. Then you’ll go.”
    Ronan sneered at her. She was already tossing him out and he’d only just gotten in. “When I decide to go, I’ll let you know.”
    “God, Ronan.” She scooped one hand through the glory of her hair, lifting it up off her neck before letting it fall down in waves around her shoulders again. “There’s nothing more to tell.”
    “Oh, aye, there is,” he said and even he heard his brogue thickening with the temper clawing at the base of his throat. “You tell me my child lived and died inside of you before I even knew of it and you think there’s nothing more to be said?”
    A sheen of tears filled her eyes and Ronan was slightly horrified. He knew if she cried, he would lose this fine edge of temper. He couldn’t stand a woman crying. Made him feel helpless. Or big and clumsy, and none of those were attributes he normally assigned to himself.
    “Don’t do that,” he ordered and watched her flinch at his tone. He felt a right bastard and quickly added, “And don’t do that, either.”
    She sniffed, jerked up her head and fired a hot glare at him that should have singed the ends of his hair. “What should I do then, oh Master of the Universe?”
    Sarcasm aside, he much preferred fire in her eyes than the sorrow that grated at the edges of his heart.
    “Tell me more. All of it.” He tore his gaze from hers, scraped both hands over his face and fought for some of that legendary Connolly control. But by damn, he felt as if his legs had been cut out from under him. When he knew he could speak without issuing another bloody order, he said, “I’ve a need to know, Laura.”
    When his gaze shifted back to hers, he saw her nod and blow out a breath. “All right. All right. A few weeks after you ended things, I found out I was pregnant.”
    Something inside him quaked again, but he steadied himself. Though this was still hard to wrap his head around, because if there was one thing Ronan was sure of, he always took precautions. He didn’t risk making a child with a woman who wouldn’t be permanent in his life.
    And since no woman would be permanent in his life, a child was out of the question. “We used condoms.”
    She snorted and wrapped both arms around her middle. “That’s what I told myself after I took the pregnancy test. Then I read the package. Ninety-seven percent effective.”
    Grimly, he swallowed that information. “And do they bury that bit of news in the fine print?”
    “Nope, right on the front.”
    “Well, that’s a hell of a thing.” He waved that information away as unimportant and urged her on. “You found you were pregnant and you didn’t tell me because—”
    “Because you’d already made it clear you didn’t want me.” A flush of color in her cheeks told him that their breakup still stung and he could have kicked himself. He’d been so damned sure that he was doing the right thing for the right reasons and still he’d managed to foul everything up somehow. Now, he told himself, he was paying the price for it.
    “Fine—then what?”
    “Then you left on your bodyguard job. You told me the night you broke up with me that you’d be going—”
    “And you didn’t bother to think that a change of circumstance might require a phone call?” He couldn’t keep silent on this because—oh, how it raged at him. She hadn’t told him. He hadn’t known he had created a life until it was gone and that was something that would haunt him.
    “I did call.”
    His gaze narrowed on her. “What? When?”
    “A week or so into