Free Return of the Secret Heir by Rachel Bailey

death all these years.
    â€œIf you want to cast blame, try your parents. Instead of supporting you, they put you in a situation where you had to escape. Or me for not standing up to them more so you could have walked out their front door.” And hadn’t he wished for fourteen years he’d done exactly that? “Besides, it was an accident, Pia, and you were a teenager.”
    â€œYes, I was. But I’m not a child now. Things will be different.”
    You’d better believe things will be different. Forcing himself to harden his heart, he reached for his coffee again and gulped a mouthful. He wasn’t a child anymore either—he wouldn’t let himself be carried away by the baby or Pia this time. Wouldn’t let fairy-tale images of women who honored their promises cloud his reason.
    â€œThey’ll be different,” he said, “but just so we’re clear, I’ll stand by you.”
    A smile flickered across her face, then left again just as quickly. “I know you will, but thank you for saying it.” She picked up her cat and held him against her chest and it struck him how maternal she was with the cat. She hadn’t had another baby, but she was still mothering someone.
    Then her face paled. “JT, my job. Ted will be furious.”
    She was probably right, but his mind was already reeling—he didn’t have room to sort through other details yet. “We’ll work something out.”
    â€œYou’re right, I’ll think about that one tomorrow,” she said with a grimace. “But in the meantime, I guess we should start making some plans.”
    Everything inside him recoiled. “No.” Standing by her was a different proposition to becoming emotionallyinvolved. He’d provide everything he could to Pia in her pregnancy, but there was one thing that no force of nature could make him do—plan ahead. “We’ll just take it as it comes for the moment.”
    Memories of cuddling together and choosing names, of buying booties and making decisions about sleeping routines pushed at his mind, but he wasn’t going there. If the pregnancy went to term, they could talk about that then. It would destroy him to plan ahead, to become excited, to open his heart, and be crushed into the ground again. Those days when he’d lost first Brianna then Pia had been the lowest point imaginable. Beyond despair, beyond agony. Most of what he remembered was shrouded in darkest gray and was thick with a dragging weight that could draw him down if he let himself dwell on it.
    â€œJT?” Pia asked, her voice uncertain.
    He shook his head quickly to release the black cobwebs that covered his mind. “I have to go.” He jumped up, needing air, to get out.
    â€œOkay,” she said faintly.
    He clenched his fists, restraining himself from running out her front door, determined to walk out like a sane person. “I’ll call you later,” he said through a tight jaw and headed for the sanctuary of his car.
    Â 
    After an almost-sleepless night spent tossing and worrying, Pia was heading for the kitchen when she saw JT’s silver coupe pull up on the street. Eight o’clock on a Sunday morning was early to drop by, but when he emerged her entire body woke up and stretched in a way that had nothing at all to do with surprise. Rumpled dark hair and aviator sunglasses led her eyes down to a black polo shirt that pulled taut over his biceps as he reached into the backseat and pulled out shopping bags. Whenhe stepped around the back of the car, the sight of faded denims sitting low on his hips incited thoughts of muscled thighs and…
    She gripped the curtain and groaned. If she was to spend time with the father of her baby, somehow she had to find a way to rein in her recalcitrant mind. And her rebellious body.
    But in some ways, it felt good to have thoughts that didn’t involve anguish. Even if they were about JT. She