Free Sutherland’s Pride by Kathryn Brocato

if you can answer one question for me.”
    Flynn sat silently, staring out the windshield and making no move to start the engine.
    “Do you still believe my baby wasn’t yours?”
    “Dammit, Pride, look at it from my point of view,” he exploded. “You claim that one unprotected incident resulted in your pregnancy, and you totally ignore the fact that, even if I have a very low sperm count rather than total sterility, it would still require a lot of luck and a lot of effort before I could get a woman pregnant.”
    “You forgot the compatibility check.” Pride grappled with a sudden desire to bop him with her purse. “You also forgot that all it takes to make a baby is contact between one sperm and one egg. Sorry, Flynn. I don’t feel the need or the desire to tell you what happened after I left. I’m surprised you’d even want to hear it.”
    She clenched her fists in her lap as Flynn started the car with an air of suppressed violence. After all the time she’d spent ridding herself of the anger and despair she’d felt at Flynn’s refusal to accept the truth, Pride was astounded to find herself literally shaking with fury.
    She wanted to beat at him with her fists. She wanted to scream at him, the way she had three years ago. She wanted to force him to listen while she recited all the likenesses between Flynn and Johnny.
    Drawing in a deep breath, Pride deliberately began the process of calming herself. If Flynn was so determined to ignore the truth, none of those things would convince him.
    Tomorrow, she told herself. She would tell him tomorrow. If that didn’t run him off, nothing would.
    Yes, she had better do it tomorrow. If Flynn kissed her again, she might go up in flames and seduce him. If that happened, what were the odds that she’d get pregnant again?
    But if she told him Johnny was her son, not Gloria’s, Flynn might take to his heels, thus saving her from the proverbial fate worse than death.
    Pride smiled to herself in a shaky way. What a way to go.
    • • •
    Flynn Sutherland opened his office door and peered out at his secretary. Killeen Ross had the
Chronicle
open on her desk, avidly reading a column.
    Grinning, Flynn walked out and bent over Killeen’s shoulder, aware that she hadn’t heard him, so engrossed was she in her reading.
    Flynn studied the column. The slightly out-of-focus photograph of Tracy Eric, dark-haired and beautiful, followed the “Single Mommy” header. Beneath the photograph, the column bore the title, “Home Again Memories.”
    “Listen to this, boss,” Killeen said. “
‘Now that the last permanent man in my life is gone forever, I wonder how my son will feel when he learns of the father he has never had a chance to know. Will he blame me? Will he blame my former lover? Will he understand the short-lived love that brought him into being?’
” Killeen heaved a tragic sigh. “I was wondering that very same thing. I found out last night my father is terminally ill. He was the one real, dependable man in my children’s lives. Without him, who will they have to look up to?”
    Flynn skimmed the remainder of the article, wherein Tracy Eric examined the feelings her father’s death had brought into being, and most of all, the effects of that death upon her too-young-to-understand son, who had never known his grandfather.
    Tracy’s son would never know a grandfather’s love now, and she mourned that fact. Flynn read the passage and mourned along with Tracy, then told himself he was a fool.
    Once more, he wondered why he hadn’t gone ahead and married Pride. Then he reminded himself it wouldn’t have made any difference, since Pride had suffered a miscarriage.
    He had realized last night when he watched her face as she spoke to his father that Pride had suffered. Whatever else she’d been lying about, Pride had been pregnant. Or had thought she was pregnant.
    Now, he would probably never have a chance to present his parents with a grandchild to love and