Free His Surprise Son by WENDY WARREN

any help. Plus, choosing the adoptive parents, dealing with the lawyer—he said it would be too much for me alone.” His beautiful eyes had been awash with concern. No one had ever—ever—looked at her that way before.
    He’d even kissed her as he’d left for the airport. They hadn’t been romantic since she’d given him the news. Pregnancy had hijacked their relationship. The goodbye kiss had been just a sweet, soft touch of his lips to her cheek, but he’d done it right in front of his parents.
    “I didn’t know anything about family back then. It was easy to convince myself that what Nate and the Thayers were offering was as good as it ever gets. I even began to pretend Mrs. Thayer was my mother-in-law.”
    “What happened when you realized you couldn’t go through with the adoption?” Shifting on Izzy’s sofa so that she was more comfortable, Holliday nursed her wine while she waited for more of the story.
    “I worked up the courage to tell the Thayers I wanted to keep the baby and give them the gift of a wonderful grandchild. I’d honestly convinced myself they’d be happy. I said I was sure Nate would fall in love with the baby the minute he saw it.”
    Derek swiped a hand down his face. He knew what was coming. By her expression, so did Holliday.
    “Yeah—” Izzy nodded “—that spooked them. I was an obstacle to everything they’d worked so hard for. Suddenly, they weren’t as nice anymore, and I was such an idiot, I was actually surprised.”
    Derek swore, colorfully. “You weren’t an idiot. You trusted them, and they were—”
    “Frightened,” she said before he could use a much less kind word. “They were really frightened. Mrs. Thayer even told me that Mr. Thayer hated being a ‘glorified janitor,’ but he’d had to take any job he could to support a family. She implied their marriage wasn’t all that happy and asked if that was what I wanted. She said Nate had dreamed of being an architect since he was ten years old and wouldn’t it hurt me to see his resentment if he stayed in Thunder Ridge and wound up like his dad.”
    “Powerful stuff,” Holliday said quietly.
    “Yes, but I didn’t let that stop me. I told her I was strong and a good worker, and I would never let Nate quit college. I said I’d work as hard as I had to for as long as I had to. She looked at me for a long time, and I thought I’d actually convinced her. But then she brought out the cannon.”
    Derek frowned. “What do you mean?”
    “She showed me a photo Nate had mailed his parents. He had his arm around a girl. They were at a party, and they were grinning at each other. She was really beautiful...stunning...wearing an evening gown, and he was in a tuxedo. They looked just the way I’d imagined us looking if we’d gone to the prom together. And Mrs. Thayer said, ‘I’m sorry, Isabelle, I really am. But Nate has plans, too. Does he look like a boy who’s thinking about becoming a father with the girl he dated one summer after high school?’” Izzy shrugged sadly. “It was the truth.”
    “What did you do?” Holliday set her glass on the table, tucked her legs to her chest and rested her chin on her knees as she watched Izzy.
    “I told Henry and Sam I was pregnant, and they helped me move to Portland to live with a friend of theirs. My mom had done one of her disappearing acts, so no one thought it was strange that I left.”
    “And he just carried on with his life?” Derek looked and sounded disgusted.
    “That’s what I thought.” She explained the rest of the story as she knew it—how she had impulsively told Mrs. Thayer she didn’t want to speak to Nate ever again, and how today she’d discovered that Nate thought she’d had a miscarriage.
    Holliday put both hands to her mouth.
    “He should have looked for you!” Far from behaving like the levelheaded sheriff the townspeople had come to trust, Derek stormed around the room. “You were a kid, and you were alone. Now he thinks