The Right Reason To Marry. Christine Rimmer

the bags on the garage floor, fished out a block of Swiss cheese from one and passed it to her. The cheese in one hand, both arms spread wide, cape rippling, Coco ran back up the stairs and into the house, slamming the door behind her.

      “You gotta love that enthusiasm,” said Otto as he bent to pick up the bags again. Karin just stood there staring down at his bent head. His hair was all white now and thinning, his pink scalp showing through at the crown. He met her eyes as he stood again. “What happened?” he asked quietly.

      She replied in a small voice. “I saw Liam at Safeway.”

      “You tell him?” Her dad and her brother, Sten, and Sten’s wife, Madison, knew that Liam was the baby’s father. Sten and Otto had been after Karin for months to tell the man that he was going to be a dad. Madison mostly stayed out of it, though Liam was actually one of her long-lost brothers.

      Karin stared into the middle distance, thinking of Madison for no particular reason. Sten’s new bride had been switched at birth, of all impossible things. She’d met Sten when she came to Valentine Bay last March to find the family she’d just learned she had.

      “Karin. You tell Liam?” her dad asked for the second time.

      She blinked and made herself answer the question. “Uh. I did. Yes. I told him.”

      “And?”

      “And I said I was going straight home, that if he wanted to talk about it, I’ll be here.”

      “You’re thinking he’ll be coming by, then?”

      She nodded. “And soon, would be my guess. If you could maybe keep the kids downstairs...?” The house was really two complete houses in one. Karin, her dad and the kids lived on the first floor just above the garage. Sten and Madison had the upper floor when they were in town, which they weren’t right now. Madison was a bona fide movie star. Currently, she and Sten spent most of their time in LA or on location wherever she was filming.

      “No problem,” said Otto. “I’ll keep an eye on the kids and send Liam up when he gets here.”

      On the top floor of the house, in Sten’s quiet kitchen, Karin brewed a cup of raspberry leaf tea. As she waited for it to steep, she stood at the slider that opened onto the wide upper deck and watched the layers of clouds over the water. The waves slid into shore and retreated, leaving the wet sand smooth as glass in their wake.

      “Karin.” Liam spoke from directly behind her.

      She stiffened in surprise and turned to face him. His hair was kind of standing on end and his eyes had a haunted look. “Hey. I, um, didn’t hear you come in.”

      He stared at her for several seconds with a numbly disbelieving expression on his face before he finally said, “Your dad. He told me to just go up.”

      “That’s fine. Great. Let’s sit down, why don’t we?” She gestured toward the sitting area.

      “No, thanks.” He blinked at her. “I’d rather stand.”

      “Maybe some tea or something?”

      “No. Nothing.” He turned on his heel and strode away from her. When he reached the hallway that led to the bedrooms, he turned again and came back, halting in the same place he’d been before he stalked off. “You’re pregnant.”

      Hadn’t they already covered that? “Yes, I am.”

      “I can’t... I don’t...” It was just like at Safeway. The poor man seemed incapable of completing a sentence. “I mean, uh, you said it was...”

      “Yours, Liam,” she gently confirmed again. “Yes. The baby is yours.”

      “And you’re due...?”

      “In a week.”

      “A week.” The wild state of his hair made more sense as he put both hands to his head, got two fistfuls of hair and pulled. “Mine. Wow. Mine.” And off he went again, his long legs carrying him swiftly past the table, on through the sitting area to the hallway that led to the bedrooms. Next to the hallway, stairs led down to the lower floor. For a moment, he just stood there, his head going back and forth, as though he couldn’t decide whether to run down the stairs or set off along the hallway.

      Karin didn’t know what to do, either, so she just waited by the slider. Eventually, he turned and came toward her again.

      “A week,” he repeated when he stopped a foot away from her. “I’ll be a dad in a week is what you just said.”

      Excuses weren’t going to cut it. She offered them anyway. “I’m so sorry, Liam. I was going to tell you earlier, but I didn’t really even know where to start. And there’s not much you could do at this point, anyway. So I thought I would just wait until after the birth.”

      “You thought you would just wait...”

      “Yes. Liam, I promise you, there’s no pressure. You can think it over, decide how much involvement you want to have.” Okay, yeah. No matter what he decided, eventually, she would be after him to spend a little time with his child. And he would have to cough up some child support, too. But it felt beyond rude to hit the poor guy with all that today when he seemed so completely torn up to learn there was a baby on the way.

      “No pressure,” he echoed blankly.

      “That’s right. There’s no big rush to make decisions. Truly, you can just take your time, figure out what works for you.”

      He raked his hair back with both hands. “But...married, maybe? We should get—”

      “What? Wait.” Now she was the one frantically blinking. “Married? Us?”

      “Well, uh, yeah.”

      She needed to nip that terrible idea right in the bud. “No, Liam. Don’t be silly. Of course not.” No way was she getting married just because there was a baby coming. Been there, done that. Bought the T-shirt, saw the movie. Lived through the heartbreak. Never. Again.

      And dear God in heaven, could she have made a bigger mess of this?

      “Listen,” she said. “After the birth we’ll do DNA. You’ll have plenty of time to deal with this. You really will—and you know, you look awful. Liam, come on. You need to sit down.” She reached for his arm.

      He jerked away before she could make contact. “I’ll stand.” They just stared at each other.

      She cast desperately about for something meaningful to say. “Liam, I really am so sorry to—”

      “Stop.” He actually showed her the hand.

      And then he spun on his heel again and paced off toward the stairs, shaking his head as he went, turning right back around and coming toward her once more, halting stock-still a few feet from where she waited. He looked wrecked, ruined, but he held his broad shoulders straight and proud. “Last March, when you broke it off with me, did you know you were pregnant then?”

      She wanted to lie to him, make herself look a fraction less like a complete jerk for the way she’d handled the situation. But she didn’t lie. “Yeah. I knew then.”

      His forehead crinkled in a frown. “You broke it off, but you didn’t bother to tell me you were having my kid?”

      “I felt awful. I couldn’t make myself admit to you that we were having a baby. I mean, why me? How many women have you been with?”

      He fell back a step. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

      “Liam. I know you. I grew up with you. We were in the same grade at school. We even went on two dates in high school, remember?”

      “Of course, I remember.”

      “My, um, point is, you’re hot and easy to be