The Pregnancy Pact. Kandy Shepherd

that she would not be eager to hear.

      “Hindsight is always twenty-twenty,” she informed him snootily.

      “How did you end up hurt?” Kade asked.

      Jessica squirmed a bit.

      “Um, we scuffled,” she admitted. “I fell.”

      “You scuffled?” Kade asked, incredulous. “You scuffled with a burglar? I would have thought it was hard to scuffle while running for the back door.”

      “I was not going to run away,” she said.

      “That is nothing to be proud of.”

      “Yes,” she said, “it is. Don’t you dare presume to tell me what to be proud of.”

      From their shared laughter over the bummers of life just moments ago to this. It was just like the final weeks of their marriage: arguments lurked everywhere.

      “Why are you proud of it?” he asked, that dangerous something still deepening in his tone, that muscle jerking along the line of his jaw that meant he was really annoyed.

      “I’m proud I took on that scrawny thief,” Jessica said, her voice low, but gaining power. “I lost my mother when I was twelve. I’ve lost two babies to miscarriage.”

      And she had lost Kade, not that she was going to mention that. In some ways the loss of him had been the worst of all. The other losses had been irrevocable, but Kade was still there, just not there for her.

      “Sorry?” he said, reeling back slightly from her as if she had hit him with something. “What does that have to do with this?”

      “I am not losing anything else,” she said, and could hear the tautness in her own voice. “Not one more thing.”

      He stared at her, and she took a deep breath and continued.

      “You listen to me, Kade Brennan. I am not surrendering to life anymore. I am not going to be the hapless victim. I am making the rules, and I am making my own life happen.”

      Kade was shocked into silence, so she went on, her tone low. “So if that means scuffling with someone who was trying to take one more thing from me, then so be it.”

      “Oh, boy,” he said, his voice low and pained. “That’s not even sensible.”

      “I don’t care what you think is sensible,” she said with stubborn pride.

      Though, she did plan to be more sensible soon. Naturally, there would be no more scuffling once she had adopted a baby. She would think things all the way through then. She would be the model of responsible behavior.

      She hoped there were no questions about how one would handle a break-in on the adoption application.

      “So you weren’t running for the back door,” he deduced, regaining himself. “Not even close.”

      “Nope.” The new Jessica refused to be intimidated. She met his gaze with determination. She was not going to be cowed by Kade. She was not one of his employees. She was nearly not even his wife. In a little while, they would practically be strangers.

      At the thought, a little unexpected grayness swirled inside her—she was willing to bet that was a result of her injury, a bit of shock—but she fought it off bravely.

      “I was not letting him get away,” Jessica said. “The police were coming.”

      For a moment he was stunned speechless again. He clenched that muscle in his jaw tighter. She remembered she hated that about him, too: the jaw clenching.

      His voice rarely rose in anger, but that muscle, leaping along the hard line of his jaw, was a dead giveaway that he was really irritated about something.

      “Are you telling me—” Kade’s voice was low and dangerous “—that you not only scuffled with the burglar, but you tried to detain him?”

      “He was a shrimp,” Jessica said defiantly.

      “In case you haven’t looked in the mirror recently, so are you. And he could have had a knife! Or a gun!” So much for his voice rarely being raised in anger.

      “I wasn’t going to stand by and let him steal from me!” At the look on Kade’s face, she backed down marginally. “Okay, so maybe I didn’t think it all the way through.” Something that was definitely going to have to change once she embraced motherhood.

      “Maybe?”

      She was not sure why she felt driven to defend herself, even when she knew Kade was right and she was wrong. Not just defend herself, but goad him a little bit.

      “Break-ins started on this block a few nights ago. No one can sleep at night. We all go down there and check our businesses. That business is everything to me now. It’s my whole life.”

      He heard the unspoken, she was sure. That the business had replaced him as her whole life.

      The jaw muscle was rippling beneath the line of his skin. She watched it, fascinated despite herself. He was really angry.

      “You’ve been going down there in the middle of the night to check your business?”

      It didn’t seem nearly as clever now with Kade glaring at her.

      “Yes, I have,” she said, refusing to back down. “And I’ll probably do it again tonight, since he got away.”

      Well, actually, she probably wouldn’t, but there was no sense Kade thinking he could order her around, could control her with even a hint of his disapproval. Those days were over.

      “You are not going down there tonight,” Kade said. “For God’s sake, Jessica, haven’t you ever heard of security cameras?”

      “Of course I’ve thought of security cameras. And security companies. But the options are many and the selection is huge,” she said. “I’ve been trying to figure out what is best for me and my budget. Not that that is any of your business. And you don’t have any say in how I decide to handle it. None whatsoever. You and I only have one thing left to discuss. And that is our divorce.”

      And unbidden, the thought blasted through her that that was a major bummer.

      And the doctor, a lovely young woman, chose that moment to come out, X-rays in hand, and say, “Mr. and Mrs. Brennan?”

      Mr. and Mrs. Brennan. That should not fill her with longing! That should not make Jessica wonder if there would ever be another Mrs. Brennan taking her place.

      It was over. Their brief marriage was over. They were getting divorced. Kade’s life was no longer any of her business, just as hers was no longer any of his.

      She would probably change her name back to Clark. She could be Ms. Clark instead of Mrs. Brennan. The baby would be a Clark.

      She wasn’t thinking about a first name. She knew better than that. Or at least she should know better than that. A memory knifed through her: Kade and her poring over the baby-name books. Deciding on Lewis for a boy and Amelia for a girl.

      And then the first miscarriage. And somehow, she could see now, in retrospect, what she had not seen then. From the moment Kade had asked her not to name that little lost baby, a crack had appeared between them.

      No, she was determined to enjoy the success of her baby nursery design business and her new storefront as a means to an end. She could have it all.

      She could fill her life with the thrill of obtaining those adorable outfits no other store would carry, those one-of-a-kind over-the-crib mobiles, those perfect lamb-soft cuddly teddy bears that everyone wanted and no one could find.

      And someday, maybe sooner than later, the outfits would be for her own baby. She would design a nursery for her own baby.

      “Don’t,” he’d whispered when she had started painting the walls of their spare room a pale shade of lavender