Swordsman's Legacy. Alex Archer

the kitchen, taking another table’s empty plates. With one elbow, she held it open for a second waitress, heading in the opposite direction. He glimpsed the choreographed chaos centered around the grill and the fryer, and yes, there was Reba’s back view. He recognized it easily—the odd combination of grace and toughness in the way she held herself, the glossy mass of her dark hair.

      Remembered desire flooded him like a tide.

      Remembered fulfilment, too.

      He knew how wildly that body moved in ecstasy. He remembered the creamy color and silky texture of her skin beneath her clothes, as if he’d seen and touched her yesterday. He knew the way her hair smelled, so simple and fragrant and good, and the throaty sound of her laugh.

      Yes, that was definitely Reba.

      Then, as the door swung closed again, she half-turned in order to reach for something, and for a moment he almost thought…

      No.

      Impossible.

      But he kept watching the door, and he stood up at his table, to get a better view.

      The door opened again within seconds, and this time what he saw left him in no doubt.

      Reba was pregnant.

      Still.

      When he’d believed until this moment that she’d lost their baby in a miscarriage during her first trimester late last year.

      “Somebody wants to talk to you,” Reba heard, but hardly took in which of the waitresses was speaking—definitely not Carla—because the woman had already disappeared again, carrying a pile of plates.

      She looked up from the grill, and Lucas Halliday stood there, turned to stone just as she’d known he would, the moment they encountered each other again. He had the same instant, powerful effect on her senses that she remembered with an intensity that was almost like pain, and deep down this didn’t surprise her, either.

      He looked every bit as angry as she’d expected, too, although she would challenge his right to feel that way, with all the energy she could muster.

      “This isn’t a good time, Lucas,” she said, steady-voiced.

      “From your perspective, maybe. From mine, it’s a very good time.” He shot a cold glance down at her bulging stomach. “You have a hell of a lot of explaining to do, Reba, overdue since we saw each other before Christmas, and I don’t see why I should wait any longer.”

      “We’re run off our feet.” Her body had been telling her so for an hour or more. Her stomach ached below the hard, rounded jut of her growing pregnancy. It was a dull sort of ache that tightened around her like an uncomfortable belt then eased, which meant that she forgot about it as she worked, then remembered it when it came again.

      “Take a break, Reba.” Her best friend Carla suddenly appeared, and touched her arm with a concerned gesture. She must already have seen that Lucas was here and she’d been hovering, waiting to step in when Reba needed her.

      The two of them had known each other since school. Carla worked here as a waitress, and she had two children, one of them still a baby. Had she felt this same nagging ache at this point during her pregnancies? Both times, she’d worked until just a couple of weeks before the babies were due, but she’d never mentioned any problems or pains.

      “I’m not scheduled for a break,” Reba answered her friend.

      Carla took no notice. “You need to talk to him,” she said in a low voice. “Might as well make it now. The guy looks as if he can’t decide whether to faint or punch a wall.”

      “Carla…”

      Lucas was still standing there, stony and angry and shocked, ready to erupt as soon as he could get her alone.

      “Twice you’ve thought it was over between the two of you, right?” Carla muttered. “Once in September, by mutual agreement, then again when you miscarried the twin in November. You have a history with him, Reba.”

      “And a future, too.” Reba closed her eyes. Some kind of future, good or bad. He was the father of this baby, and it was already clear to her that he wasn’t going to let the issue go. “Okay, Carla, I know.”

      “Gordie not in tonight, Reba?” The steakhouse’s newest waitress slipped by and threw the cheerful, familiar question at her, apparently oblivious to a tension in the air that had nothing to do with Gordie McConnell. Reba’s long relationship with Gordie had been over for more than eight months, although Gordie and half of Biggins didn’t seem to have gotten this straight in their heads, yet.

      Reba gritted her teeth. “Haven’t seen him, Dee,” she answered.

      Carla hissed in her ear, “Go. Now. Manager’s office. Your place, even. Talk to Lucas. Before Gordie does show up and make this even harder.” She stole the metal steak flipper out of Reba’s hand and pushed her toward the swing door. “Someone else can cover for you.”

      “I have a table in the corner,” Lucas offered, his voice cold and his body wound tight.

      “No. I’m not talking about this here, in front of half of Biggins,” Reba answered him. “We’ll go into the manager’s office, like Carla suggested.” She began to move in that direction at once, and he followed her, practically breathing down her neck.

      “I’m glad you appreciate that we have some talking to do,” he said.

      “It would be a little pointless to deny it, at this stage.”

      “But you were planning to, if I hadn’t shown up.”

      “No, I guess I knew you’d have to find out eventually. I was hoping it wouldn’t be until after the baby was born. And I should make it clear to you, Lucas, I don’t consider that you’re involved.”

      “How in hell can I not be involved? Is this why you were so cool before Christmas? You were afraid I’d guess?”

      “No. I didn’t know, then. I was angry, and I had good reason to be.”

      But he’d focused on her first words, not her claim about anger. “You didn’t know? That doesn’t make sense.”

      “It will in a minute.” She opened the manager’s office.

      “Good, because I’m keen to hear,” he drawled, his voice as hard as whetstone. He entered the cramped office behind her and shut the door with a snap. The noise level from the restaurant fell away. “What I’m seeing is impossible. So start from the beginning. Tell me how in hell you staged that scene at the restaurant in Cheyenne, and at the hospital. Never mind my untrained eye, how did you convince a doctor that you’d lost the baby?”

      She shook her head. “I can’t believe you think I’d do that.”

      “I wouldn’t, without the evidence. But I tend to trust facts, not feelings.”

      “I never staged anything, Lucas.” She turned to face him, feeling that strange and almost painful belt-tightening feeling again, around her stomach and across her back. As usual, it soon faded. Her desire for a comfortable chair and a pillow to support her lower spine remained, destined to stay unfulfilled.

      With its littered desk and single chair, the office was way too cluttered for this confrontation, but she was glad she’d chosen privacy over space, all the same. Lucas Halliday still looked too good, in her eyes, still filled her with all the wildly contrasting feelings he’d generated in her almost six months ago, and again in November. Anger and resentment, unwilling interest in just what made him tick, steaming attraction, dawning respect.

      “And that’s not the beginning, anyhow, and you know it,” she finished.

      “So start with your definition of the beginning,” he said. “That first afternoon in the cabin? The night we tried to say goodbye at the door of my motel room? The day you came to see me out at the ranch in November?”

      “None