A Bravo Christmas Reunion. Christine Rimmer

was locked.

      He swore, a harsh oath, though there was no one but the night to hear him. Earlier, he’d lucked out and slipped in behind a couple too busy groping each other to notice they had company as they entered the complex. Not this time. He stood at the gate alone. Muttering another bad word, he punched the button that went with Hayley’s apartment number.

      She answered immediately, as if she’d been waiting by the receiver for him to finally add two and two and come up with four. “Marcus.”

      “Is it mine?”

      By way of answer, she buzzed him in.

      She was waiting in her open doorway when he reached the top of the stairs. Waiting in silence. No Christmas music now.

      He asked, low, “Well?”

      And she nodded. Slowly. Deliberately.

      “And the husband?” he demanded. When she frowned as if puzzled, he clarified. “Is there a husband?”

      Her head went back and forth. No husband.

      He stared at her. He had absolutely zero idea what to do or say next.

      She gestured for him to come in. Moving on autopilot, he reentered her apartment. She indicated the blue couch. So he went over there and lowered his strangely numb body onto the cushions again.

      He watched as she reclaimed the blue chair, those ringless pale hands of hers gripping the chair arms. His gaze was hopelessly drawn to her belly. He tried to get his mind around the bizarre reality that she had his baby in there.

      His baby. His…

      “Oh, Marcus,” she said in a small voice at last. “I’m so—”

      He cut her off by showing her the flat of his palm. “You knew, didn’t you, when you left me? That’s why you left me. Because of the baby.”

      She shook her head.

      “What?” he demanded. “You’re telling me you didn’t know you were pregnant when you walked out on me?”

      “I knew. All right? I knew.” She pushed on the chair arms, as if she meant to rise. “Do we have to—?”

      “Yeah. We do.”

      She sank back to the chair. “This is totally unnecessary. Really. I’m not expecting anything of you.”

      “Just answer me. Did you leave me because you got pregnant?”

      “Sort of.”

      “Damn it. Either you did, or you didn’t.”

      She shut those shining eyes and sucked in a slow breath. When she looked at him again, she spoke with deliberate care. “I left because you didn’t love me and you didn’t want to marry me and you’d already told me, when we started in together, you made it so perfectly clear, that you would never get married again and you would never have children. I felt guilty, okay? For messing up and getting pregnant. But still, I wanted this baby. And that meant I couldn’t see it as anything but a losing proposition to hang around in Seattle waiting for you to feel responsible for me and this child I’m having, even though you didn’t want me and you don’t want a kid. It was lose-lose, as far as I could see. So I came home.”

      Her tone really grated on him. As if she was so noble, just walking away, telling him nothing. As if, somehow, he was the one in the wrong here. “You should have told me before you walked out on me. I had a damn right to know.”

      Spots of color stained her pale cheeks. She straightened her shoulders. “Of course I planned to tell you.”

      “When?”

      She glanced away. “It’s…arranged.”

      “Arranged.” He repeated the word. It made no sense to him. “Telling me I’m going to be a father is something you needed to arrange?”

      She let go of the chair arms just long enough to throw up both hands. Then she slapped them down again. Hard. “Look. I was stressed over it, all right? I admit I didn’t want to face you. But I have it set up so you would have known.”

      “You have it…set up?”

      “Isn’t that what I just said?”

      “Set up for when?”

      “As soon as the baby’s born. You were going to know then.”

      “You were planning to…call me from the hospital?”

      She swallowed. “Uh. Not exactly.”

      “Damn it, Hayley.” He glared at her.

      She curved a hand under her belly and snapped to her feet. “Come with me.”

      He stayed where he was and demanded, “Come where?”

      “Just come with me. Please.”

      “Hayley…”

      But she was already moving—and with surprising agility for someone so hugely pregnant. She zipped over and grabbed her bag, flung open the entry area closet and dragged a red wool coat from a hanger in there. She turned to him as she shrugged into the coat. “Where’s your car?”

      “Out in front, but I don’t—”

      “Are you drunk?”

      “Drunk? What the hell? Of course I’m not drunk.”

      “Okay.” She flipped her hair out from under the coat’s collar. “You can drive.”

      He muttered a string of swearwords as he rose and followed her into the cold, mist-shrouded night.

      * * *

      Ten minutes later, she directed him to turn into the driveway of a green-shuttered white brick house on a quiet street lined with oaks and maples.

      He pulled in where she pointed, stopped the car and took the key from the ignition. “Who lives here?”

      “Come on,” she said, as if that were any kind of answer. A moment later, she was up and out and headed around the front of the vehicle.

      Against his own better judgment, he got out, too, and followed her up the curving walk to a red front door. She rang the bell.

      As chimes sounded inside, he heard a dog barking and a child yelling, “I got it!”

      The lock turned and the door flew open to reveal a brown-haired little girl in pink tights and ballet shoes. The dog, an ancient-looking black mutt about the size of a German shepherd, pawed the hardwood floor beside the girl and barked in a gravelly tone, “Woof,” and then “woof,” again, each sound produced with great effort.

      “Quiet, Candy,” said the child and the dog dropped to its haunches with a sound that could only be called a relieved sigh. The child beamed at Hayley and then shouted over her shoulder, “It’s Aunt Hayley!”

      Aunt Hayley? Impossible. To be an aunt, you needed a brother or a sister. Hayley had neither.

      A woman appeared behind the child, a woman with softly curling brown hair and blue eyes, a woman who resembled Hayley in an indefinable way—something in the shape of the eyes, in the mouth that wasn’t full, but had a certain teasing tilt at the corners. “Hey,” the woman said, wiping her hands on a towel. “Surprise, surprise.” She cast a questioning glance in Marcus’s direction.

      And Hayley said, “This is Marcus.”

      “Ah,” said the woman, as if some major question had been answered. “Well. Come on in.”

      The kid and the old dog backed out of the way and Hayley and Marcus entered the warm, bright house. The woman led them through an open doorway into a homey-looking living room. Just as at Hayley’s place, a lighted Christmas tree stood in the window, a bright spill of gifts beneath.

      “Can