Daddy Bombshell. Lisa Childs

you called me? When you wrote me? Oh, yeah, you didn’t do any of those things!”

      He shoved his hand through his hair, tousling the dark brown strands. “We agreed that a clean break would be easier.”

      “I agreed.” As she’d fought back her tears and silently called herself all kinds of a fool for falling for him when he’d been clear right from the start that he had to leave again. Why hadn’t she listened to him instead of Tammy and her own stupid heart? “But the clean break was your idea, so I figured you wanted nothing to do with me anymore.”

      “Caroline …” He reached out but pulled his hand back before touching her face. “I never led you on. I was straight with you up front.”

      And that was why she should have never gone out with him. But the attraction between them had been so strong—as strong as it was now, her skin tingling even though he hadn’t touched her—that she hadn’t been able to resist. And she really had hoped that her friend was right, that if he fell in love with her, he would stay.

      But he hadn’t.…

      “I know you had to leave,” she said, and she suspected she even knew why—because it was too hard for him to stay in the city where his parents had been so brutally murdered. “But I didn’t know where you were.”

      “You could have given a message to my brothers Devin or Ash or to my uncle Craig,” he said. “They would have made sure I got it.”

      She laughed, but with bitterness not amusement. “I don’t know your brothers or your uncle. I never met your family,” she reminded him, feeling now as she had then, as if she had been some dirty secret of his. Had dating an elementary school teacher been so far beneath the status of one of the illustrious Kendalls of St. Louis that he’d been embarrassed to introduce her to his family?

      “But you know who they are and how to reach them,” he stubbornly persisted.

      Of course she knew; everyone in St. Louis and most of the United States knew who every one of the Kendalls was.

      “But your family doesn’t know who I am,” she retorted. “What reason would they have to believe that I was really carrying your child and not just trying to make a claim on the Kendall fortune?”

      According to local gossip, several other women had tried to get their hands on some Kendall money albeit through his brothers and not Thad.

      “My brothers or uncle would have told me that you’d come to see them—”

      “When?” she interrupted. “Are you in regular contact with them? Have you even come home in the past four years?” She waited, almost hoping he hadn’t so she wouldn’t be disappointed that he hadn’t contacted her earlier.

      “I would have gotten word,” he insisted, a muscle twitching along his tightly clenched jaw.

      “And what would you have done?” she wondered. “Would you have come back home? Would you have given up your nomad lifestyle for diaper duty and two-a.m. feedings?”

      “You did that all alone?” He glanced around the living room as if he were looking for her support system.

      Her parents had moved to Arizona years ago, coming back to St. Louis for only a few weeks every summer. Except for her friends, she had no one.

      She nodded in response, but she didn’t want his sympathy or his guilt. “And I loved every minute of it. Mark was the easiest baby and now he’s the sweetest little boy.”

      “I guess I will have to take your word for what kind of baby he was since I’ve missed out on those years,” he said.

      He had stopped his restless pacing and stood now in front of the portrait wall of her living room, staring wistfully at all the pictures of their son. In addition to the studio portraits she’d had taken every few months, she’d framed collages of snapshots, too. She’d recorded every special moment in his life, and hers, because she’d been there. Thad hadn’t. Maybe he wouldn’t have been even if he’d known. But she’d robbed him of that choice.

      Now the guilt was hers. She should have tried to talk to his family so that one of them might have gotten word to him. It hadn’t been fair of her to just assume that he wouldn’t have wanted any involvement in his son’s life just because he hadn’t wanted any involvement in hers.

      “But I don’t intend to miss out on anything else, Caroline,” Thad said, his voice low and deep as if he were issuing a threat. “I am going to be part of his life.”

      “For how long?” she asked. “Just long enough to break his heart when you leave again?” Just like he had broken hers.

      THAD’S HEAD POUNDED, tension throbbing at his temples and at the base of his skull. Maybe it was the chemicals in his new sister-in-law’s crime lab at the St. Louis Police Department that had caused the headache.

      But the fumes weren’t toxic or Rachel wouldn’t have been working still, not in her condition. The petite brunette was very pregnant, her belly protruding through the sides of the white lab coat.

      What had Caroline looked like when she was pregnant? She was taller than Rachel with more generous curves. Had she hidden her pregnancy for a while? Being a single mom might have caused her problems at the elementary school where she worked.

      He hadn’t asked about that. He’d been too stunned and angry to do more than yell at her. And he hadn’t talked to his son at all. Knowing how close he’d been to losing his temper, he had let her call her friend to pick up the boy. Instead of talking to him while they waited, Thad had just stared at the kid and had probably scared him.

      Had he scared Caroline, too? After he’d demanded a relationship with his son, she had asked him to leave, saying that she needed time to think. That had been a couple of days ago.

      All he’d been doing was thinking.

      “Hey, little bro!” Devin snapped his fingers in Thad’s face. “You called this meeting. Down here.” The CEO of Kendall Communications glanced around the sterile lab and shuddered. “What’s going on?”

      “I don’t care,” Ash murmured as he pressed a kiss against the nape of Rachel’s neck, which her high ponytail left exposed. “He gave me an excuse to see my gorgeous wife.”

      “Get a room,” Thad grumbled.

      “You’re just jealous,” Ash teased. But he was also right.

      Thad was jealous that he’d missed out on seeing Caroline like Rachel was now, glowing and beautiful in her pregnancy … with his son.

      The door to the lab opened again. “I’m here,” a deep voice murmured as former navy SEAL Grayson Scott joined them. “And if my fiancée asks, I was out bonding with my brothers-in-law-to-be.”

      “How are we bonding?” Devin asked with a grin. His eyes gleamed with curiosity and mischief. “Drinking? Working out?”

      Color flushed Gray’s face, and he grumbled his reply. “We’re Christmas shopping.”

      Rachel laughed. “Now you’re going to have to actually go shopping, so that you weren’t really lying to Natalie.”

      The thought of Christmas shopping, of the music and the crowds and all the goddamn cheer, had Thad’s stomach churning.

      “It’s better that she doesn’t know why we’re all together,” Thad pointed out. “There is no point in upsetting Natalie until we know the truth.”

      Rachel nodded and was suddenly all business. “The FBI lab results came back.” She stared at Thad, her hazel eyes narrowed with suspicion. “I don’t know how you got the results rushed, but the DNA report is back already. It confirms my findings.”

      Thad hadn’t needed a DNA test to prove that he was Mark’s father. The little boy was him twenty-eight years ago.

      “So was I right?”