Rebel In A Small Town. Kristina Knight

“But she’s... And you’re... You said she was here to hook up with you.”

      “I didn’t mean hook up hook up. God, why do men assume women can be friends with one another only if they’re also hooking up?”

      “It was a natural assumption from the way you introduced her.”

      “Are you sure you passed that police academy test? Your deductive reasoning could use a little work.”

      “Yes, I’m sure I passed it, and my deductive reasoning isn’t flawed. You insinuated—”

      “—that she was my friend. She’s also my employee, and no, that doesn’t mean I pay her for sex.” Mara intentionally lowered her voice even though there were no other people on the sidewalk. “There is no sex between Cheryl and me. I thought you’d already gotten the memo that my preferences lean toward men.”

      “I didn’t know friends randomly meet up with other friends in strange towns where one or the other of them is working.”

      “Then you obviously don’t have very good friends.” Mara crossed her arms over her chest. “Or you live in a town with a single stoplight, and so do all your friends.”

      “Touché.” James put his hands in his pockets. “You look good.”

      “So now that I’m not an attached lesbian-slash-bisexual, you’re going straight into hook-up mode?”

      James grinned. “It was a statement of fact,” he said, “not an invitation for either of us to go jumping into whatever lake we were swimming in up until two years ago.”

      Two years ago. Zeke. Fatherhood. Arguing with James about her sexuality was another no-no in the parenthood talk they needed to have. “Yeah, well, that was a pretty deep lake.”

      “I was thinking it was kind of shallow,” he said, reaching to curl a lock of her hair around his finger. “We kept things light and simple, and you walked away.”

      She could feel his heat even across the distance between them. Wanted to feel the soft pads of his fingers against the skin of her cheek. Wanted to drink in that sandalwood smell that was James Calhoun. “I...thought you wanted simple.”

      “What the hell did I know about what I wanted? Other than more time with you,” he said, and his brown eyes seemed to darken. Mara closed her eyes. She could lean forward just a little bit, could stand on tiptoe and her lips would meet his. She would have him, one more time, in her orbit. God, she wanted that.

      She snapped her eyes open. That was not how this was going to happen. She was not hooking up with James one night only to tell him he was a father the next. She couldn’t do that, not to him. Not to Zeke. She was better than this, stronger than the kind of person who let herself get wound up in a man and forgot about all the responsibilities in her life.

      Like the baby in her room at the B and B.

      “Cheryl is my nanny,” she said, blurting the words out as she took a deliberate step away from James. His eyes widened and she immediately wished the words back.

      “You have a nanny?” He cocked his head to the side, confusion evident from the slight drop in his jaw.

      “Technically, my son has a nanny. I employ a child care provider who also happens to be a friend.”

      “You have a son?” James pulled away from her, both physically and emotionally. She watched it happen in a smooth motion that started when his hand dropped from her hair and ended when his eyebrows beetled in that cold cop expression she’d seen the day before. The same cop expression his father used in any number of school assemblies and during “conversations” with her outside the principal’s office in high school. James was just as good at that condescending look as his father, but coming from Jonathan Calhoun, the look had never hurt like this. Like a bomb had exploded in her belly.

      “He’s fourteen months old,” she said, forcing her voice to remain crisp and clear. She could pretend to be just as calculated and cold as he; she would not break in front of him. Mara closely watched his expression as he counted back. Fourteen months, plus nine for the pregnancy, would land him at the conference he’d attended in July in Nashville. She’d been writing a new security protocol for a musical publishing company in Nashville. That was the last time they’d seen one another until this week. Realization hardened his gaze into an impenetrable brick. “Yes,” she said, “I got pregnant in Nashville.”

      James took another step back, putting more breathing room between them. “We used protection,” he said, his voice wooden. “Every time.”

      “Condoms break. The pill isn’t one hundred percent effective. Even used together, things can happen.” Mara started to reach for him but quickly drew her hand back. He wouldn’t welcome her touch, not now. Maybe not ever again, and she was going to have to deal with that. She hadn’t wanted to tell him in the middle of the street, but she’d felt cornered. She’d used their son to put a wall between them, and she hated herself for that.

      Her hands itched to touch him, to comfort him. She crossed her arms over her chest, and tried to put all the remorse she felt into her voice. “I didn’t realize I was pregnant until I was almost five months along.”

      “And, what, between that five-month mark and now you couldn’t pick up a phone?”

      His expression closed. No anger, no annoyance. Not even panic at finding out he was a father. There was nothing, and the nothing made Mara’s chest ache.

      “I couldn’t tell you on the phone,” she began.

      James snorted derisively. “No, you didn’t want to tell me on the phone,” he said and spun on his heel.

      “James, wait,” she called after him, but he kept walking. She couldn’t move. At the corner, he turned. When he was gone from her sight, it was as if an engine turned on inside, making her legs move to follow. She hurried after him, but he had disappeared by the time Mara reached the corner. “Damn it,” she whispered, and smacked her hand against the brick of the building. She winced and shook her hand. “Damn it.”

      * * *

      JAMES PACED THE living room of the small house he’d bought overlooking the lake. It sat on the far western edge of Water Street, and the view of the calm lake never failed to center him. To remind him of the things he wanted. A good career. A family. Making his parents proud. Being a good friend.

      Tonight the calmness of the water mocked him. He had a son. A son he had never met because, when Mara walked away, he let her.

      There were things he could have done to find her, but instead of going after her, instead of forcing her to talk to him, he’d let her walk away.

      And tonight he’d walked away from her because he didn’t know what to do with any of this. Her coming back to town. How she made him feel, even after two years. The child he didn’t know.

      Dear God, he had a son, and he didn’t even know what the child looked like. He didn’t have Mara’s phone number to call her to apologize.

      To ask her if he could meet the kid. Did he want to meet him?

      James didn’t have to think, he already knew the answer to the question. He wanted to meet his child.

      The sky had turned a brilliant orange, the last rays of sunlight glinting off the surface of the lake like a million tiny diamonds. Like the diamond he’d bought two years ago. The one currently hidden in the oak credenza that had belonged to his great-grandfather when he was sheriff of Wall County.

      James had fooled himself, thinking that the on-again, off-again relationship with Mara went off simply because of the distance. That weekend in Nashville, when they had wandered Music Row for hours, when their bodies had come together like puzzle pieces, had been different from their other encounters. Mara was softer that trip. She’d talked a little more about missing her family. He made the mistake of believing her homesickness was about him as well as her grandmother and siblings. A sunset not unlike