Lone Star Millionaire (29 page)

She beamed. “Way cool. Although finals are coming up fast.”

Thea nodded and glanced at the Matthews clan. “It's nice to meet you all. Now it's time to get this celebration on the road. I've set all the food up in here.” She indicated the hot trays on the kitchen island containing lasagna and stuffed shells. “Your backyard and patio are so beautiful, I decided to set up the picnic table out there.”

Scott went to the window and looked out. “Wow.” He glanced back at her. “It looks great. You did a terrific job.”

His compliment pleased her more than a compliment usually did, proving that she was in a lot of trouble. “I'm glad you approve. Now everyone, the plates are here. Fill them up and I'll get drinks when you're all settled at the table.”

“Of course you'll join us,” Betty said.

“Thank you, no. I'm working,” she explained.

“I don't know how Kendra roped you into this,” the older woman said, “but I'm going to make an educated, instinctive guess that she's supposed to be helping.”

“Yes, but she's part of the family and this is a family party. You all don't want a stranger intruding.”

“You're not a stranger.” Scott's mouth turned up at the corners.

The twinkle in his eyes told her he was thinking about seeing her naked, which supported his statement. Thea's cheeks couldn't have been hotter if she'd been cooking over an open fire.

“I'm the caterer,” she explained. “It's my job to be unobtrusive—to not be seen or heard.”

“I thought that was kids,” Mike Matthews said.

“No, Uncle Mike.” Gail huffed out a breath. “Kids should be
seen
and not heard.”

“Then how come you didn't get the memo?” Mike playfully grabbed her and rubbed his knuckles over the top of her head until she shrieked for mercy.

Betty Matthews stepped forward and handed Thea a plate. “You may be the caterer, but this is my house and no one goes hungry. Besides, you're too skinny.”

Scott shrugged. “I think you just had your first example of what Mike and I learned many years ago.”

“What's that?” Thea asked.

“Don't mess with Mom.”

Thea smiled at the woman who'd taken back control of her kitchen, removing plastic from the salad, uncovering steaming dishes of food and directing traffic through her domain.

“Well, I tried,” she said to Scott. The two of them were at the end of a line of Matthews family members filling their plates as they filed past the food. “Your mom is obviously happier running the show.”

“She is now that food she didn't have to prepare is here and assembled,” he said. He sniffed the fragrance of basil and garlic wafting through the air. He sighed dramatically. “You're amazing. I think I've died and gone to heaven.”

“Not yet.” Mike turned and looked at him. “But I can arrange it.”

Thea laughed. “You remind me of my brother.”

Mike looked offended. “Not exactly what a guy wants a pretty girl to say.”

“Not so fast, little brother. I saw her first.”

The tone got Thea's attention and when she looked at Scott, she wondered if he was angry. Did he think his brother was hitting on her? The idea that he might be jealous filled her with a sense of awe. She wasn't the sort of woman men fought over. And it certainly wasn't her intention to manipulate the two of them, but the fantasy of two such attractive men vying for her attention was so incredibly lovely. The rush of exuberance filled her with sheer happiness to be alive.

And for the first time since losing her husband, that thought wasn't followed by a flood of guilt.

“That was a test.” Mike grinned. “And I found out what I wanted to know.”

“I should have taken you out when I could have,” Scott mumbled, flexing his wide shoulders as if they were tense.

When all the plates were full and everyone else was seated at the table beneath the patio cover, Scott pulled a chair up beside his own for Thea before the two of them sat down. Her heart stumbled at the masculine gesture that was just shy of possessive.

She dug into the food on her plate, realizing she was very hungry. Fortunately, the Matthews clan went into action, laughing, talking, teasing. This gave her a chance to observe them.

The mutual love, respect and acceptance was evident in the good-natured banter and joking. They reminded her of her own family. She'd been raised in a similar environment and had always yearned to have that same kind of life. But fate had stepped in and robbed her of the chance.

“So, Thea, I understand you'll be catering Kendra's graduation party.” Betty took a bite of garlic bread and closed her eyes for a moment as she chewed, an expression of sublime enjoyment suffusing her expression.

“That's right.” She looked at the teenager. “In just a few weeks, she'll be the proud owner of a high school diploma.”

“And it's about darn time,” Scott said. “What took you so long, kidlet?”

The words, teasing though they were, twisted in Thea's chest. He was obviously happy to be almost finished with child-rearing and she'd barely begun. He was such a good father, with so much to offer. And that was when she pushed the thought away and ate as if this were her last meal.

When everyone declared that they couldn't eat another bite, Thea stood to clear the dishes and Kendra helped.

Gail joined them in the kitchen, resting her elbows on the island. “The food was great, Thea.”

“I'm glad you liked it.”

“The most important thing is that Grammy did. And Dad. Way to go, sis,” Gail said. “Wish I'd thought of it.”

“Thanks.” Kendra flashed a grin over her shoulder as she loaded the dishwasher. Then she looked at Thea. “What about your mom? I'm sorry. I didn't even think. Was she okay with you doing this on Mother's Day?”

“My brother and sister and I took her and Dad out for brunch,” she explained. “That's been our tradition for several years, which left me free this evening.”

“We're glad you're free, too. If you were a mom, you wouldn't be,” Gail said. A thoughtful expression settled on her pretty face. “How come you're not? Do you want children?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know? How do you decide when it's right to have kids?” Kendra asked.

Thea knew the question was generated by her family
history. Her father had never had the opportunity to choose when he wanted to
be
a father.

“I don't know about timing,” she admitted. “But I do know that ever since I was a little girl, I've wanted to have a baby.”

“So how come you don't?” Kendra asked.

Thea couldn't say anything to them about her dream nearly come true—not until she told Scott about the baby. When he walked through the sliding glass door connecting the kitchen to the patio, she knew she had to tell him soon.

“Hey, you guys,” he said to his daughters. “I can't hold your grandmother back any longer. She's opening your gifts whether you're there or not.”

“No,” Kendra said. “I want to see her face.”

“Me, too,” her sister said as the two of them hurried back outside.

Scott came up behind her and slipped his arms around her waist. “I thought I'd never get you alone.”

“So you lied?”

“How did you know?” he asked, chuckling into her ear.

“I thought you never lied.”

“It's not a lie as much as a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.”

His breath stirred the hair around her face and raised tingles all over her body. How she wanted to lose herself in his arms.

But Scott must have felt her body tense because he turned her toward him. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” she lied. Correction: a woman had to do what a woman had to do. And right now she didn't want to spoil his night.

His gaze skimmed her own and he shook his head. “I can see it in your eyes. What's going on?” He pointed a finger at her. “And don't tell me it's nothing.”

“It can wait,” she hedged. “This isn't the time.”

“If you're upset about something, I'll make time. Spill it,
lady. It's not good to keep things bottled up.” She started to put him off again, but he silenced her with that same pointed finger over her lips. “Just so we're clear, I don't intend to let this drop until you've come clean.”

Interesting choice of words. But now she really had no choice. As if she ever did. Twice she'd tried to tell him and both times he'd interrupted her with a kiss that scrambled her brain function. This was lousy timing, but there simply wasn't going to be a perfect time and place for this announcement. And one thing she'd learned about Scott—when he made up his mind, he wouldn't back off. Now that he'd insisted, she needed to just say it.

“I just have something to tell you.”

“What?” He frowned as he studied her face. “Interest rates went sky-high? You're moving to Micronesia? Global warming ruined the world's garlic and herb crop?”

She shook her head and took a deep breath. “Mother's Day seems as appropriate a time as any to tell you I've always wanted to be a mother.”

His hands stilled on her arms. “You have?”

“Yes. In fact, I'm going to have a baby in about six months.”

S
cott couldn't have been more shocked if she'd stripped naked and slugged him in the gut. He would have bet everything he owned that she hadn't been intimate with another man since her husband died. How could he have been so wrong? The bitterness of her betrayal slammed through him.

“So that's what you meant when you said you were okay. If you're already pregnant, I suppose that qualifies as birth control,” he said, his throat tight. “Were you going to try to pass it off as mine?”

She took a step back, looking genuinely shocked. “Whatever you're thinking, you couldn't be more wrong.”

“I'm thinking who's the father?”

“My husband.”

“That would take a miracle.”

“Exactly.” She nodded. “A miracle of modern science. The magic of IVF.”

“What?”

“In vitro fertilization.”

“But your husband's been gone two years.”

Thea leaned back against the sink and folded her arms over her chest. The smooth skin of her forehead puckered. From outside, sounds of laughter drifted in through the open window. At least his family was having a good time.

“When David was diagnosed with cancer,” she finally said, “we were trying to have a baby. The oncologist told us that chemotherapy was the only chance to save his life, but it would make him sterile. It would be impossible for him to father the child we so desperately wanted. We were advised to freeze sperm.”

“I see.”

“When the treatment put him in remission, we didn't want to waste any time. We consulted a fertility specialist who guided us through IVF. He injected me daily with ovulation stimulants before my eggs were harvested and combined with his sperm in a petri dish.”

“Then what?”

“The cells multiplied and divided. After that, three fertilized embryos were implanted and the rest were frozen. We thought we'd hit a home run the first time at the plate. I was pregnant.” Anguished sadness crept into her face. “Three months later, I had a miscarriage. We were crushed. Then we tried again, but the same thing happened. We were devastated. But there was more bad news. David's cancer came back.”

Scott tried to wrap his mind around what she was telling him. She was pregnant. Her dead husband was the father. The words banged around inside him and he felt as if he were slipping into a black hole. At the same time he was angry that she looked so sad for another man. A man who'd lost his fight to live. What kind of bastard was he to be resentful because she'd loved the guy with everything she had?

“Scott, I promised my husband that I would do everything in my power to make sure a part of him went on.”

“But it's been two years. Why now?”

“Lots of factors. I had no reason to believe the results would be any different this time, but time was the operative word. I'm thirty-four years old. Twenty-five percent of women under thirty-five achieve live births. After that, the rate drops with each year over thirty-five. Also, I had to make a decision about what to do with the frozen embryos. I couldn't give them to strangers or pull the plug and let them go. I had enough left for one more try and figured I had nothing to lose.”

Maybe
she
had nothing to lose. But he felt as if he was losing everything. If only she'd said something…

Anger churned through him and settled in his gut like acid. “What I don't get is why you didn't tell me right away.”

“I should have, I guess.”

“You guess?” His voice rose as waves of what ifs washed over him. If only he'd known. If only he could have insulated himself. If he'd simply shut down his instantaneous attraction to her from day one. If he'd done any of the above, he wouldn't be fighting off the pain that threatened to pull him under now.

“After everything I'd been through, I didn't know if I could survive another miscarriage. Emotionally, I mean.”

“What does that have to do with telling me the truth?”

“You make it sound like a deliberate lie.”

“Isn't it?”

She shook her head as something—anger, irritation, fear—flashed through her dark eyes. “I'm not in the habit of blurting out my personal information to complete strangers.”

“I'm not a stranger.”

“You were at first. When you got to
not
be a stranger, the situation became awkward. How do you slide something like
that into a conversation with a client? I make a mean egg roll. Oh, and by the way I'm pregnant? It wasn't any of your business. Besides, I'd made a promise to myself not to say anything to anyone until after I made it safely through the first trimester of my pregnancy.”

“And are you? Through the first three months?”

His gaze dropped to her still flat stomach. He'd seen her naked, the feminine beauty of her soft curves, her full breasts. Not a single sign had alerted him to the fact that she was carrying a baby. But he hadn't been looking for signs. He'd been too busy savoring the feel of her and wondering how he'd gotten so lucky the day he'd come home and found Thea in his kitchen. He figured his bad karma was over. No one told him karma had a sick sense of humor.

“I completed the first trimester not long ago.”

“Before we had sex the first time?” She flinched, then met his gaze and nodded. “At that point, I'd say it was definitely my business.”

“I'd been trying to find the words to tell you, then you kissed me,” she said, twisting her fingers together.

“You're blaming me for the fact that you didn't clue me in about something I had every right to know?”

“Of course not.” Her eyes flashed again, and her lips pressed together for a moment. “I distinctly remember saying I had something to tell you. Your response was ‘me first' and then you kissed me and I couldn't think about anything else.”

“Oh, please. You think flattery is going to make this better?”

“It's not flattery. The truth is it felt good. I'd forgotten how good it felt to be in a man's arms. Your arms,” she said, putting a finer point on the statement. “And making love. I simply couldn't think about anything else. It was wonderful to reaffirm that I'm still a woman. Not just a vessel for my child or a glorified science experiment. But a flesh and blood woman with
wants, needs, passions. And to know that you wanted me. Do you have any idea how much that meant to me?”

He had a clue. What she said touched a nerve with him. “That still doesn't justify what you did. Or should I say didn't do.”

“It's still something that's my personal information. I was trying to find a way to tell you, then you shared how adamantly opposed you are to having children. After that I knew there could never be anything between us and figured there was no reason to tell you.”

“That's where you're wrong. There was a damn good reason. I don't sleep with someone I don't care about. So where does that leave me?” He saw the shadows in her eyes and couldn't find the will to care that he was being harsh. “All you had to do was be upfront and everything would have been fine.”

Scott realized there was more than one way to be trapped. He'd felt that as a young father, his choices taken away when he did the “right” thing. Then his wife had walked out leaving him alone and solely responsible for their two small children. Now he was torn between his powerful feelings for Thea and his desire not to be tied down again.

“I'm sorry, Scott. If there was something else I could say or do, I would. But there isn't. So take me out back and throttle me.”

“I'm not in the habit of throttling women.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “But for God's sake, Thea. I've been in the parenting trenches for twenty years. My kids are almost independent. To start all over—”

“I've heard that children keep you young,” she said.

He stared at her and hated the hope he saw in her eyes. “Twice I was robbed of choices. After that, I did something to make sure I was completely in control.” That was a laugh. Control was a pipe dream. “I had a vasectomy.”

“Oh. That's what you meant when
you
said you were safe.”

Her eyes widened and her mouth trembled before she caught her top lip between her teeth. That told him she understood how much he didn't want to be responsible for another child. But he couldn't help feeling he'd drop-kicked a kitten and the thought ticked him off. He hadn't done anything wrong.

“I can't believe this.” He slammed his fist on the counter, ignoring the pain that vibrated up his arm and settled in his shoulder. “I finally connect with someone—with you—and now this.”

“Don't feel like The Lone Ranger. I didn't expect to ever have strong feelings for another man. Yet here I am.”

In spite of everything, pleasure shot through him at her admission, but he tried to ignore it. This was an impossible situation.

“Yeah, here we are. With a baby standing between us.”

She tipped her head to the side as she studied him. Anger flashed through her eyes and mixed with the pain. “You know, Scott, I never expected to feel alive again and didn't care to. You were right. I've just been going through the motions. It never occurred to me that I would care for someone again. And it especially didn't cross my mind that someone I liked and respected would view a new life as a negative.”

“Don't you dare make this my fault,” he ground out.

“Nothing could be further from the truth. I'm just explaining that this child is the most important thing in the world to me. I lost two babies. The crushing pain of that taught me it's not just about having a child. I learned how desperately I wanted to be a mother.”

“So what are we going to do?” he asked, frustration roiling through him.

“Under the circumstances, it might be easier if you found
another caterer to do Kendra's party. I can recommend some good, reputable ones.”

He shook his head and didn't want to think about why everything in him cried out against that suggestion. “Time is getting short. And besides, Kendra wanted you. The party is about her, not us.”

“I agree. And there's no way I would do anything to hurt her, but I had to offer.” She sighed. “And I understand if you want to back out of the house deal—”

“Why would I? To hurt you?” The thought never crossed his mind.

She lifted one shoulder. “I wouldn't blame you.”

“No. That, at least, still feels right.” In fact, it felt more right than it did before, reaffirming that he was going to control his life if it was the last thing he did.

“Okay.” She nodded. “Then we'll get through everything the best we can. After that, we don't have to see each other again.”

As Thea turned away to pack up her things, Scott felt as if she'd already left. He hated the thought of not seeing her, of not having her in his life. The emptiness hit him low and deep. He hadn't known he could feel so much so fast. Possibilities had dangled in front of him and now they were snatched just out of reach.

Maybe he was a selfish bastard, but he wanted time to think only about himself. Hadn't he earned it? His head said yes. The tightness in his chest told him something else.

 

Thea checked the heat beneath the chafing dish to make sure the flame wasn't high enough to dry out the lasagna. She'd set up the food for Kendra's party on the kitchen island and dinette. All the guests had moved through, filled their plates and then filed out the slider to the tables set up around the pool in the backyard. Now she was checking everything
to make sure the remaining food would hold up to second helpings. Sometimes they were better than the first time around. Other times, not so much.

Kind of like her and Scott. Both of them were each other's seconds and they'd been a disaster. He'd been conspicuously absent today when she'd set up for the party. And tonight she'd managed to look extremely busy when he'd gotten his food. How could she have been so stupid as to think he might care enough about her that a package deal would be okay with him?

She thought about his vasectomy and wondered why she'd been so shocked that he'd taken the ultimate step to make absolutely certain he would have no more children. From the first moment she'd met him, he'd made no secret of the fact that his youngest child was almost on her own. He had mixed feelings about it but he couldn't keep her from growing up. He was moving on and making the best of it.

For the record, she was never listening to Connie again about hoping for something she knew in her heart wasn't going to happen.

From her vantage point in the kitchen, she surveyed the Matthews backyard. She'd messed up with Scott, but at least she'd done a good job for his daughter's party. The decorations looked great. They'd strung white lights in the trees and set up tables on the brick deck surrounding the pool. Centerpieces were mortarboards and balloons—the sky's the limit. Napkins for each place setting were rolled up and tied with a ribbon to look like a diploma.

Everyone seemed to be having a good time, she thought, glancing around at the group of relatives and friends. Thea recognized the Matthews clan. They'd all been very friendly tonight so she guessed Scott hadn't clued them in on anything. She thought about the first and last time she'd seen them. Pain rolled through her and she knew it would be hard from now
on to celebrate Mother's Day without remembering how she'd had her heart broken for the second time.

As much as she tried not to, her gaze continually strayed to Scott. She'd caught him looking at her more than once. Every time, his mouth tightened and he looked angry as he immediately glanced away. She didn't blame him for any of this. It was all her fault. He was right. She should have said something. But she'd thought she was doing the right thing. After losing her babies, it had been beyond painful when people had asked how she was feeling. She'd had to put on a brave face and say over and over what had happened. This time, keeping her condition to herself had been every bit as painful—in a very different way.