Page 81 of Play for Keeps

Instead of feeling winded, a mantle of calm settled over him when he stepped into the stream of light spilling from her home. “Hey.”

She didn’t lower her arms and beckon him in, but her smile was warm and affectionate. “Hi, Ty.”

Greetings exchanged, he found himself without the slightest clue how to proceed.

Thankfully, Millie was feeling merciful. “Would you like to come in?”

He nodded. “Thank you. Yes.” Following her into the tiny entry, he had to duck to miss hitting a lower branch of the funky, sixties-style chandelier. “Oh. Uh, hey.” He chuckled as he sidestepped a frosted glass square suspended by filament wire. “That’s cool.”

She smiled as she swung the door shut behind him. “I swiped it from my stepmom’s house. She and my dad had one of those mid-century modern ranch houses that made you think Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack might be dropping by for a stiff one at five o’clock.”

Ty grinned, taken by the image her description evoked. “So it really is cool, then.”

“The coolest, man.” Her bare feet whispered over varnished oak hardwoods. She walked backward as she led him toward the kitchen. “You look like you could use a drink. Hard day at the office?”

“You could say.”

“I can offer you premixed margarita, some wine that has been open a little too long, or some rum.” She paused. “If you’re lucky, I might have a Diet Coke to go with the rum.”

“I’m okay, thanks.”

A big, fat lie, but as much as he could have used a drink, he needed to be stone-cold sober to say what he needed to say. Bracing himself, he stepped into the kitchen and came to an abrupt stop.

The room was so perfectly Millie it made his chest hurt. The appliances were newer models made of sleek stainless steel. The countertops had been replaced with some kind of speckled solid-surface material. The walls were stucco plaster and painted rich, buttery yellow. But the cabinets looked to be original, the glass panes wavy on a couple, one sporting a clamshell chip out of the corner. Other people would have painted them a glossy white, but Millie wasn’t other people. No, she’d gone with an aqua so vivid it reminded him of a tiny inlet on an even tinier Greek island.

The place where he thought he’d found peace.

Now, he knew his peace resided in the woman across from him. A woman so vivid he had a hard time tearing his gaze from her.

But he did.

There were things to be said, and he needed to get on with it.

Ty drew a steadying breath and continued his inspection of her place. After all, who knew if he’d ever be invited into her inner sanctum again?

In addition to the bold color choices, she’d finished the room off with the kind of homey touches he’d never think to make. A shallow glass bowl held fresh fruit. A Snoopy cookie jar. The fridge was peppered with whimsical magnets from a variety of destinations and printouts of Wolcott Warrior team schedules. The lacrosse team had a match the following day. She had a number of the games on the football schedule highlighted in neon green. A photo of Kate Snyder in a bikini had been printed on plain copier paper. Someone wrote the wordsmoney shotacross the top with a magic marker. The photo held a place of pride in the center of the melee.

Swallowing the dull ache in his throat, he tore himself away from his study of her natural habitat and forced himself to face the inevitable. “The baby is mine.” He spoke the words bluntly but found himself unable to meet her eyes. “At least, that’s what the prenatal test shows.”

He pressed his lips together tightly, hell-bent on having this all out in the open now. Quickly. No point in prolonging the torture for either of them. Better to rip the bandage off this farce of a life he thought he could live and let the damn thing bleed out. “They tell me the odds are pretty much certain the testing they’ll do on the umbilical cord will confirm paternity, so there you go.” He jerked his head up, his gaze homing on her like a laser-guided missile. “I’m going to be a father.”

The pause that followed was beyond pregnant. Her pulse throbbed, the delicate skin of her throat no match for the impact his announcement had on her. Part of him was elated to see the evidence of her jangled nerves. She loved him. He knew she did, even if she never said so.

“Congratulations.”

Her soft-spoken response deserved an equally polite reply. “Thank you.”

“And Mari is doing well? Healthy?”

“She’s fine.” A laugh escaped him. “A pain in my ass, but physically fine.”

“And her plan?” she prompted, suddenly intent on retrieving a bottle of water from the fridge. She glanced back at him over her shoulder. “Is she going to stay here?”

He jerked, stunned to realize he’d never thought to ask the question himself. “I have no idea.”

She nodded as she let the refrigerator door swing shut, uncapping her bottle as if they weren’t discussing the demise of everything they’d been to each other. “Well, it would be nice to have the baby nearby. Are her folks from around here?”

“They’re near DC.”

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