Page 32 of The Rancher's Pregnancy Surprise

Chapter Eleven

DON'T WAIT UNTIL IT'Stoo late, and you've already lost everything.

Konstantin's warning echoed in Ronan's mind like a death knell as he paced the sterile hospital corridor. He paused at the window of Acacia's room, watching her chest rise and fall in sleep, tubes and wires connecting her to machines that beeped a steady rhythm. His hands clenched into fists at his sides, the urge to go to her, to touch her, to explain everything nearly overwhelming him.

But he couldn't. Not yet. Not until he sorted through the chaos in his own mind.

An ominous foreboding had taken possession of Ronan's soul since the night he had taken Acacia to the fundraiser at Konstantin's hospital. He had bumped into his former professor, and the older man had casually asked him how long he had been dating Lena again.

"I'm not," Ronan had replied, confusion furrowing his brow.

"Then I must be seeing double."

He had followed Professor Jin's gaze across the crowded ballroom, and that was when the truth he had fought so hard not to see could no longer be denied. Acacia, in her midnight blue gown, laughing at something a young doctor's son had said, her hand resting protectively over her swollen belly. And beside her—not physically, but in the professor's memory—the ghost ofanother woman, with the same delicate features, the same red-gold hair.

Ronan remembered making his excuses afterward, remembered feeling like he was about to fucking puke because he finally realized that this was what he had been terrified of all along.

Don't wait until it's too late, and you've already lost everything.

The first time he saw her photo in the Initiative's file, he had wanted her...because she had reminded him of Lena, the girl he had fallen in love with as a boy, only for her to toss him aside for some college jock who would later knock her up and cause her to quit high school without graduating.

History repeating itself in the cruelest way.

That initial attraction, that immediate spark of recognition—those had been based in a past he couldn't escape.

But what had grown between him and Acacia since?

What they had was real.

And precious.

So damn precious that it had him wanting and fearing to say the truth at the same time.

Don't wait until it's too late, and you've already lost everything.

Since then, Ronan kept telling himself all he needed was time.

Just enough time to make her love him so much she wouldn't be capable of leaving him.

Just enough time to find the right words.

Time.

He had thought he wouldn't run out of it.

But he was wrong.

Ronan was at a meeting with the other members of the Hartland Initiative when he was informed that Terry was waiting to speak to him. Since his secretary knew better than to interrupt him on days like this, he knew right away something had happened—

"What's wrong?" he demanded, striding out of the conference room where Oliver and the others continued their discussion of the upcoming wedding's security protocols.

Terry was pacing outside, her face creased with worry. Before becoming his secretary, she had worked at his family home as his nanny. Many an eyebrow was raised when Ronan had hired her as his secretary, but then, as now, what other people thought mattered little to him.

"She's here, Ronan." Terry's voice was strained.

She?

Ronan stiffened. "What happened to Aca—-"

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