Page 35 of Delinquent Daddy (Banks/Kincaid Family 2)

"You... what?" Nora gaped at her like she'd lost her mind, making Ellie flush. "Oh, now I'm going to have to hear the whole story."

Ellie sighed, giving in. "We'd already broken up by the time I found out I was pregnant. Boston went crazy when I told him, accusing me of trying to trap him, of purposely getting pregnant to get him back. He blamed it all on me."

"The jerk," Nora muttered, falling back in her chair. "Why are men such jerks?" Waving her own question away, she leaned forward and confidentially asked, "Okay. Aside from the fact that he's a guy and all guys are scum, why did it end between you two in the first place?"

The answer came to Ellie in a brilliantly clear memory. "He cheated on me," she murmured, though she was already drifting toward the past, sitting in early American history class and listening to Heather Grimaldi talk with her friends about Boston Kincaid, whom she'd spent the evening with at some wild dorm party.

And suddenly, Ellie was nineteen again, in Boston's dorm room, confronting him.

89

Delinquent Daddy

by Linda Kage

"What did you do last Friday when I was working?" she asked, feeling like she had to dive straight to the point or she'd never be able to discover the truth.

Boston wouldn't meet her gaze as he shrugged. "I don't know. Why?"

She shrugged too and had to focus on something else as she said, "So, you didn't meet some redhead named Heather and go back to her apartment with her?"

His silence was the loudest confession he could've made.

Ellie swallowed. "Okay," she said calmly. "I'll take that as a yes."

Boston shoved his hands into his pockets and stared fixedly out his room's single window. A ray of light glimmered in and reflected a blue-black glow over his hair. He looked so beautiful it nearly took her breath away. But thinking about her beautiful lover with another woman killed her.

He was hers.

"Was that the first time?" she asked hoarsely.

Finally, he lifted his face Their gazes met. "Does it matter?"

Ellie's already broken heart crumbled into dust. Tears rushed up her throat, but she choked them back with a fit of stubborn pride. She'd be damned before she let Boston Kincaid see her cry.

"No," she whispered, looking down at her hands. "I guess it doesn't." She blinked a few times. Her eyes burned but remained dry.

Silence grew thick between them. Boston returned to gazing out the window. Ellie stared at his back and swallowed 90

Delinquent Daddy

by Linda Kage

a lump in her throat that must've been her pride washing down her esophagus because the next words out of her mouth were, "Are you going to do it again?"

His shoulders tensed fractionally. The remaining ashes of her pulverized heart screamed out, begging him to say he was sorry and promise it'd never happen again.

She would forgive him.

In that moment, if he'd repented, she would've forgiven anything.

But he didn't. He hitched a shoulder and softly replied, "I don't know."

Ellie froze. Her blood turned to ice. "So...you're just going to keep cheating on me? Is that what you're saying?"

He whirled around at that question. "Cheating?" he repeated in confusion.

"Yes!" she wailed, throwing her hands in the air. "What do you call it when you're in a relationship with one girl and you go out and—"

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