Page 35 of Texas-Sized Scandal

“I wish it were just that. But it’s more. My family isn’t like yours. Mine is really involved in things that are illegal and it took a lot of struggling for me to break free from them. I know if I claim you and the child as my own, my father isn’t going to stay out of the child’s life. We have to do it the way I described, or you’re going—”

“Are you saying if it weren’t for your father, you’d stay with me?” she asked.

He hesitated.

“No, you’re not saying that. Is that the excuse you tell yourself to make it sound better?” she questioned. The elevator car arrived, and she set Pixie down, letting the dog walk on before her.

“It’s not an excuse,” he said, but as soon as he said it, he knew that it was. He didn’t want to chance loving her. He’d seen what had happened with his parents’ marriage. He knew that two people from such diverse backgrounds would have to struggle to make a situation like this one work.

He could handle her pissed off and mad at him, but hurt, broken—the way his mom had been after her divorce or the way his long-ago fiancée had been after they’d split up—no. He couldn’t handle that. He needed to know that she was okay.

“You’re right, Mels. But the truth is I can’t handle being the man who disappoints you.”

“You already are,” she said.

“Not like I will,” he admitted.

“Oh, Slade,” she said, taking his hand.

And that was the moment when he should have walked away, but he let her lead him onto the elevator because he needed her more than he wanted to protect her.

Twelve

The next morning when she woke up, she found Slade sitting on the edge of the bed, head bowed as he looked down at his feet. His muscled back was strained and she saw the stress in him.

“Slade? Honey, what’s the matter?” she asked.

He glanced over at her and smiled. “Morning, baby cakes. Nothing. Just a text from my dad.”

“What does he want?”

“To see me,” Slade said. “He sends me a text once a week, asking to see me.”

“Why?”

“Because I haven’t seen him or knowingly been in his company since I turned eighteen.”

“Why not?”

“It’s complicated,” Slade said.

“I’m your pretend fiancée who is pregnant with your baby that no one knows about, so I think I can handle complicated,” she said.

He gave a laugh. “Yeah, I guess you can.”

He turned and piled some pillows against the headboard and shifted around until he was lying against them. “I took Pixie out by the way.”

“Thank you. Now you were saying about your father...” Somehow, she knew she had to get to the bottom of whatever it was that made him not want to be a family man. From her experience with her own family and from watching some of her friends marry and divorce, she knew that relationships were often influenced by the couple’s own parents.

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Nope. I have a vested interest in this, honey. Someday, our baby is going to ask me about his paternal grandfather, and I want to be able to answer honestly.”

“This isn’t going to make it easier,” he said.

“Just tell me,” she said, pulling the sheet up under her armpits and smiling over at him.

“Okay...so after my mom died, I lived with my grandparents and they had custody of me. It had been decided that it would be better for everyone if they continued raising me. It was a good life, but I was curious about my father. My memories of him had been tied to my childhood and my nonno hated my dad so I didn’t know if that had colored my opinion of him,” Slade said, not looking at her but looking at his own feet as he kept crossing and uncrossing his legs on the bed.

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