Page 27 of Last Call For Love

“Pete,” I said, scooting to the edge of the couch. “What exactly are you saying?”

“We’re going to put on a united front,” he said simply. “You and I are going to be a couple from now on. We’ve been together for the past year at least, and if Jonah or your parents come sniffing around, we’ll have my friends spin whatever tall tale we need to get them off our backs. Then, when the baby is born, we figure out what the hell to do next.”

“When I said you needed to pretend—”

“To be your boyfriend? Darling, I have no intentions of only extending that privilege to your family and friends. Everyone is going to believe this is real. Trust me, this town will have things to say and I won’t put you through that—” He paused, the words tapering off as his eyes flicked to the floor.

I opened my mouth to ask what the matter was but my tongue refused to act.

“Just trust me, all right?”

“Okay,” I replied, swallowing hard. “I will.”

“Now, get dressed. The appointment for the test is in an hour and we gotta hit the road here in the next twenty minutes.”

I stood, abandoning my coffee mug and hurried to the bathroom to do my best to look halfway decent.

But my mind was reeling. Pete seemed… off. Something about his insistence to make this situation between us look as real as possible for the sake of what the townsfolk were going to say was… unnerving.

Had something happened to him? Had he been through something like this before?

I remembered in that moment how little I knew this man.

Chapter Eleven

Pete

George told Keely what was going on, of course. I should have known the second he left the bar last night that he’d go home and run his big, fat mouth to my sister… Who has an even bigger, fatter mouth. Grant and Moira Hallston knew what was going on now, and I’d woken up to a call from Grant himself—the richest man in Hot Springs—maybe even all of Montana.

He was also a sucker for babies now that he had a step-son and infant daughter—Holliday and baby Holly. I thought the play on their names was a little silly, but Holliday never went by his full name. He was just Day, plain and simple, and was going through a phase where if anyone called him Holliday Hallston, he ignored them completely. He was ten, I think. Maybe eleven. Maybe twelve? I wasn’t totally sure. Regardless, Grant finding out I’d knocked someone up had been a blessing in disguise because that man was richer than God and wanted to pay for all of Sierra’s medical expenses.

Grant never took no for an answer, and even though I was doing quite well for myself, I’d always lived as a bachelor and hoarded money instead of spending it. Now I was looking at medical bills, baby stuff, and new clothes for the mother of my child to grow into as her belly started to round out.

I heard the shower down the hallway kick on and sighed. Two bedrooms, one bathroom. No outside space for a little tyke to run around. This apartment wouldn’t do for the three of us.

But it likely wouldn’t be the three of us, would it? If this kid was mine after all, Sierra and I were… nothing. As much as that stung, it was the truth. If we’d had more time to be together before all of this happened maybe it would have been different, but now?

I sipped my now-tepid coffee and dumped the rest in the sink before going into my bedroom to get dressed.

By the time I’d changed into jeans and button-down shirt, cuffed to the middle of my forearms, the shower was no longer running but the house too quiet. A moment of panic resulted in me barging into her room like a lunatic, thinking she’d made a run for it.

Like I cared if she ran again. Wouldn’t that solve all these issues pressing down on my shoulders like heavy weights?

She screeched, covering herself with a towel. I cursed under my breath and closed the door, standing in the hallway like the idiot I was.

“It’s not like I haven’t seen… everything. Before,” I mused, although a blush prickled over my cheeks. I’d caught a glimpse of her, of course, of those delicious curves and her heavy breasts that were even bigger now.

“You could knock,” she chided behind the door.

“I’m not used to sharing a space with anyone—”

“Well, I was fine staying at a hotel—”

“I wasn’t fine with that,” I cut in, then cleared my throat. I heard her struggling with something and cursing softly, so I rapped on the door. “Do you need help?”

“My jeans don’t fit anymore.”

“Your sweatpants—”

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