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  “I missed you guys, too.” He ran a hand over each little blond head.

  “Did you bring us something?” Johnny asked. There was a time when he and Van would never have considered dropping by without some small present for the boys—a couple Matchbox cars, packs of gum, new balls. Yet another tradition that had died with his wife.

  “I’m sorry, guys. I forgot. But I promise I’ll bring something with me the next time.”

  “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” Sarah was back, probably wondering what was taking him so long.

  “I plan on keeping that promise.” He found himself reluctant to leave the boys—they were a bit of normalcy in a world turned violently upside down.

  Her snort was not encouraging.

  “Look, Sarah—”

  “Boys, go on upstairs and wash the makeup off your faces.”

  “But, Mom, we’re Indians.”

  “Still?” She raised an inquiring eyebrow.

  “Yeah!”

  “Then you’d better go be Indians before Rose needs another nap.”

  “Aww, Mom! Already?”

  “Not yet, but soon. Her nap was cut short, remember.”

  “Yes.” Johnny sighed, hanging his head dejectedly. He looked for all the world like a kid who’d just found out that Santa Claus didn’t exist. Then Justin came up behind him and hit him on the head with a makeshift tomahawk. That’s all it took to send the two of them running up the stairs, laughing and hollering for all they were worth.

  Reece watched them go. Otherwise he would have to look at Sarah. Or worse, the baby.

  As he avoided her gaze, he realized the house was trashed. Toys were scattered everywhere, along with sippy cups and baby paraphernalia. Stacks of clean clothes sat at the bottom of the stairs while a pile of clean diapers and a box of wipes graced Sarah’s normally immaculate dining-room table.

  He cleared his throat, searched for something to say. “Is it always like this around here?”

  “Like what?”

  “So…crazy?” As soon as the word was out, he knew he’d made a vital mistake.

  “I’m a single mom with twin boys, a home business and a baby I had no intention of having to care for after her birth.” Sarah’s voice turned virulent. “So, yeah, it’s pretty much always like this.”

  The bitterness made him feel even lower—something he hadn’t thought was possible. Taking a deep, bracing breath he turned to really look at Sarah. And tried to ignore the wholly inappropriate jolt he felt when her gaze met his.

  It was the same jolt he’d felt every time she’d looked at him for the past eight years. The same one he’d tried desperately to ignore—to pretend didn’t exist. And his tactics didn’t work any better today than they had in years past.

  Was it any wonder he’d run so far and fast when Vanessa died? Because he was a perverted bastard who, even while grieving for his wife, couldn’t get over his strange fascination with her best friend.

  But as he looked at Sarah—really saw her—he realized that the woman he knew was nowhere to be found. The competent, in-control, perfectly groomed Sarah was gone. In her place was a woman he barely recognized. A woman who was sad, vulnerable, beaten down. A woman whose utter defenselessness somehow made her seem even more attractive.

  She looked like hell—worse than he’d ever seen her, except right after Mike had taken off. She’d lost weight she couldn’t afford to lose, so much that a gentle breeze could blow her over. Her eyes were ringed with such dark circles it seemed like someone had punched her. Her skin was sallow and her hair hung in short, limp strands around her face.

  He’d done this to her—with his selfishness and inability to deal with his issues. He’d turned her from the beautiful, self-confident woman he’d first met shortly after he’d started dating Vanessa into this washed-out—wrung-out—version of herself.

  And, sick ass that he was, he was as attracted—maybe even more attracted—to this woman than he’d been to the savvy, perfectly coiffed businesswoman.

  Burying his traitorous feelings as deeply as he could, he searched for a way to restart the conversation, to ease into the subject he’d been dreading for far too long. No easy way to do this, no way to absolve him of the mistakes he’d made.

  “I’m sorry, Sarah.” The words burst from him. “I’m so very sorry.”

  “For what?”

  At first he thought she was asking what he had to be sorry for. Then he realized she wanted to know which of his many transgressions he was apologizing for.

  “For everything. I let you down.”

  Her lips twisted in a smirk that wasn’t even remotely amused. “I guess you could say that.”

  The baby moved, her little arms flailing as she wailed. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “She’s tired and hungry. She fell asleep without her bottle earlier.”

  “Bottle? You’re not breast-feeding her?”

  Sarah stiffened at the unintentional censure in his voice and Reece could have kicked himself.

  “I started her on bottles right after she was born because I assumed that she would be going home from the hospital with her father. By the time I figured out that you really weren’t coming for her, it was too late. My milk never came in properly.”

  She crossed the room, pulled a ready-made bottle out of the fridge and popped it into the microwave.

  “I thought microwaves—” He refused to say one more word that could be taken as criticism by Sarah. He was in the wrong, not her.

  She turned to him, that hard look in her eyes. “Oh, don’t stop now. Believe me, I’ve been wondering for quite a while what you’ve been thinking.”

  Reece felt his back go up despite himself. He’d blown it—badly. Sarah had every right to be angry with him. But her words cut like knives, and he could feel himself beginning to bleed. It was too much when the wounds from losing Vanessa had barely scabbed over.

  “Look, I said I was sorry. I couldn’t deal after Van—”

  She pulled the bottle out of the microwave, shot him a scathing look. “Well, so sorry the world didn’t stop because Reece couldn’t deal.” She shook the bottle well, then squirted a few drops on her wrist before bringing it to the baby’s mouth. “It must be nice to have that option.”

  It’s—her, he reminded himself. Her cries stopped and she latched on to the bottle like it had been years since she’d last had food.

  “She was my wife.” He hated the need to justify himself.

  “And she was my best friend. After Mike left, she was my only friend. Do you think you’re the only one grieving for her?”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “No, it’s not.” She pulled the bottle out of the baby’s mouth and pressed her to her shoulder, softly murmuring as she patted Rose’s back. When the baby burped, she lowered her to the cradle of her arm and gave her the bottle again.

  “It’s not the same because I didn’t shirk every responsibility I had. I didn’t leave the woman carrying my child—as a favor to my wife and me—alone to deal with everything. I didn’t abandon my baby when it was born, leaving her to my wife’s best friend and surrogate to take care of. I didn’t write my child out of my life like she was a mistake I couldn’t face.

  “So, you’re right, it’s not at all the same.”

  “I sent a check every month!”

  “And that makes it okay?” The baby finished her bottle, so Sarah shifted her to her shoulder and crossed the kitchen. She opened the drawer near the refrigerator—a junk drawer judging by its contents—and pulled out an envelope.

  “Is this how you soothe your conscience late at night? Is this how you put Rose out of your mind?” She flung the envelope at him. “Take your blood money. Take it and get the hell out of my house. I don’t want it or anything else from you. Not now and definitely not in the future.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  SARAH STORMED into the baby’s room, where she laid Rose in her crib then promptly burst into tears. After
turning on Rose’s pink star mobile, so she’d have something to look at, Sarah sank to the floor, laid her head on her knees and sobbed like her heart was breaking all over again.

  What was wrong with her? She’d sworn that she wouldn’t do this. Had promised herself that she would encourage it when Reece took an interest in Rose. Had told herself she understood his pain. Understood why it had taken him so long to come around. Understood that he couldn’t face the baby without facing everything that he’d lost.

  She’d told herself all of that, had even believed it—until she had opened her front door to him. Rage had swept through her—rage like nothing she’d ever felt before, even when she’d found out Vanessa was dead. Not even having her husband leave her with two babies and almost no explanation had brought on this bone-deep fury.

  How dare Reece show up like it hadn’t been months since she’d last heard from him? How dare he throw money at her like that made his disinterest better? She’d needed him these past few months. Over and over again, she’d reached out to him for help, for company, for someone to share part of this burden with. And he had rebuffed her every single time.

  It wasn’t fair. She’d agreed to have this baby for Vanessa—and for Reece. Had agreed to be artificially inseminated, to become pregnant again so that she could give her best friend the baby Vanessa couldn’t have. But Sarah hadn’t signed on to go through the pregnancy alone. She hadn’t signed on to juggle three children and a thriving Web-design business all on her own.

  And she sure as hell hadn’t thought that her entire life would change when this baby was born. From the moment she’d gotten pregnant, she’d thought of the baby as Vanessa’s. That was the only way she could bring herself to give the newborn up. Even after Van died, she’d told herself that this was her best friend’s baby. Reece’s baby.

  And when Vanessa Rose was born—named after her mother and grandmother—Sarah had distanced herself, sure that Reece would step up to the plate once he got himself together.

  But days then weeks had passed and the only contact she’d had from Reece were those damned checks. She’d stopped calling him after Rose was four weeks old and by the time the baby was a month and a half old, she’d thought of Rose as hers. Not Reece’s. Not even Vanessa’s. But hers and Johnny’s and Justin’s.

  The boys felt the same way. Though Rose annoyed them—a lot—she wasn’t “the baby” any longer. No, Johnny called her “my baby” or “our baby” and Justin told Sarah how much he loved having a baby sister. Sarah had opened her heart to this baby that was never meant to be hers. Had lulled herself into believing that Reece had written Rose off except for the money.

  Reece’s presence threatened their family unit, disrupted the bonds the four of them had formed. Reece and his criticisms reminded Sarah of the precarious position she was in. Rose didn’t belong to Sarah and Johnny and Justin. Rose belonged to Reece. And at any moment he could snatch her away. Sarah knew her strength—honed from surviving the departures of a fair share of loved ones from her life—but she honestly doubted her ability to cope if Reece took Rose.

  And why else would he have shown up here today, if not to claim his daughter? He’d probably woken up from his grief long enough to recognize Rose was the last link he had to Vanessa. So now he’d step in to be Rose’s daddy with no thought to the impact that action would have on Sarah and her boys. Why couldn’t Reece have stayed asleep and stayed away?

  “Sarah?” Reece’s voice sounded from the other side of the door. “Sarah, can I come in?”

  The doorknob started to turn and she scrambled to slam the door in his face. “Not yet,” she said, striving for a normal tone through the huskiness. “Give me a minute.”

  Wiping her hands across her eyes, over her nose, she struggled to make herself presentable. There was no way she could disguise the fact that she’d been crying, but she’d be damned if she greeted Reece with tears streaming down her face. She was stronger than that.

  When she finally opened the door, her emotions were completely in hand. She even managed a brief smile. “I need to check on the boys.”

  “I just did.” The smile he offered was tentative, barely present and nothing like the smiles Reece used to give her—before Vanessa’s death. Those had been bright, excited, and so full of life she’d often wondered how his body could contain the joy he had for living.

  “They’re playing superheroes in their room.”

  Sarah glanced in the crib, and saw that her beautiful baby girl slept. “Come on, we can talk downstairs.”

  As she walked down the stairs, her behavior was wearing on her. How could she have talked to Reece—Reece, of all people—like that? He was the one person in the world who had loved Vanessa as much as she had. How could she blame him, then, if he loved her so much that he couldn’t cope with anything after the accident?

  There were no two ways around it—she owed the man an apology. And if it stuck in her craw, well then, that was too bad. She’d gotten herself into the mess by agreeing to be a surrogate mother to Vanessa and Reece’s child. Now she would simply have to put on her big girl panties and deal with the fallout of a situation none of them had ever anticipated.

  “Sarah.” Reece stopped in the middle of the living room. “I’m so sor—”

  “Please don’t apologize. I’m the one who lost it.” She gestured to the sofa while she took a seat in the green-striped wingback chair Van had helped her pick out when she and Michael had first bought the house. It was as close as Sarah could get to an apology.

  “I never intended for this to happen.” His brown eyes were tortured when they met hers, the pain of losing his wife still fresh in them, despite the time that had passed. She recognized it, because her own pain was almost as fresh.

  “Nobody thought Vanessa would die, Reece. It just happened.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” He shoved a hand through his hair as he stood to pace from one end of the room to the other. “At the funeral, I told myself all I needed was a little time. Some space to come to grips with losing Vanessa like that.”

  “I know—”

  “No, you don’t.” The look he shot her was intense and full of self-loathing. “I was sure a few weeks would do it. But then two months passed, three. I picked up the phone to call you so many times, but there was nothing to say. Vanessa was what we’d always had in common and she was gone. I couldn’t imagine bringing a baby into the world without her.

  “So I let more time pass, told myself I’d face it when you went into labor. Let myself believe that I’d step up and do what I had to do once the baby was born. And then that day arrived.”

  He stopped in front of her, crouched next to her chair so they were at eye level. “I grabbed my coat, headed for the door, told myself I was ready to be a father. But that was a lie. I was nowhere near ready and all I could think about was that Vanessa should be with me. We should be going to the hospital together. We should be doing all of this together.

  “I dropped my coat and keys on the floor, curled up on my couch and cried like a baby. When I woke up there was a message from you telling me I had a daughter. And I still couldn’t make myself leave the room, still couldn’t talk myself into going to the hospital. I couldn’t pick up the baby—Vanessa’s baby—and bring her home. Not without my wife.”

  Sarah swallowed against the lump in her throat as each word he spoke punched another little hole in her already leaky soul. He was in as bad shape as she was—worse, really.

  Once again she asked herself how she could hold that against him. The answer was clear—she couldn’t. And somehow, if he was ready to take Rose—her heart broke at the thought—she would find the strength to let the baby go and pretend it wasn’t killing her.

  He laid a hand on top of hers, which she’d tightly folded in her lap. “I am sorry, Sarah. I know these past few months must have been hell for you. I was a selfish bastard to let you go through them alone.”

  She shrugged, suddenly unable to berate hi
m when he was doing such a good job of beating himself up. “It’s done, Reece. We just have to find a way to go on from here.”

  “Do you think that’s possible?” he asked.

  “I don’t think we’ve got a choice. You have a daughter who needs you and I—” Her voice broke despite her determination to keep it steady. “I have two sons who need their mother.”

  “And a daughter.”

  “What?” His words didn’t make sense in the context of her grand, self-sacrificing speech.

  “You have a daughter who needs you, too, Sarah.”

  Once more she had to swallow against the tightness in her throat. “Rose is yours, Reece. Yours and Vanessa’s.”

  “And yours, Sarah.” He lifted her hand, brought it to his lips. “She’s yours most of all.”

  Reece watched as Sarah struggled to maintain her composure. A sick feeling rose up inside of him. “Did you think I’d come to take her from you? Is that what has you so upset?”

  “I’d always planned on giving her to you and Vanessa, Reece. Even after Van died, I told myself Rose wasn’t mine to keep—”

  “Yet you’re the only one who stuck by her through all of this. Do you really think I could forget that? You loved my daughter when I wasn’t able to. What kind of a man would I be if I repaid that by ripping her away from the only mother she’s ever known?”

  She shook her head as she stared at him. “I don’t understand. Where does that leave us?”

  He said aloud the words he’d dreaded for the repercussion they’d have on his life. There was no going back, no retracting the commitment. His life was forever tied to this woman who fascinated him despite his best intentions otherwise. “Together, Sarah. All the rest are just details to be worked out. We’re in this together now and I won’t let you or Rose down ever again. I swear it.”

  * * *

  IT WAS LATE the next afternoon before Reece had things arranged to his satisfaction at work. Sarah needed help and as the father of her child, he was the obvious choice. He couldn’t leave the job completely—after all, there were bills to pay—but he could cut down on his hours and occasionally work from either his or Sarah’s home.