Page 69 of Secret Baby for the Triplets

“You heard me. We’re going to Austin tonight?—”

“No!” I fire back, standing to splay my hands on the desk. “You aren’t!”

My eyes inadvertently turn toward the phone, silently willing Emerson to text me, to show me that she’s been thinking about us, caring about us, the same way we’ve been thinking about her.

Owen rises too, confusion flickering across his face before it sharpens into something harder. “You’re just being an asshole,” he tells me evenly. “And it’s not your call to make. We let you make a lot of decisions around here, but not this one. Not now”

Our eyes lock. “She doesn’t want us, you idiot,” I hiss. “Do you really want to go all the way down there and get rejected?”

My brashness takes Owen aback, but he maintains his stoic expression. “If that’s what it takes to show her that she’s not alone, then yes,” he answers quietly. “She wouldn’t have moved back home if she weren’t desperate, Brock. She doesn’t want to raise her baby there. She wants to be here, with us.”

“She sure as fuck has a funny way of showing it.”

“We need to go to her,” he insists. “Are you coming or not?”

His eyes bore into mine, and I again look at my cell phone, willing it to chime, to give me a sign.

Slowly, I sink back into my chair and shake my head.

“No,” I tell him. “I’m not going to get turned away. I have a ranch to run. And don’t come whining to me when she slams the door in your face.”

* * *

Rain starts in the early afternoon, not long after Owen leaves me, and I find myself staring out the window, lost in thought and unable to work.

In the drizzle against the panes, I make out the delicate lines of Emerson’s face, the sensuous curves of her body, those stolen moments in Las Vegas piling down on me again in a torrent.

Goddammit. I want her. I wanted her in Vegas, and I wanted her here. Owen’s right. I’m not going to be able to just let her go.

I pick up my phone and call my brother.

“Where are you?” I ask when he answers.

“Waiting for you to come to your senses,” he replies. “At the house.”

I chuckle. “I’m ready to go bring her home.”

CHAPTER20

Emerson

My parents won’t make eye contact with me. For an entire week, Mom has gone out of her way to avoid my eyes as we eat dinner or pass in the halls.

And Greg—well, he’s a little more vocal about his disapproval.

“So you don’t know who the father is, or you just won’t say?” he asks at dinner. It’s the same question he’s asked at least once a day.

“Greg, I’m sure she’ll let us know when she’s ready,” Mom placates him, handing me a plate of dinner rolls.

I change the subject to politics, and let Greg ramble on for the next twenty minutes, so I can tune him out and finish my meal.

Even though I have no appetite, I finish the grilled chicken and vegetables. The baby’s health is the most important thing to me.

I thank them for dinner and head to the room where I am staying. Calling itmyroom feels wrong, because I don’t want to get too comfortable here.

Greg barely cleaned out his study to make room for me, so I’m never going to be able to live here with my baby. I have no idea where I can put all of the baby’s things when that time comes.

But I am stuck for now. At least until the baby is born.

---