Chapter 1
Chapter
One
Present Day
“So, I’ve been thinking,” Kenny offered tentatively, while Smith dragged a comb through his wet hair and splashed some aftershave onto his freshly shaved face. He grimaced a little at the burn and met her gaze in the mirror.
“Hmm?” She found it gratifying how Smith would always give her his full attention when she had something to say. She became his sole focus. Sometimes, she found that intensity a little overwhelming. But she always appreciated it.
This wasn’t the ideal time for this discussion, as they were preparing to go to her dad’s welcome dinner at Gideon’s place. He was visiting for the holidays.
“I think we should try for a baby.”
She’d given the idea a great deal of consideration, weighing the pros and cons. And since it seemed like Smith didn’t want a divorce after all, Kenny started to feel like maybe they could give this a proper go.
His face went slack, his shock evident in the immediate waxy paleness of his healthily tanned skin. He turned around to face her, folding his arms across his lovely bare chest.
She’d always appreciated what a fine specimen of masculinity Smith was. He wasn’t overly ripped. Everything was lean, long, hard, and beautifully proportioned. He had a tennis player’s body. Which made sense since it was his favorite form of exercise.
“Uh…what?” Smith was never lost for words, always urbane, with a ready response to any given situation. But right now he seemed speechless, and that threw Kenny. She’d grown accustomed to his steady temperament. Very few things seemed to frazzle him.
Ever.
Only he looked pretty frazzled right now.
Odd.
Kenny went over her statement. There was nothing confusing or misleading about her words.
She’d expected them to be on the same page about this.
After all, they were heading into their second year of marriage, they’d established a harmonious domestic routine, they were compatible in every way.
She was at a point in her career where she could take a year or two off.
And if they weren’t going to divorce, if this marriage was going to be permanent, then surely the next logical step was a child?
“We should have a baby,” she stated as plainly as she could, yet he still stared at her with that glazed, confused look in his eyes.
“Smith?” she prompted, baffled by his response—or lack thereof.
“I-I don’t think—” He swallowed, the ashen waxiness of his complexion going a little green.
“You don’t want a baby?” she asked, hurt starting to supersede the confusion. What was going on here?
“I do. I just didn’t think you wanted another baby.”
Another baby?
“We’ve never had a baby, Smith,” she reminded gently, wondering why she always had to point that out to him. That first time… It hadn’t been… It was…
Her brain glitched as she found herself unable to define exactly what it had been. She’d tried not to dwell on it for too long afterward. What would be the point?
She dismissed it from her mind and focused on Smith. “It’s the next logical step in our relationship, Smith.”
“Is it?” His mouth tightened and something resembling anger sparked in his eyes. “Logical? Right.”
Oh, that was anger.
Why?
“Where is this coming from, Kenna?”
“I don’t understa—”
He shook his head, the gesture curt, almost impatient, and interrupted her before she completed her sentence.
“Why have you suddenly decided that you want a baby? And don’t give me any of that shit about it being logical and expected and the right timing.
Why now? Is it because your brother’s wife is pregnant? Because Tina had the twins?”
Tina was his younger sister. Her twin boys were born shortly after Kenny’s miscarriage just over a year ago.
“Is it because you think if we make another baby, you can pretend the last one never existed? Although you’re doing a pretty good job of that already, aren’t you?”
She stared, unblinking. Unsure of how to respond to the acid in his voice. The bitterness in his eyes. His words hitting harder and truer than she would ever have believed they could.
“You didn’t leave…after what happened. And we managed to find this routine that works for us. I thought it meant we’d continue on, and now seems like the right time for us to start a family.”
He looked honestly staggered by her response, his eyebrows rocketing to his hairline.
“Didn’t…don’t you agree?” God, why did she have to be so damned awkward when it came to stuff like this?
She was a leader in the field of medical and gynecological oncology, highly respected by her peers, but she couldn’t have a conversation with her own husband over something as important as this without becoming confused and flustered.
Kenny didn’t do well with interpersonal relationships, didn’t know what to do with all the messy emotions that accompanied them. She’d come to appreciate what she and Smith had. An understanding. A relationship based on mutual respect, sexual attraction, and possibly even friendship.
This was not how she pictured this conversation going. She’d expected pleasant agreement, and a conversation about ceasing birth control, ovulation cycles, and schedule adjustments.
Not this wall of resistance coming off her bare-chested husband.
“I do not agree.” His tone was firm, cold, absolutely uncompromising.
“I thought you wanted a child. That’s why we married.”
“I didn’t know you as well as I believed I did when we married. Now I know you well enough to recognize that you’re the last person on earth with whom I’d ever want to have a child.”
The words left her reeling, landing like crushing blows and inflicting whatever the emotional equivalent to gross bodily harm was. Up until this very moment she’d never really understood how badly Smith could hurt her. She hadn’t even recognized how truly important his opinion of her had become.
She’d spent her life insulating herself from emotion, from close attachments, but Smith had somehow crept beneath all of her defenses.
She’d kept Smith at a polite distance for so long because she’d expected him to leave.
But that hadn’t happened and she’d allowed herself to become complacent.
Content, even. She’d let down her guard and hadn’t spent enough time shoring up her weakening defenses.
But she could now see that creating a life—and life—with Smith, sharing intimacies, a home, meals, conversation, had given her a sense of kinship. She’d started seeing them as a team, a solid unit that had each other’s backs.
So his words—spoken in a quiet, almost gentle voice while dripping with acid and disdain—absolutely ruined her.
Her chest felt like it had caved in beneath the shattering impact of that statement and she found herself unable to speak as she battled to breathe.
“Shit.” Smith looked pained, regret pooling in his eyes. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Did you mean it?”
His hesitation told her all that she needed to know.
“How long have you felt this way?” she asked.
More hesitation. Then, “I don’t know.”
She saw the lie in the furtive movement of his eyes and the restless play of muscles bunching and contracting beneath his smooth skin.
“I don’t believe you,” she challenged.
“Fuck, Kenna…now isn’t the time for this conversation, okay? Why don’t we just get through this dinner and talk when we get home?”
“No. Tell me now.”
This time his eyes sparked with anger.
“Fine, you want the truth? I don’t see any longevity in this relationship. I haven’t in a while.”
“Because of the miscarriage?” she asked, stricken.
“Yes.” He inhaled deeply, angrily. “But not for the reasons you’re thinking. The loss of the baby was hard, but—”
She was quick to correct him. “It wasn’t a—”
“That!” The sharp interruption startled her.
He stabbed a finger toward her, the movement uncharacteristically aggressive and full of suppressed rage.
“Right fucking there. That is what I mean. Your pathological inability to acknowledge the loss. I fucking grieved for that baby. I know you did too. I wanted to comfort you and be comforted by you, but your stubborn refusal to even admit what we’d lost made it hard to connect with you.
You’re closed off, hard to talk to, and you refuse to share anything that you’re feeling with me. ”
“I never expected you to stay,” she blurted. Her words clearly confused him and he stared at her for a long moment while he tried to work it out.
“What?”
“After the miscarriage.”
He looked outraged, offended…hurt. “Seriously, Kenna? What kind of arsehole do you think I am?”
“No that’s not… It’s not that I think you’re… It’s—” She shook her head, impatient with herself.
Use your words, McKenna!
“It was the only reason you married me. The baby.”
He blinked. Stared. Blinked again. While the silence stretched on into eternity.
“It wasn’t the only reason,” he finally said, after long fraught moments of nothing. “We had—have—chemistry. We are intellectually and financially compatible. We’re…”
“You didn’t love me,” she interrupted quietly.
“What I felt for you was…” He shrugged a little helplessly. “It was complicated. But come on, Kenna. It’s not like you loved me. Did you?”
Now it was her turn to hesitate, because she wasn’t sure how she felt about him.
She hadn’t allowed herself the luxury of falling for him.
Even though she easily could have. He was…
Well, simply put, he was lovely. And in those first four months, when they’d been flirty, lighthearted, and easy in each other’s company, when all that had been between them was sex, laughter, fun, he had felt like someone she could let herself like.
Even love.
Kenny had felt light in those first few giddy months with him. Unburdened. Free. Maybe even happy.
She’d expected the passion between them to burn out very quickly. Instead it had grown and grown and weeks had turned into months. And their fling had become something perilously close to a relationship.