"All right." Miffed by the terse response, she reached for her shirt. "We should be getting back."
"Shit." He rubbed his hands over his face and sat up as she shrugged into the soft—and now wrinkled—broadcloth. "Okay, you want to know. I met her when I was racing. She liked to party with drivers."
"And you fell in love with her?"
"Christ, you're a child in so many ways." He stood and dragged on his jeans. "I fell into bed with her. We liked each other, we had good sex. So we kept falling into bed, and we kept having good sex. Then she got pregnant."
"Oh." She rose slowly and kept her eyes on her trousers as she slipped them on. "You said you didn't have children. I assumed—"
"Do you want to hear this or not?"
She looked up, surprised by the bitterness in his voice. "Not if you don't want to tell me."
"If I'd wanted to talk about it, I probably would have." He swore again, then took her arm as she bent to retrieve her boots. "Sit down. Just sit, goddamn it. Nobody uses that wounded look the way you do."
He pressed his fingers to his eyes and struggled for control. Once he'd opened up this part of his life, he would have to open others. She would ask more questions, he would give her the answers.
He accepted it there, in the sun-washed woods, with his body still warm from hers, that this was the beginning of the end.
"Okay, she got pregnant. So we talked about it. The best thing for everybody was to go for the abortion. Simple, quick, done. So we made the arrangements."
"I'm sorry. That's a difficult decision. You—you never questioned that you'd been the one who—"
"That I'd gotten her pregnant? Yvonne wasn't a liar or a cheat. She said the kid was mine, it was mine. We were friends, Laura."
"I'm sorry. It was hard for both of you."
"We figured we were doing the smart thing. I was trying to make a name for myself on the circuit, she had just started a new job. A baby didn't fit. Hell, neither of us knew anything about kids, about parenthood. We were what we were." He looked her in the eye. "Scrabblers, looking for a good time."
She kept her gaze level. "Are you telling me it was easy? A casual shrug. An oops?''
"No." His eyes shifted, stared off into the trees, into the shadows. "No, it wasn't easy. It just made sense. We agreed it was the best solution. But the night before we were to go in for it, we figured out something else. We both wanted it. We both wanted the baby. It didn't make any sense, we didn't know what we were doing, but we both wanted the baby."
"She didn't have the abortion."
"No. We got married. We figured what the hell, let's do it, let's have a baby. She tried to knit things." A smile ghosted around his mouth. "She didn't have a clue. We read books. Went in for one of those sonogram things. Jesus Christ, it was just… beautiful. We argued about names and did all the things I guess everybody does."
The smile went away and, she thought as she watched his eyes, so did he.
"Middle of the night, she was about four months along, she started bleeding, bad. She was in pain and scared. We were both so scared. I got her to the hospital, but it was already pretty much over by then. We lost the baby."
"I'm sorry." She rose again, but didn't touch him. "I'm so sorry, Michael. There's nothing more painful than losing a child."
"No, there's nothing. The doctors said she was young and healthy and we could try again in a little while. We pretended we would. Tried to keep it together. But we started fighting, sniping at each other. I'd slam out, leave her alone. She'd slam out, leave me alone. One night I came home and she was waiting for me. She'd figured it out before I had. She was a smart woman. We'd stopped being friends. All we'd had to keep us married was the baby, and the baby was gone. Now we were stuck, and we didn't have to be stuck. She was right. So we decided to start being friends again and stop being married. End of story."
She touched him now, took his face in her hands, felt the tension. "There's nothing I can say to ease that kind of grief, the kind you carry with you forever, no matter what."
He shut his eyes, let his brow rest on hers. "I wanted the baby."
"I know." She eased her arms around him. "You loved it already. I understand. I'm sorry, Michael." Gently, she stroked his back. "I'm sorry I made you tell me."
"It was almost ten years ago. It's done." He drew back, then swore at the tears on her cheek. "Don't do that. Hell, you should have asked me something else." Uneasy, he brushed the tears away. "Like about how I used to stunt double for Mel Gibson."
She sniffled, straggled to give him the smile he wanted. "Did you? Really?"
"You women always go for Mel. Maybe you should come down to Hollywood with me. I could introduce you." He twined a blond curl around his finger. "Me and Max, we have to go down tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?" She shook her head. "You're going to L.A.? You didn't mention it."