“What does that mean?”
“I was hoping they could do something.” Her voice cracked. “I hoped they might perform a miracle. Something, anything, that would make our baby stick. That’s what they said to me when they tried to make me feel okay about it. They said some babies just don’t stick and there isn’t always a reason they can find. Maybe that’s true, but to me it felt like karma. I’d got you into this situation and now I was being punished. I felt as if I deserved it for ruining your life.”
“Seriously? That’s what you believed?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t think to ask me what I felt about it all?”
“I didn’t need to. I knew that without the baby, there was nothing left.”
He was so shocked it took him a moment to process what she’d just told him. “So you thought the baby was central to our relationship? That by losing it, we’d lost whatever we’d had?”
“Yes.” She lifted her gaze to his. “You want honesty, Seth, so let’s be honest. If it hadn’t been for the baby, we wouldn’t have got married.”
“Maybe not then, but—”
“We wouldn’t have got married.” Her tone was firm. “What we shared would have ended up being a steamy summer affair. I would have returned to Manhattan. You would have gone back to college. That would have been it. And maybe one summer in the future we would have met up on the beach and had another fling for old time’s sake, I don’t know, but I do know it wouldn’t have had a happy-ever-after.”
Outside, beyond the glass, the sun was setting, sending golden light flowing across the kitchen. For once, Seth didn’t care about the sunset.
“I had no idea you felt that way. Our marriage was real, Fliss.”
She gave a choked laugh. “We got married in Vegas.”
“It was real.”
“Seth—”
“Were you happy that day?”
She looked startled by the question. “I—this isn’t—”
“Were you?”
“Yeah.” Her voice was a croak. “I was happy. It was fun. There was that crazy dress we rented and that crowd of tourists taking photos. Harriet was terrified our dad would guess what we were doing and show up. Most of the photos we took have her looking over her shoulder into the crowd.”
He didn’t tell her that he’d had the same thought. He didn’t tell her about the security firm he’d employed to keep a discreet presence in the background.
“I was happy, too. And I was afraid that if we waited and asked permission, your father would find a way to stop it. I was worried he’d guess you were pregnant.”
And make her suffer.
“You married me to protect me. Vanessa kept telling me you were a knight in shining armor. A gentleman.”
If his sister had been given access to his thoughts at that moment she would have been forced to rethink that belief.
“She wouldn’t have thought that if she’d seen me ripping your clothes off behind the sand dunes.” He thought about the night they’d had sex on the beach and knew she was thinking of it, too.
“I unleashed your bad side. I trapped you.”
She really thought that? It explained so much. “I never once thought you’d trapped me.”
“We got married because I was pregnant. That’s the truth. And I’m still shocked you took me to Vegas. I always saw you as more of a Plaza-in-June kind of guy.”
“Ouch.” He took her face in his hands. “Do you really know so little about me?”
“Are you trying to convince me you’ve always dreamed of marrying in Vegas?”