Chapter Two
Lilah lowered her lashes rather than face the protective outrage swirling like a storm in Ford’s normally calm brown eyes. All things considered, her pride seemed like an inevitable casualty of her situation, and she thought she’d come to terms with the loss of something as dispensable in the grand scheme of things as pride. But no. Talking to people—especially him, for some reason—about how she’d ended up pregnant embarrassed her. Private and self-contained by nature, she recognized the same qualities in Ford. Revealing the sad facts of her single, impulsive sexual experience wasn’t like showing a video of the event in the town square, but it felt close. Still, she trusted his motives. He wanted to help.
Dredging up the tattered remnants of her dignity, leaning hard into her trust in him, she said, “I have only myself to thank.”
He cupped her chin, lifted her face to his, and rubbed his thumb over her hot cheek. His steady gaze, or the gentle touch, sent quick, elusive currents swirling inside her.
“I have some expertise here, and I have to tell you that’s biologically impossible.” His lips kicked up at one corner to the faint smile she often noticed him wearing. It took the dangerous edge off his strong jaw, chiseled chin with a slight cleft that made him look like a young Ewan McGregor, and fathomless, quietly observant eyes. “It took two to make that baby.”
Her lips lifted of their own accord, mimicking his. “Of course. But I’m the only one left.”
He thought on that for a moment. The faint smile disappeared. “A tourist? Just because he doesn’t live around here doesn’t mean he’s off the hook. You give me a name, I’ll find him.” The dangerous edge he rarely showed was on full display now, in his ominously low brows, the shadowed intensity of his gaze. Watching those military-honed, serve-and-protect muscles flex on her behalf left her slightly breathless. His broad frame suddenly seemed to take up all the space in the cab of her Wrangler. “He has responsibilities,” Ford went on. “Moral and legal responsibilities.”
She closed her eyes and strived for the composure to complete this conversation correctly. “No. Sorry. I don’t mean that he left. Well, he did leave, but he wasn’t a visitor, and it wasn’t by choice, and…”
Good God, Lilah, just spill it. Your secret’s out. It’s only a matter of time before the entire town knows. She expelled a breath and looked into Ford’s patient, not-quite-neutral expression. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m tiptoeing around this. The people most directly impacted already know, including, as of this evening, my mother.”
“I’m not going to react like that,” he assured her and brought his other hand up to frame her face in a way that made her feel…safe? Special? She didn’t know. It just made her feel. “I only want you to let me help make things right for you.”
She wrapped her hands around his wrists, felt his pulse beating strong and sure beneath his skin, felt her own heartbeat slow to match his as the final confession lay like a communion wafer on her tongue. “It’s already as right as it’s going to get. Shay was the father.”
Ford absorbed that for long, silent moment. His deep brown eyes went a shade darker. A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Oh.”
She released his wrists, but he kept his hands where they were, cupping her face. “Trace and Bridget…?”
“They know. Izzy, too. Probably Archer…well, definitely now. I’m not alone. This baby’s a Shanahan. It has an aunt, an uncle. Family. Even if my mother never speaks to me again, this little one”—she ran her hands over her belly, where life gave a small flutter—“has family that loves it.”
“Rose will come around,” he said and stroked her cheek again.
The gesture undid some fortification she’d tried to build around her heart since landing in this situation. Ford normally spoke with conviction or he held his tongue. She wished she felt his certainty.
“Did Shay know before…?”
“Before he flew into a mountain and died?” she finished for him. The death of her baby’s father was another thing she’d had to come to terms with, all on her own at that time, as she hadn’t yet confided in anyone.
Except Shay.
“No,” she replied and dropped her gaze, once again amazed at how easily the lie passed her lips. She’d been raised to be honest and could probably count the number of outright lies she’d told in her life on one hand, but about this, she’d lied again and again. She’d lied to Izzy and Trace first, out of guilt, yes, but also an inability to tarnish Shay’s memory in the eyes of his older brother. She’d continued the lie with Bridget, Shay’s twin sister, for the same reasons.
With Ford, however, it came down to just her own shameful guilt. The same day she’d told Shay she was pregnant, he’d died in a solo crash deemed pilot error. She should have waited until he’d returned from his passenger run to Anchorage to drop that kind of bomb on him, but she’d been scared and selfish, fixated only on how the pregnancy affected her. She’d wanted comfort, assurances, because suddenly finding herself knocked up by Captivity’s king of the casual fling left a girl feeling pretty uncertain. He’d given her all the comfort and assurance she could have hoped for, seemingly without a moment’s hesitation.
And then, hours later, he’d died, and she couldn’t bring herself to admit the tragedy might have had an underlying trigger—one she’d recklessly pulled in her haste to share the weight her own anxiety. All these months later, she still hadn’t come to terms with the guilt.
“I…um. I didn’t realize you and Shay were involved,” Ford said.
Something in the hesitancy of his words and the cautious, almost flinching look in his eyes made her think he approached the topic with reluctance. They were even, then, because her embarrassment returned in a wave of heat that surged up her chest, her neck, and into her face. She looked beyond his shoulders, out the window, anywhere but at him. “We weren’t. I mean, we were friends my whole life, but Shay was older and…footloose. I always felt like he thought of me as a little sister.” She risked a quick glance at Ford, who continued to stare at her.
“He took advantage of you.”
“No.” She shook her head, dislodging his hands, and immediately missed the safe feeling his touch imparted, but his reaction seemed to be the prevailing one—even with Trace and Bridget—and her honest nature refused to let it stand. “The opposite, actually.”
Her face felt so hot she pressed her cheek to the window and stared out at the deepening dusk. “One evening last October he ordered a pizza from Gino’s. I dropped it off as a favor and found him home, alone, wet from the hot tub and a little wasted. He smiled and said something that made me laugh, like always. Asked me if I’d had dinner yet. I hadn’t, so he invited me in to share the pizza with him. He was just bored of his own company and being friendly. I knew my mother wouldn’t approve, but…”
Gentle fingers brushed hers. Looking down, she realized she had a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel.
Deliberately, she loosened her hold and took a slow breath before continuing. “But she and I had gotten into a little bit of an argument that afternoon about the summer. I’d been invited to attend the summer session at University of Anchorage, and I wanted to go. She wanted me to stay and work. Hold off until fall, as we’d originally agreed. We got into it about several things, really. I was angry. Felt she continued to treat me like a child instead of the adult I am. So, when he invited me to join him like I was a grown woman in charge of my own life, I accepted. We went to the patio, he got back in the hot tub, and we ate pizza and laughed some more. When he noticed me shivering under the blanket he’d given, he told me to come in and warm up. And I told myself it was about time I did something like that, because I was twenty, for God’s sake, and I could get into a hot tub with a guy if I wanted. So, I did.”
She’d stripped right down to her skin and gotten into the churning water. Her heart had been pounding, her body shivering from nerves rather than the cold, until she’d looked into Shay’s wide, awestruck, and, yes, slightly glazed eyes as he’d whispered, “Sweet Lilah. How old are you now?” She’d whispered back, “Old enough,” and done her best to prove it, both to herself and the guy she’d crushed on, on and off, for most of her life. And then, afterward, much to her shame, she’d avoided him. Mostly because when he’d looked at her, she’d seen things in his pretty blue eyes that she didn’t want to see. Uncertainty. Awkwardness. Guilt.