“At least this makes so many things clear. You took up ménages after Heather’s death, didn’t you? Then if any woman got pregnant, you always had another man to blame.”

She’d figured him out fast. Exactly. She was exactly—Wait!

His gaze snapped over to Luc. “Maybe you’re the baby’s father. Maybe—”

“I’d love to take responsibility for this.” Luc dropped to his knees in front of Kimber, lifted her T-shirt, and placed a gossamer kiss on her still-flat belly. Deke waited for the relief. And waited. But watching Luc’s reverence as he stroked a soft hand over Kimber’s stomach, he could only feel sick at the thought of his cousin creating life inside his woman. The possibility made him want to retch and break something at the same time.

Then Luc stood and looked at him with not just sadness, but tragedy in his dark eyes. “But I can’t take responsibility, Deke. The baby can’t be mine.”

“You fucked her, too. Both of us did.”

“True.” Luc crossed the room and sat beside him, clapped a hand across his back.

“But I can’t have children. I’m sterile.”

Kimber gasped. Deke barely heard. Instead, he stared at his cousin, barely able to process those words. A second bomb tonight—the first, Kimber’s news, like Hiroshima, the second, Luc’s confession, Nagasaki. Nuclear. Devastating.

“You can’t…”

“No.” Luc gazed away, stared out the window. “When I was about fourteen I got some virus. Really high fevers for days.” He shrugged. “Apparently, it killed nearly all the swimmers.”

Was he hearing this right? Deke couldn’t comprehend. “What?!”

“You’re sure, Luc?” Kimber asked.

“The first few years, I was tested and retested and tested again. I saw specialists.

They said my sperm count was so low, it’s pretty much statistically impossible that I could get anyone pregnant.”

“And you never told me? Me? ” Of all people.

Luc shrugged. “I begged my parents not to tell the family.”

“But you didn’t tell me. Why the fuck not?”

“You know how people are, always wanting the one thing they can’t have.” His smile was tight with self-deprecation. “I wanted a baby who shared at least some of my own blood. A baby that might have a chance of being a little like me. I wanted to know its mother. Be a part of its family. Feel connected to the conception and pregnancy, the birth, the raising. I would have asked you to simply…donate, but I knew you woudn’t want to accept the responsibility of a child.” Luc’s whole MO came into focus with startling, sickening clarity. “You’ve been waiting around for twelve years for me to get someone pregnant?” Deke could hardly close his gaping mouth.

“That’s why you were always pushing for the wife and the picket fence? That’s why you cornered me into taking Kimber’s virginity?” Deke had thought of Luc like a brother, a best friend, the closest family. All this time, Luc had thought of him as a sperm donor?

“You would have taken her, anyway. Be honest about that.” Grinding his teeth, Deke silently admitted Luc was probably right. But he wasn’t about to give his manipulative cousin the satisfaction now.

Luc sighed. “Deke, there are a lot of reasons I’ve hung with you for years. But I have to admit, hoping we could eventually find a woman and have children was a big one. I never hid that.”

“You knew the last thing I ever wanted was to get anyone else pregnant!”

“But I also knew that someday, you’d be whole again and want kids. You believed it, too, somewhere deep down. If you hadn’t, you would have had a vasectomy. I know you.”

Deke didn’t want to think too hard about that. He’d considered a vasectomy. He’d even had an appointment once. Then…something had stopped him. He’d never known what. Never looked at it too hard, figuring condoms and ménages would cover his bases.

“But since you never got snipped, I was sure you’d find the right woman—”

“Knock her up, take off, and leave the ready-made family to you?”

“No. I never intended to cut you out. I figured you—”

“I can imagine what you figured,” he snarled. “Congratulations, you got your fucking wish. Now you’ve got a pregnant woman living under your roof who will pop you out a baby. And you,” he pinned a stare on Kimber, “you got a whole man who’s eager to marry you and have the perfect little family. Consider each other my wedding gift to you.”

CHAPTER 18

On his way out, Deke slammed the front door. A minute later, his Hummer left the driveway in a squeal of tires. Like he couldn’t leave fast enough. Kimber closed her eyes and tried to stop shaking.

In the wake of Deke’s departure, a terrible dread smothered her. She hadn’t expected him to be happy about the pregnancy, but in her worst nightmare, she couldn’t have imagined the scene that followed.

Luc sat beside her and wrapped a supportive arm around her waist, offering a shoulder to lean on. “Are you okay?”

Well, she was pregnant by a man who was scared shitless she was going to do herself in and had handed her over to another man. All in all, not her idea of a great day. “I think I would have preferred being hit by a Mack truck. Faster and less painless.”

He brought her against his chest and stroked her back. “I’m sorry. The way he acted must have hurt. I don’t know what to say to help explain his reaction.”

“I don’t expect you to explain him.” Deke was a big boy, responsible for his own actions. And she’d be pissed as hell at him if his fear hadn’t been so real and tangible. So obviously painful. Instead, she just felt hopeless.

“Deke is just…he never healed.”

“Got that, loud and clear.”

“After Heather’s death, he took on so much guilt. And her family didn’t help. Her twin sister spread a rumor around the school that Deke had encouraged Heather to kill herself. Her mother worked as a teacher at the high school and made sure that most adults on campus believed he’d been responsible for the death of a sixteen- year-old girl—and treated him like a stone-cold killer. They lived in a really small town, so there were no other schools to transfer to. He could barely leave the house without one of his parents. One time when he did, Heather’s dad picked him up for supposedly speeding, hauled his ass to jail, and threw him in a cell with a violent adult offender, even though Deke was a juvenile. The bastard denied him a phone call for six hours. If Deke’s dad hadn’t figured out quickly where his son was and showed up at the jail with his lawyer, I’m pretty sure Deke would have been raped.”

Kimber’s heart stuttered and wept all at once. “Oh my—That’s terrible.”

“What’s worse is, I think Deke believed he was solely responsible and heaped the guilt on himself. I think he still does. And I think he’s been terrified for years that he might be responsible for another woman’s death.” The story was awful. Beyond tragic. A waste of a young girl’s promise, her grieving, vindictive family, the fracturing of a young man’s sense of self and worth.

No one healed. And now she was bringing a baby into the picture.

“Thank you for telling me.”

“You’re not angry with me?”

“For being honest about Deke’s past?”

He winced. “For not being honest about my…issue sooner.” Mad? No. She had no real cause to feel betrayed. His inability to have children was something that shamed him. Even in the midst of all the drama of Deke and Luc’s argument, she’d seen the humiliation on his face and felt more than a pang of his hurt and loss for something he wanted so desperately.

“You didn’t owe me any explanations.”

He hung his head as if he heard her implied words. “I owed Deke one.” No way she could refute that. “Why did you keep the truth from him? You’re his best friend, his rock. He cares about you, relies on you—”

“I—I thought we’d both win with this arrangement. I’ve always believed that, someday, we’d meet the woman who could help make him whole again. Then he’d be okay with her becoming pregnant. One of us would marry her, we’d all be happy… I thought going through all that would help heal him and give me the family I want so badly.”

Luc had guessed wrong. “I guess the fact I was a virgin was an added bonus.”

“For Deke, yes. I thought taking you would be a catharsis for him, get him past one of his mental barriers. And when he did, I really thought he’d grown. It was more about you, though. The way he responded to you was, from the beginning, totally different. I think he was half in love with you when you walked through the door. You looked half in love with him yourself. And I thought you were sweet and wonderful the first time I met you.” He smiled sadly. “I didn’t see how any of us could lose.”

“I guess on the surface it would have looked good.” But everything had gone to hell, and Kimber had no idea where to go from here.

With a finger under her chin, Luc turned her toward him. “Oh, sweetheart. I’m so damn sorry. You look so lost, like you’re wondering what the hell to do.” He placed a soft, lingering kiss on her mouth.

“Sometimes I swear you’re psychic.”

He tapped her nose with a fingertip. “Sometimes you’re easy to read.” She rolled eyes, raw from crying, and tried to laugh. “Good point.”

“I like that about you. I like a lot of things about you.” He took a deep breath, then cradled her face in his hands. “Marry me.”

What? That had come out of left field. Yet it shouldn’t have. Luc wanted a baby of Deke’s seed, since he couldn’t have one of his own. She had the power to grant him that request. But…

“It’s a logical offer. You’d have a baby. I’d have a husband…except we’d just be saying ‘I do’ for the wrong reasons. You don’t love me.”

“That’s not true.”

Kimber looked in his eyes and saw love reflected in those dark depths—but the same kind of love she had for him. “Luc, I won’t deny that we have hot sex—”

“Very hot sex.” He smiled.

“But you don’t love love me. You love me like I love you, as a friend. Over time, the hot sex would wear off.”

“Maybe not. And a lot of people start with less, and we could grow more in love together. We’d be a family. Please think about it before you answer.” He was damn near pleading.

Damn, she didn’t want to hurt him, but if she said yes, she’d only hurt him more later when it didn’t work out. “We’d always have Deke between us. He’ll always be the father of this baby, and I’ll always love love him. As years pass…I don’t think you could live with that.”

“I’d be fine—”

“I see how much you want this baby and a family of your own. I have no doubt you’ll be one of the proudest uncles ever to my baby, but I don’t think marriage is a good idea.”

“Please… This is my last hope. I’ll be thirty-five this fall. Deke is never going to share with me again after tonight—not you or anyone. Fathering a baby is the one thing I can’t do for myself. I’ve achieved success in my career. I managed to buy a house, make close friends. I’ve got more money than I’ll ever spend. But…this is the one hole in my life I can’t fill.”

And her heart ached for him. “Have you considered adopting?” He grabbed her hands. “I want a part of me, even if it’s a small part. You’re carrying a small part of me with you. Deke is not going to come play daddy. This baby needs a father. I’ll be a good husband.”

“I have no doubt you would.” To the woman he really loved, he would be golden.

But that wasn’t her. “And I know Deke isn’t going to change his mind. I just don’t think it would be a good idea to add another mistake on top of all the others.”

“Think it through before you say no.”

“I have. You’ll be a big part of the baby’s life. But if you marry me, rational or not, your relationship with Deke will be destroyed. I don’t think you want that. I know I don’t want it on my conscience.”

Luc’s shoulders fell as he pulled away from her with a heavy sigh. “I know you won’t, but if you change your mind…”

“I know where to find you.”

Kimber leaned forward and kissed Luc. Softly. A brush of lips and an exchange of sighs. A whisper of good-bye. Desperate fingers latched into her hair as he nudged her lips apart and stroked inside, his kiss begging. As if he’d decided that if words didn’t convince her, maybe sex would.