“Exactly, and I’d prefer not to waste words on him. If Karen approves of you and Alex, we should buy a house. My apartment isn’t big enough and you share yours with Caleb.”
“We can start house hunting as soon as we get back to Auckland.” Ryan gripped her hand, not wanting to verbalize his thoughts but knowing he needed to for Alex’s sake. “Are you sure? You’re not his birth mother. If you have any doubts, tell me now. Later…I don’t want you to tell me you’re willing to accept Alex and come to regret it later.”
His words should have hurt, but she understood. He had the right to question her, and she’d be a hypocrite to object. She squeezed his fingers. Now that she was back with Ryan her heart seemed lighter. She met his gaze. “I’ll be honest. It would have been harder if he hadn’t taken after you in looks. It would have taken me a little longer to fall in love with him, but those big blue eyes of his. One look and I was toast. Do you know your eyes grabbed my attention first?”
He huffed out a sound that wandered close to humor. “Do you mean to say if I’d had brown eyes you might have picked Caleb instead of me?”
She grinned. “We’ll never know for sure.” She sobered. “I want you, and I want Alex. Together we’ll make a great family.”
“I’m glad because we both need you.”
Together they wandered back downstairs. Ryan poured her a glass of wine and grabbed a beer for himself before leading her into the lounge. Photos of Ryan and his siblings covered the walls and a grand piano stood in the far corner, signs of a musical family.
“Caleb and I are still determined to keep our tours short. We’ve talked about it a lot during the last week. We want to focus on song writing. That means I’ll be around more. Between the two of us and Karen, Alex will have everything he needs.”
He curled a hand around her neck, drawing her closer. Her wine splashed over the edge of the glass, and she set it aside to avoid a spill.
“Alex is great. Once he loses his shyness, he doesn’t stop talking. He was quieter tonight, but you wait until he’s with his cousins tomorrow at the party.” His grin faded. “Tell me about our baby,” he said, reaching for her hand.
“I’ve told you everything.”
“Tell me again. Please, Julia. The more we talk about our loss…” He trailed off and gave a helpless shrug. “You understand what I mean.”
Their fingers twined together, and she stared at them for an instant. She sucked in a deep breath and shifted her gaze to the vase of apricot roses atop the coffee table. After another inhalation, she started talking. “I discovered I was pregnant several weeks after you left. It was a shock, and I…um…dithered about telling you. We’d never talked about children.”
Ryan barked out a laugh. “You never dither.”
“I never thought I’d marry. You know about my father. He returned to his wealthy family, wiping us from his mind in the way other people delete computer files.” Bitterness coated her words, a twang of pain playing through her—a chord or two of a heartbreaking he-done-me-wrong song.
“You never talked about your parents.”
“The man who got my mother pregnant doesn’t qualify for the description.”
Ryan squeezed her hand in silent commiseration.
“Anyhow, the shock of my pregnancy lasted for a few weeks.”
“And when you rang me, you got some idiot woman instead.”
“Yeah.” She blinked to ease the sting at her eyes.
“What did you do then?”
“I was numb. I walked around in a daze for weeks.”
“What about your friends? They would have helped you.”
Julia hung her head, unwilling to admit her stupidity.Tell him everything. Connor’s instruction echoed through her mind. “I didn’t tell them. I’m not sure why. Shock.” She shrugged helplessly. “I woke up one morning feeling off. I had bad cramps and collapsed in my apartment, hitting my head when I fell. Susan and Christina found me and got me to the hospital.”
Ryan turned to her, and she saw the emotion glistening in his eyes. He stared at her, unashamed, as a single tear ran down his cheek. “I’m sorry you had to go through that alone.”
Julia ran her free hand over his cheek, brushing the dampness away. “The doctors said sometimes women suffer miscarriages for no obvious reason. I would have lost the baby, no matter what I’d tried to prevent it.” The truth of the words hit her—the actual meaning, and she realized she was coming to accept the reality.
It wasn’t her fault.
All these months, she’d blamed Ryan. She’d blamed herself. But it wasn’t Ryan’s fault either. No matter what she’d done, she would have lost her baby.
The acknowledgment seemed to lift a weight off her shoulders. She squeezed Ryan’s hand, sending him a misty smile. “I love you, Ryan, and I will do whatever it takes to make our marriage work. I missed you.” Her smile turned rueful. “I missed you so much I wore one of your T-shirts to bed every night just to feel closer to you.”
