“Look, Gideon, you’ve said it before—and I do agree. We’re just too different. You live and move in a totally different world than I do. Rachel’s pregnancy is a perfect excuse—a validreason—for you to take a step back, and I understand that. Itrulydo.” She reached across the table and patted his hand—like he was back in second grade and had lost his favorite Matchbox car. “You’ll make a wonderful father, Gideon. You really will. I have no doubt of that.”
His heart plummeted, then surged back up. “I don’t even know if the baby’s mine, Fiona,” he repeated, hearing the desperation in his voice. The vodka in his stomach sloshed.
He wasn’t ready to be a father. He wasn’t certain he’d be strong enough to put his weaknesses aside, unlike his father had.
And he wasn’t ready to let Fiona out of his life. Even though she…she was already ready to let him go.
“Gideon.” Her simple word—similar to her response when he’d told her about his mother: quiet, full of feeling without being smothering—made him focus on her sad face. “Remember what I saw in the line on your hand? A wife and a baby.”
With both of hers, she gathered up his left hand, gently turning it so that the palm faced up. Her index finger traced a crease on the side of his pinkie, then carefully swept over his open hand, whispering over his skin and raising every nerve ending in his body.
No. God, no…
He was losing her—he’dlosther, faster than that sand funneling away underfoot.
It was in her face, and in his head.No. No!
Suddenly, he recalled what Iva told him, the message from Salton:You’d have a very difficult decision to make…that it would turn your life around…and she said that, although it would be very painful, you would do the right thing in the end.
It seemed like everyone knew his future but him.
* * *
Fiona rushed out of the restaurant, blinking back what she refused to consider might be tears.
No way. It was allergies that made her eyes sting.
It was for the best. No doubt in her mind.
She’d done the right thing.
Gideon was wishy-washy-ing around about telling her the whole story—but she knew what his palm had said, and she knew what had to be done.
He had to be cut loose so that he could become a father with a little less guilt than he would already have, having had a father of his own who was such a screw-up.
The baby might not be his.
So? she told herself, jamming the key into her car door lock. She knew Gideon. She’d come to learn his soul during their time together.
He was theresponsibletype—the ultra-vigilant uber-responsible type; the exact opposite of his father—and even if the baby wasn’t his, he would do right by Rachel because it could just as easilyhavebeen his.
And because he couldn’t stand to see the child of someone he cared about—perhaps even loved, she thought miserably, cranking up a Katy Perry song on her car stereo about being hot and then cold—grow up in a broken home.
He would fix it as his grandfather had fixed his.
Oh God, oh God…why did she have to fall in love with such a conservative, stick-in-the-mud, responsible, do-the-right-thing guy?
The truth was, she told herself firmly, if he wouldn’t have been looking for a way out of their “relationship,” he would never have brought it up.
Responsibility or no, Rachel’s pregnancy was Gideon’s fast ticket away from her.
* * *
“I’m getting married,” Gideon said.
His grandfather beamed, leaning across the table at the elegant restaurant Grove, and clasped Gideon’s hand firmly.
“Congratulations, son,” he said, tightening his warm grip before his grandson could pull away. “Iva and I have been hoping for such an announcement from you, and we’re thrilled that you’ve finally found the right woman.”
