My breath stopped, my lungs instantly went on strike, and my heart slammed against my ribs so loudly I was sure she could hear it.A baby?
I finally found my voice but barely. “Was it, uh, was the baby his?”
Claira braced both hands against the countertop and closed her eyes like she needed a second to summon full southern emotional fortitude. Then she straightened, went to the fridge, and pulled out a chilled bottle of white wine.
At ten in the morning. And she didn’t even pretend it was for cooking.
“Oh, honey,” she murmured, grabbing two glasses and filling them both nearly to the brim. “You’re going to need this.”
Claira took a long swallow of her wine before setting the glass down with a soft clink. Her eyes drifted toward the window, like she was watching ghosts wander across the lawn.
“They were only twenty-three,” she began quietly. “Young but old enough to know better. Or at least, that’s what I thought, but they’d been dating seriously for years when Savannah announced she was pregnant.”
My heartbeat thudded in my ears, but that wasn’t even the worst of it. Claira looked up, her eyes misty as she shook her head. “Trent married her.”
My eyes slammed shut. I couldn’t help it. It felt like someone had punched me in the chest and yet she kept going.
“He started having the plans drawn up for that big house of his and gave her access to all his money. He did everythingright.” She pressed her lips together, pride and regret warring on her beautiful features. “Everything.”
I couldn’t speak, but at least my eyes were open again. My lungs were still refusing to work properly, though.
“Within a few months of the announcement and the quick wedding that followed, the scandal ripped through every circle they were part of. Savannah was having an affair.”
My chest tightened.
She sighed. “With one of Trent’s good friends.”
I winced.God. It’s no wonder he doesn’t want to talk about it.
“Savannah wasn’t even sure if Trent was the father,” she said, her voice now thin with disgust. “Apparently, she’d simply felt that he was the more stable option. The better name. The better life, but after a little digging…” She gave a humorless laugh and took another gigantic gulp of her wine. “I found out she’d been spending Trent’s money as fast as he could make it. Tens of thousands. Using her so-calledbusinesstripsfor her boutique in Dallas to take lavish vacations with her affair partner.”
My throat closed. Poor Trent.My Trent—Wait, no. Notmyanything.
“The baby was three months old when Trent found out he wasn’t the father.”
I put a hand against my stomach, nausea swirling through me. I hadn’t been planning on drinking the wine she’d poured me, but she’d been right. I needed it. So I reached for my glass and took a page out of her book, tipping almost a quarter of the glass into my mouth in one long sip.
“He was willing to raise the baby anyway,” Claira said. “To stay in the marriage. To be a father, a protector. He was ready to shoulder all of it, but we forced him to end it. To let them both go.”
She looked ashamed, but not of him. Of herself. “We withheld his inheritance and his access to the family money. He wouldn’t get the ranch unless he ended it.”
The words rang in my head like a cruel bell. He’d lost everything, his marriage, the child he’d thought was his, and a friend, and his family had pushed him to let it all burn. I swallowed hard, bile creeping up my throat. I swallowed it down with more wine.
All this time, I’d thought Trent was just grumpy, dry, emotionally unavailable, and annoyingly stoic. A man who’d chosen loneliness. I’d had no idea that he’d been gutted.
I drained my glass, torn. Claira quickly refilled my wine all the way to the brim again before she pushed the glass back toward me.
“He was willing to give it all up for puppy love,” she said softly. “Savannah was the one who eventually pulled the plug on the whole thing when Trent’s money started drying up. She’d bled him dry and then she moved right on. Divorced him and married her affair partner, who’s now quite wealthy after investing all that money Trent gave her.”
Her lip curled ever so slightly. “Last I heard, they moved to Florida. Boca, I think. Trent eventually got the marriage annulled. There’s no record of it. Only whispers.” She sighed. “It’s been so long now. Ten years or so.”
She kept talking, telling me something about how Trent had never brought another woman home after that, how he’d poured his heart into the ranch, but her voice began to fade out, her words blurring into each other as my heart sprinted.
A baby. A marriage. Betrayal. Public humiliation. Financial ruin. A mother forcing her son to let a child go. A woman who used him, hollowed him out, then threw him away.
Trent.Oh, Trent.
Sothiswas why he’d barely been able to look at Savannah last night and why he’d shut down the second I’d mentioned her. He’d done everything right and it’d backfired in the most catastrophic way.
