His eyes looked haunted.
“What’s wrong?” She bolted up from her chair. “Is the baby okay?”
He shook his head as he stepped closer.
Oh, no.
“Were there…” JJ wasn’t sure the right word for it, something that wouldn’t sound too morose. “Complications?”
His pretty blue eyes met hers and he frowned. “No. I’m sorry. No complications.” He shrugged. “Not that I know of anyway. I left.”
Wait. Huh? “So she didn’t have the baby?”
“The baby’s not mine, JJ.”
JJ was tempted to stick her fingers in her ears to clear them out. Had she heard him right? “What?”
“The baby … she’s not mine.”
She?JJ was almost positive Baz was having a boy. He’d talked about it, about having a son, teaching him to play baseball, going to football games.
“I don’t understand.” JJ reached for his hand, pulled him toward an empty chair, and urged him to sit down. “What’s goin’ on?”
He eased into the chair as though he was ninety-two years old, not thirty-two.
“Molly…” He swallowed hard, looked at her when she pulled her chair over and sat in front of him. “I didn’t have sex with Molly.”
Her heart galloped in her chest even though she didn’t understand.
Baz shook his head, his eyes lowering quickly. “I guess we tried, but I was drunk. I couldn’t…” He cleared his throat. “Molly was already pregnant by then.”
“Oh, my God,” she muttered. “So she what? She trapped you?”
It made perfect sense considering all JJ had learned about the woman.
He nodded. “I guess. She’s nineteen, JJ.”
JJ sat back, inhaled deeply. “I know.”
“She told me she was twenty— Wait. What do you mean, you know?”
For a second there, she’d wondered if she could get away with not telling him what she’d learned.
She took a deep breath. “Luca … he, um, he did someresearch.”
“Into Molly?”
JJ nodded, holding his gaze, wondering if he would be pissed.
“What did he learn?”
That wasn’t the question she had expected. Her first question would’ve beenwhy?
Baz shook his head, held up a hand. “Never mind. I don’t want to know. Hell, I don’tneedto know.”
JJ didn’t offer it up. If he honestly didn’t want to know, she had no problem keeping the details to herself. She would warn Luca to do the same.
So that meant the next question was… “What happens now, Baz?”
