“Congratulations,” she said again, tears close enough again that she knew she had to get out of there. Not just from their bedroom, but out of the house, away from the rest of the Sullivans and everything she’d told herself she never wanted, but so desperately did.
“I need to get back to the dogs. Zach, you should stay. I’ll watch Cuddles as long as you need me to.”
She practically broke into a run as she fled the bedroom. She thought she heard his siblings, maybe even his mother, say her name as she made a beeline for the front door, but apart from blurting out something unintelligible about needing to get back to the dogs, she didn’t stop to acknowledge them.
She couldn’t let Lori tell her how great Zach was again.
She couldn’t let Sophie look at her so sweetly and say they were all really hoping for a normal sister-in-law.
She couldn’t let herself fall deeper into the quicksand that she should have been smart enough to keep out of in the first place.
Zach had driven them here in one of the dozen cars he seemed to have in his underground garage, but a walk would do her good, would help her clear her head and figure out what the heck was wrong with her.
Only, she already knew she could walk all day and all night for the next year and never be able to erase the picture of Zach with the baby in his arms.
Heather loved kids enough that, despite not wanting to do it the traditional way, she had always planned to have children of her own. Not only because she wouldn’t dare risk trusting a man enough to pledge a lifetime to him, but also because she couldn’t possibly risk her children’s hearts either, the way her mother had risked hers.
But as soon as she’d seen Zach and the baby, when she’d witnessed the complete adoration, the pure, unconditional love in his eyes...she’d stupidly wanted that dream family. With him.
Because she’d fallen in l—
No.
God, no.
Horrified by what she’d almost admitted to herself, she was startled by Zach’s strong hands on her waist, pulling her against him out on the sidewalk. Of course, her body had to betray her by instinctively curling into his heat.
She felt his mouth in her hair, and then his kiss on the top of her head before he asked, “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t do this.” Knowing she needed to be strong, that she should have faced him head-on rather than running, she forced herself to turn around and look him in the eye. “This thing we’re doing—” She sucked in a shaky breath to get it out. “—it’s a mistake.”
How she wished she’d never laid eyes on the man who had turned her world completely upside down. But that was a lie, too, because she couldn’t imagine not having had these past two weeks with him.
Still, that didn’t change the fact that she needed to get out while there was still a chance of retaining one small sliver of an unbroken heart.
“I thought I could do this, but seeing you with the baby and the dogs and your family—it’s too much. I let myself get in too deep. I shouldn’t have been in there today with all of you.”
“They all wanted you there, Heather. And I needed you with me.” He slid the pads of his thumbs across her cheeks to wipe her tears away. “Seeing you with the baby—” He paused, his gaze intense and filled with emotion. “You’re going to be such a beautiful mother, Heather. So damn beautiful.”
The reverence in his words made her tears fall faster, made it even more imperative that she say, “I’m sorry. I can’t see you anymore.”
“Why?” he demanded fiercely.
Because I can’t keep pretending I’m not falling more in love with you with every breath you take, with every caress from your strong hands, with every sweet word from your lips.
Instead of saying any of those things, she forced herself to shrug. “It was fun, but—”
“Fun?” It was more growl than word. Any trace of the teasing man he often was completely disappeared as they faced each other down on an early-morning San Francisco sidewalk. “We both know it’s been a hell of a lot more than fun.”
She couldn’t let him say anything more. Not when Zach Sullivan was hands-down the most charming, charismatic man on the planet, to the point where he actually made her father look like a rank beginner by comparison.
And not after she’d just watched a fantasy flash before her eyes of him holding their baby one day.
Desperate to try to save what was left of her heart, frantic to try to keep her soul from being utterly destroyed along with it, she said, “That’s why we should stop seeing each other—before either of us gets any deeper.”
“Too late.” His eyes flashed with surprise and he stared at her in the same stunned disbelief that she’d just experienced moments before. “Holy hell, I think I’m already in love with you.”
Her entire body tingled at his words, especially the several square inches just beneath her breastbone.
She’d never seen Zach look less than steady on his feet. Or maybe he just looked that way because she was spinning so fast from having heard the one four-letter word she’d been certain Zach Sullivan would never, ever say.
His emotional confession knocked the breath right out of her. Joy at his words of love warred with disgust at herself for wanting to hear him say them again, to insist that they would remain true no matter what she said or did to try and push him away.
“We agreed,” she said just above a whisper, her throat raw, the words hoarse. “Just sex. No emotions. No falling in love.”