Rachel Lee – His Pregnant Courthouse Bride (страница 7)

He couldn’t disagree. “I imagine you really liked him.”

“Of course. I thought I was falling in love. Maybe I was. But then I found out. God, that was awful. I caught one of the clerks drinking in the bathroom, and when I started to tell her she couldn’t do that, she stopped me dead in my tracks. It seems I wasn’t the first newbie Tom had taken advantage of, and if she hadn’t been drunk she probably wouldn’t have told me. Everyone kept quiet about it because they didn’t want to get fired.”

She shook her head, then held out one arm, almost a pleading gesture. “I broke it off immediately, of course. He started giving me a hard time, but there wasn’t a whole lot he could do except make me uncomfortable. I was uncomfortable enough that all my coworkers probably knew what had been happening. I felt so humiliated!”

“I’m sure your coworkers knew you had been used,” he offered quietly.

“I’m sure. At least that’s what I kept telling myself. Until I found out I was pregnant.” A bitter laugh escaped her. “Birth control fails sometimes. I was one of the minuscule percentage of failures. Ironic, huh?”

“I think it stinks. I don’t find it ironic at all.” He wished he could hug her, but he wasn’t sure that would help. If she needed to talk, the best thing he could do was listen.

“Anyway, that’s when I called you. I could stick out the knowing looks. I figured the whispers would go away. But a pregnancy? Everyone would know. And I have no doubt Tom would have used every bit of influence he had to get rid of me if he knew, because he could deny everything except a paternity test.”

As a lawyer and then a judge, Wyatt had learned to separate his emotions from his thinking. He had to. He was the one who had to remain objective as much as possible. He’d be no good to a client if feelings clouded his judgment, and that hadn’t changed much on the bench. He might dispense mercy when he could, but he still had to have an unemotional, clear grasp of the situation, the facts and the law.

He was finding that objectivity very difficult to achieve right now. In fact, damn near impossible. He looked at the young woman, his friend, nearly curled up on herself as she relived her nightmare, and he would have dearly loved to get his hands on this guy Tom. His fists had clenched, and he had to make an effort to relax them. He didn’t want to frighten Amber with the impulse to violence that was building in him now.

“Anyway,” she said presently, “it’s been a nightmare, especially since I found out I was pregnant. I couldn’t believe that on top of everything else. Maybe I still can’t believe it. It’s almost like if I close my eyes and pull the blankets over my head, the bad things will go away.” She shook her head. “I know better than that. And you’re right, whether I’m ready to accept it or not, I need to take care of the child growing inside me. That’s one thing I can still do right.”

His chest felt as if a steel band wrapped around it, and it tightened at those words. One thing she could do right?

“Amber...” Maybe he was wrong, but he remembered the woman he used to know. Had she entirely given up because of this? He wouldn’t have expected it.

Maybe she just needed time and space to get used to so much. It sure as hell had been a huge, shocking change.

It had been a month since she first phoned him. Back then the emotionless delivery he’d heard from her had been understandable. He’d believed she’d been merely discussing her options, ways to deal with an untenable situation. But now she seemed to be in some kind of shock. Maybe she had been when she first called, and her clinical attitude had been some kind of an emotional withdrawal. Did this mean it was now becoming emotionally real to her?

He’d thought he’d been offering refuge to a friend, a safe place where she could rest and decide what to do. Now he was wondering just exactly what she needed, and if he could even begin to help her deal with what was clearly a bigger trauma than he’d imagined.

A friend quitting her job because a relationship failed and she was pregnant hadn’t sounded so bad. Now that he was getting the dimensions of all this, he didn’t think nightmare was too strong a description.

“Anyway,” she said after a minute or so, “sorry for the dump.”

“Don’t be sorry. You needed to dump on someone. And maybe your friends weren’t listening.”

“Friends?” She shook her head and at last returned to sit at the table with him. “I had coworkers, colleagues. People I knew, but no one I was able to get intimate with. I was always on guard. You have to be careful what you tell a coworker.”

There was no arguing that. He went to pour himself some fresh coffee, asking her if she wanted anything.

“I’m full from lunch. Thanks.”

When he faced her across the table again, he was still trying to find something to say to her. She’d been unsparingly honest with him, telling him far more than she had on the phone, and in the process giving him a better view of the dimensions of all she faced. Come here for a few weeks to catch her breath and make a plan?

That’s what he’d thought, but now he wasn’t so sure it was going to work that easily. She was still having trouble believing she was pregnant. Maybe she still hadn’t really started to believe any of this.

If so, it would take more than a few weeks.

“Wyatt? Remember when we first met in law school? We were in the first week and I was already overwhelmed.”

“I remember.” He’d never forget it. He’d seen not only a pretty young woman, but someone who didn’t look old enough to be facing the fire of law school. He’d thought he’d detected a bit of panic in her gaze, so he’d wandered over to the bench where she was sitting beside a pile of books, handouts and notebooks, and introduced himself.

“L-1 is a hard year,” he’d offered. “I’m in my last year.”

Her head had swiveled then, and she’d truly seen him. “I’m scared to death.”

From that moment, they’d become friends. “I remember,” he said again.

“You seemed so calm,” she said. “And friendly. You told me things to pay attention to...oh, you gave me a load of good advice for doing well and getting through it. But I never told you something.”

He waited the way he waited in a courtroom, knowing that important information was coming his way.

“I didn’t want to be there,” she said. “And I don’t just mean the first weeks, or the overwhelmed feeling. I didn’t want to be in law school at all.”

That shocked him. He’d never imagined that law school hadn’t been her choice. He’d spent three years surrounded by people who wanted to be no place else. “Then why did you apply?”

“Because of my parents. I didn’t graduate early because I wanted to. I didn’t go to college at sixteen because I wanted to. And I sure as hell didn’t go to law school because I wanted to. Although I have to admit, I started to like the law. I still enjoy the practice of it. Parts of it, anyway.”

But he saw her in an entirely different way now. So much suddenly became clear: her push for success, her moving up the ladder in firms that could tear the soul out of a person simply through overwork, client demands and the constant threat of losing your job if an important client grew unhappy. And he also understood something else. “So your parents don’t know anything about this...situation?”

“Not a thing. Mom passed away five years ago, but no, my father doesn’t know. I guess he’s going to have to know eventually, but not right now. He’ll be furious.”

Wyatt would have liked to argue with her, but how could he? He’d never met Amber’s father.

She sighed and reached for the napkin she had used to wipe her mouth and smoothed it out with her fingers. “I’ve been a wuss,” she said finally.

“That’s one thing I’d never call you.”

She lifted her head with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “I let myself be used to fulfill their dreams for me. It only got worse when Dad told me after Mom’s funeral that she’d be so proud of all I’d accomplished.”

“More pressure.”

“Exactly. Evidently somewhere along the way I failed to grow a spine.”

He doubted that was a fair assessment, but he could understand where it came from. “Well,” he said finally, “you’re here now, you can stay as long as you like and the only thing I’m going to pressure you about is seeing a doctor.”

She nodded. “Fair enough.” After a moment she asked tentatively, “Did you feel pressured because your dad was a lawyer?”

“He didn’t pressure me,” Wyatt said truthfully. “Yeah, we talked about me going into the practice with him, but he didn’t offer a single objection when I took two years after I finished my undergrad degree to see if I liked something else.”

She shook her head a little. “I can’t imagine it.”

“Evidently not. It sounds to me like you never had a chance to take a deep breath.”

She closed her eyes briefly but didn’t answer. “I guess you’re saving my life again.”

Two things struck him in that. Offering her a place to stay was hardly saving her life. Over-the-top. But then... “Again? What do you mean?”

“You saved me that first year in law school. I was totally at sea, totally unprepared to be so much on my own. For the first time in my life, my parents weren’t watching my every move and helping me make every decision. I could have made some really big mistakes. But you were always there to remind me.”