Healing Beau (The Brothers of Beauford Bend Book 6) (15 page)

Or so she thought. Emma Ruth came around the corner.

“Christian?”

Emma Ruth always did that—said her name like a question, as if she hadn’t been there the day Christian came home from the hospital and every day since.

Christian paused with her hand on the doorknob of the salon. “You’re still here?”

“No, baby. I went on home and died. This is my ghost.” She put her hands on her hips. “Of course I’m still here. Those young college girls you’ve got hired can’t dust for nothing. I have to go behind them.”

“No you don’t, Emma Ruth. They answer to you. You can make them do it right, like you always made me.” Even though they’d always had staff, Christian’s parents had insisted that she clean up after herself and keep her room clean. “You used to say to me, ‘You call that making a bed? Little Missy, you get in there and lick your calf over.’”

“But you know how to make a bed now, don’t you? You fixing to go in Miss Willa’s salon? You never go in there.”

“It’s not Miss Willa’s salon anymore. It’s mine. Mother’s in Florida.”

“She’s pestering me to come down there and stay a month with her. Says she misses me. I think she just wants me to clean out her closets.”

“I wish you would. She pesters me, too, and I can’t go. I’ve got to run this B&B. You ought to go while it’s cold here.”

“Child, if I left you here with nobody but those slovenly college girls, I’d never get this place clean again. It’d take a shovel and divine intervention.”

Christian laughed. Just for a second, standing there bantering with Emma Ruth, she had forgotten all her troubles, forgotten why she’d needed to retreat to the salon. But the front door opened, and Christian immediately recognized Noel’s quick, light footsteps on the hardwood floors. Then she remembered.

• • •

“And that’s what happened. All of it.” Christian and Noel sat close together on the mahogany and apricot brocade settee. Christian’s words had come out in a rush. She’d summed up twenty-eight years worth of love and longing in twenty minutes. Noel had nodded, saying nothing, but didn’t seem surprised by any of it.

“And there he was with Mary Charles, and I just lost it and ran out. Thank you for coming. I’m shouldn’t put it all on you, but you can see why I couldn’t tell Gwen and the sisters-in-law. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t you dare apologize to me, Christian Hambrick!” Noel exploded, and Noel seldom exploded. “You spend all your time and energy trying to make things all right for everyone else. The time has come for that to stop, especially where Beau is concerned. Now, what are you going to do?”

Was everyone in the universe going to ask that question? “What is there to do? I’m going to run this B&B and have this baby.”

“When are you going to tell Beau?”

Good question. The muddled picture began to clear, and an answer formed. “I’m not.”

Noel blinked twice, and then her eyes went wide. “You’re not? You can’t be serious.”

“I am.” Her heartbeat picked up. This was the right thing to do. “It’s best. He doesn’t know I was a virgin. He’ll believe me when I say it was someone else.”

 “Christian, that’s wrong. Not only is it wrong for you and the baby, it’s wrong for Beau. He deserves to know he’s going to be a father.”

“No. What he deserves is to be happy after all he’s been through. And he’s moving that way. He was angry, hurt, and had no direction when he came back. Now, he’s on his way to being well physically and in every other way. Will Garrett has apprenticed him, and he seems at peace. I can’t blunder through and ruin all that for him.”

“If there was a blunder, both of you made it Christmas Day. How do you know that this wouldn’t make Beau happy? Look at Rafe. Even if it was a rough start, have you ever seen him happier now that he has the twins, Phillip, and Abby?”

“That’s different. I’m no Abby. It’s for Beau’s own good that I don’t want to tell him.”

Noel’s eyes snapped. “You’re lying to yourself. You don’t want to tell him, because you think he’ll hate you for not telling him you were a virgin and for saying you were on birth control.”

When had Noel gotten so tough? “I didn’t say I was on birth control. I told him he didn’t need to worry about it. And he doesn’t.”

“Christian, I am not even going to dignify that with a reply.”

“I thought you were supposed to be the sweet one.” Where was the Noel who was supposed to clutch her hand, cry, and say whatever Christian wanted to do, she’d help her? “I thought you would help me.”

“I am helping you. I’m helping you to not be stupid.”

“Are you going to tell if I don’t?”

“Of course not. But you have got to stop worrying about how Beau is going to react. That’s not in your control.”

Of course it was easy for Noel to say all this now that she had Nickolai, who thought himself the luckiest man in the history of five eternities.

“But it is in my control whether I tell him or not. And so what if I don’t want him to hate me? Is that so bad? Besides, Mary Charles—”

“Stop it with the Mary Charles. Are you in the seventh grade? She has nothing to do with this. Do you honestly think after all these years they pledged their love while perusing the menu at Mill Time? How exactly do you think that went? ‘How about some of these stuffed mushrooms? By the way, darling, you’re all I dream of.’ Ridiculous.”

“It could have gone something like that. Maybe they never got over each other.”

Noel shook her head. “I’m not talking about Mary Charles anymore. There’re a lot of things that need to be considered, but she isn’t one of them. Do you want to know what I think of Beau Beauford?”

Not really, Noel. I don’t think I’d like what you would have to say.

Noel plowed on. “I think he has taken you for granted and misused your friendship, but you’ve let him do it. No. You’ve
begged
him to do it with thought, action, and deed. But he’s a good, decent man, even if he is spoiled—which, by the way, you have had a major part in, though probably not as much as Jackson. Like any decent man, if Beau were to find out he’s got a child who’s three, or ten, or sixteen, and you didn’t tell him—that’s when he would hate you. And believe me, Christian, these things always comes out. Beau will find out.”

Christian opened her mouth to argue, to say Noel didn’t understand, to beg her to help figure out away to keep the secret.

But she never got a chance to utter a word, because a voice rang out from the doorway.

“Beau just did find out.”

• • •

Beau felt nothing—none of the serenity he’d found in Will Garrett’s workshop or the confusion from Mill Time. It was like he’d hit his thumb with a hammer and was waiting for the pain to set in.

Christian looked as frozen as he felt, and Noel looked ready to war. He met Noel’s eyes.
Bring it on.
He might not be fit to be a Ranger anymore, but he could take a quilt maker.

Then he shook the thought away. What the hell was he thinking?

Noel stood. “I should leave y’all to it.”

No shit. Noel must have stood in front of him for a full ten seconds before he realized he was blocking the doorway. For the first time in over a week, a sharp pain shot up his spine. With some effort, he moved his concrete block feet forward, and Noel brushed by him. He let himself down in the nearest seat, which wasn’t fit for a grown man. The rocking chair was dainty and feminine, like everything else in this room. It was probably meant for a woman to rock a baby.

A baby.
A baby.
Babies were for other people, not him. Never had he wanted to run as much as he did right now—and he knew something about wanting to run. From the time he’d killed half his family, he’d lived for the day when he could run from the memories, the ghosts, and the guilt.

And now this. In itself, being married to Christian—and there was no question of not marrying her—wasn’t totally unappealing, even if the timing was bad. They knew, liked, and understood each other. And let’s face it—the sex was amazing. But a wife, let alone a baby? No. That’s something he’d never, ever planned on having. He didn’t deserve loving women and babies. More than that, what if they died? How would he live through that again?

Yet, here he was. Christian was pregnant with his child.

The realization still hadn’t completely taken hold, but at least this explained why Christian had run out of Mill Time before. Strange. His main objective in coming here had been to get an answer to that question. Now, he had the answer, and it was the least of his worries. Christian and the baby would be his family—and families were for other people.

Christian finally broke the silence. “How much did you hear?”

“That’s hard to say since I don’t know how much was said. Maybe you should tell me the whole conversation.”

Christian abruptly jumped to her feet and headed toward the door. Funny. He could never recall her walking away from him before.

He stood up and blocked her way. “Where are you going?”

“Anywhere but here. I don’t want to talk to you.”

“I think you have to.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re pregnant.” The words clanged through him like Big Ben chiming forty-seven o’clock.

“So? It’s not your problem.” She lifted her head and crossed her arms against her chest.

“Of all the things in the world that are not my problem, I would say this is not one of them.”

“Why? It’s not as if the baby is yours. True, I didn’t want you to know it because I didn’t want you to think poorly of me, but now you do know. So don’t worry. I won’t be the first or last single mother on planet Earth.”

A Fourth of July fireworks show went off in Beau’s head. He raised his hands in frustration, and Christian recoiled. What the hell? “Christian, do you know nothing about me? Did you actually think I was going to hit you?”

“No.”

“Stop lying to me, and not just about thinking I’m capable of hitting you. I stood right there and heard Noel say you were a virgin and that you weren’t going to tell me you were pregnant.”

“Ahh.” Christian closed her eyes, like she was recalling something and nodded.

Then it hit him. He’d been had. She’d tricked him into telling her when he’d come in on the conversation. Maybe he should have wondered what he missed, but it couldn’t have been much—or if it was, he’d deal with it after he dealt with what he had heard. That ought to take about twenty years. No—at least twenty-two. That was when kids graduated from college, unless they went to grad school—or med or law school.

How was he going to pay for that? He didn’t even have a job.

For maybe the first time in his life, Beau sat down while a woman was still on her feet. Not in that spindly little baby-rocking chair this time, though this chair wasn’t much better. It had no arms but plenty of needlepoint.

“Beau, are you sitting?” Aunt Amelia’s voice drifted around him. “Surely not—not while the mother of your child is on her feet.”

“Not a good time for ghosts right now, Aunt Amelia.”

“Beau, a gentleman stands when the mother of his child is standing.”

“Christian!” His voice was louder than he’d intended. “Sit down! Sit your ass down on that couch.”

She looked so shocked at the vehemence in his voice that she obeyed. He was stark raving mad, no doubt about it.

“Beau, do you not use language like that in the presence of a lady.”

“Come on, Aunt Amelia. If I’ve seen her ass, surely I can say it to her. And I have. Seen her ass, I mean. Apparently there’s medical evidence to support that.”

But was there? He summoned calm, and not just any calm—lifesaving, elite soldier calm. He was on a high building. The planning had taken weeks. The timing had to be perfect. Many, many lives depended on him remaining calm when he took the shot.

“Are you sure you’re pregnant?” Good. He sounded calm. The shot was off. He never missed.

“As sure as anyone can be who has taken four home tests and been to a doctor.”

So there went that.

“Okay. I see.” Though he wasn’t okay and he didn’t see.

Christian folded her hands in her lap. “I want you to know that this doesn’t have to impact you in any way. My body, my decision, my baby.”

“Like it was your decision to tell me you were on birth control?” But his words were hollow. Two people, one act, two responsibilities—and he had fallen short. My God, it was even worse. She had been a virgin? How did a woman who looked like Christian remain a virgin for twenty-eight years?

“Right.” She nodded. “Technically—”

He waved a hand in the air. “I know. I heard what you told Noel. Technically you didn’t say you were on birth control. Why, Christian? I know you didn’t set out for this to happen.” And he did know that. He knew her inside, out, up, and down. Or he thought he did.

“No,” she said. “At first, I didn’t think. I mean—” She blushed. And he did know what she meant. They’d been carried away. Hell, he hadn’t thought, hadn’t asked, either. “By the time you asked, it was too late. I didn’t plan on letting it happen again. But then it did. I know it’s not worth anything, but I did go the drugstore the next morning and … and got something. And I was already planning to go to the doctor but—”

But he’d come to her, intending to tell her it wouldn’t happen again. She’d read him and said it herself. Why had she done that? If she’d bought birth control, that meant she’d been expecting, hoping even, that things were going to continue.

Because she saved him every single time, just like she had intended to save him from fatherhood.

 If he hadn’t overheard the conversation between her and Noel, would he have believed her when she said the baby wasn’t his, just like he’d believed her when she said she didn’t want to go to the prom, and that the sex had been nothing more than a no-guilt holiday treat?

But even if there hadn’t been guilt, there certainly had been repercussions.

“Beau, I’m sorry about the birth control,” Christian said.

“Ah, hell.” Beau swiped his hand over his face. “I was carried away, too, and I had less excuse. I was experienced.”
And I’d wanted you for days.
“I didn’t ask. But it’s too late now, anyway.”