Forged in Steele (KGI #7)(69)

Tears rose in her eyes. Her hands shook and she looked so damn scared that he couldn’t stand it any longer. He pulled her into his arms and held her tightly as she shook against him.

Her words were choked out, muffled by his chest, but he didn’t loosen his hold on her.

“I didn’t know for sure then, Steele. You have to understand. I suspected, but I couldn’t imagine that it could be true. As you said, we used condoms. The day you came back was the same day I drew my own blood and sent it off for testing. Before you arrived, I was going to wait for the results and then contact you through Sam. But then you got there and you planned to stay a while, so I figured when I got the results I could tell you face-to-face and we could go from there. But then you left, and I didn’t want to lay that on you when you were leaving on a mission. I didn’t think it was fair. What if I wasn’t pregnant? You would have gone on your mission and been thinking about whether I was pregnant or not. You would have been distracted and in your line of work, distractions can be deadly.”

He breathed into her hair and then stroked one hand down the length and then back up again, tangling his fingers in the strands.

“You should have told me,” he said quietly. “Whether you were or weren’t isn’t the issue. The possibility that you were is. I would have never left you if I’d known there was even the possibility. If you’d told me, I would have stayed, Maren, and you would have never been kidnapped.”

“I did what I thought was best,” she said, a sob catching her voice and cracking it midsentence.

She reared back, pulling from his embrace, and then she reached up to touch his face, her fingers fanned out over his skin. Her gaze was earnest and beseeching.

“I was freaking out myself, but you have to believe me, Steele. Never once did I intend not to tell you. I got the results three days after you left and I was going to tell you the minute you came back. But then when I was leaving the clinic, Carlos, Tristan’s hired man, was waiting for me.”

She stared up at him, silver trails sliding down her cheeks.

“Please believe me, Steele. I’d never keep something like that from you.”

“I believe you,” he said quietly.

Her eyes lit up and she looked so damn hopeful that he regretted the way he’d all but attacked her. He had no excuse other than the blame he felt for leaving her. If he’d been there, she would have never been taken. Never suffered what she’d suffered for the last months.

And close on the heels of his words came self – recrimination.

“Christ, I’m sorry, Maren. This can’t be what you wanted. It’s my f**king fault. The goddamn condom must have broken or leaked. That’s on me. You have to know I would have never placed you in this position on purpose.”

She stroked over his face, soothing him with her touch.

“I know that, Steele. It’s both our blame and neither at the same time. We’re adults. We both know that birth control isn’t foolproof. We both played with fire and we both got burned. But now that I’ve had time to take in the news, I’m not sorry about the baby. I hope when you’ve had enough time to digest it all, you won’t be sorry either. Our child may not have been purposely conceived, but he or she is there now. Inside me. A part of me. I love our baby already. The last several weeks have been so horribly stressful. I was afraid to eat or drink anything because I feared that Tristan would try to harm our child or make me miscarry.”

Anger surged through him all over again. He reached out to cup her jaw, rubbing his thumb along her cheekbone, trying to wipe away the lines of fatigue and stress. He chased away the tears that dampened her cheeks and then he leaned in, softly kissing away the moisture.

“I failed you, Maren, and I’m sorry for that. It seems I have a lot of experience in failing people who matter to me in the last year. First P.J. Now you. I should have been there sooner. If I had, you wouldn’t have spent the last months in hell, worrying that the son of a bitch would force himself on you or cause you to lose your child. My child,” he said forcefully.

His child. God, he couldn’t even wrap his mind around the fact that he was going to be a father. He was so ill prepared for parenthood, it was ludicrous. Children had never been in his game plan. Ever. With the job he held and never knowing where he’d be from one day to the next, and worse, not ever knowing if he’d make it back from a mission? It was no way for a child to live. It was no way to be an effective parent.

He wanted to be the kind of father his own dad was to him. Even though he’d never planned to have children, now that it was inevitable, he wanted to give his child two loving, stable parents just like his own had been.

How could he or Maren provide that when their jobs took them to all parts of the world? Into dangerous situations?

“You didn’t fail me, Steele,” she said softly, breaking into his thoughts. “How were you to have known? I could have said something when Tristan started sniffing around me. I blew it off. It was stupid. I could have called Sam at any time. But I’m a big girl. I can handle myself. I’ve been doing it for years. I’ve worked alone in places many men wouldn’t venture. But you know what? I blew it off because I had no reason to ever believe he would take things as far as he did.”

She exhaled sharply and continued.

“I’ve never been singled out like that. You have to understand, I blend. I never draw attention to myself. I’m not the kind of woman who stops traffic or gets noticed in a crowd. What happened in Africa was just an unfortunate case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It wasn’t personal. I was taken hostage along with all the other people who just happened to be in that same wrong place at the same wrong time.