Watch Over Me (Danvers #7)(66)
Gwen turned to see her friend smiling at Gage, her eyes soft and filled with something that looked a lot like love. At that moment, she hoped with all of her heart that Gage proved everyone wrong and had just been waiting for the right woman all along. She’d never known Shannon to even date since finally breaking free from her disaster of an ex. The man hadn’t had a faithful or truthful bone in his body. Gage might have gone through a lot of women, but if Dominic and Mac had been friends with him for all of these years, then he was a good guy—he had to be.
“I’m good,” Shannon murmured right before Gage trailed a finger down her cheek before dropping a kiss on her lips.
Both Gwen and Shannon collapsed side by side onto her couch. “I owe both you and Gage an apology as well,” Gwen said. “I don’t know why I said all of that. I love you and the girls to death, but your personal life is none of my business. I’m sorry, Shannon. I truly am.”
Shannon scooted closer and dropped her head against Gwen’s shoulder. “We really outdid ourselves this time, didn’t we? I swear, I thought for a minute there we’d start throwing fists or something. I really care about Gage, and I guess I’m a little overly sensitive about our relationship. He’s the first man that I’ve connected with in such a long time, and I’m afraid of losing him.”
“How long?” Gwen asked, curious as to how she could have missed Gage coming and going from Shannon’s apartment.
“A couple of months,” Shannon admitted. “He just officially met Megan and Maddy a few weeks back for the first time.” Blushing, Shannon added, “I think you remember them telling you all about it at the zoo that day.”
“Ah yes, the whole ‘don’t—stop Cameron’ thing. I thought that all came out of nowhere.” Feeling a little hurt, Gwen said, “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
“I hated keeping it from you, of all people. I just didn’t want anyone knowing in case I’d made yet another mistake. When you’re a single mom, people seem to have a lot of opinions about what you should and shouldn’t be doing, especially where men are concerned. I didn’t want everyone rolling their eyes and talking about me. Trust me, I’ve been there, and it’s not pretty.”
Gwen winced. “I guess I validated all of those fears with my little tirade, didn’t I?”
Shannon chuckled. “You kinda did that for a moment, Rambo. I’m just gonna let you blame it on your crazy pregnancy hormones and not hold it against you.”
Gwen instantly sobered at the mention of what she’d been trying to wrap her mind around all day. Her hand lifted to rest on her flat stomach, still in disbelief that any of this was really happening. Well, the part about the man leaving her was actually pretty easy to believe. She might not have been pregnant during her other relationships, but she was certainly familiar with seeing the guy’s back as he walked away. “I really didn’t know, Shannon. I took a test on Friday and thought I had my period, but it only lasted less than two days. Wendy told me I should test again after I admitted to not having a regular period. I swear I didn’t really have any reason to think that I might be pregnant. I had the tests leftover and you know Wendy, the drill sergeant. I knew I’d never hear the end of it until I double-checked. I almost passed out when I saw that second line. Then I guess you saw all the tests lying around my bathroom. I lost my mind there for a while and was just frantically taking the rest of them. Now Dominic seems to think I’ve been lying to him about it.”
“Well, he kind of deserves some crap after his comment to you. What was it again?” They both repeated, “Good deal, thanks for letting me know,” at the same time. “Come on, that was kind of an * reply, wasn’t it? Seems so out of character for him, though.”
“Boy, this is one of those times you’d like to get drunk with your girlfriend, isn’t it?” Shannon mused. Before Gwen could reply, the front door opened and she heard Maddy and Megan’s voices reverberate down the hallway. Raising a brow, Shannon said, “I can’t offer you booze, but if you need a distraction, I got two who will more than do the job for ya.”
Chapter Seventeen
Dominic peeled the label from his second beer as he stared at the large screen television in the bar without really seeing it. He wasn’t even sure what he was doing here. He’d been feeling a cross between anger and betrayal, helped along by a good ole fashion case of panic when he’d taken off earlier. The whole crazy relationship between Shannon and Gage had been surprising, but kind of entertaining, until the whole revelation of the pregnancy. Now that he had not seen coming. Hell, they really hadn’t even discussed it since Gwen had texted him while he was in Charleston. He had been sitting next to Gage, who immediately advised him not to make a big deal out of it. So, he sent that stupid, f*cking text, using Gage’s words. Damn, he’d regretted doing that, but he didn’t want to bring it up to Gwen on the slim hope that she had not thought it strange.
The question on his mind tonight was why she had said she wasn’t pregnant if she was? Clearly she was if Shannon saw the positive tests. Gwen claimed she had just found out that morning, but that was days after she said the test was negative. What the hell?
“Damn bro, couldn’t you have picked a bar a little closer? The traffic was hell getting here.” Dominic jerked around in surprise to see Gage standing behind him. He was at Flannigan’s, which was miles off the beaten path. He hadn’t actually had a destination in mind; he just drove until he was ready to stop. “I tracked your phone,” Gage added at his questioning look. “You know we have that enabled on all of the company phones, just in case.”