Hot Finish (18 page)

But Suzanne was already sliding down the wall, her legs going out from under her like they were made of clay. She was vaguely aware of Tammy screaming for her husband and Imogen saying something about water, but mostly she was focused on getting the blackness dancing in front of her eyes to recede and her saliva to stop multiplying in her mouth.

When she hit the floor with a thud, sitting hard on her butt, a hand shoved her head between her legs, which didn’t help, and only made her jeans cut into her waist.

“I’m fine,” she managed weakly, swatting at the hand holding her down. “Let me up.”

The blood all rushed into her face and she had a precarious moment where she thought her stomach had mistaken itself for a trampoline, but she held it together and took a deep breath. Her hands were shaking. “Well, that was embarrassing. That was such a girl thing to do.”

“News flash, you are a girl.” Tammy smoothed her hair back off her forehead.

Suzanne realized her bangs were damp from sweat. Sexy. “I guess there’s truth in that. I’m a girl. A stupid, idiotic girl who has learned nothing in the past six years.” She started to laugh, feeling more than a little hysterical. “I mean, I got knocked up in a car! How high school is that?”

Imogen tried to hand her water but she waved it away as she dissolved into a high-pitched laugh that occasionally turned into a sob. She sounded crazy, she knew it, but she couldn’t stop herself. She felt just a little bit crazy.

Elec came around the corner and said, “What’s going on—”

His eyebrows shot up when he saw Suzanne on the floor rocking from her laughter. “Um . . . everything okay?”

“Yes,” Tammy said.

“No,” Suzanne told him.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Not unless you’re volunteering to be the target for all my man hating.”

“Hmm. I think I’ll pass.” Elec started to back up in the hallway. “Enjoy your girl time.” He darted into the kitchen.

“You’ve terrified my husband.”

“Hell, I’m terrifying myself.” Suzanne forced herself off the floor, taking the hand Tammy offered.

Tammy reached out and hugged her. “This is fine. We’ll figure it all out.”

“Thanks.” She accepted a hug from Imogen, too. “I know it will be fine. I do believe that a baby is a blessing, I want this baby. I may have to sell everything I own to survive, but I’ll manage.”

Imogen squeezed her hand. “But you won’t have to do anything that drastic. This is Ryder’s child, too, and he’ll be more than willing to give you child support. Given his income, it will be a substantial amount of money.”

Suzanne wrinkled her nose. Why did that feel about as good as going on the dole? “I’m still going to law school. I want to be proud of who I am, not raising a kid on the father’s charity.”

“This isn’t something you need to worry about right now,” Tammy told her.

No. What she needed to worry about right now was telling Ryder he was going to be a daddy.

“SO
you’re telling me there’s nothing I can do?” Ryder glared at Bill, his PR rep. They’d been having this argument for a week since he’d gotten back from Vegas, smarting from being dumped by Suzanne and furious that some anonymous online blogger was making him look like a smarmy playboy. But even worse, the blogger had made Suzanne look . . . not good. And that made him see red. Whether she ever spoke to him again or not, he didn’t want her thinking he didn’t have her back.

“No. Tuesday Talladega has the right to say whatever she wants, and it was the truth. Can you just let it go? Nobody cares if you’re sleeping around. You’re divorced.”

Technically, no. But no one needed to know that. Hell, he hadn’t even known that until a month ago. “I don’t really care what they’re saying about me. But she had no right to drag Suzanne into this.”

Bill was in his mid-twenties, a fresh-faced wonder boy straight out of college, with a clean-cut look and a hairline that was already starting to take a step back. “I feel obligated to point out that you dragged the former Mrs. Jefferson into this when you took her to Champions Week with you.”

Little know-it-all. Ryder leaned back in his office chair, feeling the walls closing in on him. He hadn’t been sleeping well, and he was ragged out. He hated being in the office on a good day, and there had been no good days since Suz had walked out of that suite in Vegas. “You’re not obligated to say anything. Mind your own damn business.”

But with the confidence of a twenty-four-year-old, Bill just cleared his throat and straightened his navy tie as he stood in front of Ryder’s desk. “On the contrary, that’s what I’m paid to do. So I’m also obligated to tell you that it’s time for you to shave. Your image is rock star driver, not weird mountain man.”

Ryder scratched his suddenly full beard and scowled. “There’s no rule that says I can’t have facial hair. Next you’ll be telling me I have to shave my balls.”

“Since the cameras don’t pan in on your balls, I have no opinion on what you do or don’t do to them.”

See what he had to put up with? “Let me ask you this since you’re so full of opinions—why does it matter to a woman that you might have happened to take her to the same hotel that you had been to with a previous woman? One a lot less important than her, too, I might add.”

Ryder was still struggling with that being the root of Suzanne’s anger. It just seemed like she was making too big of a deal out of it to him.

Bill coughed. “Am I obligated to be honest here?”

“Yes. You look like the type who eavesdrops on women, so maybe you know something I don’t.”

Rolling his eyes, Bill said dryly, “Thank you, sir. But really, it’s more that I listen to women when they’re speaking to
me
. I’ve never had a girl break up with me, ever. I’m a pretty stellar boyfriend.”

“Modest, too. So? What do you think, oh wise one?” Ryder was walking a thin line here, knowing he just might find himself without a PR rep tomorrow, but he was incapable of stopping himself. He needed answers, and Bill seemed to be the only one talking. Ty and Elec hadn’t been much help because they both had a potential conflict of interest with their significant others, and there was no way in hell he was going to Evan for advice.

“It’s a matter of public relations. You know how you have to make your number one sponsor feel special? How you have to wear their merchandise and mention them at important functions? A woman feels the same way . . . she wants to be special. Like she’s definitely number one, not like you plastered her logo on top of someone else’s with peel-off plastic.”

Huh. Maybe Ryder could see the logic in that. He picked up a pen and tapped it on the desk. Make Suzanne feel special. Make her feel number one.

The question was how the hell did he do that?

He didn’t think even Bill of the perfect dating record would have the answer to that.

CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

SUZANNE
paced in her living room, waiting for Ryder to show up. It had been surprisingly easy to get him to agree to come over, even without telling him why. She had just texted him and asked if they could talk and he’d replied right away.

See? She could hear Tammy’s voice in her head, telling her that Ryder wanted to be with her. But that was irrelevant. She thought.

Or didn’t. She was so damn confused she didn’t know if she was coming or going. All she knew for sure was that she was having a baby, and despite the fact that it made her want to throw up in her mouth, she had to tell Ryder. She’d already gone around and around on the when and the how, debating waiting until after Nikki’s wedding and until after Christmas, then realizing there was no point in waiting. Nor was there any perfect time to drop a baby bomb on a man.

Besides, she didn’t think she could see him at the wedding with this weighing on her. Holding it in for four days had been hard enough and she’d had no interaction with him in that time. God knew she couldn’t be blurting it out in the middle of Nikki’s reception while the bride and groom cut the cake.

Just tell him. Get it over with.

Hopefully he wouldn’t freak out.

She was fairly certain Ryder had never really wanted kids since he’d never suggested they try again after they’d lost their first baby, so she wasn’t sure how he was going to react.

When the doorbell rang, she held her churning stomach for a minute before forcing herself to the door. “Hi,” she said, her voice a weird squawk. “Thanks for coming over.”

“Sure.” He gave her a searching look as he stepped into her foyer. “Look, Suzanne, first things first. I’m sorry for that dumb blog. I know that must have been humiliating for you and I never in a million years meant to make you feel bad. I didn’t think about being at the Wynn with those other women, because well, you’re the most important woman to me. You always have been.”

Suzanne blinked. That blog was so two weeks ago. Before she’d learned she had a human embryo riding shotgun with her. “It’s okay.” She definitely hadn’t invited him over to dissect their always complicated relationship yet again. She’d invited him over to complicate it further.

“No, it’s really not. I want . . .” Ryder paused, clearly frustrated. “God, I’m like the worst communicator.”

But the cutest. Suzanne couldn’t help but notice how hot he looked in his jeans and sweatshirt. It was freezing outside, but he wasn’t wearing a coat. “Ryder, listen to me. It’s okay.”

“No, really, I . . .” Ryder frowned as he studied her. “Are you okay? You look like you’ve been sick. You’ve lost weight.” He reached out and ran his thumb under her eye. “You’re not getting enough sleep. What is it, the flu?”

An overwhelming melancholy swept through her. She missed him.

Shit. It had to be the hormones.

“No.” Suzanne took a deep breath and stepped out of his touch. She couldn’t think when his fingers were on her. “Ryder.”

“Yes?” He looked at her expectantly.

“I’m pregnant,” she blurted out. “And I swear to God if you actually ask me if you’re the father I will cancel your birth certificate.”

Ryder hadn’t a clue what Suzanne was going to say, but never in a hundred million years could he have guessed she would say that. He just stared at her for a second, feeling like someone had dumped a bathtub’s worth of ice water on his head. “You’re pregnant?”

She nodded, her cheeks flushed, eyes glassy. She had definitely lost weight in her hips and arms, and her face was thinner. Yet now that he thought about it, her chest had actually filled out. She was bursting at the seams of her button-up top. “You’re pregnant.”

That time it wasn’t a question and his brain started to regroup from the shock.

“Yes!”

Ryder felt a grin start to split his face. “Holy shit, we’re having a baby.” He thought back to the times they’d had sex. “Is this my fault for not using a condom?” He’d never bothered to ask if she was on the pill, he had just assumed she was or she would say something.

“No, it’s not your fault. It’s mine. I forgot to take my pill that first night. I took it the next morning, so I thought it was fine, but it obviously wasn’t.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

“So you think you got pregnant that first night?” How was that for a bull’s-eye? And he hadn’t even been aiming. Ryder grinned. “Well, alright, then. So you’re what, like five weeks? Because that night was the night of the camping trip . . .” He tried to count back. Then forward. That would mean she was due in August if he had his math right.

But his thoughts were cut off when Suzanne burst into tears, startling the hell out of him. This was the second time she’d cried on him in as many weeks and it was freaking him out. “What? What’s the matter?”

“Our baby was conceived in the front seat of a car! That’s just tacky!”

Did it matter? It wasn’t like they were going to print it on the kid’s birth certificate or anything. Not to mention, it had been a passionate reunion, with pheromones flying. Ryder thought that was kind of an awesome way to be conceived, with your parents totally digging on each other and in love. But he knew better than to say any of that.

“It was probably later in the night, when we were in bed. In fact, I’m sure of it.”

She looked at him like that was the stupidest thing he’d ever said, which it probably was, but hell, what was he supposed to say?

“How could you possibly know that?” she asked in irritation.

“Okay, I don’t! Any more than you know it was in the car. And it doesn’t matter, we’re not going to tell anyone that you might have gotten pregnant in the front seat.”

“I told Imogen and Tammy.”

While his initial reaction was one of hurt that she’d shared their news with her girlfriends first, Ryder knew that was normal for a woman. Besides, they weren’t exactly
Leave It to Beaver
at the moment. It wasn’t quite the regular way of things when you find out you’re having a baby. Love, marriage, baby. For them, it had been more like love, baby, marriage. Divorce, sort of marriage, baby again. Love? He wasn’t sure where that fit into the equation anymore.

Suzanne’s eyes looked a little wild and her lip was trembling, but the sobs had quieted down. Ryder took her hand. “Come on, babe, let’s just take a deep breath and sit down on the couch, alright?”

She nodded. “Alright, you’re right. Sitting down is good.”

“How have you been feeling?” he asked her as they settled onto her sofa next to each other. “You look tired.”

“I’ve been nauseous and tired. Normal I guess, but needless to say, I’ve been stressed.”

He wanted to reassure her, but he also wanted to proceed with caution. If there were more tears, he wasn’t sure he could be trusted not to panic. “I know this is unexpected, but this is a wonderful surprise. I mean, a baby. Our baby. Suz, that makes me really damn happy, and I’ll do whatever you need me to.”

She looked at her hands in her lap, nails digging into the denim of her jeans. “You don’t really have to do anything, you know. Like I said, this was pretty much my fault, and I know that you didn’t really want children, so it’s fine. Contribute as little or as much as you want, it’s all good.”

Uh, that really wasn’t what he’d expected her to say. Ryder wasn’t sure what bit of fiction in there he needed to address first. He’d go with the biggie. “Why in the hell would you say I don’t want children? Of course I want children.”

“Then why haven’t you gotten married and started a family?”

What the fuck? Ryder was starting to wonder if those hormonal changes people talked about had kicked in already because Suzanne was acting nuts. “Because I haven’t met anyone I wanted to marry and start a family with. Besides you, that is.”

“But our baby and marriage weren’t planned.”

“So? I told you before that it happened sooner than I expected but I knew I was going to marry you. A baby was a bonus.” Ryder pried her hand away from her leg and wrapped his around it. “Suzanne,” he told her softly, “when we lost that baby, I was devastated. I wanted that baby with you more than anything.”

His chest felt tight just thinking about it. And now that they had a second chance, well, damn, he was starting to understand the tears.

“But . . . but you never said anything. And you never mentioned trying again . . . I thought you didn’t want to.”

Ryder stared at her flabbergasted. “You thought I didn’t want to try again? I was just waiting for you to say something, honey. I was afraid if I brought it up, it would be too soon, that you’re weren’t ready, because you never said you wanted to.”

“Of course I wanted to. I wanted to right away.”

“Oh, my God.” Ryder took his free hand and ran it through his hair. “Talk about a total lack of communication, damn. That pretty much sums up our marriage, doesn’t it?”

“So you’re telling me you wanted to try again for a baby?” Suzanne was fiddling with the gold chain around her throat. “You really did?”

“Yes.” Seeing that look on her face, knowing what they’d both been through, Ryder had a thousand regrets, a million self-recriminations. But right now all he could do was pull Suzanne into his arms and rest his forehead on hers. “Yes, babe, yes. I can’t imagine any other woman as the mother of my child.”

Ryder wiped the tears off her cheeks and kissed her trembling lips. He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. “Jesus, why didn’t we ever talk about this?”

“Because we’re stubborn and emotionally stunted,” she told him with a sniffle, cuddling up against his chest, like she was enjoying being held.

Ryder gave a soft laugh. “Which one am I, stubborn or emotionally stunted?”

“I think we each have a fair amount of both. Let’s face it—I have abandonment issues from my mother and your parents were so indulgent anything you did half-ass was always more than good enough.”

Well, that was slicing through it with a knife. “I guess that’s true on both counts. But we could fix all that by just talking about our feelings.”

Suzanne pulled back, wiping her eyes. “That’s crazy talk, Jefferson. Talking about feelings? Lordy, we’ll have to reconfigure our whole way of dealing with each other.”

“Baby steps, right?” Ryder nudged her knee with his. “Get it,
baby
steps.”

She gave a laugh that dissolved into a cough. “You’re a dork and I need to blow my nose.”

“See? That’s genuine emotion right there. We’re making progress already.”

Suzanne stood up and walked across the room toward the kitchen. “Do you want a drink? A beer? I need some water.”

“I’ll get it. Why don’t you sit back down? You look tired.”

She turned and gave him a wry look. “That’s like the third time you’ve said that. I get it, okay? I look like hell in a handbasket. I am well aware of that fact, thank you.”

“You don’t look like hell, you look tired, and I was offering because I’m nice and I’m concerned about you. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Suzanne stared at him then shook her head. “This communicating thing is going to take some getting used to.”

Ryder followed her into the kitchen and got himself a beer from the fridge as she filled a glass with water from the tap. “So have you been to the doctor? Do you have a due date?”

A baby. He was reeling. He just couldn’t believe it. Like the few days and nights he’d spent with Suzanne hadn’t been awesome enough, now they’d created a baby out of that time together. It had his head spinning and his heart inflating.

Suzanne took a sip of her water and tried to wrap her head around all of this. All things considered, his reaction to her news was decent. “I don’t go until right after Christmas. Tammy gave me her OB/GYN. I didn’t want to go to the same one as last time and have to answer a bunch of questions.” Like what they were to each other and how they’d managed to do this again.

She wasn’t sure what to think about the things he’d said. He had wanted children. That still sort of blew her mind. She had put up so many walls and had been so sure that he hadn’t wanted a family with her that it was hard to relinquish that belief now. It had honestly colored everything she had done in her marriage, and standing here pregnant again, this whole new reality displayed in front of her, she just didn’t know how to act.

But it had felt good with Ryder’s arms around her. Not for sex, but for intimacy. For holding her, caring for her. It had been real nice.

“Do you think it’s a girl or a boy?” he asked as he frowned at his beer bottle, unsuccessful at twisting the cap off.

“I think there’s a fifty-fifty chance it’s one of those. And that’s not a twist top, what are you doing? That’s your brand. Bottle opener is in the drawer by the stove.”

Ryder looked at the bottle in his hand and shook his head. “I think I’m a little rattled.”

“I’m a lot rattled but at least we have eight months to figure out what we’re doing. I mean, really, what do I know about being a mother?”

“You’ll be a fantastic mother. You care. Deeply. That’s what makes a good mother.”

Suzanne felt her cheeks burning. Lord, since when did she blush. “I say inappropriate things in front of Hunter and Pete. I let cusswords slip out.”

“A little cussing never killed a kid. They hear it in grade school on the bus anyway. You’ll be a great mother, I know it.” Ryder dug around in the drawer for the bottle opener.

“Thanks,” Suzanne said softly. “I appreciate that.” She did, because her confidence had really been suffering the last few weeks. She wasn’t sure she could do this, and do it right. It felt good to have him backing her up. “And I know you’ll be a great father.”

“I just wish I could be around more. This job is kind of a bitch when it comes to the schedule.”

“I’ll bring her to see you on the road if I can. It depends on if I get into school or not.” The whole thing suddenly seemed daunting again and Suzanne clutched her water glass.

“She? You think it’s a girl?” Ryder looked rapturous at the thought.

“I don’t know.” She wasn’t sure why she said
she
. It had just come out.