“What’s going on?” Blair interjected tautly before Kat could respond.
“I’ll be talking to the sheriff,” Byrd assured him. “He’s a good cop. Diligent.”
Kat felt her face flame, but she told herself not to rise to the bait.
Blair, however, wasn’t known for holding back. “You got something to say, you better just say it.”
“You her boyfriend?” Byrd challenged.
“Dad,” Rinda said, discomfited.
Blair’s brows raised. “What’re we doing here?” he asked.
“The sanctity of marriage shouldn’t be laughed at, especially when there’s a new life on the way.” He swung his gaze meaningfully toward Kat, and everyone else looked at her too.
There was a buzzing in her head, and the sunlit field behind the Kincaid ranch house began to swim in front of her eyes.
Shit.
Chapter 24
She didn’t completely pass out. After several seconds, her vision righted itself, and with the attention off him, Noel seized the opportunity to plead his case, whining that old man Crutchens deserved everything coming to him because he was a mean, nasty, old bastard.
Ann Byrd stepped between her husband and his grandchild, and Rinda and John Brinkman looked at their son like he was a creature from another planet. They decided to walk Crutchens’s horse back to him with the help of the truants who were desperate to wash off the water-based paint before he saw his horse. They wanted to go alone, but their parents ignored them, and the whole family trooped toward the Crutchens property.
Mike had diplomatically disappeared to one of the outbuildings, and Kat pulled out her phone, glanced at the screen, and said with false lightness, “I’d better go. Duty calls. It’s in Hal Crutchens’s hands now, and hopefully he won’t be too hard on them.”
“Are you pregnant?”
Of all the scenarios she’d thought of, and there had been a few that had run through her mind, about how, when, or even if she would tell Blair he was about to be a father, this was one of the worst.
“I’m . . .” She stopped. There were no words she could think to say. She wanted to deny it all. She wanted to lie. She couldn’t do it, so she just stopped.
Blair was regarding her through incredulous blue eyes. “Is it mine?”
“No.”
“It’s not mine?”
“It’s . . . I’m . . . I haven’t figured this out yet, and I’m . . . taking some time to, uh . . .”
“But you are pregnant?”
“I haven’t seen a doctor. Nothing’s for sure.”
“Whose is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” he bit out. She didn’t like the way he was gazing at her so intently.
“No, I don’t know. It could be any one of the guys I’ve been seeing,” she snapped.
“What guys?”
“The . . . the ones I’ve been dating.”
“Name one.”
“It’s a secret. They don’t know about each other, and it’s gotten worse, the stakes are higher now with the . . . this . . .”
“Name one,” he insisted. He took a step toward her, and it was all Kat could do not to step back.
“You threatening me, Kincaid?” she demanded.
“You’re pregnant, and it’s my baby, and you weren’t going to tell me.”
“You’re making assumptions!”
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re . . .”
“Kat,” he whispered when she couldn’t go on.
“I don’t know what I’m doing, Blair! You don’t know anything about me, and that’s the way it’s going to stay!”
“What’s with you, Kat? Two months ago . . . practically three . . . we end up making love, and then you won’t talk to me, and now you don’t tell me that you’re pregnant?”
“I just learned, okay? I got a pregnancy test from that pharmacy at the edge of town, and the Byrds’ daughter works there, and she saw me. Don’t tell me that you have any rights because you don’t! I don’t want to hear that from you.”
“Well, you’re going to.” His lips were pressed blade thin.
“To hell with you.”
“To hell with you,” he shot right back.
They glared at each other.
Kat was a mess inside. She couldn’t believe she was having this verbal skirmish, all of it out in the open. “I haven’t seen a doctor yet. Or told my dad. Or people at work.”
“Well, you’d better do it soon,” he growled. “’Cause the word’s out.”
“I’m not sure I’m keeping it!” The words rang out between them. They were false. She’d already determined she wouldn’t be able to go that route. But she was alarmed. He was alarming her! Where did he get off being so proprietary?
“Kat,” he said in disbelief.
“I gotta go.”
She turned away from him, yanking open the back door, hurrying through the house, blinded by her own tumultuous thoughts. He was right on her heels, and when she ran onto the porch and slammed the front door into the outside wall, he grabbed her arm. The door banged back into him, but he wasn’t fazed.
“Kat. Wait.”
She tried to shake him off. “Stop it. I don’t want the Byrds to come back and see us fighting. Just let me go.”
“Come on, I’m sorry. You shocked me. I don’t want to fight. I just need to talk. You and I. Talk.”
There were tears rising to her eyes from the depths of her soul. Oh. God. No. She couldn’t break down. She didn’t even feel like breaking down. It was her out-of-whack hormones. “I can’t right now. I’m working. I’ve got . . . things to do.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Addie Donovan’s missing, and Courtney Pearson’s dead. Would you let me go?”
He dropped her arm. “Is it mine?”
She shook her head, glad that he wasn’t one hundred percent sure.
But his words followed her to her Jeep. Yes, it’s yours. There’s been no one else.
She tore away from his ranch, seeing his image retreat in her rearview mirror as he watched her leave. What was it that made her act like an adolescent around him?
“You should’ve told him,” she muttered through her teeth.
She glanced down at her cell. It would be a simple matter to put that right.
But she didn’t pick up her phone.
*
Blair Kincaid watched the plume of dust that followed Kat’s Jeep down the long drive that led to the ranch. He was a mass of conflicting emotions, which really pissed him off. The credo of his life had been to be a rolling stone, and when he’d accepted his older brother’s invitation to work the ranch with him, Blair had turned a corner he hadn’t been sure he wanted to turn. But he’d dug in, side by side with Hunter, and together they’d brought the ranch back to its glory days . . . well, maybe not quite that far, but it had been in real disrepair until the Kincaid brothers had gotten to work, and now it was a whole lot better.