“You would’ve liked my wife if you’d met her,” he said. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was starting with that part, other than it was the words coming out of his mouth, so he ran with it. “We graduated together, though, so I doubt you ever met her.”

Kylie shook her head mutely, just watching him as he talked.

He gulped. He felt naked. Vulnerable. What he was about to tell Kylie was something only he, his mom, and the coroner knew.

So yeah, not a whole lot of people.

“Wendy was right there for me through it all. She moved to Boise and we attended BSU together. After I got my undergrad, I transferred to vet school. She transferred with me.

“Partway through vet school, we got married. It was one of those things where we’d always told ourselves that we wouldn’t get married until I was out of school, but…” He shrugged. “We were both sick of waiting. So we got married by Judge Schmidt down at the courthouse and told ourselves that we’d have a grand wedding later, when we had the money, but for now, we wanted the piece of paper.

“We never did have a grand wedding. Life kept getting in the way. We were going to do it ‘later,’ and…later never came.”

He tried to act as if it wasn’t a big deal that he hadn’t given his Wendy what she needed, but the guilt of that still haunted him.

A quick sideways glance at Kylie told him that she wasn’t fooled, not one little bit.

He looked back out through the front windshield. There were no pale green eyes to haunt him out there. He wondered for a moment if she knew how much she looked like her mother, right down to that unique shade of green.

“We didn’t start trying for a baby until I’d graduated from vet school and had come back to Sawyer to take over the practice. The former vet had held in there until I had my degree so he could sell it to me, but I don’t think anyone in the world has ever been as happy as he was, the day he got to walk away from it all. Last I heard, he’s been hanging out in the Caribbean, as far away from cows and horses and sheep as he could get.”

Kylie’s laughter tinkled out and Adam smiled a bit. Laughter. That was…nice.

“When Wendy got pregnant, I was thrilled to pieces. I don’t know if you’ve done the math, but my mom had me quite late – she was coming up on forty before she finally got pregnant for the first time. She always called me ‘my miracle baby.’ And then, she lost my dad just before she had me, almost like God was telling her that she only got to have one or the other – she didn’t get to have us both.”

His voice broke and he felt the heat of unshed tears build up behind his eyes but he wouldn’t let himself shed them. He’d cried too many tears too many times before.

He cleared his throat and plowed on.

“Wendy was only a couple of months along when…she lost the baby. Woke up to bloody sheets and her screaming. The doctors said to give her body some time to recuperate and heal, but that we were absolutely fine to try again after that. Said that some women’s bodies reject the first baby, or even two, but that it would work. Eventually.”

He breathed in and then out, slowly and evenly, trying to get a grasp on his emotions. It’d been such a long time since he’d torn the bandages off these wounds, and it turned out, they were just as painful and gaping and awful as they’d always been.

“She lost two more after that. Same thing every time. The doctors couldn’t seem to figure out why – there was no medical reason for it that they could see. Her body just kept rejecting the pregnancies. Wendy eventually got it in her head that she shouldn’t tell anyone that she was pregnant; that she was somehow causing this to happen by blabbing the news to everyone too early. So with the last pregnancy, she didn’t even tell me.

“One day, it occurred to me that I couldn’t remember the last time she’d had her period – when you’re trying for a baby, you start to watch that sort of thing real closely – and asked her when she was supposed to have her next visit from Aunt Flo.”

Kylie giggled at that, and Adam tore his gaze away from the windshield to grin at her. “‘Aunt Flo’ is such a better term than ‘period,’ honestly. Anyway,” he waved his hand in the air, brushing the aside away, “that’s when she told me that she was pregnant, and this time, she was four months along.

“I couldn’t believe it. She’d never made it past the two-month mark before, and this time she’d made it to four? It was a miracle. But…I know it sounds crazy, but I also felt betrayed.”

“Betrayed?” Kylie echoed. “Because your wife was pregnant?”

“No,” he whispered, “because she didn’t tell me. Her superstition about not telling anyone that she was pregnant meant that she’d kept this information from even me, her partner and husband. This was something that we’d worked for, for so hard and so long, and then…she hid it from me. I don’t think she realized how hard I’d take that. I didn’t realize how hard I’d take it until it happened. I could understand not wanting to tell all of Sawyer, but not even me? It was this wonderful, magical secret that she’d kept to herself for four whole months.”

He let out a deep sigh. This was where it got bad. Kylie wasn’t going to look at him as a good guy much longer, and the idea of that hurt his soul.

He wasn’t a good guy, but he liked to pretend that he was, and he liked to think that others saw him that way, even if it wasn’t true.

“We went to bed angry with each other that night. I just needed some time to calm down and get over myself, as my mother would say, but…I had no idea that it was my last night to hold my wife in my arms. If I’d known, I think I would’ve made myself get over the hurt and shock a whole lot faster.” He let out a bitter laugh.

“The next day, I went straight out to a client’s place, hoping to work my way through my problems. I am a doer. If I have a project in my hands and can work, it lets my brain think through shit. If I just sit somewhere, problems go around and around in circles, and never get resolved.”

Kylie let out a little laugh, and Adam looked up, pulled momentarily from his story. “What?” he asked, perplexed.

Her gorgeous green eyes were sparkling with laughter, but she attempted to wipe the smile from her face. “Nothing. I’ll tell you later. Keep going.”

He shrugged. “So Wendy came out to where I was that day, and asked me to have lunch with her. She’d packed a hamper and everything. She wanted to say sorry for keeping this news from me. I’d already started to feel better about the whole thing, but hell, when your wife goes through all of the trouble to make you lunch and follows you out into a field to ask you out on a date, you don’t tell her no. So I wrapped up quick and headed out with her. She took me here.” He gestured at the forest towering on either side of the dirt road.

“There’s a little spot just over there – flat, with soft sand instead of hard dirt – a perfect place to have a picnic. After we ate, Wendy went down to the river and was splashing around. Teasing me. She was flicking water on me and telling me that I was too chicken to get in there with her. It’s a glacier-fed stream, so it’s certainly not a nice warm bathtub you want to soak in. But before I could join her or flick water back at her – I hadn’t decided which to do yet – her feet…”

He paused and then whispered, “They slipped.”

He gulped, trying to shove down the sudden nausea that’d boiled up in his throat, the acid burning, bitter and nasty.

“She fell. Her head hit the rocks in the shallow river, and…that was it.” He shuddered out a breath. “She was gone. I just didn’t know it yet.”

He looked at Kylie but he couldn’t see her through the hot tears swimming in his eyes, and anyway, he was seeing his wife instead, drifting in the stream, blood swirling away, hearing his own screams as he frantically splashed through the water, dragging her to the edge…

“I wrapped my shirt around her head. It was the only thing I could easily get my hands on. I carried her to my truck, laid her down in the backseat, and took off like a bat out of hell for the hospital. She never woke up. They tried everything, but…she was gone.

“It took me years to get past it. The what-if’s still haunt me to this day, to be honest. What if I hadn’t been angry with her for not telling me the news right away? She wouldn’t have felt like she needed to pack a picnic and take me out here. What if I’d been faster when I saw her slip? I might’ve been able to catch her. What if I’d insisted that we not try for another baby? There would’ve been no fight, and thus no picnic. People say that it doesn’t do you any good to say ‘what if’ because you can’t change the past, but dammit all, it’s instinctive. And if someone has learned how to control that instinct, well, good for them. I’m not there. Not yet.”

He blew out a breath and looked up at Kylie to find her face swimming in front of him. He brushed angrily at his eyes. He’d cried enough tears to fill an ocean. He didn’t need to cry anymore.

“So, when I heard that you’d hid your pregnancy from me, I took it a lot more personally than I should have. Please forgive me. I am not your husband or your boyfriend or the father of the baby. You weren’t obligated to tell me about your pregnancy, and I shouldn’t have been upset with you over it. There’s just…a lot of personal pain mixed up in this. And I haven’t even told you about the time I helped a gal give birth on the side of the road in the middle of a blizzard! Traumatized for life with that one.” He tried to chuckle, to laugh off the pain, but he wasn’t sure that he was fooling anyone.

“I was going to tell you I was pregnant this morning,” Kylie said softly. “I know that probably sounds suspicious – yeah, sure, easy for you to say now – but I actually decided that I would tell you the truth yesterday afternoon. I was waiting until this morning to do it, though, because I wanted to make muffins for you and while I had you softened up with food, tell you about the baby. I’m totally not above bribery.” She flashed an unrepentant grin at him.

“Oh, I forgot about the muffins!” he exclaimed, happy to focus on anything but how it was that he’d failed his wife and unborn child. “You were holding them this morning when I came to pick you up.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I…uh…started a new project.” She suddenly looked embarrassed. Adam dashed the last of his tears away and cocked his head to the side, studying her intently. There was red blossoming on her cheeks, and the tips of her ears were a bright cherry color.

When she didn’t say anything, he prodded her. “And that project would be…?”

“Keep Adam Fed,” she blurted out.

He stared at her for a moment, and then he couldn’t help it. He burst out laughing. “Oh my God, are you kidding me?” he finally huffed out through his laughter. “Am I that hopeless that you need to take me on as a charity project?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say hopeless,” Kylie said loyally. “Just not as focused on taking care of yourself as you should be.”

“Keep Adam Fed,” he repeated, and then laughed again. “It was the PB&J comment, wasn’t it?”

“I’ll admit that it got me started,” she allowed, her cheeks burning brighter than ever, “but you’re just so busy all the time. It can’t be good to only eat once a day.”

“How do you know I don’t eat breakfast or lunch?” he protested. “You’re not at my mom’s house or out in the field with me.”

She arched an eyebrow at him. “Do you?” she asked bluntly.

It was his turn to squirm in his seat. “Sometimes,” he said, stubbornly. “When I have the time.”

She just continued to stare at him, one eyebrow perfectly arched.

“Once every six months or so, I do,” he finally admitted, sighing in defeat.

She shook her head. “That isn’t healthy. You need three square meals a day and snacks in-between. Healthy snacks. And no, donuts from the Muffin Man do not count as healthy.”

“You’re a terror, you know that?”

She grinned angelically at him. “You should meet my mother. She’s got me beat to pieces!”

He let out a loud laugh at that. “I have met your mother, and I have to say, I absolutely believe you!”

They grinned at each other for a moment and then Adam said seriously, his eyes trained on every curve of Kylie’s face, “I…Listen, I don’t want to creep you out and this is all sorts of awkward because I’m your boss and two decades older than you—”

“Hold on, how old are you?” Kylie broke in.

“I’m 38. How old are you?”

“Not 18,” she said hotly. “I’m 22.”

“All right, fine, not two decades, only 16 years. Does that make you feel better?”

“Yes,” she said, mollified. “Now, you were busy saying that you’re my boss and 16 years older than me…?”

“And for those reasons and probably a dozen others that I can’t think of at the moment, I shouldn’t say a damn thing, but honestly, I already screwed this up when I kissed you in the barn so I might as well say something now, so the truth is, I like you, a lot, and that’s actually the biggest reason why I took it so hard to hear that you’re pregnant.”

She jerked her head back like she’d been slapped. “Because you can’t like someone who’s pregnant with another man’s bastard, is that it?” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears.

“No!” he exclaimed, reaching for her, but she jerked her hands back, out of range.

“Then what?” she spat out. “And choose your next words carefully if you actually want a future with me.”

He sighed and rubbed his forehead. “I just meant that it hurt to hear about the pregnancy after the fact, rather than the person I love being uppp fffrront…” He stuttered to a stop. Her mouth was gaping open, her eyes as round as two teacup saucers.

“Have I mentioned yet that I love you?” he asked weakly.

“You…wha…I can’t…” She was sputtering, mouth opening and closing spastically. And then, she started laughing, until she bent over in the seat, holding her sides and tears running down her cheeks. “If someone ever calls you Casanova,” she gasped, “just laugh in their face. Please.”

“Funny you should mention that,” he said dryly. “I was thinking that I needed some help in the suave department after I told you that you weren’t so fat that you’d affect my gas mileage.”

She started laughing again. “I have to admit, that was a hell of a compliment. One of the best I’ve ever received.” She looked at him, her lips twitching with the effort of holding her laughter in. “So, Casanova, you really love me, huh?”

He looked at her seriously. “I really do. I know it’s crazy, but I’ve only loved four women in my life, and one of them is my mother. The other two were Wendy and…and Chloe Bartell. Soon-to-be Chloe Blackhorse.”

“Was she the gal who used to rent from you?”

He nodded, surprised. “How did you know?”

“You always acted so cagey and weird about your previous renter. I knew there had to be something between you guys, or at least on your end.”

He nodded slowly. “Within weeks of meeting Wendy, I knew I’d love her forever. Within weeks of meeting Chloe, I knew the same thing. But you…I knew from the moment I clapped eyes on you. That’s why the betrayal was so deep to me.”

“Is that why you hired me?” Kylie asked, biting her lower lip. “Because you were in love with me as soon as you saw me?”

He squirmed a bit in the driver’s seat. “Well, if you’d asked then, I would’ve told you absolutely not. I’m really not an impulsive person. Only my heart is impulsive.”

She let out a belly laugh at that and he grinned back at her. “Honestly, I knew the paragon of perfection that I wanted to hire, and you didn’t have a single qualification on that list. Not one. But my heart was telling me to do it, and then watching you with Sir Grouch…did you know that cat hates everyone except his owner and you? Even Ollie can’t get away with picking him up. But there you were, cuddling the orneriest cat I’ve ever had in my clinic, and he was purring. If he’d started reciting Shakespeare sonnets, I don’t think I could’ve been more surprised.”

She laughed lightly. “Animals have always seemed to like me,” she said, and shrugged, as if it was no big deal. She chewed on her bottom lip for another moment and then said, “Before we can go any further down this road, I need to tell you about me and this baby. You should know the truth, and then decide if you still love me. I won’t blame you if you don’t. I mean, I won’t pretend to be excited, but I won’t be surprised either. Can we walk as we talk? It’s getting hot and sticky in here without the air running.”

“Of course,” he said. “Just…don’t go down to the river?”

“I promise.” And just to show how serious she was, she crossed her heart…and then winked.

He threw back his head and laughed. He couldn’t believe that he’d told her the most awful story he had to share, and was laughing just minutes later.

He’d never met another soul like her; not even Wendy or Chloe did what Kylie did to him.

It was terrifying and wonderful, all wrapped up in one. Terriful? Wonderfying?

Definitely…something.