Baby, Come Back Read Free Page A

inquire about Sheri Kane.”
    He slipped off his cashmere coat and tossed it over a chair. “I understand you’re her therapist.”
    â€œWe prefer the term ‘counselor’ here. It makes the kids feel more comfortable.”
    â€œCounselor, then.” He moved his gaze over the room once more. “I’m not surprised to find you working in a place like this.”
    She narrowed her eyes. “You say that as if you think being altruistic is a fault. As if wanting to help someone besides myself is something to apologize for.”
    â€œNot at all.” He arched his eyebrows. “No criticism intended.”
    â€œLike hell.”
    â€œPicking up right where we left off, I see.”
    Alice drew in a quick breath, her cheeks burning with color. “We’re not picking up anything. You’ve come about Sheri. Well, I’ll tell you what I think. She’s a lovely girl, and I’m very fond of her. I don’t want to see her hurt any more than she has been already. I consider our relationship privileged, so if you’ll excuse me, I have things— ”
    She started to brush by him; he caught her arm. “She’s pregnant. You knew that?”
    Alice looked at his hand, then back up at him, eyes narrowed. “Of course. She told me a couple of days ago.” Alice shook off his hand. “And Jeff’s the father.”
    â€œSo I understand.”
    â€œLife’s funny, isn’t it, Hayes?”
    Hayes’s mouth tightened into a hard line, and he swung away from her, crossing to the window. Alice stared at him, at his stiff back, the rigid line of his shoulders, her heart thundering.
    Why had she said that? Why had she opened a door best left shut and tightly bolted? Pain trembled through her. And with it regret, so bitter it left her aching and sad.
    Hayes Bradford had been a hard man when she’d known him. Unemotional. Coldly determined. Cynical. He’d been the kind of man who walked into a courtroom and owned it, the kind who strode into a room of savvy, successful men and cowed them.
    But she’d seen something soft in him. Something emotional. Vulnerable, even. Some part of him that had needed her.
    That hint of warmth, of need, had been extinguished in the intervening years, leaving a man dying of the cold. The truth of that pulled at her, even as she told herself that he’d made his own isolation.
    He turned back to her, his expression as if chipped from granite. “Is there any chance that Jeff’s not the— ”
    â€œFather? No chance.” Anger moved through her, extinguishing the flutter of sympathy, of empathy. “Sheri is not promiscuous. She and Jeff have been dating for months.”
    â€œExclusively?”
    Alice’s cheeks burned. “Yes. Exclusively.”
    â€œYou’re angry?”
    â€œOffended.”
    He lifted his eyebrows. “I don’t see anything out of line about my questions. They’re questions any parent would ask.”
    He’d always thought her too open, too emotional. Had always thought her too reactive.
    She cocked her chin. “Then why aren’t you asking your son these questions? Or weren’t his answers the ones you wanted?”
    Something flashed in Hayes’s eyes, then was gone. “All grown up, I see. Complete with claws.”
    Anger took her breath. She battled to hold on to it, to keep it from showing. “I was hardly a child back then.” But he’d always treated her like one anyway.
    â€œYou were nineteen, Alice.”
    â€œOf legal age. An adult.”
    â€œAnd I was twenty-seven. Already a widower. Responsible for a young son.”
    â€œA son whom I adored. And who adored me.”
    â€œWe were emotional and philosophical poles apart.”
    But I loved you anyway. So much I thought I was going to die when you rejected me.
    Alice pushed the thought away and inched her chin up a fraction more. “Except in