Brady stood in front of the open garage bay and watched Reyna reaching for something in the engine compartment of a sedan. She stretched, but her belly—as small as it still was—got in the way and she had to readjust in order to reach whatever she was after.
Frowning, he considered the best way to approach her about her plans for the increasingly near future. Her pregnancy was going to get in the way of what she did for a living. Literally.
The reality was, she was going to be on her own. Not alone, because she had too many people who cared about her for that. Including him. But she was an independent woman who owned her own business and had chosen to have a child. It was probably scary, and it was important to him that she know that he might not be able to rebuild a carburetor, but he was going to be there for her. Always, and no matter what.
“I’d ask you to hand me a four millimeter socket, but I’m not sure you know what that is,” she teased, looking over her shoulder at him.
“You’re funny. Electricians have tools, you know.” He went inside and grabbed the four millimeter socket out of its slot to hand to her. “And Chris and I had to learn to do the basic stuff to keep Mom’s cars running before we got good jobs and could afford to have your dad do it for us.”
He watched her work for a few more minutes, and then she closed the hood. After wiping her hands on a shop rag, she reached in through the open window and turned the key in the ignition. It started immediately, and he had no idea what she was listening for, but after a minute, she nodded and killed the engine.
When she went into the office, he followed her in and sat on the stool while she made a note on the repair order. Something was up with her today. Usually she would have stopped to kiss him on her way past, and it seemed to him she wasn’t even really making eye contact.
Maybe a bad day, he thought. Sometimes Marcy had been cranky and off and claimed it was just pregnancy hormones, though Brady would never dare suggest that to Reyna out loud.
“Why are you looking at me so intently?” she asked, frowning slightly.
“Sorry. I didn’t realize I was.” He shrugged when she arched one eyebrow. “Just a lot on my mind, I guess.”
“Anything you want to talk about?”
He guessed now was as good a time as any. “I was watching you work and it looks like it’ll get a lot harder as the baby gets bigger. What are you planning to do about the garage? So you can take a maternity leave, I mean.”
She shrugged. “I’ll figure it out.”
“It’s not like you can just give customers a heads-up that you’re closing up for a couple days to actually give birth. What you do won’t be easy after a certain point in your pregnancy. And I know that you’ll have your mom around and stuff, but she can’t fix a transmission or mount and balance tires.”
“Actually, my mom can mount and balance tires. She can also do oil changes. But no, she won’t be working in the garage.”
Her prickly attitude about this rubbed him the wrong way and he frowned. “I get that you probably think this is none of my business—”
“Because it’s not.”
“But you’re carrying my child, so how you take care of yourself actually is my business.”
She stared at him with slightly narrowed eyes for so long, he was starting to think she wasn’t going to respond. But then, in a flat tone that made it clear she didn’t agree that it was his business, she spoke. “I’ve already arranged to have Joey Millson start as soon as school lets out. He’s been doing the automotive program at the tech, so it’s kind of an internship situation. I’ll be supervising, but he’ll be doing any heavy lifting. When the time comes, I’ll have to close the garage temporarily, but I have savings and because we own the building, overhead expenses are minimal. I’ll be fine.”
“You can’t be mad at me for worrying about you.”
The way her eyebrow arched let him know he was wrong about that, too. “You’re not worrying about my health. You’re worrying about my business.”
“They’re kind of tied together. Pushing yourself too hard or losing sleep over the garage could affect your health, and I don’t want to see you stressed out further down the road.” He should apologize for bringing it up, but he wasn’t sorry. “You’re not alone in this, Reyna.”
“But I want to be,” she snapped, and he felt her words like a physical blow. “I told you when I asked you to father my child that I wanted a baby but I didn’t want a man.”
The hurt was so immediate and so strong, he could feel a trembling deep down inside.
He’d known this day would come. Because she had made it clear from day one that she wanted a baby and that was it. Any hopes and dreams that might have taken root in his heart since then were his. That wasn’t on her.
But he knew she cared a lot more than she was allowing herself to show right now. There’s no way that he’d misread the looks. The touches. The things she said and the little ways she had to show him how much she cared.
No matter what he felt, though, and no matter how much she had come to care for him, it must not be enough. If she had fallen in love with him, she would be able to tell him.
“You’re right,” he said when he was sure he could speak without his voice cracking or shaking. “Your business is none of my concern.”
“I shouldn’t have…” She closed her eyes briefly, but when she opened them there was still resignation under the contrition. “I’m sorry that came out that way.”
“I’m going to go,” he said, sliding off the stool. “We can talk later.”
“Brady.”
He shook his head. “You’re right, Reyna. You did tell me you wanted a baby and not a man. We had an agreement to look to everybody else like we were going down a traditional path and it didn’t work out. And that’s where we are now.”
“We still need to talk,” she said, standing up.
They did, but he couldn’t do it right now. “Later. We’ll talk later.”
He walked to his truck without looking back because the trembling sensation was spreading through his body, and he was not going to have an emotional breakdown in the parking lot of Bishop’s Auto Care.
When he got home, he silenced his phone and stretched out on the couch so he could stare up at the ceiling and try to control the pressure cooker of feelings that was building up steam inside of him.
Reyna Bishop was the hot burner he just couldn’t stop touching. And this time he’d really gotten burned.
* * *
For the first time since taking over Bishop’s Auto Care, Reyna called in sick. She didn’t have a boss to call, though, so she just messaged the customer who had an appointment that she’d have to reschedule and left the closed sign in the window.
She curled up on her couch and tried to cry as little as possible. She didn’t really know if the crying disturbed the baby or not, and the little peanut didn’t deserve to be miserable because its mother had been absolutely awful.
For twenty-four hours, she replayed her words over and over in her mind. And she couldn’t close her eyes without seeing the shock and the pain in his eyes.
She’d panicked. Even though she’d known the time had come for them to either face that what they had might be real or to go their separate ways, she couldn’t bring herself to confess she had fallen in love with him. She’d promised him she wouldn’t—that she wouldn’t ask anything of him but a baby. And she’d fallen in love with him anyway.
But she also couldn’t summon the words to tell him that, if they were going to part, it had to be now. That the reality closing in grew more painful every day. So when he’d questioned how she was running the garage, she’d taken the annoyance and made it a big deal. A big enough deal to force a conversation. But in her panic, she’d hurt him, and watching him walk away had hurt so badly it still made it hard to breathe if she pictured it.
Her phone chimed and it felt as if her heart skipped when she saw Brady’s name on the screen.
We have an appointment with Preston at 5:30 on Friday. I’ll see you there.
Dropping the phone, she wrapped her arms around her belly as if she could shield the baby and cried.
* * *
At 5:29 on Friday afternoon, she saw Brady waiting for her outside Preston’s office, and all of the things she wanted to say bottlenecked in her throat, choked off by emotion.
He looked pale and tired, and when he smiled, it was empty. His eyes were flat and when she opened her mouth—with no idea what she would say—he opened the office door and gestured for her to go ahead of him.
Brady sat in one of the armchairs, leaving Reyna to sit alone on the love seat. She listened as Preston spoke, too numb to cry or to do anything but agree to the terms she and Brady had reluctantly discussed over the last several months. When it was over, she signed where Preston told her to and nodded when he said he’d be in touch about the next step. Then she shook his hand and Brady held the door open for her again.
When they stepped out onto the sidewalk, she touched his arm and his flinch gutted her. “Can we get a coffee or something? Or go for a walk?”
“No.” He sighed and didn’t look her in the eye. “Not yet. We will, because we’re going to get past this and be amicable for the baby’s sake, but…not yet.”
“Amicable,” she whispered. What a horrible word to describe what they were going to be to each other.
He shook his head. “You know, we agreed from the start that you and I weren’t going to work and that we were going to have to talk about where we were going with this pretty soon. But I honestly thought you cared enough about me to not be cruel.”
I love you. The words were there. They were in her heart and in her head, but the idea of saying them and having them rejected scared her so badly she couldn’t get them to come out of her mouth. “I’m sorry.”
“You might not be hell on men, Reyna, but you’re hell on me.”
He spun and walked away before she could say anything else. She wasn’t sure what she would have said even if he was still standing in front of her.
We agreed from the start that you and I weren’t going to work.
That was it, then. They’d made a plan. They’d made a baby. And now the part of the plan that involved Brady kissing her and holding her hand and looking at her as if she was the only woman in the world he’d ever wanted was over.
She realized she was still standing in the middle of the sidewalk, staring at the corner Brady had disappeared around, and probably looking like a woman whose world had just come crashing down around her.
Straightening her shoulders, Reyna smoothed her hand over her baby bump and walked to her car. No matter how broken her heart was or how much she’d hurt Brady, she had the baby to think of.
They would be okay. Just the two of them—her and her baby—just the way she thought she had wanted.