His Pregnant Courthouse Bride

It was her suspicion that the moment she became a potential embarrassment to Tom, her career would be in jeopardy. Maybe they’d have given her time to find another position, but she didn’t want the humiliation. There was already enough of that, knowing she’d had an affair with a married man, and that others knew it as well.

She sighed and returned her attention to Wyatt. “I guess I’ve been trying to ignore it. To deal with the nitty-gritty of quitting my job, packing up my life and heading into the unknown. But I couldn’t have stayed. I couldn’t.”

He nodded slowly. “You could have tried. It certainly would have been miserable, but if you said nothing, maybe they would have gotten past it.”

“You said that. I wasn’t buying it. If I hadn’t just joined the firm last spring, maybe. But my track record was so short...” She wrapped her hands around the glass of milk and stared into the liquid. “See if I ever trust a man again.”

His dark eyes turned suddenly inscrutable. “Ouch,” he said quietly.

She flushed. “I don’t mean you. You’re different.”

He merely gave her a half smile. “Of course, we all know who should be paying for this mess, but unfortunately life isn’t always fair. Kicking up a fuss would probably have bought you more trouble than you’d ever want. You think this guy Tom would have retaliated in some way?”

“Probably,” she said glumly. “Even if I never said a word, I’d have worried him. I’d be hanging there like a threat. I saw how he handled his cases. He’s not a man you want to cross swords with if he feels threatened.”

Wyatt nodded. “I accept your judgment. Never having met the guy, I have no idea what he’s capable of.” He paused. “Did I ever tell you about Ellie?”

She shook her head slowly, grateful for the change of subject. “Who’s she?”

“I dated her for a while about a year ago. Along about the time we started to get serious, she asked me to dismiss a bunch of charges against her cousin.”

Amber gasped, totally diverted from her problems. “No!”

“Oh, yes. That relationship ended instantly. So to get even, she told everyone she knows that I’m gay.”

“Oh! That must have made you angry.”

He grinned suddenly. “Why? I don’t care. That’s my business and nobody else’s. Anyway, it’s old news. I’m just saying, life throws curveballs. It’s what we do about them that matters. I chose the high road and she tried to get even. The point is, I understand why you worried about what Tom might do. He had a job and a marriage to protect. A reputation, even. He’d probably have done everything he could to submarine you. I’m not saying he would have succeeded, but it could have made you miserable for a long time. You decided how you wanted to handle it, and here we are.”

For the first time, she drank some of the milk he’d offered her. “Yes, here we are,” she said after she’d dabbed her mouth with a paper napkin. “Where is that?”

He laughed. “Just take some time to figure out whatever you need to. The only thing I ask is that you get to a proper doctor. Wherever you may be in seven or eight months, you don’t want to be with a baby that could have been healthier if you’d taken care of yourself.”

* * *

Right now, Wyatt thought as he studied her and listened to her, the pregnancy was a major concern whether she was ready to face it or not. While he was no expert and had no personal experience, he seemed to remember hearing that the first few months could be absolutely critical to a fetus. Were vitamins and avoiding coffee enough? He had no idea.

That was the point of doctors, and he had great respect for professionals. Amber needed one, and he was determined she see one before long.

She was a beautiful woman, a very smart woman, and it troubled him to see her in this situation. From all he’d heard from her over the years, he got the feeling that she’d been one of those people for whom everything went right. No major problems, a skyrocketing career, the world on a string.

But of course, nobody got through life without their share of troubles. She’d apparently lumped many of hers into one enormous mistake. And she was devastated. Everything she’d worked for had been taken from her by a lying jackass. He had plenty of questions to ask, basic ones like, hadn’t she been using protection? But it was none of his business.

His only business was to be supportive until she could figure out what she wanted to do. In the meantime, quashing his attraction to her would probably be very wise. She’d been through the wringer; she’d said she wouldn’t trust men again. Having her place him in a separate category meant she didn’t see him as an eligible man. Which was fine by him. Neither of them needed any complications, and she’d probably be moving on in a month or two.

Given Amber’s dreams, he couldn’t see her hanging around here for long.

But still, there was an errant part of him that had belonged to Amber ever since the first day they had talked. Friendship? Of course. Something more? No point in thinking about it, even though over the years he’d occasionally daydreamed about what life would have been like with her. Pointless fantasy, reawakened by phone calls and running into her at the convention. Fantasies he’d put aside again every time they rose.

She finished her milk and rose to rinse the glass at the sink. Standing there with her back to him, she began to speak. “I need to wake up,” she said.

“Wake up?” Curious, he twisted in his chair to better see her, even if it was only her back.

“Wake up,” she repeated. “This has been like a nightmare. Do you know how it started?”

“Which part?”

She shook her head, and a heavy sigh escaped her. “Which part? Good question. You know working for a firm like that doesn’t leave any room for a social life.”

“I’ve heard.” Not that being a judge was a whole lot better, unless he put his foot down as he had this week.

“Two thousand billable hours a year is forty hours a week for fifty weeks. Which doesn’t sound all that awful until you add all the hours that aren’t billable. I didn’t get a day off and I didn’t expect one. Not for many years to come. Your friends, such as they are, are people you work with. If you have a family, you might see them for a few minutes as you’re falling into bed or running out the door in the morning. I loved most of it.”

“Okay,” he said to show he was listening, but unsure if she was looking for a particular response from him.

“In a few more years, if I’d been lucky and continued to rise, I’d have reached the level where I could get out of the office to go golfing with clients. I might even have been able to take an occasional weekend. The point is, though, that your whole life revolves around the firm. They even arrange the social occasions. Dinner with the partner, a party at a partner’s house, where in theory you’d win some new clients. All business.”

For those who wanted to get ahead in that game, he thought. Plenty of others chose an easier path, but Amber had always been driven. Law school at nineteen?

“Human nature will have its way eventually,” she said. “Tom started to express interest. He was attractive, and considering we were pretty much working all the time, he was what was available. Office romances are dangerous. I knew it, but I took the chance anyway. He was in the middle of a messy divorce, he said. And I believed him.”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

She turned slowly to face him and folded her arms tightly. “I think that from working all the time I let parts of my development become stunted. The practice of law gave me a view of a lot of ugliness in life, but that ugliness didn’t include a coworker deliberately lying to me to get me into his bed. Regardless, in the last ten years I haven’t had time for a boyfriend. I only dated a couple of times, but my schedule blew everything up. So there I was, missing a massive part of life, and this coworker was suddenly pursuing me. I was flattered. I was stupid.”

“You’re not stupid. Some very smart people get conned, Amber.”

She smiled crookedly, without humor. “Well, I got conned. Funny, it never seemed odd to me that the only time we got together was in a hotel over our lunch hour. When we had a lunch hour. It’s not like I couldn’t have escaped the office sometimes just for dinner. There should have been red flags all over it.”

He couldn’t disagree. “I imagine you really liked him.”

“Of course. I thought I was falling in love. Maybe I was. But then I found out. God, that was awful. I caught one of the clerks drinking in the bathroom, and when I started to tell her she couldn’t do that, she stopped me dead in my tracks. It seems I wasn’t the first newbie Tom had taken advantage of, and if she hadn’t been drunk she probably wouldn’t have told me. Everyone kept quiet about it because they didn’t want to get fired.”

She shook her head, then held out one arm, almost a pleading gesture. “I broke it off immediately, of course. He started giving me a hard time, but there wasn’t a whole lot he could do except make me uncomfortable. I was uncomfortable enough that all my coworkers probably knew what had been happening. I felt so humiliated!”

“I’m sure your coworkers knew you had been used,” he offered quietly.

“I’m sure. At least that’s what I kept telling myself. Until I found out I was pregnant.” A bitter laugh escaped her. “Birth control fails sometimes. I was one of the minuscule percentage of failures. Ironic, huh?”

“I think it stinks. I don’t find it ironic at all.” He wished he could hug her, but he wasn’t sure that would help. If she needed to talk, the best thing he could do was listen.

“Anyway, that’s when I called you. I could stick out the knowing looks. I figured the whispers would go away. But a pregnancy? Everyone would know. And I have no doubt Tom would have used every bit of influence he had to get rid of me if he knew, because he could deny everything except a paternity test.”

As a lawyer and then a judge, Wyatt had learned to separate his emotions from his thinking. He had to. He was the one who had to remain objective as much as possible. He’d be no good to a client if feelings clouded his judgment, and that hadn’t changed much on the bench. He might dispense mercy when he could, but he still had to have an unemotional, clear grasp of the situation, the facts and the law.

He was finding that objectivity very difficult to achieve right now. In fact, damn near impossible. He looked at the young woman, his friend, nearly curled up on herself as she relived her nightmare, and he would have dearly loved to get his hands on this guy Tom. His fists had clenched, and he had to make an effort to relax them. He didn’t want to frighten Amber with the impulse to violence that was building in him now.

“Anyway,” she said presently, “it’s been a nightmare, especially since I found out I was pregnant. I couldn’t believe that on top of everything else. Maybe I still can’t believe it. It’s almost like if I close my eyes and pull the blankets over my head, the bad things will go away.” She shook her head. “I know better than that. And you’re right, whether I’m ready to accept it or not, I need to take care of the child growing inside me. That’s one thing I can still do right.”