Not Quite Mine (Not Quite #2)(17)
Author: Catherine Bybee

Not twenty-four hours later, Dean knocked on the door of her suite. When she asked what he was doing there, he told her he wanted to kiss her again. To make certain he hadn’t imagined the experience.

Suddenly Katie was a young girl again, giddy with his attention. He left her suite the next day, and she knew her life would never again be the same.

“We didn’t date in public. When we were with friends, it became a game to tease each other without anyone noticing,” Katie explained to Monica.

“How long did this go on?”

“A few months.”

“What happened to break it up?”

Katie’s gaze slid to the floor where she had been lying next to Savannah for the last hour as she talked about her past. Savannah had fallen to sleep, her pouty lips moved with every breath.

“We fought…things ended.” She wasn’t about to tell all her secrets. About how she’d ended up pregnant with Dean’s baby only to have a miscarriage. About how the awful monthly cycles she’d endured were actually a severe case of endometrioses that messed up not only her fallopian tubes, but made her uterus inhospitable to carry a pregnancy to term. The fact she ended up pregnant to begin with was a small miracle. “Six months after our breakup Dean was engaged. He obviously wasn’t heartbroken.”

“But you were.”

She shook her head. “No…please. We had a fling. That’s it.”

Monica was sipping her second glass of wine. “A fling? You sleep with your teenage crush and you think it’s a fling?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Hmm. Do the two of you ever talk about your affair?”

“No.” Not out loud anyway.

“Is it awkward? Working with him?”

“As much as can be expected. I’m sure it would have been worse had we told the world about us.”

Monica moved off the couch quietly and placed her wine glass in the sink. “I’m sure you think what you had is over, but Dean watches you whenever you’re in the room. I noticed it at the wedding. He obviously still cares.”

“He nearly married another woman. If he felt anything for me, it was lust and that’s it.”

“Time will work that out.”

“Time will work what out?”

“Whether he only wants you for the crazy-hot sex or something more.”

“I didn’t say it was crazy-hot.”

Monica rolled her eyes. “You didn’t have to. The temperature in the room rose five degrees while you talked about it. Listen, all I’m saying is this. If you’re going to be working beside him for the next few months, and he still has a thing for you, you’re going to find out about it. My gut says he does.”

Katie started to shake her head.

“And…my gut is also saying you have a thing for him.”

“Had a thing.”

Monica waved her hand in the air, dismissing everything Katie was saying. “Whatever! De’Nial is a river in Egypt yet you’ve parked your brain right next to it. Deny you care about him all you want. But when he starts sniffing around asking where you’re spending your time, you’ll know without a doubt that he’s thinking about you.”

Monica slipped past her and started down the hall. “I’m taking a shower and going to bed.”

“G’night, Monica.”

Left alone with her thoughts, Katie wondered if it was possible that Dean thought about her at all. She’d severed their relationship with a hacking knife instead of a quick clean blade.

Two weeks after the miscarriage and all the follow-up tests her doctor put her through determined that she would never carry a child, Katie found Dean in her suite looking at pictures on his cell phone. They were pictures of his nephew and Dean’s large family visiting the baby in the maternity wing at the hospital.

For the first time in weeks, Katie had felt like getting dressed and joining the world. She’d surprised Dean by coming up behind him.

He snapped his phone away, but Katie had already seen the pictures.

“Hey,” he said, pecking a kiss on her cheek. “You’re dressed.”

He’d been strong, a shoulder to cry on…a friend. “I’m feeling better,” she said. “What were you looking at?”

“Nothing.”

“Really? Nothing?”

Dean tucked his phone into his jeans as he stood. He placated her with a smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“Just pictures. So, what do you have planned today?” His changing of the subject wasn’t unnoticed.

“How old is your nephew now?”

Dean shuffled his feet. “A year and a half.”

“You still keep a baby picture of him on your phone?” The hurt of losing their child hung just above the surface of her skin, it burned.

“He’s a cute kid.” There was more to his walk down memory lane than glancing at a picture of his nephew. Dean was thinking about the magnitude of Katie’s problem. At least that’s what she thought. If she asked him, he’d probably tell her she was wrong. But she knew he wanted to be a dad. He’d been right there with her from the beginning of the pregnancy and never once said he wasn’t ready. Quite the opposite.

They’d never kept secrets from each other and the moment Katie suspected she was pregnant, she told Dean. They drove together to a drugstore far outside of town, hoping like hell that there weren’t any cameras pointing her way. They’d been together when the double lines on the stick told her that her period wasn’t late, it simply wasn’t coming. Instead of staring at the stick and cursing it, Dean gathered her in his arms and kissed the living daylights out of her. “Yeah, we didn’t plan it,” he’d said. “But I was born to be a dad and you’re going to be the best mom.” He’d made love to her that night and the next morning she woke up to a plush teddy bear on the pillow next to her.

Within a week, she’d miscarried.

All the joy, all the excitement, left Dean’s eyes. Until she’d seen him staring at the picture of his nephew.

Her inability to have kids was her problem.

It wasn’t too late for Dean.

For the next few days, Katie cloaked her emotions with her debutant persona, slid into her tight skirts, and avoided Dean. No one knew about them. No one knew about the miscarriage. Katie knew she had to cut her ties and the only way she’d be able to do that was with bloodshed.

The nightclub was packed the night Dean found her. She’d had a couple of drinks, but was far from drunk. She was contemplating leaving when she spotted him looking for her. She ran her hand up the arm of a man who’d been trying to get her attention all night and asked him to dance.