A Pregnancy Scandal by Kat Cantrell Page A

she wasn’t concerned about children that didn’t exist yet. Only the one that did. “I’m sorry, but—”
    â€œWait.” He shushed her gently. “I’m getting to the important part. I married Gina with my heart and eyes wide-open. We were going to have that life I just described and then she was gone. It was a single-car accident and no one could say for sure what had happened other than a telephone pole in the wrong place. The devastation... I can’t go through that again. So I’m not a fan of marriage, either. At least not the kind of marriage I had with her.”
    â€œThere’s another kind?” Alex blurted out before she thought better of it.
    She’d been caught up in watching his face as he talked about his first wife. The emotions were heartbreaking. What would it be like to be married to a man who loved you that much? Up until this moment, she hadn’t realized it was possible to love someone so much that even the distance of two years wouldn’t fully dull the pain of losing them.
    Obviously Phillip was the exception to the rule that love didn’t last.
    â€œThere are all kinds of marriages,” Phillip said. “That’s why you can’t say for sure that no marriages work.”
    Was that where he was going with this? “Sure I can. I didn’t have a fairy-tale childhood like yours. I lived through a really bad divorce and it doesn’t matter what kind of marriage my parents had because the ultimate result was that it ended. Just like yours did. That’s why marriages don’t work, because when they end, people get hurt. That’s why a marriage between us wouldn’t work.”
    â€œNot if we do it differently,” he suggested calmly, despite her rising agitation. “Hear me out.”
    Genuine curiosity got the better of her. If he’d spouted romantic poetry or autocratic demands, she’d order him to stop the car. But logic? The man couldn’t have picked a better way to get her attention. “Okay. I’ll bite. What kind of marriage could we possibly have that would work, Phillip?”
    â€œOne based on partnership. We’re about to become parents. I’d like to raise our child together, without shuttling him or her between us. I want us to be on the same page about things like discipline. I want to celebrate holidays together. Share milestones. I think that’s best accomplished by being a unit.”
    His deep voice slid along her skin as he wove a picture with words. A picture that dug into the core of her hurt and disappointment about her parents’ divorce and promised that her child wouldn’t have to endure what she had.
    It was fool’s gold, though. All the things he talked about depended on their commitment to each other never dying. It depended on no one changing their mind at some point down the road and ripping out the heart of the family that they’d built.
    â€œBut we don’t have to be married to make parenting decisions together,” she said. “And if we’re not married, we never have to go through a divorce.”
    No marriage meant no one got hurt. No child of hers would ever have to be the product of a broken home.
    But the line she’d just drawn might also mean her child wouldn’t get to know his or her father, not like she’d envisioned. She couldn’t have it both ways.
    If she and Phillip didn’t live in the same house, how would Christmas morning work? They’d have to split custody and explain that Santa came to two houses for some children. But she would always feel that something wasn’t quite right. And the arrangements might mean that some years, she wouldn’t even have her child with her on Christmas morning. Or a random Tuesday when her child took his or her first steps. The first day of school, learning to ride a bike—the list went on and on.
    There were thousands of things she might miss