Buchanan: Delicious Part 48

The magnitude of what he'd lost slammed into him. A wife. A family. They had all been his to lose and he had. She'd truly loved him. Sure, intellectually he'd known but until this exact second, he hadn't gotten it down deep.

Why hadn't he believed? Why hadn't he known how much he'd let drift away? She'd accused him of letting her go, of almost not being surprised that she'd left and she'd been right. He'd been waiting for her to walk out from the first day they met.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

PENNY FELT a profound sense of relief. It was as if she hadn't been able to draw in a deep breath for weeks.

"Pretty amazing," she said from the pa.s.senger seat of her Volvo.

"The picture was detailed," Cal said. "You could see everything."

"And more than you wanted to," she teased. "Were you completely grossed out?"

"No." He hesitated. "Okay, I didn't need her showing us the hole that was going to be the stomach."

Penny laughed. "That was a little strange," she admitted. "But very cool." All of it had been a miracle. "The baby seems so real now. I knew I was pregnant before, but seeing it like that while hearing the heartbeat..."

"It changed everything," he said.

"Exactly. And I was very tempted to ask about the gender. It would help with getting the nursery ready. The clothes and stuff."

"Do newborns wear clothes?" he asked.

"Oh. Good point. There's not a formal wardrobe, but they do have things to sleep in. I have some books on babies. I guess I should start reading that part."

"The chapter on fashion accessories?" he asked.

She smiled. "Sure. I don't want my baby being out of step with what's in style." She angled toward him. "Thank you for coming with me," she said. "I would have hated to do this alone."

"I'm glad I was there, too," he said. "But Reid would have come."

She nodded. "I know, but he would have freaked out." There'd been something intimate about the experience. While she and Reid were great friends, they'd never shared stuff like that.

She looked at Cal. Happiness, anger and sadness blended uneasily. She'd wanted this experience for them. She'd wanted to have children with him.

How involved had he been with Alison's pregnancy? How much of his presence here was to smooth things over? She believed he was genuinely sorry he'd hurt her, and that he hadn't withheld the truth to be vicious, but she suspected he would have been content to keep his daughter a secret forever.

"I'm sorry about our baby," he said.

She stared at him in surprise. "What do you mean?"

"I'm sorry we lost it." He shrugged. "I felt bad before, when it happened, but until today, the experience wasn't real. Intellectually I knew you were pregnant back then, but I didn't think about you having a baby. Sorry. I'm not making sense."

"No, you are." She understood how he could have been more disconnected from the experience. It hadn't been happening to his body. She just wasn't sure she believed him.

"I missed out on a lot," he said, staring straight ahead. "It's sad, for both of us."

Wow. Cal admitting to an emotion. "I'm sad, too," she told him. "But it was for the best."

"You losing the baby?"

She nodded. "There's a reason that sort of thing happens. There was probably something wrong with it and it wouldn't have survived anyway."

"I thought you were going to say it was for the best because we got a divorce."

"That's a factor, but not a big one," she said. "We would have figured out how to be parents without being together."

Not that she'd ever expected to be a single mother. Yet here she was, making it happen.

"You were right before," he said. "About me expecting you to leave. I was. Right from the beginning. Even when we got married, I always thought the relationship was temporary."

"Why? What did I ever say or do to make you think that?"

"It wasn't you." He gave her a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "You were in it for the long haul. It was me. How I was raised. What I believed. There are a lot of reasons that aren't that interesting. But I wanted you to know you were right." He glanced at her again. "It's one of your favorite things."

"Usually," she murmured, stunned by his confession. "This time I would have accepted being wrong." She hesitated, then asked. "If that's how you felt, why did you marry me?"

"I wanted to be wrong."

"But you weren't. I did leave."

"You left to get my attention. I'm the one who let you go. I had a good thing with you, Penny," he said. "When you left, I lost something I'll never be able to replace."

"Thank you for saying that. I always wondered if you'd even noticed I was gone."

"I noticed."

"Just not enough to come after me."

He glanced at her. "You're still mad about Lindsey."

"Mad doesn't cover it, Cal. It's not like you were hiding a tattoo. You kept a huge part of your life separate from me. Not just that you had a daughter, but that you loved her so much, you couldn't love anyone else."

"That's not true."

"Isn't it?"

"Penny, you were my wife. I wanted..."

"What? To stay together forever? To have a family?"

"I wanted us to make it."

"I don't believe you. I think you wanted to be alone with your guilt. At least your lack of interest wasn't about me specifically. You would have done this to anyone."

His hands tightened on the steering wheel. "You're not going to give me a break, are you?"