Page 34 of Alaskan Blackout
Eleven
Quinton felt the ground fall away from underneath him. McKenna’s words simply didn’t track in the aftermath of sex so good it had rearranged his atoms. He’d barely recovered himself.
She was pregnant? A vein throbbed in his temple, keeping time with his suddenly pounding heartbeat.
“I don’t understand,” he managed finally, knowing that his whole future might very well hang in the balance of what he said next. He needed to proceed with care. “So soon? And we were careful...”
His words trailed away. They were meaningless and he knew it. A pregnancy could happen at any time. No matter how careful they might have been. He’d attended sex ed in high school. The mechanics hadn’t changed since then.
“I’m aware that I’m in the very early stages, but I skipped a period while I was on the tour to Attu.” McKenna righted herself to sit up straight in bed, holding the pale blue afghan to her chest. Her blue eyes had a worried look. “If I’d been anywhere close to civilization I would have tried to hunt down some Plan B contraceptives, but by the time we neared a village with a store, I was well past the time for that to work.”
Quinton realized he’d sat up at some point too, his back pinned to a headboard padded with heavy gray twill. The afghan still covered his lap and legs, the loosely woven yarn a fragile shared connection between them.
“I’m glad you told me,” he assured her, the words coming on autopilot since he knew what he needed to say. He would never be the kind of father that Duke Kingsley had been, only recognizing half of his children. “Since the news has a great impact on us both.”
McKenna’s brow furrowed, her lips compressing into a frown. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that as well. There’s no reason for you to feel obligated when I’m perfectly capable of raising a child on my own.”
He felt his brows shoot up. Wariness replaced his earlier shock. “Excuse me?”
“There’s no need to rearrange your whole life for a pregnancy you didn’t want—”
“Wait.” He had to halt that line of thinking immediately, concerned about the message she might have misconstrued from his surprise. Shifting to face her on the bed, he took her shoulders in his hands so she could see his expression. Hear his sincerity. “This baby might be unexpected but it is most certainly wanted.”
In the quiet aftermath of his declaration, McKenna’s calico cat leaped onto the bed, winding her way between them as if brokering a peace. She settled on one of the pillows and proceeded to lick a paw.
McKenna’s fingers strayed to Freya’s head, where she stroked through the long, multicolored fur.
“I understand what you’re saying. I only meant that you’re under no obligation to remain here because of this.” Her chin tilted up. Defensive.
What had he ever said to give her the impression he was the kind of guy who would cut and run in a situation like this?
“McKenna, there is every obligation.” He lifted a hand to her face, willing her to understand. “I wouldn’t walk away from my child any more than you would.”
She seemed to weigh his words, her struggle to trust evident in every line of her tense shoulders. Finally, she nodded. “Fair enough.”
Quinton felt a weight roll off his shoulders, thankful he’d made himself clear on that point at least. But he knew it was only the beginning of everything they needed to work out between them.
The next point was one of considerable importance. He took one of her hands in his, shifting closer still. Freya mewed a protest that they’d intruded on her space before resettling on the foot of the bed.
“If this baby continues to grow and thrive in the coming months,” he began, his throat so dry he needed to clear it. Tension strung his muscles tight. “I hope you will consider marriage to me.”
He could hear the wooden cadence in his tone as he pushed the words free but didn’t know how to fix that. It had been tough enough framing the life-changing words he hadn’t expected to speak this day.
This year, even.
McKenna withdrew her fingers from his. Her tone had cooled when she spoke again. “Don’t be absurd. You don’t want to be married to me any more than I want to be married to you.”
A knife twisted in his gut that he was wrecking this. Possibly hurting her in the process. Yet how could he pretend to be ready for marriage? He hadn’t even accomplished his primary goal in coming to Dutch Harbor, so it wasn’t like he was in a good position to stick around now. For that matter, the woman who carried his child had dug her heels in so hard to defy him she’d forced Quinton to continue his search another way.
Unless that postcard downstairs held a clue to Clayton’s whereabouts after all. He hadn’t thought about it during the course of their date or the amazing encounter that had followed it. But now, he thought back to the wolf picture that had appeared randomly on the Cyclone Shack bulletin board. Then reappeared in McKenna’s home. In his gut, he felt sure there was a connection to Clay. Right now though, he needed to allay McKenna’s concerns for the sake of their child.
“I want whatever is best for this baby,” he clarified. “After seeing my father fail to claim all of his offspring, I can tell you with one hundred percent certainty that I won’t follow in his footsteps.”
McKenna appeared only slightly mollified by the explanation. His eyes had grown accustomed to the dim light in the bedroom by now, and he could see the slight relaxing of her shoulders even as her teeth continued to worry her lower lip for a long moment while the night wind howled outside.
“I don’t want that any more than you do,” she said at last, hugging her arms tighter around herself. “But I’m not sure the best answer is to race into a union based purely on convenience.”
The weight of the future shifted squarely to his shoulders, the need to protect the mother of his child as important to him as giving any child of his a secure home life. Memories of his mother breathing her last gasp in his arms was a rough kick to his chest. The loss still left a big hole in his life. Quinton wouldn’t abdicate the responsibilities of family for anything.