.

reigned while he tried to process what she’d said. “You’re pregnant?”

      “Yes.”

      “Just how far along are you?” he prompted, his heart beginning to thump inside his chest like an out-of-control jackhammer.

      Her gaze never wavered from his when she answered. “Three and a half months.”

      He immediately glanced at the front of the sweatshirt she wore, but it was big on her and a little too early to notice any telltale thickening of her stomach. Unable to sit still, Zach rose to his feet and began to pace the length of the kitchen. It didn’t take a math degree to figure out that the baby she was carrying was most likely his.

      “And before you ask, yes, I’m pregnant with your baby,” she stated, confirming his suspicions.

      His stomach twisted into a painful knot as he recalled another time a woman was carrying his child. “We used protection.”

      “Yes, but one of the condoms broke,” she reminded him.

      He’d figured the chances of making her pregnant from that one time had to be fairly remote. Apparently he’d been wrong.

      Nodding, he rubbed the tension building at the back of his neck. “I remember. But why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Her desire to be left alone to deal with the flooded-out car and her refusal to take off her bulky raincoat suddenly made perfect sense. She’d been trying to hide the pregnancy from him. With his jaw clenched so tight it felt welded shut, he asked, “Didn’t you think I had the right to know?”

      He watched her expression turn from defiant to righteously indignant. “Oh, no you don’t, buster.” She stood to face him. “I’m not letting you get away with playing the victim here. You lied to me about who you were. And up until this morning, when you barged into my office and told me your real name, I thought I was having Tom Zacharias’s baby.” She started to walk away, then, turning back, added, “And just for the record, I searched desperately to find a man who didn’t even exist because I thought he needed to know that he was going to be a father.” She swiped away the tears suddenly spilling from her eyes. “When all of my efforts proved useless…you can’t even begin to imagine…how much of a fool I felt or…the emotional pain I went through. So don’t…even go there.”

      Zach stood in the middle of the kitchen long after he watched Arielle rush down the hall toward the guest room. Stunned, he had a hard time believing how rapidly his life had changed in the past twelve hours. When he’d gone to the school this morning, he’d had nothing more on his mind than sweettalking Helen Montrose into going easy on his mischievous nephew, then heading to the office to go over the contracts and blueprints for his newest resort. But along with his discovery that the old gal was no longer in charge at Premier Academy, the only woman he’d been tempted to have a relationship with since his ill-fated engagement had reappeared in his life and was pregnant with his baby.

      Just the thought that he was going to be a father caused a myriad of feelings to course through him. Had it not been for his ex-fiancé, he might have felt pride and excitement about the baby Arielle carried. But thanks to Gretchen Hay den and her duplicity, he was filled with a deep sense of apprehension that he just couldn’t shake.

      Five years ago, he’d thought he had it all—a thriving business, a devoted bride-to-be and a baby on the way. But all that had changed when Gretchen decided that motherhood would be detrimental to her figure and seriously limit her options should something better than being the wife of a hotel entrepreneur come along.

      He took a deep breath in an effort to chase away the ugly memory of the day he’d discovered the woman he’d thought he loved had deliberately ended the life of their unborn child. All of his focus now needed to be on Arielle and protecting the baby they’d created together. And this time the outcome was going to be different than it had been five years ago. This time, he wasn’t going to take it on faith that Arielle truly wanted his baby. He was going to make certain his child was protected.

      Most of his anger dissipated as he thought about her trying to tell him about the baby and how hurt she’d been when she couldn’t. But not all of it.

      He understood her inability to find him after they parted in Aspen. In order to be completely anonymous, he always registered under an assumed name when he checked into one of his hotels. It was the only way to get an accurate idea of the quality of guest services and the efficiency and courtesy of the resort management. Besides, it was standard practice that guest information was kept in the strictest of confidence. If Arielle had inquired about him, and he had every reason to believe that she had, the management at the resort wouldn’t have given her anything. And even if they had broken protocol and given her the name and address he’d registered under, the information would have proven completely worthless.

      But that didn’t explain why she hadn’t told him about the pregnancy when they were in her office this morning. And she’d had ample opportunity to tell him this afternoon when he’d discovered her sitting in her car in the school’s parking lot. And why hadn’t she told him the real reason that she had become sick on the drive to the ranch?

      His appetite deserting him, Zach removed their plates from the table, scraped the food into the garbage disposal and put the dishes in the dishwasher. He’d give her time to calm down, then he wanted answers. And he wasn’t going to bed without them.

      With her emotions once again under control, Arielle wiped away the last traces of her tears and sat up on the side of the bed to look around the guest room. It was decorated in shades of peach and antique white and at any other time, she would have loved staying in such a beautiful room. But at the moment, it felt like a prison cell, albeit a very pretty one.

      She was stranded on a remote ranch with the man who had lied to her about his identity, abandoned her without a word, broken her heart and made her pregnant. And if all that wasn’t enough, he was blaming her for not telling him about the pregnancy.

      “Unreal,” she said aloud.

      But even more incredible was that her life was paralleling her mother’s. Francesca Garnier had fallen in love with a man who had impregnated her with a set of twin boys and simply walked away. Then, ten years later, the man had shown up long enough to rekindle their romance, which led to the birth of Arielle, and once again disappeared. And when Arielle and her brothers first met their paternal grandmother a few months ago, they’d learned their father had used an assumed name.

      Instead of Neil Owens, the starving artist their mother knew, their father was the infamous playboy Owen Larson, the only offspring of Emerald Larson, one of the richest, most successful businesswomen in the modern corporate world. During the ten years away from their mother, Owen Larson had fathered three other children—all boys and all with different women.

      It was so bizarre, she even had a hard time believing it. But when Emerald Larson had contacted them Arielle had gained three more brothers. And Emerald had embraced the Garnier siblings as part of her family, giving each a multimillion-dollar trust fund and one of the many companies within the Emerald, Inc. empire. Arielle became the new owner of Premier Academy and moved to Dallas.

      But that was immaterial. What was extremely disconcerting was, as her mother had done with her father, Arielle had fallen for a man she’d thought to be as honest and forthright as she’d been with him. But just like her father had done to her mother, Zach had deliberately lied to her to keep her from finding him.

      She shook her head to chase away her disturbing thoughts and concentrated on forgetting what she couldn’t change and focusing on her present dilemma. In spite of the stress and tension she had experienced or because she hadn’t finished her dinner, her hunger had returned full force.

      Unfortunately, if she went to find something for herself in the kitchen, she’d likely run into Zach. Though they had several things to discuss and decisions to make, she wasn’t ready for that just yet. She’d already had an extremely upsetting day.

      But the decision was taken out of her hands when her stomach rumbled. If she waited much longer she’d