The woman smiled at me, her face clearly rewinding back into that past. “Yeah, we had some great times. You’re very lucky…he’s a great guy.” She said that last part wistfully and that tension came back to me. Just how had she known my husband? Before I could ask, she added, “Do you live around here?” She looked around like Teren might be here too. I mentally smiled that he was visiting his family at the ranch. Bringing her eyes back to me, she said, “Do you think we could all get together while I’m in town?”
Relief flooded through me that she didn’t live here. Sighing with a fake reluctance, I said, “I’m not sure. He’s very busy with his work.”
She brightened at that. “Oh, did he become a writer? He was so brilliant in school.”
My smile left me that she knew him so well. “Um…yes. He writes for a magazine here.” Not knowing how I felt about meeting this woman, I slapped on a friendly smile, my hand automatically going to my stomach, as yet another child knocked me from the inside. “Well, I’ll be sure to tell him you say hello.” You can be sure of that. I had many questions for that boy.
She didn’t react to my clear dismissal. Instead her eyes went to my stomach and I swear her face paled. “Are you…is that…?” She looked up at me, her eyes unnecessarily moist. “Are you expecting …Teren’s child?”
My brows furrowed at the look on her face. I couldn’t even speak. Luckily, or unluckily, Tracey answered for me. “Yep. He knocked her up good…twins. Right around the time they got married.” She stressed married, like she was trying to warn away this could-be home wrecker.
As the woman’s eyes filled with tears, I still didn’t think that that was what this was about. Her eyes went back to my stomach and as the tears filled to flood level, she hastily brushed them aside. “God, I’m sorry. I’m being so inappropriate today. I just didn’t expect to hear about him again…and here you are…and you’re…” She looked at a smugly smiling Tracey and then to me. “I should go. Congratulations…to both of you.”
She hastily turned to leave and I reached out and grabbed her hand. She looked back at me, more tears falling, and the sympathetic side of me kicked in. “Are you okay?” Tracey snorted again and I ignored her again. This woman was hurting for some reason, and it couldn’t just be because some boy she’d known in high school had gotten married and started a family.
She sniffled as she looked back at me, another tear falling, her blue eyes glistening. “I’m sorry. It shouldn’t still affect me after all this time, and we were so young, it really was for the best.” She bit her lip and shrugged. “I guess you just never really get over that kind of loss.” She shook her head, more tears falling.
She was really starting to lose it and I had no idea why. Then her words started filling in my head, and over the music piping through the room, I started to piece together what she meant. Loss. She didn’t mean losing Teren. She hadn’t seemed much more than curious about him, until she looked at my stomach. That was when pain had brought her to the blubbery mess she was now. Pain, over my pregnancy. Loss…over her own?
She stared at my stomach, her voice sad and reminiscent. “I wonder if they will have his super dark hair and beautiful pale eyes.” She stopped talking and looked back up at me. “Such a great combination, isn’t it? The darkness and lightness. So perfect.” Her hand went to her stomach in a familiar move, a move I did daily. My eyes widened as I watched her, my suspicions confirmed.
My mouth dropped wide open. “Were you pregnant?” I whispered.
She looked terrified, like I might strike her, and backed up a step, pulling apart from me. She looked over at a startled Tracey and then back to me. “God, I’m so inappropriate. I shouldn’t be bringing this up with you.” She shook her head and started to leave. “Please, tell Teren hello. It was nice to meet you.”
She turned to leave again and I stood up quickly. Well, as quickly as I could get out of the throne room-like chair. Tracey understood, and helped me to stand up quicker. The woman paused as I desperately grabbed her arm again. “Please,” I begged. “I need to know. Did Teren get you pregnant?”
She sighed, looking horribly apologetic. “It was a long time ago. Please don’t be angry.” She shrugged off my hand and took a quick step back. “I’m so sorry I said anything.” She looked at my stomach again. “You just…surprised me. Brought back a lot of…memories.” Backing up another step, she muttered, “Please, give Teren my best.”
I only nodded. I planned on giving Teren my best as well. I couldn’t even comprehend the fact that this woman vividly remembered him, right down to the hair and eyes and the fact that he loved to write. Her admission over what their relationship had been was so beyond startling, that I was a little numb from it, and Tracey had to physically help me walk to my car, for fear I might pass out at any moment. I wasn’t the first woman to have Teren Adams’ seed growing inside her. I felt like my world had just shattered.
I managed to separate from Tracey after we left that fateful coffee shop, convincing her that I was fine, and it was in Teren’s past and didn’t concern me in the slightest. She eventually bought that, and left in her own car to go home and visit Hot Ben, maybe now even more concerned over what he may be hiding from her.
I couldn’t worry about them any longer, as the hole punched through my gut started to ache. He’d gotten someone pregnant and never once mentioned it. You would think that was the sort of thing he’d mention while we were trying. And what happened to the baby anyway? Carrie had only mentioned loss. She never actually said what kind of loss. Did she not make it through the full pregnancy or did she give the baby up? I couldn’t imagine Teren’s family letting an heir go, so I tended to think it was the first part. She’d lost the baby. Willingly or unwillingly? How far along? While they were in school? How often had they had sex to get her pregnant?
As I automatically started driving to the ranch to confront my husband, that’s the direction my mind went. I knew I shouldn’t, I mean, neither one of us were virgins going into this relationship, and I’d had my fair share of dalliances, but as I sped along that highway, the only thing running through my head was the various positions he and that woman had possibly been engaged in. I pictured them in her car in the school parking lot, under the bleachers during a pep rally, and even up against the wall in the girl’s locker room. I doubted any of those scenarios had actually happened, but I pictured them anyway. I also wondered if I’d just met Teren’s “first”. My stomach felt sour by the time I got to the ranch.
Alanna greeted me at the door, opening it right as I walked up – she could now sense me too, since the blood in my babies was a homing beacon to all the vamps. She smiled widely at seeing me. “Emma, I didn’t think you’d be by today.” She cocked her head as I strode into the entryway. “Are you alright, dear?” She could probably hear my hammering heart.
“Where is he?” I bit out through clenched teeth.
She looked over her shoulder to a place outside, where he must be with Jack. “He’s coming. He sensed you approaching.”
I nodded and started pacing the room, my fists clenched tight. Alanna stopped me, putting a hand on my shoulder. “What is it, Emma?”
I started to answer her, to ask her if she knew about any of this, and how could she not tell me, and what else did she know, when suddenly Teren breezed into the room. His pale eyes took in my body language - my heart, my smell, my stance – everything about me was pissed off. He scrunched his brows as he walked over to me, his cool fingers coming to my cheeks while his eyes looked for clues. “What happened?”
Grabbing his hands and pulling them off my face, I clenched his fingers in mine. He made no indication that I was hurting him, which I probably wasn’t. “I met someone today, someone who knows you…very well.”