Page 39 of Forsaken Trail (Runaway 4)

I flinched. She might as well have slapped me. “I would never do that.”

“I don’t know you, Brody.” Aria’s voice gentled. “Not really. I just don’t know what to expect from you. But I don’t want to fight. I don’t have the energy for it. So please don’t take offense. I honestly don’t know why you’re here.”

That was the thing with Aria, the reason her company was so refreshing. She didn’t want anything from me. She didn’t care about my money. She didn’t care about my business. She was simply honest. Sometimes, brutally so.

Honesty, I could deliver.

“I’m here because I want to be involved. With this—our, my—baby. I won’t forsake my child.”

Aria blinked, her eyebrows coming together. “Seriously?”

“Is that so hard to believe?” Did she really think I was such a cold monster? Probably. And I couldn’t blame her for it.

“I don’t know what to believe,” she whispered.

“Believe that I see how hard Clara works to raise August on her own. Believe that I don’t want my child growing up without me in his or her life. Please . . . don’t shut me out from this.”

Now it was her turn to flinch. An expression of sheer annoyance, distinctly Aria, added fire to those tired eyes. “I would never do that.”

The tension eased from my shoulders. “On the way here, I had some time to think.”

“I can already tell I’m not going to like this.”

A grin tugged at my mouth. “Hear me out.”

She leaned back, sagging into the couch. She yawned and covered it up with her hand. “I’m listening.”

“You live in Oregon.”

“I do?”

“Smart-ass,” I muttered. “I live in Arizona. Traveling back and forth isn’t going to work, for either of us. And I am guessing that you won’t want to be away from the baby for extended stretches of time.”

“No. I won’t.”

“Then one of us has to move.”

“You mean me.” She sat straight, her spine stiffening. “My life is here, Brody. My work. My home. I’m not giving it all up to live in the desert.”

The way she spat the last word made me pause. “What’s wrong with the desert?”

“It’s a desert.”

It was too much like California.

Clara had once told me the reason she suspected Aria had run from Vegas to Oregon hadn’t been the fake people or the city life, but because she’d wanted to get away from anything that reminded her of life at the junkyard in Temecula.

“You move here,” she said.

“I can’t.” I held up my hand when she opened her mouth. “I can’t in the next year.”

“After that?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“Why a year?”

I stood from the chair and stripped off my suit coat. If we were going to get into this, we might as well get comfortable. “Are you sure you don’t want dinner?”