“But you’ll be in danger. I have to go with you.” She put her fists on her waist as if puffing up to make herself fierce. “Benjamin, I know you. If someone stood in front of you with a gun pointed straight at your head, you’d be thinking about what the man planned to do. Would he really shoot me? Or was he just trying to make a point? You’d think about it. Should I run? Should I stay? I need to be there to tell you to duck.”

He shook his head. “I’m not going to get shot.” He almost smiled as he saw the fire in her eyes. The fire of the fighting Irish was in her blood as well as her hair.

“You don’t understand, Benjamin. I can’t lose you. I don’t care if you don’t believe in love—I do, and I flat out, no doubt in my mind, love you. I don’t care if you don’t love me. That doesn’t stop me from loving.” Both hands gripped his shirt. “I go where you go.”

Benjamin frowned, knowing he’d gotten everything wrong and it was time he straightened it out. “Don’t you know, Jenny, that I love you too? I have since that first time we made love at the lake when we were in college. I love you with my brain and my heart and a few other body parts.”

She laughed. “I’m glad you finally remembered, but now I know I really have to go with you. I cannot lose the man I love, the father of my baby.”

“We’re too old to have a baby, but we’ll have a good life.”

She puffed up again, ready to fight, only this time he was the opponent. “That’s just it, we’re not too old, apparently. I bought all four brands of pregnancy tests at the drugstore and they all said the same thing. I’m pregnant. Correction, we’re pregnant. You’re the only man I’ve been intimate with for years, so I have no doubt you’re going to be a father.”

“How did that happen?” he demanded, but he couldn’t stop his smile.

“Benjamin, you really do have to take my biology class.”

He sat down on the porch railing and breathed like the world was running out of air. “Making up a pregnancy won’t work, Jenny. You have to stay and I have to go. I swear, I’ll be back in an hour. We’ll talk later.”

For a moment he’d believed her. “You must know I’m not the least bit afraid of a bomb. But just thinking about the possibility of a child made me feel like a bomb went off in my chest. So stop pretending.”

“Listen to me, Benjamin. We are having a baby in about eight months, whether you believe it or not.”