“I’m not here for dinner.”

I stepped back. “Come in anyway.” I led the way to the kitchen.

“Have you told the father?” Trey asked.

I lifted the lid off the soup. “Not yet.”

“You need someone to take care of you,” Trey said. “You and the baby.”

I stirred. “Not your job.”

“It could be.” His tone was uncharacteristically grim. Resolute.

I turned. His face was pale, his eyes very dark.

He was serious, I realized with a curious twist of heart. He was . . . Trey. My buddy. But at some point, when I wasn’t paying attention, he had become something more, this quiet, determined man set on doing the right thing. “I can’t stay old Mr. Laurence’s grandson for the rest of my life.”

He was right, and I was wrong. He had changed.

And I had, too.

Marrying Trey would be the perfect romance novel solution, where the pregnant heroine enters a marriage of convenience and finds true love with her best friend. I could be Elizabeth Bennet, living happily ever after at Pemberley. Trey was kind. He was rich. He would always take care of me.

Only . . . Lizzy loved Darcy, right?

“Trey.” I put down the spoon and sat, taking his hands across the kitchen table. His hands were long and elegant. No scars, except for a white puncture at the fleshy base of his thumb where he’d jabbed a fish hook once. No tattoos.

I swallowed. “I appreciate the offer. I do. Really. But I don’t want to marry you.” I squeezed his hands. “And you don’t want to marry me.”

Something flashed in his eyes. Relief? “It’s complicated.”

“Well, yeah,” I said dryly. “I’m pregnant.”

He didn’t smile. “I still want to help.”

“You can. You will. You’ll be an amazing uncle.”

He sighed and released me. “I’m better at playtime than diapers anyway.”

“You’re good at a lot of things.” I got up to serve us soup. Somehow I knew that now he would stay. “You want to start a college fund, I won’t say no. My job prospects don’t look so good right now.”

“What about that guy? The father.”

“Eric.”

“Yeah. He ought to pay.”

“You mean, like child support.”

“That, too.”

“Ha. I’m glad you can joke about it.”

“Who says I’m joking?” Startled, I turned, soup dripping from my ladle. Trey was smiling crookedly, the old Trey smile, but his eyes were deadly serious. “You have to tell him,” he said quietly.

“I know. I will. I want to. It’s just . . .”

“Complicated,” he finished for me.

“Yeah.”

“If you’re worried about how he’ll react—”

“No,” I said quickly. Not in any way I could discuss with Trey. “I trust him to do the right thing.” Whatever the right thing was. “It’s just . . . It’s not the sort of news you break over the phone.”

“So you’re going to see him.”

Come see me, I had written on New Year’s Eve. NC is beautiful in the spring.