The pensive look turned into something Izzy couldn’t name. Guilt? “He was fun,” Lilah said. “Easy to hang with. Cute,” she added, almost reluctantly, and blushed again. “They’re an attractive family. The Shanahans have always been part of my life. I love them, but Shay was always one of my very favorite people.”
Ah. A crush. “I’m sorry. I can’t even imagine how difficult it is to lose someone like that.”
Lilah sent her a sad smile. “It is hard. And…complicated. Izzy, I apologize for such a personal question, but”—she broke off and took a deep breath, then continued in a rush—“are you and Trace going to get married?”
That came out of nowhere. “Uh, well, um.” She grabbed her wine and took a big gulp to stall. “I don’t know what the future holds, for us.” True. “We enjoy spending time together.” True.
“He cares about you, though,” Lilah insisted. “A lot.”
“He does,” she agreed. That much was also true. Trace was one of the most caring men she’d ever met. “I care about him, too.” Her truth streak continued, despite the thorny patch of questions. “I love him.” Wha?
Lilah’s smile bloomed.
Oh damn. Totally true. The realization settled bone-deep, as if it had always been there, waiting for her to discover it. She loved him. This wasn’t amazing sex—not just amazing sex. Not merely affection. She was in love with Trace Shanahan. And she should have shared the fact with him first, not a nice young woman clearly at a crossroads in her life, but there was no way to walk it back, now. Shaken, she took another sip of her wine.
Lilah scooted closer. “Have you and Trace talked about children?”
Whoa. Children?
She choked mid-swallow and dissolved into loud, chest-rattling coughs. “N-No. No,” she finally managed. “Lilah, honey. We’re not even engaged. I live in L.A. He lives here. How would that work?”
Yeah, how would that work?
“But you want kids, someday?”
“I, um…” She almost said she’d never really thought about it, but the answer rose up from another place inside her she hadn’t paid much attention to, like a shoot emerging from a long-dormant seed. “I do.” She said it more to herself than her companion. The mind she considered more logical than fanciful found it so easy to conjure a rough-and-tumble young boy with Trace’s blue eyes and black hair. Easy to picture Trace giving that boy a piggyback ride down the hill to the airfield. Or a girl. Her heart beat faster. And a girl. A little girl with long hair like hers, and long legs like Bridget’s, and no fear of geese, or snowshoeing, or piloting a bush plane over ice-laced mountains. “I do,” she said again, and faced Lilah.
Lilah reached out and captured both of Izzy’s hands, squeezed them tight and pinned her with urgent eyes. “Izzy, I have to tell you something. It’s important. Please, please, please don’t share it with anyone yet.”
Oh dear. She wasn’t sure she should make that promise, but she swallowed her reservations, and nodded. “Okay. I won’t.”
“I’m…I’m…” Lilah’s chin quivered. “God, I’ve never said this out loud before.”
Izzy’s thoughts raced in a thousand different directions. She wanted to make this easier for Lilah, so she latched onto the possibility uppermost in her mind. “Honey, are you gay?”
Lilah made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and vigorously shook her head. “No. Sorry, no.” She swiped at tears with an impatient hand. “No, Izzy. I’m pregnant.” Perhaps unconsciously, she laid her hand protectively across her abdomen. “I’m pregnant,” she said again, her voice suddenly steady. “I’m pregnant with Shay’s baby.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“I need you back here now, Trace. Now.”
The desperation in Izzy’s voice lifted his mood—and some other parts of him. Parts he thought might be out of commission for the evening thanks to spending time in the hotel bar with Jorg, fending off Jager shots. That seventy-something son-of-a-gun could drink like a monster. He folded an arm behind his head and got comfy on the hotel bed. “I’ll be home tomorrow by ten, latest. But we can do a bedtime story in the meanwhile.”
Silence greeted that suggestion. It stretched so long, he wondered if she was still there. “Izzy?”
“Trace, I’m serious. This is not me being playful. There are things going on. Things you need to be aware of. Things I can’t take care of, and I can’t ignore. And…and…”
The note in her voice wasn’t desperation—not sexual desperation—it was panic. His gut twisted. He sat up. “What’s going on?”
“I can’t tell you. I made promises. But you need to get back here ASAP. You need to talk to Bridget, and you really, really need to talk to Lilah.”
Bridget and Lilah? He leaned back against the headboard again. “Jeez, woman, you scared me for a minute. I thought this was something about the deal.”
“It is. Or it could be. No, it definitely is. More than just the deal, but everything I’m talking about impacts the deal. It impacts a lot of things.”
It wasn’t like Izzy not to make sense, but he couldn’t make sense of what she said. Damn Jorg and his Jager shots. The next time the man chartered a flight to visit his proctologist, Mad could do the honors. “Honey, if it involves the deal, then tell me. Just spill it. I’m your client, remember?”
“I can’t! God, Trace, I’m in the middle of a Shanahan shitshow here, and it’s got nothing to do with my duty to you as your attorney. There is extraneous personal information of a nonlegal nature that you need to consider and I. Can’t. Tell. You.”
He didn’t know what she was talking about, but one thing came through loud and clear. She’d worked herself into a state. He frowned. “Are you having a panic attack?”
She groaned. “‘Panic attack’ is a term reserved for an episode of intense physical and emotional anxiety arising from a perceived threat rather than an actual imminent event. I’m not worried about a perceived threat. I’m worried about actual imminent events. There is nothing irrational about the way I’m feeling right now.”
Clearly, she believed it, but all she was giving him were unsolvable riddles. Then another thought struck, because he knew she was spending the night at his place with Bridget and Lilah. “Uh, how much have you had to drink?”
“I don’t know. Doesn’t matter. This is not the Pinot talking. Look, you just have to trust me. You need to fly home tonight and talk to them. Separately. The order doesn’t matter. With Bridget, ask her why she left college. Ask Lilah… God.” She muttered under her breath. “I don’t know how you approach that conversation. Just sit down with her somewhere private and tell her I suggested she had news she ought to share with you. After you’ve talked to them, we need to talk, see where you’re at with the deal.”