tried to help him, but when that had failed, she had to err on the side of self-preservation. She couldn’t have sat back and watched his downward spiral any longer. Not when she’d loved him so much.
And she still cared about him now. She didn’t want that to be the case, but seeing Ian again had brought all those old feelings to the surface. In only a few short hours together, she’d been bombarded by her attraction to him and wrestled to keep herself at a physical distance. At the same time, her disappointment in his workaholic lifestyle was just as present. He was just as dedicated to the job now as he had been back then. But she couldn’t ignore her fierce protectiveness where he was concerned. Missy was lucky she’d never made it to the house last night. If all this had come to light with her here, Ian would have had to separate the women before someone had gotten hurt. And by “someone,” Bree meant Missy.
She entertained herself with fantasies of winning rowdy catfights. Eventually, she noticed the yelling had stopped. Bree didn’t know if he had hung up the phone or if his anger had finally run its course. Either way, she wasn’t going upstairs anytime soon. She flipped the television to a documentary on Pompeii and let her mind get lost in history instead of the eruption taking place upstairs.
About twenty minutes later, the dull thud of footsteps coming down the stairs roused her from the show. She turned down the volume and looked up in time to see Ian in the doorway. His face was stony and emotionless as he came over and dropped down onto the couch beside her.
Bree sat quietly and waited. He would talk when he was ready. She knew better than anyone that he didn’t like talking about his emotions. It might take him a while to be able to voice his feelings about what had just happened. Even Bree wasn’t sure she could find the words if faced with a betrayal of this magnitude.
“It’s true,” he said at last. His voice was steady and even. The yelling was done and now he was back to the even-keeled Ian she knew. “Missy is not having my baby.”
At least now he knew for certain. “I’m sorry, Ian. Is there anything I can do?”
“No,” he said dismissively. “Missy has done enough.”
“I’m surprised she admitted to it.”
Ian chuckled bitterly. “She didn’t want to, I’m sure, but it’s the kind of lie where you’ll get found out eventually. I’d done my part by rationalizing away all my doubts, but eventually she would have had to start showing. Eventually, she’d have had to give birth to this baby.”
That was a hell of a lie to pull off. Had she really thought it through? “Did she tell you what she intended to do? If the story hadn’t hit the press, she couldn’t have kept the lie going on much longer.”
“She said she was hoping that we would stop using protection and she would actually get pregnant. If that didn’t work, she was going to pretend to miscarry after the wedding.”
Bree shook her head. “With so many women suffering through the reality of losing a child, I can’t imagine her faking something that terrible.”
“That’s because you don’t know the real Missy Kline. All anyone sees is the sexy blonde in music videos and on album covers. I’m sure people think she might be spoiled or a diva. But the truth is that she’s ruthless, especially when it comes to her career. She learned it from her viper of a stage mom.”
“Is that why she did it? For her career?” Bree’s career meant everything to her, but she had a limit of how far she would go to be successful. Most people did.
“That’s not what she said at first. When I confronted her, she cried and wailed that she thought she was losing me. She said she did what she had to do to keep us together because she loved me too much.”
Ian looked down at his hands folded in his lap. “That was absolute crap. I know what it feels like to have a woman love me and it was nothing like that.