Tempting Taine by Kate Silver Page B

tonight.   As good as we used to be."
    She crossed her arms in front of her.   Clearly he was far too used to getting his own way.   "You're not the sort of man I want to get involved with again."
    "I'm not?"   He laughed, but it was a brittle sound and disappeared quickly into the darkness.   "Are you sure?   After all, I've come back home a wealthy man.   I can afford to buy you whatever you want.   Enough to keep you around for as long as I want you."
    The heat rushed to her face.   Is that what he thought of her?   And their daughter?   "The boy I once knew would not have insulted me like that."
    His reply was hard, unforgiving.   "The girl I once thought I knew would not have deserved it."
    Verity lay awake that night, listening to the wind and the night birds call.   Taine was as bitter and unforgiving as he had been nine years ago.   Though he still desired her, the years had ingrained his cynical attitude towards her.   He would not change, or ever stop despising her for who she was and the choices she had made.   There was no point in hoping for a miracle.
    She would forget him.   Put him out of her mind.   Maybe even go on a date with her accountant, as he had asked her several times lately to do.  
    Taine would never be a real father.   Aroha deserved better than a man who resented her, ignored her, and simply pretended she did not exist.
    No, Taine Hunter was not for her.   The sooner she came to terms with that, the easier it would be.
    He never had been for her.   She had known that ten years ago, when she had returned home fighting back tears from the disastrous lunch with Taine's parents and that little blue line on the pregnancy test has confirmed what she had secretly already known - that she was carrying his child.
    She had known him so well back then, or so she had thought.   She sat there with the kit in one hand and a box of tissues in the other, knowing what she had to do.   Break it off with him.   Now.   Before it got any harder.
    She could not tell him that she was expecting.   He would do the right thing and marry her, even though his parents, his mother especially, would hate it.   He would give up finishing his degree at Lincoln to get a job and support his new family.
    She could not ask him to do that.   She would not ask him to do it.
    He had dreams, and she wanted to see him free to reach those dreams.   She would not shackle him to the drudgery of a job he did not want to support a family he had not planned.   It would not be fair.   To either of them.   Their love could never flourish in such an environment - however strong it was and however they tried to nurture it, it would inevitably wither and die
    Neither would she do as her mother and grandmother had done before her, and give up all hopes of an education and a decent job just because she made the mistake of getting pregnant too young.   No, she would go to university, just as she had planned, and she would cope.
    She had sat there cross-legged on the bathroom floor for over an hour, her pregnancy test in her hand, crying her heart out and planning what she would do.   Then she rose, dried her eyes, and set out on her new path.
    Saying goodbye to Taine was the hardest thing she had ever done.   She waited for two days, until the day before he was to leave for college.   They sneaked out to the lake together, and were curled up in the sun together on a blanket.
    Verity fought to hold back the tears as they made love.   The knowledge that it was the last time he would ever hold her, stroke her skin, or whisper his love into her ear was the closest to hell that she had ever gotten before.
    Afterwards, she sat up on the blanket, her arms around her knees.   "This isn't going to work, Taine."
    "What isn't going to work?"   He traced lazy circles on her back with his hand.   "I thought it worked pretty well just now, don't you?"
    "This.   Us.   We are not going to work.   You're going back to