“I think this warranted a phone call before now,” he said.

He didn’t sound calm so much as he sounded defeated. West Morgan, in the time she’d known him, had never sounded defeated. In fact, part of what had made her so willing to spar with him was that he’d seemed undefeatable.

“You’re right. I kept putting off deciding how to tell you, another day, then another and another until all of a sudden there you were driving down the road toward my goat.”

His expression turned wounded. “Did you really plan to tell me?”

Busted.

Her mouth went dry, and she worked to find the ability to speak again.

“Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to do. I knew it would be wrong to keep it from you, but I…I put off deciding. That’s the truth.”

“Okay.”

She could see him processing the information, trying to decide on his next course of action, which was what she feared most.

Captain West Morgan would have a very narrow idea of the right way to handle this situation. Get married. Settle down. Make the best of it. She’d become the target of his next mission: Operation Family.

With the echoes of their last argument and his 1950s clichés ringing in her head, she had no interest in becoming a cozy family of three. She had no interest in any of the things that would entail-the compromises, the subjugation, the loss of freedom.

“I decided on my own to have the baby, and I don’t expect anything from you. Just so you know.” Though she knew these words were wasted and unnecessary.

“Of course I’m going to be involved,” he said.

“Of course,” she echoed weakly.

“I’m the father. I won’t let my own child grow up without a father.”

He looked stunned but determined, and Soleil knew she wasn’t going to convince him of anything now. But she couldn’t help standing her ground-she was just as unyielding as he when it came to her ideals.

“You live in Colorado, and I live in California. So what? You’re going to commute here to do diaper duty and midnight feedings?”