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loved.
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    And Katy Hart would be nothing more than a wonderful dream that never had the chance to come true.
    “Dayne, you’re not talking.” Kelly sounded weak, hopeless. “Look, if you’re not into this, I can get it taken care of. I’m not raising a kid by myself. Not with the tabs taking potshots at me along the way. If you want out, don’t worry about it. I can be done with this in-“
    “Kelly!” He didn’t raise his voice, but his tone caught her attention. He raked his fingers through his hair and paced across the room to the other side. “I would never ask you to raise a child-our child-by yourself.” He was breathing faster now, his mind racing with the possibilities. “Should you… do you wanna move back in with me? So we can go through this together?”
    “It isn’t that easy.” Defiance colored her words. “I’m not a charity case. If you take me back, it’ll be because you want me. Me and no one else but me.”
    The room was spinning again. Outside in the hall he could hear new voices-new attorneys, no doubt, getting ready to use the room for whatever deposition or hearing came next. He tried to focus. “Okay … so you don’t want to do this alone. But you don’t want to move back in either?”
    “What I’m saying is, let’s take it slow. Let’s start hanging out again and see where it goes.” Her tone softened. “There’s no one I’d rather have as the daddy for my child. I’ve seen you with kids-on the sets and on location. I think we have a chance here. Let’s at least give it a try.”
    “Okay.” Dayne was still confused. With Kelly four months along, they couldn’t only give it a try, could they? They had to make a commitment-to each other and to their unborn child. He stopped and stared at the floor. “When can I see you?”
     
    “Tonight isn’t good.”
    Dayne pictured Katy at the hotel, ready to catch a flight back to Bloomington in the morning. “For me, either.”
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    “What about tomorrow night? We could meet at my place. Eight o’clock.”
    “All right.” Dayne massaged his temples with his free hand. In a single phone call his life had changed. No, more than that. His future had been decided. He had no idea what to say. “Kelly … I’m sorry.”
    “It happens.” Possibility rang in her tone. “Who knows? Maybe it was supposed to work out like this. So we would find our way back together.”
    “Yeah.” But Katy Hart’s face filled his mind, his soul. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing her smile to disappear. “Yeah, maybe so.”
    They hung up, and Dayne hung his head. What had just happened? He was going to be a father? He had promised to try and make a future with Kelly Parker? All of it felt like a terrible nightmare, a horrific joke. He felt weak, nauseous. It took nearly a minute before he could force his legs to carry him into the hall to a uniformed officer waiting just outside the door.
    “The car’s this way.”
    Dayne nodded and followed the man. He was halfway to Katy’s hotel before he made a plan. The information about Kelly and the baby would be a secret to the media and the industry, a secret to the public and even to their friends. But there was one person who had to know before another day passed. A person who would not look back after she knew the reality of what lay ahead.
    That person was Katy Hart.
    All through lunch, Katy knew.
    Something was wrong with Dayne, something about the trial or one of his films or maybe something about her. There was no other explanation. He sat next to his attorney and ate with the
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    rest of them, and whenever someone asked him a question he had an answer. But he was distant and distracted, almost despondent. Most of all, he wouldn’t look at her. While they ate salads in a meeting room of her hotel, a space rented by Dayne’s lawyer, only rarely did Dayne even glance in her direction.
    True, until today they hadn’t seen each other since opening night for Annie, but the look he’d