by Susan Meier
She located his street, turned onto it and immediately saw his house. Simple stone, accented by huge multipaned windows, his house boasted a three-car garage and space. Not only was the structure itself huge, but beyond the fence that Grace assumed protected a swimming pool, beautiful green grass seemed to stretch forever before it met a wall of trees. Compared to her tiny bungalow, his home was a palace.
She parked her little red car in his driveway, got out and reached into the back seat to unbuckle Sarah. Opting not to put her in a baby carrier, Grace pulled her from the car and settled her on her arm.
Holding her squirming baby and bulky diaper bag, she strode up the stone front walk to Danny’s door, once again noting the differences in their lifestyles personified by decorative black lantern light fixtures and perfect landscaping.
Grace shook her head, trying to stop the obvious conclusion from forming, but she couldn’t. She and Danny were different. Too difference to be together. Why hadn’t she recognized that? He probably had. That’s why he’d told her he didn’t want to see her. They weren’t made for each other. Not even close. And he’d now had fifteen months to forget her. She could have to explain the entire situation again, and then face another horrible scene.
Still, as much as she dreaded this meeting, and as much as she would prefer to raise Sarah on her own, she knew it wasn’t fair for Sarah to never know her father. She also knew Danny should have the option to be part of his daughter’s life. If he again chose not to believe Grace when she told him Sarah was his child, then so be it. She wouldn’t beg him to be a father to their baby. She wouldn’t demand DNA testing to force him in. If he wanted a DNA test, she would comply, but as far as she was concerned, she was the one doing him the favor. If he didn’t wish to acknowledge his child or be a part of Sarah’s life that was his decision. She wasn’t going to get upset or let him hurt her again. If he said he wanted no part of her or her baby, this time Grace and Sarah would leave him alone for good.
Again without giving herself a chance to think, she rang the doorbell. Waiting for someone to answer, she glanced around at his massive home, then wished she hadn’t. How could she have ever thought she belonged with someone who lived in this part of the city?
The door opened and suddenly she was face-to-face with the father of her child. Though it was Saturday he wore dress slacks and a white shirt, but his collar was unbuttoned and his tie loosened. He looked relaxed and comfortable and was even smiling.
Then his eyes darkened, his smile disappeared and his gaze dropped to Sarah, and Grace realized he remembered who she was.
She took a breath. “Can we come in?”
The expression in his eyes changed, darkening even more, reminding Grace of a building storm cloud. For the twenty seconds that he remained stonily silent, she was positive he would turn her away. For those same twenty seconds, with his dark eyes condemning her, she fervently wished he would.
But without saying a word, he pulled open his door and stepped aside so she could enter.
“Thank you.” She walked into the echoing foyer of his big house, fully expecting this to be the worst evening of her life.
CHAPTER FOUR
AS GRACE BRUSHED by Danny, a band of pain tightened his chest. At first he thought the contraction was a result of his anger with Grace, fury that she’d continued with her pregnancy scheme. He wondered how she intended to get around DNA since he would most certainly require the test, then he actually looked at the baby in her arms, a little girl if the pink one-piece pajamas were any indication. She appeared to be about six months old—the age their baby would be if he had gotten Grace pregnant that Sunday night at his beach house. More than that, though, the baby looked exactly as Cory had when he was six months old.
Danny stood frozen, unable to do anything but stare at the chubby child in Grace’s arms. Suddenly the baby smiled at him. Her plump lips lifted. Her round blue eyes filled with laughter. She made a happy gurgling sound that caused playful spit bubbles to gather at the corners of her mouth. She looked so much like Cory it was as if Danny had been unceremoniously flung back in time.
Feeling faint, he pointed down the corridor. “There’s a den at the end of the hall. Would you please wait for me there?”
Grace caught his gaze with her pretty violet eyes and everything inside of Danny stilled. In a hodgepodge of pictures and words, he remembered bits and pieces of both the weekend they’d spent together with Orlando and the morning he’d kicked her out of his office—wrongly if his assumptions about the baby were correct. In his mind’s eye, he saw Grace laughing with Orlando, working with him, making him comfortable. He remembered her soft and giving in his arms. He remembered her trembling when she told him she was pregnant, and then he remembered nothing but anger. He hadn’t given her a chance to explain or even a sliver of benefit of the doubt. He’d instantly assumed her “pregnancy” was a ruse and wouldn’t hear another word.
“I don’t think we want to be interrupted,” he said, grasping for any excuse that would give him two minutes to come to terms with some of this before he had to talk to her. “So I need to instruct my housekeeper that we’re to be left alone.”
She pressed her lips together, nodded and headed down the hall. Once Danny saw her turn into the den, he collapsed on the bottom step of the spiral staircase in his foyer and dropped his head to his hands.
They were shaking. His knees felt like rubber. Pain ricocheted through him and he squeezed his eyes shut. In vivid detail, he saw Cory’s birth, his first birthday party, and every Christmas they’d had together. He remembered his giggle. He remembered his endless questions as he grew from a toddler into a little boy. He remembered how he loved garbage trucks and mailmen.
Pain overwhelmed him as he relived every second of the best and worst six years of his life and then realized he could very well go through it all again. The first birthday. Laughing, happy Christmases. Questions and curiosities. And pain. One day he was a doting dad and the next he was living alone, without even the possibility of seeing his son again.
He fought the anger that automatically surged up in him when the thought about his marriage, about Lydia. In the past year, his sense of fair play had compelled him to examine his marriage honestly and he had to admit that Lydia hadn’t been a horrible shrew. He hadn’t been a terrible husband. Their marriage hadn’t ended because he and his ex-wife were bad people, but because they’d hit a crossroad that neither had anticipated. A crossroad where there had been no choice but to separate. They had once been the love of each other’s life, yet when their marriage had begun to crumble, they’d both forgotten the eight good years, only remembered their horrible final year, and fought bitterly. They’d hurt each other. Used Cory as a weapon. And both of them had walked away damaged.
Remembering that only made his upcoming showdown with Grace more formidable. He and Grace didn’t have two years of courtship and six years of marriage to look back on to potentially keep them from hurting each other. So how did he expect their confrontation to turn out any better than his fight with Lydia had?
He didn’t.
He wouldn’t shirk his responsibility to Grace’s baby. But he had learned enough from the past that the key to survival was not being so in love with his daughter that she could turn into Grace’s secret weapon.
Finally feeling that he knew what he had to do, Danny rose from the step, went to the kitchen and told his housekeeper he and Grace weren’t to be disturbed, then he walked to the den.
Unfortunately he couldn’t keep the displeasure out of his voice when he said, “Let me see her.”
Grace faced him. “Save your anger, Danny. I was the one left to have this baby alone. I was so sick I had to quit my job and depend on my parents to basically nurse me for nine months. The bonus you gave me went to support me until I had Sarah and could go back to work. I was sick, exhausted and worried
that if anything went wrong when she was born I wouldn’t be able to pay for proper care. You could have helped me through all of that, but you never even followed up on me. So the way I see this, you don’t have anything to complain about.”
She was right, of course. It didn’t matter that he was still hurting from the end of his marriage when she told him she was pregnant. He hadn’t for two seconds considered Grace or her feelings. Still, he had no proof that she was the innocent victim she wanted him to believe she was. The weekend they’d spent together, he’d made himself an easy mark for a woman he really didn’t know. He’d never wanted another relationship, let alone a child. And now he had one with a stranger. A woman he genuinely believed had tricked him.
“What made it all worse was wondering about your reaction when I did bring Sarah to you.” She sat on the leather sofa in the conversation area, laid the gurgling baby on the cushion and pulled the bonnet ribbon beneath the little girl’s chin, untying the bow.
Danny’s breathing stuttered as he stared at the baby. His daughter. A perfect little pink bundle of joy. She punched and pedaled her legs as Grace removed her bonnet.
Grace’s voice softly intruded into his thoughts. “I understood when you told me you didn’t want to see me anymore. I had every intention of respecting that, if only because of pride. But this baby was both of our doing.”
Sarah spit out her pacifier and began to cry.
Grace lifted the little girl from the sofa cushion and smoothed her lips across her forehead. “I know. I know,” she singsonged. “You’re hungry.”
She rose and handed the baby to Danny. “Can you take her while I get her bottle?”
Panic skittered through him and he backed away. He hadn’t held a baby since Cory.
To his surprise Grace laughed. “Come on. She won’t bite. She doesn’t have teeth yet.”
“I’ve...I’m...I just—”
Realizing he was behaving like an idiot, Danny stopped stuttering. He wasn’t an idiot. And he would always think of Cory every time he looked at Sarah, but there was no way he’d admit that to Grace. She already knew enough about him and he didn’t know half as much about her. Seeing Cory every time he looked at Sarah would be his cross to bear in private.
He reached out to take the baby, but this time Grace pulled her back.
“Sit,” she said as if she’d thought his hesitancy was uncertainty about how to hold the baby. “I’ll hand her to you.”
Deciding not to argue her assumption, Danny lowered himself to the sofa and Grace placed the baby in his arms. “Just set her bottom on your lap, and support her back with your left hand.”
He did that and the baby blinked up at him, her crying becoming sniffles as she lost herself to confusion about the stranger holding her.
Staring at her mutely, Danny identified. The first time he’d seen Cory was immediately after he’d slid into the doctor’s hands. He’d been purple and wrinkled and when the doctor slapped his tiny behind he’d shrieked like a banshee. The little girl on Danny’s lap was clean and now quiet. The total opposite of her half brother.
Grace pulled a bottle from her diaper bag. Dripping formula onto her wrist, she checked the bottle’s temperature and said, “Can I take this to your kitchen and warm it?”
“Go back to the foyer, then turn right. The door at the end of the hall leads to the kitchen. My housekeeper is there. She’ll help you.”
Grace nodded and left.
Danny glanced down at the blue-eyed, rather bald baby. He took a breath. She blinked at him again, as if still confused.
“I’m your father.”
She cocked her head to the right. The same way Cory used to. Especially when Danny would tell him anything about Carson Services, about responsibility, about carrying on the family name, as if the idea of doing anything other than paint was absurd.
Remembering Cory’s reaction tightened Danny’s chest again, but this time it wasn’t from the memory of how, even as a small child, Cory had seemed to reject the idea of taking over the family business. Danny suddenly realized this little girl was now the one in line to run Carson Services. Grace might not know it, but Danny did.
* * *
Grace ran to the kitchen and didn’t find a housekeeper, but she did locate a microwave into which she quickly shoved the bottle. She’d never seen a person more uncomfortable with a baby than Danny appeared to be, which was surprising considering he had a son, but she wasn’t so insensitive that she didn’t realize that meeting Sarah hadn’t been easy for him.
She’d been preoccupied with Sarah’s needs and hadn’t factored Danny’s shock into the equation. But having watched his facial expression shift and change, she realized that though he might not have believed Grace when she told him she was pregnant he seemed to be accepting that Sarah was his.
When the timer bell rang, she grabbed the bottle and headed back to his den. Walking down the hall she heard Danny’s soft voice.
“And that’s why mutual funds are better for some people.”
Grace stopped just outside the door.
“Of course, there are times when it’s more logical to put the money of a conservative investor in bonds. Especially a nervous investor. Somebody who can’t afford to take much risk. So you always have to question your investor enough that you can determine the level of risk his portfolio and personality can handle.”
Standing by the wall beside the door, Grace twisted so she could remain hidden as she peered inside. Sarah gripped Danny’s finger and stared up at him. Her blue eyes sharp and alert. Danny appeared comfortable, too, holding the baby loosely on his lap, and Grace realized that talking about something familiar was how Danny had overcome his apprehensions. Still, stocks? Poor Sarah!
“It’s all about the individual. Some people are afraid of the stock market. Which is another reason mutual funds are so great. They spread the risk over a bunch of stocks. If one fails, another stock in the fund could skyrocket and balance everything out.”
If it had been under any other circumstances, Grace would have burst out laughing. Danny looked up and saw her standing there. He grimaced. “Sorry. I didn’t know what else to talk about.”
She shrugged. “I guess it doesn’t really matter. All a baby really cares about is hearing your voice.” She walked into the room and lifted Sarah from Danny’s lap. Nestling the baby into the crook of her arm, she added, “When in doubt, make up something. Maybe a story about a bunny or a bear. Just a short little anything.”
Danny didn’t reply, but rose and walked to the window. “You should be the one to sit.”
Not about to remind him that there was plenty of space for both of them on the leather sofa, Grace took the place he had vacated. With two silent parents, the sound of Sarah greedily sucking filled the room.
“I almost wish you hadn’t brought her to me.”
Grace hadn’t forgotten that he’d broken up with her before she told him she was pregnant. Still, that was his tough luck. He’d created a child and she wasn’t letting him pretend he hadn’t.
“She’s your child.”
“Yes. And I know you think there are all kinds of reasons that’s great, but you’re not going to like the way this has to play out.”
“The way this has to play out?”
“I have to raise my daughter.”
Not expecting that, Grace stared at his stiff back. But rather than be offended by his defiant stance, she remembered the feeling of his corded muscles beneath her fingertips. The firmness of his skin. Her own shivers of delight from having his hands on her.
Reaction flared inside her but she quickly shook it off. She wouldn’t let herself fall victim to his charm again. Too much was at stake. She didn’t know the official definition of “raise his daughter,” but it sounded as if he intended to get more than a Saturday aft
ernoon with Sarah every other weekend. There was no way Grace would let him take Sarah and ignore her. He hadn’t ever wanted her. If he took her now, it would probably be out of a sense of duty to his family.
Still, if Grace argued, if she didn’t handle this situation with kid gloves, her reply could sound like an accusation and accusations only caused arguments. She did not want to argue. She wanted all this settled as quickly and amicably as possible.
“It’s good that you want to be involved—”
Danny suddenly turned from the window and caught her gaze, but Grace couldn’t read the expression in his eyes and fell silent. She didn’t know what he was thinking because she didn’t know him. Not at all. She hadn’t worked with him long enough to even know him as a boss. With Orlando he had been fun and funny. But when she’d told him about being pregnant he’d been hard, cold, unyielding. As far as she knew he had two personalities. A good guy and a bad guy and she had a sneaking suspicion few people saw the good guy.
“I want my daughter to live with me.”
“Live with you?” Grace would be the one getting a visit every other Saturday afternoon? He had to be joking. Or insane.
“I’ve got money enough and clout enough that if I take you to court I’ll end up with custody.”
Grace gaped at him. It had been difficult to bring her child to meet him. As far as she was concerned, he could have stayed out of their lives forever. She was only here for Sarah’s sake. Trying to grasp that he wanted to take Sarah away from her was staggering. Could his money really put Grace in a position where she’d be forced to hand over her innocent, defenseless baby daughter to a complete stranger? A man who didn’t even want her?
