A Child on the Way

by Janis Reams Hudson

  Jack would have kept on walking, but Belinda was suddenly blocking the doorway.

  “Oh,” she said with a gleam in her eye, “I think there is. I think there’s a lot more to talk about.” She placed one hand squarely in the middle of Jack’s chest and shoved. “Sit down.”

  “Well, hell,” Jack muttered. But he sat, because there was no getting around Belinda when she got that steely-eyed look about her.

  “Very good,” she said, as if he were a puppy who’d just piddled on the paper instead of the floor. “The first thing you should be aware of before you start denying things is that Lisa and I are very good friends. She tells me everything.”

  “And your point is…?”

  “My point is, what is this nonsense about you not being able to love a woman and not knowing how to be a husband or father?”

  “She said that?” Ace asked his wife.

  “I had to browbeat her to get it out of her.”

  “You browbeat her?” Jack cried, outraged. “That woman has been through pure hell this past week. You had no business—”

  “Looks like Rachel was right.” Ace’s grin was huge. “He’s nuts about her.”

  “I’ve heard enough.” Jack moved as if to get up, until he saw the look in Belinda’s eyes.

  “I’ll just come after you.”

  “Look, you two,” Jack said with what little patience he had left. “No offense, but this is none of your business.”

  “No offense taken,” Belinda said sweetly.

  When Belinda got sweet, a man had better look out.

  “However,” Ace said, “I’m remembering a certain early-morning trip to the family cemetery a while back.”

  “Early-morning kidnapping was more like it,” Belinda corrected.

  Jack groaned. The two of them, Ace and Belinda, had been eaten alive with guilt for having feelings for each other, each of them letting the ghost of Belinda’s sister, Ace’s late wife, stand between them. Jack had finally gotten fed up watching them tap-dance around their feelings for each other. Never were two people more suited to each other or more in love than they had been, but they were letting Cathy stand between them as if she were still alive. In pure frustration Jack had dragged them to the cemetery one morning and pointed to Cathy’s grave, demanding that they acknowledge that she was dead and they weren’t.

  It hadn’t been the nicest thing he’d ever done, but the results were there before him now—a man and woman, husband and wife, deeply in love and more suited to each other than any two people in the world. Jack had no regrets.

  Except now it looked as though they were going to use that little incident as an excuse to butt into his life.

  “So,” Belinda said, “we feel we owe it to you to get to the bottom of your problems.”

  “I don’t have any problems.” The lie had come way too easily.

  “You are the problem,” Ace said tersely, “if you believe any of that garbage about not being able to be a good husband and father.”

  “Hell, Ace, what do I know about that sort of thing? You know I never had a father at all until I was twelve, and then the one I got…well, King Wilder never won any prizes for fatherhood.”

  “So what?” Ace cried. “I had the same lousy father you did. Are you saying I’m no good at raising my sons?”

  “No!” Jack stared in shock. “Of course not. You’re a great father.”

  “Hallelujah,” Belinda said. “If Ace is a great father—and he’s the best—and you and he had the same father, then you’ve got no excuse in that department, buster. Maybe Rachel was wrong. Maybe you really don’t love Lisa. Or maybe you just don’t want to raise another man’s child as your own.”

  It was on the tip of Jack’s tongue to protest that Jacqueline Dana was not another man’s child, she was his. Hadn’t he felt her move in her mother’s womb? Hadn’t he helped bring her into the world? Weren’t his hands the first touch she’d ever known?

  But he bit back the words and pushed himself from his chair. “I have to think.”

  “Think real hard,” Belinda called after him as he left the room. “Before you lose the best thing that ever happened to you.”

  Ace and Belinda listened as Jack’s footsteps faded, then the back door slammed.

  “Do you think we were too hard on him?” Belinda asked.

  “Not nearly as hard as he’s obviously been on himself. At least he’s thinking now. With any luck, he’s thinking straight.”

  “It’s about damn time,” Belinda muttered.

  The next morning after he finished his chores, Jack stood beside his rig and stared at the pile of Lisa’s belongings in the back. He’d gone by the garage yesterday after leaving the hospital and gotten them from the trunk of her car. Two more suitcases, several boxes, a portable crib, a computer. The trunk had been crammed.

  He supposed he should haul it all up to the house and unload it, so she would have it there when they brought her home later that day. She was supposed to be discharged around two.

  He’d overheard some of the arrangements last night that Belinda and Donna were making. Donna was going to move upstairs into the guest room so they could put Lisa and the baby in Donna’s room downstairs off the kitchen. It seemed they’d decided Lisa didn’t need to be climbing stairs all day.

  After witnessing firsthand what she’d gone through giving birth, Jack had no quarrel with that. If he had his way, she wouldn’t get out of bed for the next month.

  But dammit, he didn’t want her in the downstairs room off the kitchen in his brother’s house. He wanted her in his house. He wanted…hell, he wanted too damn much.

  What he wanted most just then was to know where he stood with her. And by God, he was tired of guessing. He was going to find out.

  When Jack got to the hospital, he figured he had the worst case of cold feet in history. But this was too important for him to let that stop him. He entered Lisa’s room, ready to fight for his life, because no less than that was at stake.

  “Jack, you came.”

  He nodded once. Her smile looked sad around the edges and scared the hell out of him. “I came. Lisa, I—”

  “Would you do something for me?”

  “Of course.”

  “I know I’ve asked too much of you already, but—”

  “You’ve never asked anything of me. Whatever I’ve done, I’ve done because I wanted to.”

  “All right,” she said slowly. “But this time I’m asking.”

  “All right, what is it?”

  “Would you…” She paused and shifted the baby in her arms. “Would you hold Jacqueline Dana?”

  Jack’s heart gave a hard thump somewhere near his throat. Sweat broke out on his palms. “Hold her?” He was dying to hold her.

  “Please? If you don’t mind, that is.”

  He swallowed hard. “I…of course I don’t mind. But it’s been a while since I’ve held a baby that small. Shouldn’t you get one of the nurses to hold her for you?”

  “No. I want…I want to be able to tell her, when she’s older, that the man who delivered her, the man she’s named for, held her in his arms.”

  Everything inside Jack went numb. If that wasn’t a goodbye, he didn’t know what was. She was through with him. Or would be, once this was done. He wanted to throw back his head and howl in protest. He wanted to gnash his teeth. He wanted to weep.

  Instead, he held out his arms. “Give her here,” he said, his voice rough with emotion.

  The ache in Lisa’s throat grew almost unbearable as she placed her sleeping daughter in Jack’s arms.

  She’d made her decision last night. She would not try to hold on to him. He had already stepped back from her. Now Belinda was home, and there was no longer any reason for her to lean on him, to need him. He had his own life to live. She had conveniently ignored that fact from the beginning. The blizzard had altered everything, sealing them together inside that little house.

  But that was long past, and now that h
e didn’t have to worry about her all the time, he could get back to his own life.

  Seeing him hold the child he had delivered from her womb was the most precious sight in the world to her. The way he gazed down at the baby with so much love in his eyes. The way his callused hands held her so gently, one finger stroking her hair.

  Oh, God, she was going to humiliate herself and fall apart if she didn’t get a grip.

  “Hello, little cupcake,” he said softly to the baby. “How are you doing today? Are you being nice to your mama?” He eased down until he was sitting on the edge of Lisa’s bed. “I guess the two of you don’t need me anymore, huh? You’ve got all these nurses here at the hospital, and pretty soon you’ll have your aunt Belinda and Donna and everybody else to look after you. Maybe someday your mama will tell you about conking herself out and losing her memory. You probably won’t believe it, but it’s true, I swear.”

  Jack was silent for a long time, just staring down at the baby in his arms.

  No. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t surrender without a fight. He stood and leaned down. “Take her.” His voice came out more harshly than he’d intended.

  “Jack, I’m sor—”

  “Wait.” He held up his hand, palm forward. “Wait. This is all sounding like a big goodbye scene, and before we go that far, I have a question to ask you.”

  With her heart breaking, Lisa shifted the baby in her arms. “A question?”

  “That’s right.” He stood beside the bed and stuffed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “The other night, when you thought I was asleep, did you mean what you said?”

  He didn’t need to explain. Lisa remembered perfectly what she’d whispered in the dark when she’d thought he was asleep.

  “You were awake?”

  He nodded. “I was awake.”

  Heat stung her cheeks. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I…I don’t know. Did you mean it?”

  She picked at an imaginary piece of lint on the baby’s blanket. “That you were the most loving man I’d ever dreamed of knowing? Yes.” She looked up at him. “I meant it.”

  Jack balled his fists to keep from reaching for her. “What about the rest? Did you mean that, too?”

  She swallowed and held his gaze. “Yes. I meant it.”

  “You said…you said you loved me.”

  “Yes. I did. Am I…am I alone in this?” Slowly Jack took his hands from his pockets and sat on the edge of her bed. “No.” As he reached for her, his hands shook. “No, you’re not alone, Lisa. I love you. If you’ll have me, you’ll never be alone again, I swear it.”

  Her eyes, those beautiful green eyes, filled with tears. “Jack?”

  “I love you, Lisa Hampton. I don’t know anything about being a husband, but if you’ll help me, I’ll learn. If love counts for anything, I’ve got it licked. As for her,” he said, looking down at the baby and stroking her cheek with a fingertip, “I’ve been her slave from the minute she was born. Before that, even.”

  “Oh, Jack.”

  “I want us to get married. I want us, the three of us, to be a family. I want you and Jacqueline Dana to share my home, my life and my name. If you need to stand on your own, that’s fine. Just let me stand beside you. If you want a large family, let me give you mine. If you want more children…marry me, Lisa. Marry me.”

  “Oh, Jack, yes, yes.” She lay her head on his shoulder, with the baby cuddled between them, and wept tears of joy.

  When Belinda and Ace arrived to take Lisa and Jacqueline home, they found Jack sitting in a chair holding the baby while Lisa stood beside them, dressed and running a brush through her hair.

  “You’re all ready?” Belinda asked.

  Lisa whirled toward the door. “Belinda!”

  “Good grief,” Belinda said. “Lisa, you’re…you’re practically glowing.”

  “There’s been a change of plans,” Jack said. “Oh, really?” Belinda asked, a slow smile starting across her face.

  “Yes, really.” Jack rose and stood beside Lisa, the baby in one arm, the other arm going around Lisa, and faced his brother and sister-in-law. “Lisa won’t be going home with you. She’s coming home with me.”

  “Well, now.” Ace folded his arms across his chest. “Since Lisa doesn’t have a father here to speak up for her, I guess that leaves it up to me. Are the two of you planning to live in sin?”

  Lisa burst out laughing.

  Jack raised an eyebrow. “Not that it’s any of your business—”

  “You wanna watch that, Jack,” Belinda warned with a gleam in her eye.

  “We’re getting married,” Lisa told them. Belinda shouted. “Hallelujah!” With their daughter cradled in one arm, Jack looked down at the woman who was his life. “Let’s go home.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Let’s.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4603-5568-8

  A CHILD ON THE WAY

  Copyright © 2000 by Janis Reams Hudson

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  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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  * Wilders of Wyatt County