The Texan's Surprise Baby

by Gina Wilkins

  The dog wagged its tail, and leaned companionably against Andrew’s leg. Andrew chuckled wryly, thinking that this was probably the worst guard dog on the planet. He was much too lazy to chase off any trespassers.

  “Mom just rang me,” Hannah called from across the road. “Most of the family is hanging around the grill waiting to hear from me.”

  Giving the dog one last pat, he then crossed over to join her. “Did you tell your mom yet that the baby is a girl?”

  She shook her head with a wry smile. “She wanted to wait and hear at the same time as everyone else. Perhaps you’ve noticed that my family likes to turn everything into an event.”

  “As a matter of fact, I have noticed that.”

  She pushed a hand through her dark hair, brushing it off her face. Thunder sounded again, a bit closer this time, drawing her eyes to the darkening sky. “I was going to walk over, but maybe I’ll take a cart instead. Looks like those clouds could open up any minute.”

  He noted the faintest of purple shadows beneath her eyes. “You’ve had a long day,” he said, reaching out to stroke back a strand she’d missed. He let his hand linger on her cheek. She felt warm. Soft. Silky.

  Their eyes locked and held. His thumb moved against her cheek, savoring the feel of her. His mouth was close to hers, and it would take only a slight movement on his part to have their lips pressed together. She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, and he knew she was thinking along the same lines.

  Whatever other problems they faced, the attraction between them had never been in doubt. All it took was a touch or a shared look to set it off again. He couldn’t imagine that ever changing, at least not on his part. Even tired, a little disheveled, worried and pregnant, Hannah looked beautiful to him. He wanted her. And he suspected she knew it.

  He dropped his hand, knowing this wasn’t the time. “Golf cart?”

  She blinked. “Um, what?”

  There was some satisfaction in knowing that brief interlude had left her mind a little hazy, especially because it had taken some effort to clear his own. “You were going to take a cart to the diner? I’d be happy to chauffeur you.”

  “Oh. Right.” Her cheeks a little flushed, she stepped away from him. “Sure, if you’re going that way anyway.”

  “Are you kidding?” He chuckled. “I wouldn’t miss the grand announcement. Bet you a dollar your grandmother is going to brag she knew it was a girl all along, though I heard her tell your aunt yesterday she was sure it was a boy.”

  Hannah shook her head. “I’m not taking that sucker bet. Of course Mimi will claim to have known all along. That’s what she does.”

  Pushing that near kiss to the back of his mind to analyze later, he placed a hand lightly at the center of her back and escorted her to the green cart. They would talk again later, he reminded himself. In the meantime, he needed to decide exactly what he wanted to say to her.

  * * *

  Not everyone in the family was waiting in the diner—at a swift glance, Hannah cataloged her uncle C.J., her cousin Lori and her grandfather among the missing—but the others all seemed to be waiting for her. She saw Shelby helping her mother behind the serving counter, an indication of how busy they’d been because Sarah usually handled grill and check-out duties on her own. Hannah’s own mother had pitched in to wipe down tables, which meant someone else was running the store. Hannah hadn’t thought to look that way when she’d entered the building. Was Lori at the store register? Or maybe Aaron, who wasn’t here with the others? She’d heard he’d helped out in the store when Steven was hurt. Apparently her mother had been too impatient to wait there rather than in the grill with the rest of the family.

  The family members not working in the diner were gathered around their usual big round table in the far corner. Maggie spotted Hannah and Andrew first, and motioned them over in excitement. “Well?” she called before they even had a chance to head that way.

  Hannah wondered idly how many of her family’s big events had played out in this little retro diner. Birthday cakes had been served here, announcements made, good and bad news received. While her family got along amazingly well considering how much time they spent together, her father and her uncle had once almost come to blows over a business dispute on a hot, harried afternoon and hadn’t spoken for almost a week until Mimi had trapped them both in the grill and made them apologize to each other right in front of the customers. Growing up, Hannah had probably spent as many hours in this multipurpose building as she had in her parents’ house. Along with her sister and cousins, she’d done her homework at the counter with mugs of hot chocolate on many a winter afternoon. Would her daughter sit at one of those high stools someday, kicking her feet and scribbling in a notebook?

  Her mother reached her before anyone else, the table cleaning cloth dangling from one clenched hand. She searched Hannah’s face. “Is everything okay?”

  Hannah smiled reassuringly. “Everything is fine. Your granddaughter is developing perfectly.”

  Her mom caught her breath. “Granddaughter?” she asked in little more than a whisper. “It’s a girl?”

  “It’s a girl,” Hannah confirmed with a light laugh, one hand resting on her tummy.

  Hugs and high fives ensued, and Hannah found herself fielding congratulations even from customers in the diner she’d never met before. The ultrasound picture was passed from hand to hand, examined and cooed over. Mimi, of course, declared loudly that she had known from the start that Hannah was carrying a girl because she had a knack for knowing those things. Because she was accustomed to her family’s exuberance, Hannah wasn’t particularly fazed by the outburst. As her father gave her a big hug, she noted that Andrew stood back quietly, cooperatively playing the part of her driver, nothing more. His own copy of the ultrasound photo was tucked discreetly out of sight.

  She felt a pang of guilt, which wasn’t helped when she heard her mother say to him, “You’ll have to excuse us, Andrew. We’re just so excited about the baby.”

  “I understand,” Hannah heard him murmur in response. “I’m sure any family would be thrilled to anticipate the arrival of their first grandchild.”

  Hannah winced. And then noted that her sister was looking from her to Andrew and back again with speculative eyes.

  “Shouldn’t everyone get back to work?” Hannah asked, waving a hand around the busy diner. “We can talk later, after closing. Is Lori handling the desk?”

  Her mother nodded. “Yes, Lori’s at the desk and Aaron’s running the store. He volunteered so I’d be free to meet you in here with everyone else. I should go relieve him.”

  “I was just headed back to my place,” Maggie said, taking Hannah’s arm. “You should put your feet up for a while, sis. Come on, I’ll give you a ride.”

  “Oh, but there were a few things I was going to do this afternoon—” Hannah started to protest, but was immediately overridden by her concerned parents and grandmother, all of whom insisted she needed to go rest.

  “Lori can finish up,” Sarah agreed. “She needs to put in a few more hours this summer anyway. Heaven knows I’d rather see her helping us out than hanging around with Zach.”

  Outnumbered, Hannah surrendered. “Fine. I’ll go put up my feet.”

  Maggie glanced at Andrew. “Need a ride back to Steven’s?”

  “No, thanks. I think I’ll find my brother. I’ll see you all later.”

  “Thank you for getting me to the doctor and helping me pick up my car,” Hannah said to him for everyone else’s benefit.

  He gave her a look, but replied merely, “You’re very welcome.”

  Maggie tugged at her hand. “Let’s go. Sounds like it’s starting to rain. Maybe if we hurry we can get inside again before the worst of it hits.”

  Knowing she would see Andrew later, Hannah turned to follow her sister out into the starting drizzle.

  They dashed to the nearest cart parked in the reserved space beside the building and Maggie hopped behind the wheel. Th
e rain started in earnest as she guided the cart onto the road, but the cart kept them mostly dry except for the occasional damp wind gust. Hannah didn’t worry about it. She wouldn’t melt if she got soaked.

  “Thanks for the lift,” she said when Maggie stopped the cart right at the foot of Hannah’s steps.

  “Oh, no, I’m coming in,” Maggie insisted.

  Hannah sighed. “Of course you are.”

  Chapter Five

  The sisters dashed together through the now-pouring rain, crowding beneath the door’s tiny overhang as Hannah shoved the key in her lock. Normally Maggie would have stood back to give her more room, maybe leaning against the railing of the redwood porch, but they were laughing and sticking close together to get what little protection they could from the downpour. They tumbled into the dry living room almost simultaneously. Hannah shook her head, sending raindrops flying. “Do you need a towel?”

  “I didn’t get that wet.” Maggie pushed her hair out of her face and added, “I wouldn’t turn down a cup of tea.”

  “Okay, put the kettle on. I’m going to change into dry clothes. The rain was blowing in my side of the cart.”

  She might have put on comfy pajamas had she not known Andrew would be coming by later. She settled for navy maternity yoga pants and a loose, pale blue cotton T-shirt with soft pink slippers. The tea was ready by the time she rejoined her sister. She accepted her mug with a murmured thank-you, letting the soothing scent of chamomile wash over her as she sank to the couch, feeling the stress of the day catching up to her. Knowing it wasn’t over yet.

  “So, did Andrew go in with you for the ultrasound?” Maggie asked from her chair, her mug cupped between her hands.

  Hannah gazed into her tea to avoid meeting her sister’s eyes. “Yes.”

  “How does he feel about having a daughter?”

  Thinking of the expression in Andrew’s eyes when he’d looked at the ultrasound monitor and then at her, Hannah looked up then. “He’s thrilled.”

  “Wow.” Hannah wasn’t sure if Maggie was responding to the reply or to the implicit confirmation of her suspicion that Andrew really was the father.

  Drawing a deep breath, Hannah nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Oh, my gosh.” Maggie set down the cup, then pressed both hands to her cheeks. “Andrew?”

  “Just as you suspected, I ran into him in Dallas last December. It— Well, things happened.”

  “So I see. And?”

  “And what?”

  Maggie gestured avidly with one hand, encouraging more detail. “Have you stayed in contact with him? How long has he known? When are you going to tell the family?”

  “I haven’t stayed in contact with him, he’s known since he figured it out when Aaron mentioned in a phone call that I’m pregnant and we’re telling the family this weekend. Probably.”

  Maggie hesitated a moment, then asked, “Does Mom know?”

  “No.” Hannah sighed. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Maggie. I wanted to. I just...didn’t know who to tell first. It took me a while to wrap my head around what I’d done, and figure out what I was going to do about it.”

  Maggie nodded, apparently unsurprised by any of the decisions her sister had made. “I wish you’d felt comfortable talking with me, though. You had to feel very alone.”

  “I never felt alone,” Hannah corrected her. “I knew the family was always here for me.”

  “Always will be.”

  “Yes, no matter how many bad decisions I make.”

  Maggie gave her a chiding look. “You haven’t made that many.”

  Hannah snorted inelegantly. “Right.”

  Ever the loyal sister, Maggie insisted, “We all fell for Wade’s act. I mean, he was never my favorite person, but I didn’t know quite how horrible he was until after you had the sense to dump him. As for this—” she gestured vaguely toward Hannah’s baby bump “—you’ve always wanted a baby, and you couldn’t have chosen a better father.”

  Leave it to her determinedly optimistic sister to spin it that particular way, Hannah thought with a wry smile. Maybe she should have talked to Maggie from the beginning, rather than spending so much time brooding in self-recrimination. “I didn’t exactly choose for Andrew to be the father of my child. It was an accident. Honestly, we thought we were being careful.”

  “Then it was just meant to be. So? How’s it going to proceed from here? With you and Andrew, I mean.”

  “I’m not sure. We’re going to talk later this evening. Try to make some decisions, I guess.”

  “I don’t want to sound too much like Mimi—but you might as well be prepared for everyone to ask, so I’ll start. Is there any chance that you and Andrew could maybe—”

  “No,” Hannah interrupted firmly, knowing exactly where this was headed. And her sister’s automatic question was the most compelling reason Hannah had been so reluctant about telling her family. “That’s not on the agenda.”

  “I see.” Maggie kept her expression carefully neutral.

  Thunder boomed outside, loud enough to rattle the windows in the trailer. The wind had picked up, too, and rain hammered against the roof and glass. It wasn’t a severe storm, but Hannah hoped everyone in the resort was managing to stay safe and dry. She glanced at her watch. It was time for the marina, store and grill to close, so the rest of the family would be headed to their own homes soon unless they were waiting out the rain in the main building. “There’s no need for you to go out in this deluge. Why don’t we make some pasta or something for dinner?”

  “Sounds like a plan,” her sister agreed. “What time are you meeting Andrew?”

  “We didn’t really say. I guess he’ll just show up later, maybe when the storm has passed.”

  Maggie nodded. “I’ll give the two of you privacy when he gets here. But in the meantime, pasta sounds good.”

  They moved together toward the kitchen. Maggie placed a hand on Hannah’s arm when they reached the pantry. “Hannah?”

  “Yes?”

  “You know that no matter what happens, I’m always here for you and my niece, right?”

  Touched, Hannah smiled. She thought fleetingly of all the squabbles and competitions and tiffs she and her sister had gotten into through the years, of all the times they’d fussed and pouted and tattled—and yet she was absolutely confident that Maggie meant every word of her promise. “I know, Mags. That goes both ways, you know.”

  “I know. Now, about that pasta...”

  * * *

  Because of the downpour, Andrew, Aaron and Steven lingered in the grill even after Sarah hung the Closed sign on the door. Shelby and her dad joined them a few minutes later, their own work finished for the day. Bryan and Linda had taken Mimi and Pop home in Bryan’s dual-cab work truck, which he could drive straight into their garage to keep them from getting wet. Shelby’s family decided to make a dinner of soup and sandwiches in the grill while waiting for the rain to stop. Andrew thought of Hannah, but they hadn’t said anything about dining together, so he accepted Sarah’s invitation for him to join them. He would slip over to Hannah’s later.

  “I wish Lori had waited until the storm passed to go out,” Sarah fretted, glancing upward automatically when thunder boomed. “I don’t like to think of her driving in this.”

  “You don’t like to think of her driving in the rain to meet Zach,” Shelby corrected.

  C.J. scowled at the mention of his youngest child’s undesirable boyfriend. Sarah hesitated, then nodded sheepishly. “I guess that has something to do with it.”

  Andrew had heard the family talk of Zach a few times during the past few days, enough for him to get the gist of why they didn’t approve of him. “I know you said Lori’s boyfriend got into some trouble as a juvenile, but is there any reason to believe he’s living on the wrong side of the law now?” he asked, curious.

  He watched as the family exchanged looks. “Not specifically,” Sarah finally admitted. “He still looks like a delinquent, but as far as I know he
hasn’t been arrested lately.”

  “Do you want me to check into him? If there’s genuine reason to be concerned about Lori spending time with the guy, I could probably find it.”

  Sarah’s eyes went wide. “Can you do that? Legally, I mean?”

  Andrew shrugged. “I can do a routine background check.”

  Aaron chuckled quietly. “He can do a bit more than that. Mostly legally, of course.”

  Andrew shot his brother a look, making Aaron grin unapologetically. Aaron, of course, was equally capable of running a background check, but Andrew could probably do so more quickly.

  Shelby shook her head. “Lori would hate you for it.”

  “She wouldn’t have to know,” C.J. commented, looking thoughtful. “Not if Andrew doesn’t find anything worrisome.”

  “You understand it would just be a surface check,” Andrew warned. “I’m not going to follow him around and spy on him. I hardly think that’s warranted, and I don’t have time anyway. I really have to be back in Dallas Monday.”

  As if to support his insistence, his phone chirped to announce a text message. Murmuring an apology to his dinner companions, he glanced at it, saw that it was a business question from one of his cousins who was working late at the agency and replied with a few quick thumb movements.

  Lori’s parents and brother all agreed that Andrew should run the check when he had time, though Shelby still looked doubtful. “It still seems sneaky to me. Lori would be angry and hurt.”

  “Maybe if someone had done this for Hannah she wouldn’t have gotten tied up with Wade,” C.J. murmured. “We’d have found out about all the secret debt Wade ran up before he married Hannah. Not to mention his tendency to sneak around with other women even when he was engaged to her. Would have spared that poor girl a truckload of heartache and saved the family a lot of trouble.”

  None of this was news to Andrew. He was the one who’d uncovered all that information—belatedly, of course. And while he would have given anything to have saved Hannah the pain she’d been through, if he hadn’t been hired to help them resolve the issues with her ex, he never would have met her. He was beginning to understand what a great loss that would have been.