Heiress's Baby Scandal

by Janice Lynn

  She sniffed. “Why would you want me, Ty?”

  “Are you kidding me? Why wouldn’t I?”

  Should she write him a thesis? Or perhaps just send him the abbreviated version?

  “You are a beautiful, intelligent, sexy, fun, wonderful, caring woman, and I know it, so you should, too.”

  Yep, she was dreaming, so she might as well enjoy her dream. She buried her face in his chest and let him hold her, let him soothe the part of her that had never quite felt good enough for her family.

  In Ty’s arms, she felt good enough.

  She felt perfect.

  She didn’t know how the future would play out. For the moment the future didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Ty made her feel complete, as if she belonged. He made her believe in herself, made her stronger than she’d thought she was.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  TY DREADED GOING downstairs, but knew eventually he would have to face his family. Part of him was surprised he and Ellie hadn’t been interrupted by the whole Donaldson clan. Each of them would have something to say to him, no doubt.

  Things he’d really rather Ellie not hear.

  He’d convinced her to lie down. He’d lain down with her, held her sleeping body spooned up against him for almost an hour before he’d slipped out of the bed. He liked how her body fit against his, how holding her in his arms felt so right.

  His brain had been racing from the moment he’d realized she might be pregnant. There were so many things to consider that he didn’t want to rush what he said to her, didn’t want to possibly say the wrong thing and inadvertently create problems.

  A baby.

  He’d dedicated his life to caring for babies, for nurturing and providing care for innocent new lives. Now he was going to be responsible for a new life.

  A baby.

  His and Ellie’s baby.

  Really, before he faced his family’s various reactions, he’d like a little time to figure out his own emotions and to clear his head. Black Magic called to him. Big-time.

  Somehow he made it out of the house without bumping into anyone, but the moment he stepped into the barn, his brother slapped him on the shoulder.

  “Wanna go for a ride?” Harry asked, probably knowing that was exactly where Ty was headed.

  “Absolutely.” He went into a tack room, grabbed his saddle. When he’d gotten his gear, he wasn’t surprised to see his brother had already mounted his stallion. Black Magic waited impatiently.

  He spent a great deal of time getting the horse ready for the ride, taking time to talk gently to the stallion, to allow him to bond again with his too-long-gone master.

  When he sat on the horse, old memories and emotions hit him. He’d loved this horse, but first medical school then moving to New York had kept him away.

  But really what had kept him away had been much more than physical location and distance.

  His father’s disapproval had been what had driven him away.

  In silence, he and his brother rode out across the fields, riding toward nowhere in particular, yet neither was surprised when they stopped at a pond where they’d often ridden out to, fished and played at as kids.

  Although the air was brisk, the sun was shining and light glimmered across the water’s surface.

  “You wanna talk about it?” Harry asked when they’d both dismounted and stood next to the pond just as they’d done hundreds of times in the past. They’d swum in this pond, played in this pond, camped at this pond.

  Removing his gloves, Ty picked up a rock, skipped it over the water. One. Two. Three. Sink. He found another flat stone, tossed it toward the water. “Ellie’s pregnant.”

  “Yeah, I heard.” Harry bent and studied the ground until he found a rock that suited him. “My wife isn’t known for her discretion, God love her.”

  Ty shrugged. “Mom already knew.”

  “Mom has this way of already knowing everything.” Harry gave his stone a fling and it skipped farther out than Ty’s had gone. “So, what are you going to do? You going to marry her?”

  “I’m not sure.” He wasn’t even sure that if he wanted to get married whether Ellie would marry him. She didn’t need some man complicating her life. Not that he hadn’t already complicated her life enough by getting her pregnant. “Her father will likely get out his shotgun when he finds out.”

  “His proverbial one, maybe,” Harry agreed. “I may not know Senator Aston, but I do know of him. Shooting you would cost him too many votes, so I think you’re safe.”

  Despite his brother’s teasing tone, Ty didn’t smile. “She deserves better than me. A lot better.”

  Harry stopped in midsearch for another stone, looked up at him and frowned. “Because she’s an Aston?”

  “Because she’s Ellie.” Which summed up everything. He couldn’t care less that she was an Aston. What he cared about was the woman herself. He cared about Ellie.

  Straightening, Harry seemed to consider his answer. “She could do worse.”

  “Yeah.” Ty gave the stone he’d been holding a hard fling. “She could have ended up with you.”

  Harry grinned. “Nah, Nita wouldn’t have been happy ‘bout that. I’m a taken man.” His brother hit his shoulder. “It’s not so bad, you know. Having a kid, being married. You might like it.”

  “This coming from the man who still lives with his parents.” Ty could have bitten his tongue off the moment the words had left his mouth.

  Harry’s face paled, then his cheeks splotched red, and not from the cold.

  “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

  “Sure you did,” his brother countered, cramming his hands into his jacket pockets. “In some ways, you’re right. I do live in that big house with Mom and Dad, because you know what? I love it there. I love having my wife and child grow up on this ranch, because I love it here. I love Swallow Creek, the Triple D, and there’s no place on earth I’d rather be than right here with my family.”

  Ty didn’t say anything. He figured he’d already said too much.

  “But that life isn’t for you,” his brother surprised him by saying. “The ranch has never been in your blood the way it has in Dad’s and mine. William’s, too, actually. But living on this ranch isn’t what I was referring to. I was talking about having a family, a place where you belong.”

  That Ty understood. “I belong at the Angel Mendez Children’s Hospital.”

  “Really?” Harry’s brows formed a V and he sank down on a fallen log, picked at a piece of loose moss before glancing up and meeting Ty’s gaze. “That’s enough? Your career?”

  “It always has been.”

  “Before Ellie.”

  Before Ellie. The words seemed to echo across the plains, strumming louder and louder in Ty’s head.

  “She’s a part of Angel’s,” he said slowly, wondering why the words wouldn’t quit sounding through his mind. Before Ellie.

  “Ellie is your family, Ty. She’s carrying your baby.”

  Ty sank onto the log next to his brother. “Tell me about it.”

  “So, I ask you again,” Harry said with that calm bigbrother voice of reason of his. “What are you going to do? You need a game plan, bro. Because we both know that when Dad finds out you’ve gotten a Northern girl pregnant out of wedlock, he’s going to hit the roof.”

  “Of all the stupid, irresponsible stunts that boy has pulled, this one tops them all!”

  Ty winced. Yep, Harry had been right. His father was hitting the roof. Ty had barely stepped back into the house from his ride with his brother and didn’t really have his game plan formed. He’d wanted to talk to Ellie prior to doing that. To tell her his thoughts and how he felt about her, to ask what her thoughts were, what she was feeling.

  Unfortunately, he doubted he was going to get the opportunity. At least, not before a confrontation with his father.

  His mother replied in her usual steady voice, encouraging her husband to calm down, that having another grandchild wa
s a good thing.

  Good ole mom, always coming to his defense.

  “The boy is living in New York City. What kind of place is that to even consider raising a family? Too many people, too much pollution, no grass to grow beneath one’s feet.”

  Ty felt his father’s shudder as much as he heard it.

  “And rather than have a real man’s job, he takes care of babies for a living.” Another shudder, this one much more pronounced. “What kind of example is that going to be for my grandchild?”

  A new jab poked into an old wound. Hadn’t this been exactly the argument that had led him into leaving Swallow Creek? Into swearing he wouldn’t return? He didn’t have to be a rancher to be a real man.

  Except in his father’s eyes, that was.

  Ty took a deep breath and prepared to go into the kitchen where his parents were talking. Might as well get this over with rather than leave his mother to take all the flak.

  No doubt she’d taken enough of that over the years since he had moved away.

  “A good one.”

  Pausing in midstep on his way into the room, Ty’s ears perked up at the steady voice that responded to his father’s question.

  Not his mother’s voice, as he’d expected, but Ellie’s.

  “What did you say?” His father’s voice boomed, obviously shocked and awed that someone dared speak up.

  Ellie’s voice didn’t waver, neither did it stutter. God bless her. “I said Ty would be a good example for our child.”

  His father harrumphed. “A good example would be for that boy to get his act together and get his butt home so he can help take care of family responsibilities.”

  Without so much as a pause, he heard Ellie’s sweet voice continue to defend him.

  “He has new family responsibilities now. To me and our baby.”

  “To you? Hell, woman, he’s not even got a ring on your finger and you’re knocked up. I don’t think he can be accused of facing his family responsibilities or doing right by you.”

  Ty cringed, wondered why he was still standing just outside the room, yet he wanted to hear what Ellie would say. He needed to hear what she would say.

  “Ty is a man of honor.”

  His heart swelled at her confident words. God, he would do his best to do right by her. Somehow. Some way. He would do right by Ellie and their baby.

  “A man of honor doesn’t abandon his family to move out of state to take care of babies.”

  “A man I admire and respect,” she continued as if his father hadn’t spoken. “A man who works hard and gives all he has to help those around him, a man who will be a good father and not judge our child based upon outdated, chauvinistic ideas that a man has to live off the land to be a real man.”

  Pride surged at Ellie’s staunch defense. Knowing how her anxiety tended to flare, he was again amazed that not once had she stuttered. Hell, he’d seen his father make grown men stutter and quake in their boots. Yet Ellie was standing her ground, defending him.

  Ty closed his eyes, picturing her in his mind, her smile, her eyes, the way she looked at him when he kissed her.

  The way he knew he looked at her. As if she meant the world to him.

  Because she did.

  “You’ve known him, what, a few months? Don’t pretend you know my son better than I do.”

  “Harold, don’t do this,” Ty’s mother begged, speaking up for the first time since Ellie had come into the conversation. “Don’t say such things.”

  “You know I’m right. That foolhardy boy always had his nose in a book when he should have been doing other things.”

  “Other things such as being like you, Dad?” Ty hadn’t consciously decided to step out of the shadows, but he couldn’t risk his father launching into Ellie. He wouldn’t risk it. She was too fragile.

  Too precious.

  As timid as she’d always been around the hospital, recalling how panicked she’d been at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, he was amazed at how she’d defended him, at how her shoulders were high and her gaze bright, confident. Had she been wearing a long red cape and the wind blowing in her hair, he wouldn’t have been surprised. Ellie was his heroine.

  His father’s lips pursed and his gaze narrowed as it settled on Ty. “A boy could do worse than to grow up to be like his old man.”

  True. His father was a hardworking man who had always provided for his family, had always given as much as he demanded of others. But that didn’t mean Ty had to follow in his footsteps.

  “I’m not like you, Dad.”

  “Ty,” his mother began, her nervous gaze going back and forth between her husband and her younger son, “perhaps we should have this conversation later.”

  “Why, so that we can sugarcoat the fact that my own father is disappointed in me?” Had he ever said those words out loud before? He didn’t think so. Maybe he’d never even mentally acknowledged them, but something about Ellie’s defense of him made him acknowledge a lot of things.

  “No, thanks. We’ve been doing that for years and it’s not helped one bit. And if it’s for Ellie’s benefit, don’t bother. She’s already seen how he feels about me. Hearing the words only confirms what she has already figured out.”

  “Don’t you be rude to your mother, boy.”

  “I’m not a boy,” he countered, not really thinking he’d been rude to his mother and certainly not intending to have disrespected her in any way. But his father’s chest puffed up and his gaze narrowed.

  Out of years of deferring to the man he’d been taught his whole life to respect, Ty automatically zipped his lips.

  Ellie, on the other hand, did not.

  “He’s right,” she said with that easy confidence again that surprised him. “Ty is a man. A very good man who is going to be a father. A very good father to our baby, who can grow up and do anything he or she likes in life, whether that be a baby doctor or a rancher or a garbage collector. What’s important is that our child grow up healthy and happy and knowing that he or she can do or accomplish anything and that self-worth does not come from how others see you but how one sees oneself.”

  Ty bit back a smile at the shocked look crossing his father’s face and took a step forward in Ellie’s direction. Hell, he wanted to wrap his arms around her and spin her around for the staunch way she defended him.

  But she was oblivious to him and focused solely on his father. Her shoulders lifted, her eyes burned with dark intensity and she met his father’s gaze squarely.

  “If you want anything to do with our baby, you will learn to appreciate the wonderful man you have for a son because he is a brilliant doctor and an honorable man,” she warned, her hands on her hips and her expression serious. “I will not have my child around someone who obviously has so little appreciation for a man who does so much good for so many.”

  Blood pounding in her ears, Eleanor wondered if Ty was going to read her the riot act for daring to be so outspoken to his father, but she didn’t care at the moment. Anger burned too hotly in her veins for her to hold her tongue. Really, how could any man be so obtuse?

  No wonder Ty had moved so far away.

  She’d awakened, realized Ty was gone, and that he must have been for some time because the bed barely held an imprint of him having been there. She’d gone downstairs to find him.

  And stumbled on Ty’s parents, discussing him.

  Discussing being the mildest of ways she knew how to put what Ty’s father had been doing.

  Degrading his son.

  Tearing him down.

  She hadn’t been able to stand it.

  How dared he say such things about the most wonderful man she had ever known? About the man who made her view life differently?

  If the blustery old man thought he was going to have anything to do with her baby when he treated his son so callously, he was wrong.

  Because she might have only known she was pregnant for a few hours, but she loved this baby and would protect him or her with her life. No way woul
d she let some overbearing, pompous man berate her child.

  Or her child’s father.

  “Ellie, dear, perhaps you and I should go to the den and let the men have this discussion?” Ty’s mother suggested gently, her worried gaze going back and forth between her son and her husband. She moved toward Ellie, put her arm gently on her shoulder.

  Eleanor risked a look at Ty. His face was dark, cloudy, upset.

  Coldness doused the flame that burned within her.

  She had overstepped her boundaries.

  Hadn’t she known she had?

  She might be pregnant with Ty’s baby, but she’d been talking to his father. Blood was thicker than water. Didn’t that always hold true?

  Still, she wasn’t going to apologize. Not when she so strongly disagreed with how Ty’s father treated him.

  “Actually, I need to do some things upstairs,” she ventured, not wanting to go with Ty’s mother so that she could be scolded for overstepping her place. Plus, tears burned at her eyes and she wanted to get away, far away, before they fell. No way did she want to show weakness in front of this family. If for no other reason, she didn’t want them to think they could browbeat her in regard to her baby. They couldn’t. She held her head high. “If you’ll excuse me …”

  Without pausing, she headed back toward the stairs she’d descended only minutes before.

  She hadn’t mentally made any decisions, but when she got back to Ty’s room, saw all the things from his childhood and past, she was struck with homesickness.

  Immense and utter homesickness.

  Perhaps her family was odd. Perhaps they each had their own quirks and faults. But they were her family.

  She wanted them.

  Before she even consciously thought about what she was doing, she had her suitcase out of Ty’s closet and had begun methodically packing her things back into the case.

  “What are you doing?”

  She spun at the sound of Ty’s voice. “Going home.”

  Filling the entire doorway with his tall frame and broad shoulders, he didn’t look happy. His gaze narrowing, he stepped into the room, closed his bedroom door behind him.