Baby Bonanza

by Maureen Child

  She nearly groaned. “San Pedro?”

  “Jenna, just do this for me, okay?” He paused, then added, “Please.”

  Surprise flickered through her. She couldn’t remember Nick ever saying please before. So when he gave her directions, she dutifully wrote them down. When he was finished, she frowned and said, “Okay, we’ll come. Should be there in about a half hour.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  He hung up before she could ask any more questions, and Jenna scowled at her cell phone before she set it down on the seat beside her. “Well, guys, we’re off to meet your father.” Cooper cooed. “No, I don’t know what this is about, either,” she told her son. “But knowing your daddy, it could be anything.”

  It turned out to be a house.

  Cape Cod style, it looked distinctly out of place in Southern California, but it was the most beautiful house Jenna had ever seen. It was huge, and she was willing to bet that five of her cottages would have fit comfortably inside. But for all its size, it looked like a family home. There was a wide front lawn, and when she stepped out of the car in the driveway, she heard the sound of the ocean and knew the big house must be right on the sea.

  “What’s going on here?” she wondered aloud. But then Jacob’s short, sharp cry caught her attention and she turned to get her sons out of their seats.

  “Jenna!”

  She looked up and watched as Nick ran down the front lawn to her. He looked excited, his pale eyes shining, his mouth turned into a grin so wide, his dimple dug deeply into his left cheek. Naturally, Jenna felt an involuntary tug of emotion at first sight of him, and she wondered if it would always be that way.

  God, she hoped not.

  “Let me help with the boys,” he said after giving her a quick, hard, unexpected kiss that left her reeling a little.

  “Um, sure.” She watched as he rounded the back of her car, opened the other back door and began undoing the straps on Cooper’s car seat. “Nick, what’s going on? Where are we? Whose house is this?”

  He shot her another breath-stealing grin and scooped Cooper up into his arms. “I’ll tell you everything as soon as we get inside.”

  “Inside?” Finished with Jacob’s seat straps, she picked him up, cuddled him close and closed the car door with a loud smack of sound.

  “Yep,” Nick said. “Inside. Go on ahead. I’ll get the diaper bag and your purse.”

  She took a step, stopped and looked at him. Dappled shade from the massive oak tree in the front yard fell across his features. He was wearing a tight black T-shirt and those faded jeans he’d been wearing the night before when they-Okay, don’t go there, she told herself. “I can’t just go inside. I don’t know who lives here and-”

  “Fine,” he said, coming around the hood of the car, her purse under his arm and the diaper bag slung over that shoulder, while he jiggled Cooper on the other. “We’ll go together. All of us. Better that way, anyway.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ll see.” He started for the house and she had little choice but to follow.

  The brick walkway from the drive to the front door was lined with primroses in vibrant, primary shades of color. More flowerbeds followed the line of the house, with roses and tall spires of pastel-colored stocks scenting the air with a heady perfume.

  Jenna kept expecting the owner of the house to come to the front door to welcome them, but no one did. And when she crossed the threshold, she understood why.

  The house was empty.

  Their footsteps echoed in the cavernous rooms as Nick led her through the living room, past a wide staircase, down a hall and then through the kitchen. Her head turned from side to side, taking it all in, delighting in the space, the lines of the house. Whoever had designed it had known what they were doing. The walls were the color of rich, heavy cream, and dark wood framed doorways and windows. The floors were pale oak and polished to a high shine. The rooms bled one into the other in a flow that cried out for a family’s presence.

  This house was made for the sound of children’s laughter. As Jenna followed Nick through room after room, she felt that there was a sense of ease in the house. As if the building itself were taking a deep breath and relishing the feel of people within its walls again.

  “Nick…” The kitchen was amazing, but she hardly had time to glance at it as he led her straight through the big room and out the back door.

  “Come on, I want you to see this,” he said, stepping back so that she could move onto the stone patio in front of him.

  A cold ocean wind slapped at her, and Jenna realized she’d been right, the house did sit on a knoll above the sea. The stone patio gave way to a rolling lawn edged with trees and flowers that looked as she imagined an English cottage garden would. Beyond the lawn was a low-lying fence with a gate that led to steps that would take the lucky people who lived here right down to the beach.

  As Jenna held Jacob close, she did a slow turn, taking it all in, feeling overwhelmed with the beauty of the place as she finally circled back to look out at the sea, glittering with golden sunlight.

  Shaking her head, she glanced at Nick. “I don’t understand, Nick. What’s going on? Why are we here?”

  “Do you like it?” he asked, letting his gaze shift around the yard as he dropped the diaper bag and her purse to the patio. “The house, I mean,” he said, hitching Cooper a little higher on his chest. “Do you like it?”

  She laughed, uncertainty jangling her nerves. “What’s not to like?”

  “Good. That’s good,” he said, coming to her side. “Because I bought it.”

  “You-what?”

  Nick nearly laughed at the stunned expression on her face. God, this had been worth all of the secretive phone calls to real estate agents he’d been making. Worth getting up and leaving her that morning so that he could finalize the deal with the house’s former owners.

  This was going to work.

  It had to work.

  “Why would you do that?”

  “For us,” he said, and had the pleasure of watching her features go completely slack as she staggered unsteadily for a second.

  “Us?”

  “Yes, Jenna. Us.” He reached out, cupped her cheek in his palm and was only mildly disappointed when she stepped back and away from him. He would convince her. He had to convince her. “I found a solution to our situation,” he said, locking his gaze with hers, wanting her to see everything he was thinking, feeling, written in his eyes.

  “Our situation?” She blinked, shook her head as if to clear away cobwebs and then stared at him again.

  The wind was cold, but the sun was warm. Shade from the trees didn’t reach the patio, and the sunlight dancing in her hair made him want to grab her and hold her close. But first they had to settle this. Once and for all.

  “The boys,” he said, starting out slowly, as he’d planned. “We both love them. We both want them. So it occurred to me that the solution was for us to get married. Then we both have them.”

  She took another step back, and, irritated that she hadn’t jumped on his plan wholeheartedly, Nick talked faster. “It’s not like we don’t get along. And the sex is great. You have to admit there’s real chemistry between us, Jenna. It would work. You know it would.”

  “No,” she shook her head again and when Jacob picked up on her tension and began to cry, Nick moved in closer to her.

  He talked even faster, hurrying to change her mind. Make her see what their future could be. “Don’t say no till you think about it, Jenna. When you do, you’ll see that I’m right. This is perfect. For all of us.”

  “No, Nick,” she said, soothing Jacob even as she smiled sadly up at him. “It’s not perfect. I know you love your sons, I do. And I’m glad of that. They’ll need you as much as you need them. But you don’t love me.”

  “Jenna…”

  “No.” She laughed shortly, looked around the backyard, at the sea, and then finally she turned her gaze on Nick ag
ain. “It doesn’t matter if we get along, or if the sex and chemistry between us is great. I can’t marry a man who doesn’t love me.”

  Damn it. She was shutting him down, and he couldn’t even find it in himself to blame her. Panic warred with desperation inside him and it was a feeling Nick wasn’t used to. He was never the guy scrambling to make things work. People cowtowed to him. It didn’t go the other way.

  Yet here he stood, in front of this one woman, and knew deep down inside him that the only shot he’d have with her was if he played his last card.

  “Oh, for-” Nick reached out with his free arm, snaked it around her shoulders and dragged her in close to him. So close that their bodies and the bodies of their sons all seemed to be melded together into a unit. “Fine. We’ll do it the hard way, then. Damn it Jenna, I do love you.”

  “What?” Her eyes held a world of confusion and pain and something that looked an awful lot like hope.

  She hadn’t even looked that surprised when he’d shown up at her house a few days ago. That gave him hope. If he could keep her off balance, he could still win this. And suddenly Nick knew that he’d never wanted to win more; that nothing in his life had been this important. This huge. He had to say the right things now. Force her to listen. To really hear him. And to take a chance.

  Staring down into her eyes, he took a breath, and then took the plunge. The leap that he’d never thought to make. “Of course I love you. What am I, an idiot?” He stopped, paused, and said, “Don’t answer that.”

  “Nick, you don’t have to-”

  “Yeah, I do,” he said quickly, feeling his moment sliding by. He hadn’t wanted to have to admit to how he felt. He’d thought for sure that she’d go for the marriage-for-the-sake-of-the-boys thing and then he could have had all he wanted without mortgaging his soul. But maybe this was how it was supposed to work. Maybe you couldn’t get love until you were willing to give it.

  “Look, I’m not proud of this, but I’ve been trying to hide from what I feel for you since that first night we met more than a year ago.” His gaze moved over her face and his voice dropped to a low rush of words that he hoped to hell convinced her that what he was saying was true. “I took one look at you and fell. Never meant to. Didn’t want to. But I didn’t have a choice. You were there, in the moonlight and it was as if I’d been waiting for you my whole damn life.”

  “But you-”

  “Yeah,” he said, knowing what she was going to say. “I pulled away. I let you go. Hell, I told myself I wanted you to go. But that was a lie.” Laughing harshly, he said, “All this time, I’ve been calling you a liar, when the truth is, I’m the liar here. I lied to you. I lied to myself. Because I didn’t want to let myself be vulnerable to you.”

  “Nick-” She swallowed hard and a single tear rolled down her cheek. He caught it with the pad of his thumb.

  “It would have been much easier on me,” he admitted, “if you’d accepted that half-assed, marriage-of-convenience proposal. Then I wouldn’t have had to acknowledge what I feel for you. Wouldn’t have to take the chance that you’ll throw this back in my face.”

  “I wouldn’t do that-”

  “Wouldn’t blame you if you did,” he told her. “But since you didn’t go along with my original plan, then I have to tell you everything. I love you, Jenna. Madly. Completely. Desperately.”

  Fresh tears welled, making her eyes shine, and everything in him began to melt. What power she had over him. Over his heart. And yet he didn’t care anymore about protecting himself.

  All that mattered was her.

  “You walk into a room and everything else fades away,” he said softly. “You gave me my sons. You gave me a glimpse into a world that I want to be a part of.”

  Another tear joined the first and then another and another. In her arms, Jacob hiccupped, screwed up his little face and started to cry in earnest. Quickly, Nick took the boy from her and cradled him in his free arm. Looking down at his boys, then to her, he said, “Just so you know, I’m not prepared to lose, here. Nick Falco doesn’t quit when he wants something as badly as I want you. I won’t let you go. Not any of you.”

  He glanced behind him at the sprawling house, then shifted his gaze back to her again as he outlined his master plan. “We’ll live here. You can do your gift baskets in the house instead of the garage. There’s a great room upstairs that looks over the ocean. Lots of space. Lots of direct light. It’d be perfect for you and all of your supplies.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but Nick kept going before she could.

  “I figure until the boys are in school, we can live half the year here, half on board ship. It’ll be good for ’em. And if they like the dog I bought them, we’ll take her along on the ship, too.”

  “You bought a d-”

  “Golden retriever puppy,” Nick said. “She’s little now, but she’ll grow.”

  “I can’t believe-”

  The words kept coming, tumbling one after the other from his mouth as he fought to convince her, battled to show her how their lives could be if she’d only take a chance on him.

  “Once they’re in school, we can cruise during the summers. I can run the line from here and I have Teresa. I’ll promote her,” he said fiercely. “She can do the onboard stuff and stay in touch via fax.”

  “But Nick-”

  “And I want more kids,” he said, and had the pleasure of seeing her mouth snap shut. “I want to be there from the beginning. I want to see our child growing within you. I want to be in the delivery room to watch him-or her-take that first breath. I want in on all of it, Jenna. I want to be with you. With them,” he said, glancing at the twins he held cradled against him.

  The boys were starting to squirm and he knew how they felt. Nick’s world was balanced on a razor’s edge, and he figured that he had only one more thing to say. “I’m not going to let you say no, Jenna. We belong together, you and me. I know you love me. And damn it, I love you, too. If you don’t believe me, I’ll find a way to convince you. But you’re not getting away from me. Not again. I won’t be without you, Jenna. I can’t do it. I won’t go back to that empty life.”

  The only sound then was the snuffling noises the twins were making and the roar of the sea rushing into the cliffs behind them. Nick waited what felt like a lifetime as he watched her eyes.

  Then finally she smiled, moved in close to him and wrapped both arms around him and their sons. “You really are an idiot if you think I’d ever let you get away from me again.”

  Nick laughed, loud and long, and felt a thousand pounds of dread and worry slide from his shoulders. “You’ll marry me.”

  “I will.”

  “And have more babies.”

  “Yes.” She smiled up at him, and her eyes shone with a happiness so rich, so full, it stole Nick’s breath. “A dozen if you want.”

  “And sail the world with me,” he said, dipping his head to claim a kiss.

  “Always,” she said, still smiling, still shining with an inner light that warmed Nick through. “I love you, Nick. I always have. We’ll be happy here, in this wonderful house.”

  “We will,” he assured her, stealing another kiss.

  “But you’re going to be housetraining that puppy,” she teased.

  “For you, my love,” Nick whispered, feeling his heart become whole for the first time in his life, “anything.”

  MAUREEN CHILD

  is a California native who loves to travel. Every chance they get, she and her husband are taking off on another research trip. An author of more than sixty books, Maureen loves a happy ending and still swears that she has the best job in the world. She lives in Southern California with her husband, two children and a golden retriever with delusions of grandeur.

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