Another Man's Child

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “But I’m a grandfather!”

  “So?”

  “I know that a lot of people today are happy to just live together, but I can’t do that, Beth. Not to you or to myself. It leaves too many doors open.”

  “I understand,” Beth said. And she did. She just didn’t like it. She was tired of living alone. Of eating alone. Of waking up alone.

  “I guess we’re just going to have to be patient a little longer until I can talk to Lisa. I can’t ask you to marry me until I’ve at least warned my daughter that I’ve rejoined the living.” His sheepish grin charmed Beth—and then his words sank in.

  “What?” she squeaked. Had he said marry her? She hadn’t even dared consider such a thing. Whenever she’d looked into their future, she’d just assumed Oliver would want her as a long-standing “friend.”

  “She’s my daughter, Beth. I have to tell her.”

  “Did you just ask me to marry you, Oliver, or did I miss something?” Beth asked, hoping she didn’t sound as young as she felt.

  “Not yet. But I intend to. Just as soon as I have a talk with my daughter. Little Sara’s getting better every day, so we shouldn’t have to wait too much longer.”

  Beth worried a moment as she thought of Lisa’s likely reaction to the news. She was not at all sure her friend would be happy for them. Especially when her own marriage was in so much trouble. She hadn’t told Oliver about that last conversation she’d had with Lisa in the hospital, when Lisa had said she was planning to leave Marcus as soon as she brought her baby home. But in any case, she knew her own happiness wasn’t worth causing Lisa more distress.

  “Maybe we should wait at least until Sara’s home.” She entwined her fingers with his.

  He nodded. “You’re right. Lisa’s a strong woman, as was her mother, but everyone has a breaking point and I can’t risk putting any more on her shoulders just now.”

  “Lisa always said her mother could handle anything. She envied that,” Beth said, looking out over the lawn that still showcased the gardens’ Barbara Webster had cultivated.

  Oliver squeezed her hand. “Thank you, my dear.”

  Beth smiled. “What for?”

  “For allowing me my memories.”

  And suddenly Beth understood. “You never have to worry about mentioning Barbara around me, Oliver. No more than I ever want to have to worry about talking to you about John. I can’t go through life being threatened by the past. Nor do I want to lose the beautiful memories I have of it.”

  “I love you, Dr. Montague,” Oliver said. He leaned over to kiss her, and for the first time since John’s senseless death, Beth felt real hope for the future.

  “Tell me something,” Oliver said several minutes later as he walked her out to her car.

  She grinned up at him. “Anything.”

  “When I do get around to asking, is your answer going to be yes?”

  “THIS IS BETH MONTAGUE. I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you’ll leave a message, I’ll—”

  Lisa hung up the phone with a frown. That was the fourth time she’d tried to call Beth in the past week and found her out. Not that Beth wasn’t free to go away, of course she was, but over the years, Lisa had become so familiar with Beth’s schedule that she almost always reached her friend on the first try. She called Beth’s office to make certain Beth had been showing up there, to assure herself that Beth was at least all right. Then she put a call through to her father, asking if he was going to be home for the next hour because she wanted to stop by. She knew he had a faculty meeting that evening, but Sara had been breathing on her own for almost four hours. She had to share her news with someone!

  Oliver looked great when he opened his door to her fifteen minutes later. “How’s our little one?” he asked immediately.

  “She’s breathing on her own, Dad! Has been for over four hours now.” Lisa could barely contain her excitement.

  “She’s off the respirator?” he asked, pinning her with his no-nonsense gaze.

  Lisa nodded. “Yes!”

  “And she’s getting enough oxygen?” Oliver was well versed on every aspect of Sara’s progress.

  “Her counts have been out of the danger zone.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned!” He grabbed Lisa up and swung her around.

  She noticed a new bounce in his step as she followed him out to the enclosed back patio for a quick cup of tea. It had been years since she’d seen her father look so happy. She was glad to see that he was finally getting over the loss of her mother.

  “Guess what else?” Lisa asked, sipping her tea.

  “What else?” her father asked, mimicking a game they used to play when Lisa was a little girl.

  “I held her today.”

  Oliver’s mouth fell open and he sat forward, taking Lisa’s hands in his own. “You took her out of her bed?”

  Lisa’s eyes brimmed with tears as she nodded. “For ten whole minutes.”

  “That’s great, honey. That’s just great!” His eyes were moist, too, as he shared her joy. Other than herself, Oliver was Sara’s only living blood relative. It did her battered heart good to know that he cared for her daughter as much as she did.

  “I imagine Marcus was standing in line to hold her,” Oliver said thirty minutes later as he and Lisa walked back through the house to the front door. He had his meeting to get to, and she had a husband who’d be waiting for her at home.

  Lisa stopped, unwilling to face that part of her life, but knowing she couldn’t put it off any longer.

  “Marcus doesn’t know, Dad. He hasn’t had a thing to do with the baby since the day she was born, or even before, really.”

  Oliver stopped in his tracks. “Nothing?” He frowned.

  “He says he can’t pretend.” Fresh tears gathered in Lisa’s eyes.

  “Oh, honey, still?” He pulled her against him. “I’d hoped he’d worked his way through all that after Sara was born. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I kept hoping he’d come around, too,” she said. It sounded so feeble when she said it aloud, but that tiny thread of hope had been keeping her going for months.

  “I’m sorry, honey. So sorry.”

  Lisa squared her shoulders. “If Sara lives, I think I’m going to have to leave him, Dad.”

  Oliver nodded, the happiness in his eyes dimmed. “I understand. You can’t bring the baby home to his house if he doesn’t accept her.”

  Hearing her father say the words made them all that much more real to Lisa. Had she been hoping he’d disagree with her, try to talk her out of it?

  “Can I bring her here, Dad? Just at first? Just until she doesn’t need round-the-clock supervision?” Lisa hated even having to ask. Moving home was the last thing she wanted to do.

  “You bring her here and stay here, young lady. I’ll not have you off someplace caring for her all by yourself. You, me and Sara, we’ll make a great family.”

  “I’ll need to get a place of my own at some point.”

  “We’ll worry about that later,” Oliver said, dismissing her concern. But Lisa promised herself she’d start looking for a home for herself and Sara right away. She’d stay with her father as long as the baby’s safety depended on having extra ears and eyes around, but she was going to have a home waiting for them when they were ready. She had to if she was ever going to believe that her marriage to Marcus was over.

  “I can’t imagine that Marcus is taking this sitting down,” Oliver said, walking with her out to her car.

  She took a deep breath. “I haven’t told him yet.”

  Again Oliver nodded as if he understood. “Time’s getting close, though,” he said, echoing the thoughts she’d been trying not think ever since she’d left the nursery several hours before.

  “I know.” Lisa was filled with a sudden urge to get home to her husband, to grasp whatever last minutes she could with him.

  “YOU OKAY?” Lisa asked Marcus over the pizza they shared later that evening.


  He’d had the idea on the way home to take her to their old stomping grounds, the pizza parlor they’d frequented during their years at Yale. They had something to celebrate, even if she didn’t know he knew that.

  “I’m fine. Why?” He smiled at her. She really was a beautiful woman.

  “I don’t know. You just seem different.”

  He felt different. “I’m fine,” he repeated, unable to explain to her what he couldn’t understand himself. Nothing had happened. Nothing had changed. He just didn’t feel quite his usual self.

  She took another bite of her pizza. “Anything happen at work today?”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary.” He wanted to tell her about his trip to the hospital. He wanted her to tell him how it felt to hold Sara. He wanted to know how significant she thought it was that they’d removed the respirator. But he knew it wouldn’t be fair to her. She’d accepted the situation as it had to be. He mustn’t let her get her hopes up, allow her to start expecting things from him he wouldn’t be able to give.

  “I saw Debbie today,” she said casually.

  “You did?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He watched her through narrowed eyes. Could Lisa really not have any idea how desperately he’d been waiting for her to be ready for him again? How hard it had been to lie beside her each night these past weeks and keep his hands to himself? Did she not know that he’d have had her before dinner if he’d realized he could?

  “And?”

  She grinned at him, and Marcus dropped the piece of pizza he’d been about to devour. The minx knew exactly what she was doing to him. He gestured at her plate. “Are you done there?” he asked.

  She continued to grin. “That depends,” she said.

  “On what?”

  “On how quickly you can get me home.”

  “Good answer, woman.” Marcus threw down a wad of bills, then took his wife’s hand and practically dragged her from the restaurant.

  FOR ALL HIS HASTE, Marcus took his time making love to her. He undressed her slowly, then caressed every inch of her while she lay beside him on their bed. He forced himself to be patient while she reacquainted herself with his body, as well.

  “You turned every college boy’s head in that joint tonight,” he whispered, his lips against her neck.

  Touched by his nonsense, Lisa laughed softly. “I did not. To them I’m an old lady.”

  He nipped her earlobe. “Hardly. I’m telling you, honey, every male eye in the place was on you as you sashayed your sweet butt out of there tonight.”

  “I did not sashay.”

  “Sure you did, Lis.” He moved to her other ear. “You always do.”

  He captured her lips, and she returned his kiss passionately. She was desperate for Marcus. For his touch. For his tenderness. For him. Desperate because even while she made love to him, she knew it was all slipping away.

  Her swollen breasts ached beneath his tender ministrations as he ran his fingers lightly over them, discovering their new hardness. A drop of milk leaked out, rolling down one side of her breast. Marcus caught it with his fingertip.

  “Are you saving all of it?” he asked, staring at the path the drop of milk had taken.

  She shook her head, oddly embarrassed. “Not anymore. There’s too much.”

  “How long does it keep being produced?”

  She tried to turn over, afraid that he found her milk repulsive, but he was half on top of her now and didn’t move. “As long as I keep pumping,” she finally said. He was still her husband. He had the right to an answer.

  He ran his hand lightly over her again. “Does it hurt, this pumping?”

  “Not much. It’s supposedly a lot worse than nursing, but I don’t really mind.”

  Her breast dripped again, and Lisa bit her lip. She’d had no idea that being with Marcus would stimulate her milk glands. Again Marcus caught the drop on his finger, and this time he brought it to his mouth.

  Marcus cherished her that night, loved her in ways he never had before, and when he finally entered her, bringing them both to a climax that seemed to go on and on, Lisa gave him more than her body and heart. She gave him her soul all over again. At least for one more night.

  And later, when he lay sleeping beside her, she gave him her tears. Because for everything she’d given him that night, she’d lost just as much. She couldn’t fool herself any longer. Marcus wasn’t going to come around. Sara was breathing on her own. It was time for Lisa to find her daughter a home.

  MARCUS DIDN’T EVEN STOP at the viewing-room window the next afternoon on his way home from work. He proceeded right to the door, and then on to a set of scrubs as soon as Regina answered his knock. He had business to attend to.

  “Hello, Sara,” he said, settling himself beside the warming bed on the stool he’d used the night before. “My name’s Marcus.”

  A nurse he’d never seen before walked by, and Marcus leaned down a little closer to the crib. “I’m married to your mama.”

  The baby was awake, but she appeared to be studying a scratch on the side of the bed opposite Marcus. He fought the urge to turn her little face toward him. He wasn’t going to touch her. Only the medical professionals and her parents were supposed to be touching her. He was neither.

  “Here’s the thing. I love your mama very much. And pretty soon, as soon as you get to know her, you’re going to love her, too. And she loves both of us. So you and me, we’re going to have to share her.”

  He paused, giving her time to digest his words. One of her inch-long feet kicked in the air.

  “Well, I just wanted you to know that I’m okay with that now, sharing her with you, I mean. I’m sorry it took me so long to come around. But it’ll work out fine, you’ll see. I have an office at home, and I can always work in there on the nights you need her to help you with homework, or if she’s teaching you to sew or something. And then she can get a sitter some nights and go out with me, too.”

  It wasn’t ideal. But it could work.

  “But, uh—” Marcus looked around him before leaning in just a bit closer “—unless you’re sick or something, I get her nights.”

  The baby didn’t cry. Marcus decided that was a good sign. “Okay. Now that that’s done, I’ll go get someone over here to change that diaper for you.” He looked around for Regina.

  Marcus backed up while Regina moved the cellophane covering Lisa’s baby and slipped a dry diaper beneath her. She plopped the old diaper on a scale, wrote something on the baby’s chart and came back with a doll-size pacifier in her hand which she attempted to place in Sara’s mouth. The baby spit it out, and Regina put it back in, all the while watching a bottle of milky solution drip into the baby’s catheter.

  “Should she have that thing if she doesn’t want it?” Marcus asked. He’d read that pacifiers were bad for babies’ teeth.

  “Before she can nurse, she has to learn how to suck,” Regina said, patiently forcing the pacifier back into the baby’s mouth. Sara spit it back out.

  Marcus grinned. The baby was as stubborn as her mother. “Maybe it’d be better to try her again later,” he suggested.

  Regina shook her head. “We give it to her only when she’s eating so she’ll learn to associate sucking with the full feeling in her stomach.”

  Marcus looked at the baby’s apple-size stomach. “She’s eating?”

  “Yep.” Regina nodded toward the bottle she was watching. “She’s taking about an eighth of a cup every four hours. We’re just about ready to try her on breast milk.”

  Thinking of the night before, Marcus had a sudden urge to go home and make love to Lisa again.

  “My wife will be glad to hear that,” he said, instead.

  “She was. We called her about an hour ago. She’s going to bring in the first four ounces in the morning and hold Sara while we feed her.”

  Marcus felt a pang as he thought about being there to watch Lisa feed her baby for the first time, but he knew better than to torment himself—
or Lisa. So he settled for watching the nurse continue to offer the baby the pacifier, until Sara finally gave in and accepted the unfamiliar object in her mouth. She sucked for about a minute and then fell asleep.

  “I’m a little concerned about her temperature,” Regina said, feeling the baby’s face with the back of her hand. “She’s getting feverish.”

  Marcus’s stomach tightened. “Is that normal?”

  Regina frowned and called out to another nurse. “See if Dr. Cunningham’s still in the building, Susan.” She kept looking from the baby to the dials on one of the machines beside the warming bed. “Her temperature’s climbed a full degree in an hour. And no, that’s not normal,” she said to Marcus.

  They were the last words anybody said to him during the next fifteen minutes as a full team of medical personnel went to work on Lisa’s baby. Marcus watched from the viewing-room window, just as he had for all those weeks. And when the team finally came away from the baby’s bed, Sara was once again hooked up to the respirator.

  They were right back where they’d started.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  URGENCY FUELED his blood as Marcus drove home. He wanted to be with Lisa in case the hospital called. He didn’t want her home alone when she heard the bad news. When he walked in the door, he could smell Hannah’s crab Alfredo coming from the kitchen. Lisa was in their office, working at her desk. She looked up at him when he came in, saw his worried expression.

  “What’s wrong?” she said, rising. Her face got that pinched look he’d come to dread.

  With his arm around her shoulders, Marcus led her to the leather couch that dominated one wall of the office. “Sara’s got some kind of infection, Lis. A nurse noticed her temperature rising when she was feeding her dinner. They had to call Randal Cunningham.”

  “Oh, my God. Oh, no. Not now.” Lisa started to get up from the couch. “I’ve got to go.”