She knew she had shocked him with the offer when he gave her a long, penetrating stare. It was apparent he hadn’t expected her to be that cooperative. His gaze shifted to Lily.
“May I hold her?”
“Hold out your arms and see if she’ll come to you.”
* * *
Giles extended his arms, and much to his surprise Lily leaned forward and held out her arms for him to take her. He smiled at the little girl looking up at him. “She looks different from when I last saw her.” Her hair was longer and there was a hint of more teeth coming through her upper gums.
Mya leaned against the porch column and crossed her arms under her breasts. “I’m able to see her change even though I’m with her all the time. Right now she’s teething, so she’s drooling on everything.” As if on cue, Lily picked up her bib and gnawed on it.
Giles shifted his attention from Lily to Mya. He marveled that a woman without a hint of makeup and wearing faded jeans and a white T-shirt and socks could appear so incredibly sensual.
“How old is she now?”
“She turned eight months two days ago.”
He quickly did the math. “Her birthday is February 5?”
“Yes.”
“Our birthdays are four days apart. Mine is February first.”
“That’s quite a coincidence.” Mya turned and opened the storm door at the same time Lily let out a piercing scream. “That’s her way of telling me she wants to be changed. In fact, it’s time for her afternoon nap.”
Giles followed Mya inside the house and sniffed the air. “Something smells good.”
Mya glanced at him over her shoulder. “I’m making pot roast. You’re more than welcome to stay for dinner.”
He stared at the denim fabric hugging her hips and smothered a groan. Giles knew it wasn’t going to be easy to completely ignore the woman with whom he would spend time whenever he came to see Lily. Everything about her turned him on: her face, body, hair, softly modulated voice with a hint of a drawl and then there was the way she stared at him. It was as if she knew what he was thinking or going to say before he spoke.
Jordan had come up with nothing—not even a parking ticket—in Samantha and Mya’s background for him to use as leverage to bolster his case if and when he decided to sue her. The only alternative was to watch for signs of neglect, and watching Mya closely was definitely going to become a delightful distraction.
“I’d like that very much. Do you cook every day?”
“Yes, because I have to prepare meals for Lily.”
Giles slipped out of his running shoes, left them on the thick straw mat near the door and followed Mya through the living room and up a flight of stairs to the second story. “You don’t buy baby food from the supermarket?”
“No. I’ve heard stories about jars of baby food being recalled because of foreign objects, so I decided it’s safer and healthier to prepare her food myself. I’ll cook carrots, beets, spinach or sweet potatoes and then purée them to a consistency where she can swallow without choking.”
“That’s a lot of work.”
“She’s worth it.” Mya stood at the entrance to the nursery. “Do you want to change her?”
Giles didn’t mind holding a baby but usually drew the line when it came to changing diapers. The few times he’d changed his nephews it was apparent he had been too slow when they urinated on him. “I’ll watch you do it.”
Her eyebrows flickered a little. “You’ve never changed a baby?”
“Only boys. My brother has two sons.” Giles handed her Lily.
“The fact that they’re not anatomically the same shouldn’t make a difference. You are familiar with the female body, aren’t you?”
Giles narrowed his eyes. “That’s not funny. I remember you warning me about being facetious,” he added when she gave him a Cheshire cat grin.
She scrunched up her nose. “I do remember saying something like that.”
Giles had to smile. His daughter’s mother was a beautiful sexy tease. How different she was from their first encounter where he could feel her hostility. This was a Mya he could readily get used to.
“Everything you’ll need to change her is in the drawers of the changing table.” She opened and closed each drawer. “Here are diapers, wipes, lotion and plastic bags for the soiled diapers.”
He stood at the changing table positioned at the foot of the crib and watched as Mya removed Lily’s bib and onesie. She quickly and expertly changed the wet diaper and disposed of it in a plastic bag. “Where do you put the plastic bag?”
“There’s a garbage can in the mudroom.”
Giles studied the exquisite furnishings in the nursery. It was apparent Mya had spared no expense when it came to decorating the space. Green and pink were the perfect contrast for the white crib, dresser and chest of drawers. The colors were repeated in the rug stamped with letters of the alphabet with corresponding images of animals. A solid white rocking chair and footstool had covered cushions in varying shades of pink and red roses.
“Is she sleeping throughout the night?”
Mya nodded. “Now she is.”
“What time do you put her to bed?”
“Eight.”
He angled his head. “That should give you a few hours for yourself before you turn in for the night.”
“A few,” she said cryptically. Mya handed Lily back to Giles. “You can hold her while I throw away the diaper and bring up a bottle.”
Giles smiled as Lily stared up at him with curious, round, clear blue eyes with dark blue centers. “Hello, princess. I’m your daddy and now that I’m here we’re going to get to see a lot of each other. I have lots of plans we can do together once you’re older. I’m going to teach you to swim, ice-skate and, when the time comes, how to drive. You like sports?” he asked, continuing his monologue with the little girl. “Well, if you’re a Wainwright, then you’ll definitely be into sports. And if you come to live with me in New York, then you’re going to have to decide whether you like the Yankees or the Mets. Those are baseball teams. You don’t have to choose when it comes to football because your cousin Brandt played for the NFL. That means we always cheer for one of the New York teams. Rooting for the Rangers rather than the Islanders is a better pick since you’ll be living in Manhattan. Let’s see, what’s left? Oh! I forgot about basketball. Your daddy is partial to the Knicks, although I also like the Nets.
“Then there’s your family. Your birth certificate may list you as Lawson, but I don’t want you to ever forget that you are a Wainwright. You’ll probably be a little overwhelmed when everyone will want a piece of you, but not to worry because Daddy will make certain to take care of his princess. And when you’re older and you want to live with me in New York, I’ll make it happen. There’s a wonderful school blocks from Central Park where several generations of Wainwrights were educated.”
“Don’t, Giles.”
He turned to find Mya standing in the doorway to the nursery. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t promise her things that may not become a reality. I know she doesn’t understand what you’re telling her. And I forgot to tell you that Sammie’s will states that Lily should be raised here.”
Giles clenched his teeth in frustration. It was apparent Mya wasn’t that ready to compromise, that she was going to hold to Samantha’s mandate that Lily grow up in a town where the residents appeared reluctant to accept it was now the twenty-first century.
“Do you realize how manipulative your sister was? That she’s controlling three lives from the grave?”
Mya reacted as if he had struck her across the face. “Maybe she had a reason for setting up the conditions for how she wanted her daughter to be raised.”
“What reason could that be?” Giles spat out, angrily.
“I don’t know, because I wasn’t aware that m
y sister was seeing someone until after she’d become pregnant. And even then she refused to tell me your name.”
“I think we need to talk.”
“What about?”
“About my relationship with your sister.”
“You are so right about that,” Mya said.
Giles handed Lily to Mya and stalked out of the room. If Samantha hadn’t revealed the name of her baby’s father, then he had to assume she had never spoken to Mya about him or their on-again, off-again liaison.
He knew he could never move forward in his quest to claim his daughter if he withheld the truth about the woman who had remained an enigma even before she disappeared from his life.
Chapter Four
Mya found Giles in the family room. He stood with his back to the French doors. “Are you going to stand while we talk?” she asked.
He took several steps and pointed to the love seat. “You first.”
She sat and he folded his tall frame down on a chair opposite her. “Where and how did you meet my sister?”
Stretching out long legs, Giles stared at his sock-covered feet. “Samantha was the flight attendant assigned to first class on my flight from the Bahamas to the States. I had a connecting flight in Miami, but all planes were grounded because of severe thunderstorms. I decided to check into a hotel rather than spend hours in the airport waiting for the weather to clear. Samantha and several crew members were checking into the same hotel because they weren’t scheduled to fly out again until the following day. She invited me to have drinks with her, and we agreed to meet in the hotel lounge.”
“Are you saying that Sammie picked you up?”
Giles shook his head. “No, she didn’t. We’d passed the time during the flight from Nassau to Miami chatting about movies, so when she suggested we have drinks, I accepted because I’d found her pretty and outgoing. She told me her parents were dead and that she was an only child. When I mentioned her Southern drawl, she said she’d grown up in a small town in what I’d assumed was Virginia.”
Mya bit her lower lip to still its trembling. She wondered how many other men had Sammie told the same lie. “Why do you think she lied to you?”
Giles lifted broad shoulders under his sweatshirt. “I don’t know.”
“What else did she tell you?”
“She said she hated growing up in a small town and that’s why she decided to become a flight attendant. And when I asked her what she wanted for her future, she claimed she hadn’t figured that out. When the topic of marriage and children came up, we both agreed we definitely weren’t ready for either.” Giles paused, seemingly deep in thought. “After seeing her a couple of times, whenever she had a layover in New York I could detect restlessness in her. As if she was always looking for something or someone. And when I mentioned it to her, she played it off, saying she always felt more comfortable in the air than on the ground.”
Mya had to agree with Giles when he talked about Sammie being restless. “That someone she was looking for was her birth mother.” She told him about Samantha’s mother getting into a taxi with her week-old baby and when she got out, she hadn’t bothered to take the infant with her. “There were times when I suspected Sammie never really appreciated what our adoptive parents did for us. She’d complain about feeling incomplete because she’d been abandoned.”
“I suppose her feeling that way wouldn’t permit her to engage in a committed relationship.”
Mya stared at Giles. “You wanted a commitment from her?”
He blinked slowly. “I wanted more than her calling me every couple of months to tell me she was in town and wanted to see me.”
Mya frowned. “So you just wanted to see her for sex?”
“No! There were times when we were together and never made love. I’d always ask her when I would see her again because she knew her flight schedule well in advance, and her answer was ‘I don’t know.’ We dated off and on for a little more than a year, and then it ended. One month passed and then another and after the third month, I knew it was over.”
“Had you argued about something that made her angry?”
“We may have had some minor disagreements but it never escalated to an argument. Come to think of it, I did notice she would become sullen whenever I talked about my family.”
“That’s because you grew up with your biological mother and father and she didn’t.”
He sat straight. “So she punishes me by having my child and using her as a pawn so I’ll never be able to legally claim her as a Wainwright.”
A shiver of annoyance snaked its way up Mya’s spine. She wasn’t about to let Giles attack her dead sister. “Maybe because you are a Wainwright Sammie feared you would use your family’s name and money to take Lily away from her because you’d told her you weren’t ready for marriage and fatherhood. In other words you’d take the baby but not the mother.”
“I’m not going to lie and say I was in love with your sister, but I’ll say it again that if I’d known she was carrying my baby, I definitely would’ve provided for them.”
Mya threw up a hand. “Do you hear yourself, Giles? You talk as if money will solve everything. Sammie didn’t need money because our parents made certain we would be financially secure before they passed away. They left us this house and their furniture-manufacturing company, which we sold because neither of us wanted to get involved in running a business. Sammie had two life insurance policies, and as the beneficiary I invested most of the monies in tax-free bonds for Lily’s college education and whatever else she’ll need to start life on her own.”
Giles ran a hand over his face. “None of this makes sense.”
Mya closed her eyes when she recalled the times when they recited their prayers before going to bed, and Sammie’s prayer was always the same. She wanted to find her real mother. Those were the times when Mya resented the Lawsons for telling Sammie she was adopted. It would’ve been so easy for them to say she was their biological daughter because of the physical resemblance. But living in a small town where it was difficult to hide anything made that virtually impossible.
She opened her eyes. “It doesn’t make sense because you have what Sammie wanted most in life. My sister used to spend hours on the computer pouring over sites dedicated to people searching for their relatives. She told me whenever she had a layover in the Midwest she would search through local birth and death records for a woman who’d given birth to an infant girl around the time she was born. Sammie couldn’t know where she was going because she didn’t know where she had come from.”
“Where did her mother abandon her?”
“It was in New Lebanon. It’s a city southwest of Dayton, Ohio.”
“What about you, Mya? You’ve never searched for your birth mother?” Giles asked.
“No. Because whoever she is, I know if she’d been able to take care of me she wouldn’t have left me in the hospital. When people ask me about my race, I always tell them I’m African-American. And if they asked whether I’m mixed race, my comeback is, isn’t everyone? All they have to do is take the ancestry DNA test to find their true ethnicity.”
Giles laughed. “That is so true.”
Mya realized it was the first time she’d heard Giles laugh. The sound was low and soothing. “Sammie did take a DNA test and it said she had ancestors who were European Jewish, Russian and Scandinavian. She focused on the Scandinavians because they’d settled in the Midwest.”
Giles angled his head and smiled. “I guess that makes Lily quite an ethnic gumbo.”
He sobered. “I’m glad you told me about Samantha. I think I understand her a little better now.”
“Are you still upset that she didn’t tell you about Lily?”
“Whether I’m upset is irrelevant. What’s done is done. What you and I have to do is come to an agreement as to what is best for Lily. You have a jump
on being a mother while I have to learn that being a father is a lot more than offering financial support. I will not make any decisions concerning Lily unless I discuss it with you. I did tell my mother that she has a granddaughter, so she’s anxious to meet her.”
“What about your father?” Mya asked.
“He still doesn’t know, and Mom and I won’t tell him until you’re ready to come to New York.”
“What if we aim for Thanksgiving?” Mya knew it was one of the holidays Sammie had designated for visitation, yet after talking with Giles she was willing to be flexible as long as he didn’t threaten or put pressure on her about Lily’s future.
“That’ll work. That gives us at least six weeks to get used to being a family.”
Mya wanted to ask Giles about his relationship with his father when she recalled his statement about fatherhood: I have to learn that being a father is a lot more than offering financial support.
Had his father not been a positive role model? Had he just provided financial support while relinquishing the responsibility of child rearing to his wife? She’d heard the expression more money, more problems. Did his father’s wealth did not translate into knowing or doing what was best for his progeny?
Mya pushed to her feet. “Where are my manners? I forgot to ask you if you wanted lunch.”
Giles rose in one fluid motion. “Thank you for offering, but I had a buffet breakfast before I left the hotel.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s time I go and check in with my office.” He winked at her. “By the way, what time is dinner?”
“Six.”
“I’ll see you later, Mya.”
Mya nodded. “Okay.”
She watched as he slipped into his shoes, walked out of the house and closed the self-locking door. Giles’s arrival had altered her writing schedule. She had to tweak a proposal for the next book in her series and submit it to her editor by the end of the week.
When her sister came back to Wickham Falls with the news that she was staying until she delivered her baby, Mya knew her well-ordered life would never be the same. Before Sammie’s return, all she had to concern herself with was refining her lectures notes; reading and grading papers and penning novels in her spare time. And now when she had adjusted to being a full-time mother and part-time writer, she would now have to change again. This time she would have to adapt to sharing Lily with Giles.
Claiming the Captain's Baby Page 5
