Her Soldier's Baby

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Her request made no sense.

  Until Daniel walked in the room, stopping when he saw Pierce there.

  “Where’s...she?” the boy asked, frowning as he looked around.

  In what appeared to be a hospital paper gown over the jeans he’d had on at the studio, the boy looked more like a young doctor than a seventeen-year-old kid. He had a surgical mask resting against his throat as if he’d just pulled it off.

  She. He didn’t know what to call Eliza.

  The awareness shouldn’t have surprised Pierce. He was good at tuning in. At knowing what people were hiding. Even with this kid, he’d known when he was hiding something from them.

  But that was...before.

  Everything that had taken place before those irrevocable words, I’m your son, would be forevermore the before in Pierce’s life.

  It’s a matter of life or death, Pierce. Talk to him. For me.

  “Come in,” he said.

  It became clear suddenly that Eliza needed him to tell the boy he was his father. She was asking him to let her off the last hook of loyalty to him.

  It was a fair request.

  One he’d already planned to honor. He was not his old man. He would not turn his back on his own son.

  He respected the boy when he shut the door behind him and stepped forward, his shoulders square, his head high. He was as tall as Pierce.

  They met eye to eye.

  “Eliza asked me to speak with you,” he said.

  Daniel’s lips pursed, his chin puckered. He nodded. “She’s not here, is she?” More accusation than question.

  “What? Of course she’s here. She’s Eliza. There’s no way she wouldn’t be here.” He slowed as he realized the boy had no way of knowing what type of woman his mother was.

  And the crime in that truth cut through him.

  “Your biological mother is the most nurturing, kind woman I’ve ever had the honor to know,” he said, not caring that he sounded like the sap he was where his wife was concerned.

  Just as Daniel wouldn’t suffer for the father who’d created him, he deserved to benefit from the mother who had.

  Daniel crossed his arms. Still facing Pierce head-on. “So, what’s this about?”

  “I expect she needs me to talk to you about your biological father...”

  What? “She needs me to tell you that I’m your biological father” was what was supposed to have come through.

  “You know about him?” Daniel’s blue eyes were narrowed. Pierce could have been looking in the mirror. Another kick to the gut.

  One he withstood. He had a mission to see through. And then he’d be done.

  “When she didn’t mention him, you know, back at the pool when she told me the truth about giving me up, about her father and all...she only said she was in love with my father. She didn’t say anything else, except that he left for the army and that her father had told him to stay away from her. I...thought maybe...you know, he hurt her pretty bad by doing that, and she didn’t know for a long time that it wasn’t his fault. I thought maybe it was too painful for her, so I didn’t ask. Do you know who he is? Is he still alive?”

  Pierce felt the blip. He blinked. Reminded himself of his mission. Of the goal—doing the right thing. Being a man. Loving Eliza with action.

  “I do know him. And yes, he’s alive,” he said. Blipped. Blinked. Blipped. Blinked. “He’s standing right in front of you.”

  * * *

  ELIZA TRIED TO hang out in the family waiting room. She didn’t make it five seconds. Too many sweet children. Young mothers. Worried grandparents.

  She walked instead, and ended up by the elevators, sitting on a window seat in front of a half wall of windows.

  Using all her focus, she sent Pierce her energy. Her love. Tried to show him his self from her perspective.

  And she saw herself, too. A girl who’d always disappointed everyone. Her parents. Her son. Her mom and dad would be seeing the show soon. They’d asked her not to call them ahead of time to tell them she’d won. They wanted to watch it themselves. Get it all firsthand.

  She hadn’t won. She hadn’t wanted it badly enough. What she’d wanted badly enough, the only thing she’d wanted badly enough since she was fifteen years old, was a family with Pierce.

  She’d brought this to be.

  Yeah, she’d told herself she’d needed to be the best at something, to receive the ultimate recognition as a professional chef to feel like she’d reached her potential. Because she’d known she was good enough as a cook. But her heart hadn’t been about the show. It had been consumed with finding her son. Cooking was allowed. It was something no one would fight her on. Her son had been forbidden on many levels.

  She realized something else, too, as she sat there raw and open, where honesty was the only thing she had left.

  It wasn’t her father she was worried about disappointing. It had been herself. She’d disappointed herself when she hadn’t fought hard enough to keep her baby.

  But seeing him now, seeing the young man he’d become with the love of two sets of parents devoted to him, she wasn’t disappointed in her decision anymore. She’d have been a great mother. But not at sixteen. She wouldn’t have been able to give Daniel all of the advantages, the stability, that his adoptive parents had given him.

  She thought about the choices he was making—determined to find a way to keep his son in his life while he did what he had to in order to become an adult who would one day be a great parent, able to provide all of the things that a child deserved.

  And she knew something else, too.

  She’d come full circle.

  There was another baby. Just down the hall. Her flesh and blood. She had a chance to be the mother he needed.

  And she had to face the prospect of doing it without Pierce.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “YOU’RE MY FATHER.”

  Daniel had fallen down to one of the couches. Pierce took the other. Sitting back, arms along the back of the couch, he was open to answering the boy’s questions.

  Or blipping.

  Either way, he’d get the job done.

  “I fathered you, yes. But I’m not father material, Daniel. That has to be understood right from the beginning.”

  “I get it. You don’t want me.”

  “No!” Pierce stood up. Sat back down. Left his arms at his sides. “You don’t get it. I am fully prepared to support you financially in any way you will ever need. With everything I have. I will pay for college. Give you a down payment on your first home. Buy you a car.”

  “You want to buy me off so I stay out of her life.”

  “No.” He crossed his arms. Then spread them out. “Listen, Daniel, had I known about you, I would have moved hell and high water to make it back to you. To your mother. It’s not a matter of wanting you...”

  “You don’t want my kid, my son.”

  “I...”

  Daniel stood, turned as if to leave. “That’s why she’s not here. She didn’t have the heart to tell me you said no. You’re here to break it to me.” He was heading toward the door.

  “Hold it right there.” Pierce couldn’t remember ever using that tone.

  Daniel froze. Turned back to him.

  “Eliza does not need me to speak for her. And if you think for one second that she would let you down, that she’d let that baby down, you are grossly mistaken. I forgive you for thinking so only because, through no fault of your own, you don’t know her. But when you do get to know her, if you ever disrespect her that way again, I will...” He stopped. What was he doing?

  Daniel threw himself down to the couch. Stared up at him, a slightly belligerent look on his fa
ce, and a curious maturity, too.

  “You just said you wouldn’t be a father.” The belligerence was out in full force, mixed with a hefty dose of accusation.

  “That’s right. But not because I don’t want to be. Because I can’t.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  Pierce had known this wasn’t going to be easy. He just hadn’t expected it to be quite so hard. Or thought that he’d be able to sustain the conversation without walking out the door if it had been.

  “Look, what you’re doing...looking for a way to keep your boy with family while you do what you need to do to prepare for fatherhood...it’s exactly what you should do. It’s noble and decent. It’s right. You are a tribute to the family who loved and raised you, Daniel. You’re one of the good ones.”

  “Yeah, right.” Daniel’s tone had changed completely. “You want to know what I am?” he asked, jumping up. “I’m a murderer, that’s what. A damned murderer.” He was crying. Raising his voice. Pacing.

  Pierce stood, too. Strong and able where the boy was weak.

  “What are you saying?” he asked, cop and more, as he stood there. What had the boy done? He couldn’t help him out of it until he knew the details.

  But he’d help him. He could pull strings. Have him watched over until they could sort it out. He knew attorneys. Or would find one...

  “Molly. If I hadn’t gotten her pregnant, she’d still be here...”

  Pierce didn’t move. He watched the boy and had to take a second. It was like watching himself. He’d had a similar thought just weeks before.

  If he hadn’t gotten Eliza pregnant, her whole life would have been different. She wouldn’t have wasted it pining for a child she could never have back. For a life she’d wanted more than any other, that she’d never have...

  “No,” he said aloud. “That makes you human,” he said. “Maybe you should have been more careful. She should have, too. But when you found out what had happened, you stood up to it. You’re still standing up to it...”

  As Pierce was doing. Right then. Standing up. For Eliza. For the boy. Because it was what a man did. Even when he wasn’t capable of being all that they needed. Even when he knew that giving them each other meant losing what he had. Losing Eliza. Their life.

  Most especially them.

  “You don’t get it. It’s my fault,” Daniel said, shaking his head. Pacing. Still crying.

  Grieving, Pierce figured. He recognized the wail. Had been through something similar himself. When he’d first gone into counseling.

  Daniel sat again, dropped his head to his knees and sobbed.

  Pierce recognized even that. The pain. The helplessness.

  The hopelessness.

  The guilt that was weighing down an honorable young man. And shouldn’t be.

  He’d been faced with an untenable situation.

  Pierce sat down without thinking. Put his hand on the boy’s back. His neck. Rubbed his hair. Because he remembered needing to feel Eliza’s comforting touch when he’d been sitting in a stranger’s office, trying to find a way to endure the rest of his life with the weight he carried.

  “You told Molly you would find your mother. You promised yourself you wouldn’t give up your son,” he said. “And today, when you could have walked away, you stayed. You asked the toughest question ever. You asked complete strangers to love your son.

  “When a good man is faced with tough choices, no clear right or wrong, and no time to think, he keeps his word.” He wasn’t sure he’d ever heard the words before. Didn’t think he had. Didn’t remember them. But they came to him.

  And he recognized their truth.

  * * *

  ELIZA HAD NO idea how long she sat on her window seat, staring out at mountains that had managed to sustain all of the trials and tribulations of millions of years of life. From battles to lightning fires. Population, drought, earth shifts, four-wheelers and quakes might have changed them through the centuries, but they endured. Stood tall enough to reach the clouds. Gifted the world with glorious beauty, proof of incredible strength and the will to live.

  She had no way of knowing if Daniel and Pierce were even still talking. But until one or the other of them contacted her, she wasn’t moving. She’d put them in the same room together. The rest was up to them.

  They found her there. Sitting in that window seat. Looking out at the sun setting over the mountains in the desert. Quietly crying.

  “Come,” Pierce took her hand, pulling her up. She stumbled. Her foot was asleep after sitting for so long.

  Daniel was there. Taking her other hand.

  They started to walk.

  “Where are we going?”

  Pierce looked at Daniel. He looked at Pierce. Neither of them said a word.

  Could a boy become his father in the space of an hour?

  They reached a door that said No Admittance. Daniel took care of getting them admitted. He showed them where to get gowns and hats and helped them put them on, tying Eliza’s while Pierce tied his own.

  And then they took her hands again. She was afraid to move. To look.

  Afraid she’d fallen asleep in that window seat and was going to wake up alone. Lonely. Heartbroken.

  Incomplete.

  They entered a room. A long room with four glass-encased little beds. But she couldn’t say if there was anything in any of them. There were no other adults in the room. She heard some swishing. An occasional light beep.

  “Mother, Father, meet Bryant Nathaniel.” Daniel let go of her hand, picked up the tiniest body Eliza had ever seen in person, swaddled him in a blanket like a pro and handed him to her.

  Her arms were shaking, but she took that tiny bundle, watching his tubes as Daniel instructed, cradled him close to her heart and cried, too.

  It had been seventeen long years. Years of grief. Of longing. Of trying to give up on what could never possibly be.

  And there she was, Eliza Maxwell Westin, holding the baby who was flesh of her flesh. And flesh of Pierce’s flesh, too.

  Her heart, like the mountains, had endured. She’d remained open to hope and love even after having lost everything. That open heart had brought Pierce back to her.

  And now, in one day, they’d become both parents and grandparents.

  That’s when it occurred to her that he was still standing there. He wasn’t blinking. Or blipping.

  Daniel was at his shoulder while Pierce stared at the baby.

  “In tough situations, a good man keeps his word,” the teenager said. Eliza didn’t understand.

  But apparently her husband did. He nodded.

  “If you blip, we’re right here,” Daniel said, sounding so much like Pierce it was eerie.

  Eliza caught on enough to move closer to Pierce. “Come on, Grandpa, he needs to feel you, too,” she said and then, still holding the baby, rested her arms against Pierce.

  They could do this in baby steps.

  His arms came up. They cradled Eliza’s. He nodded.

  Daniel was grinning. And crying a bit, too.

  “We’re going to make one heck of a family,” he said. Then, with a quick word to Eliza, he walked with his father out to the hallway to get some air.

  * * *

  “YOU’RE SURE YOU’RE okay with this?” Eliza looked at Pierce in his gray suit with the sedate gray tie. He’d insisted on buying new clothes so he’d look respectable enough.

  “We’ve been given a second chance, Eliza. Only a fool t
urns his back on that.”

  “But...”

  With a finger over her lips he said, “Shhh. We’ll get through the rest, Liza. One step at a time. If I have a problem, I take a breather. If I have a nightmare, we’ll get through it. I may never have another. This could be it. I may have them for the rest of my life. Either way, we go together.”

  It was all she’d ever wanted. She didn’t need a millionaire. She didn’t need five-star hotels or the best schools. She needed what she’d needed since she was fourteen years old. Pierce Westin. By her side.

  “Sorry.” Daniel, in jeans and a Harvard sweatshirt, came running up the hall. He looked at the baby carrier hanging on Pierce’s arm. “I can’t believe how bad I had to pee...”

  He’d put on a little weight. All muscle. Playing baseball as a freshman at his mother’s alma mater. It had been a crazy six months since Eliza had appeared on Family Secrets. She was worried sick about him.

  Pierce kept telling her to cool it. Their son was fine. He’d let her know if he wasn’t.

  “You’re sure you want to do this?” she asked him anyway.

  “Ma...” They’d settled on the term rather than the Mother he’d started with. Mom would always be his adoptive mom. Thankfully his adoptive parents had been happy to welcome Eliza and Pierce into their family.

  They’d already decided that the baby had to be adopted out. And while they’d been sad to lose Daniel to the East Coast, they’d known he’d be going away to college.

  “I told you,” Daniel said, “I’m fine with this. I know it’s different than what Molly and I originally planned. But she’s gone. She won’t be here to take him back. And I think I’ll make a much better big brother than a father to this little guy. I’m not even eighteen yet.”

  Double doors opened in front of them, and a woman in a blue suit stepped out. “The judge will see you now.”

  Pierce, with the baby carrier on one arm, slipped his other arm through Eliza’s. Daniel held her up on the other side and, as a family, they went in and got the job done.