Lady of the Lake

by Erin McCarthy

  After what she had shared with Dylan, she knew she absolutely could not go to the sperm bank and grab any old DNA. She would have to hold out for Mr. Right. Who she suspected she had already sent packing.

  If she was pregnant, she was going to be equal parts thrilled and sad, that she had denied her child a father when he had been willing to give it a go.

  Her brain hurt. Her heart hurt. Her stomach was doing flips.

  “I want to have a baby, you know. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  “Good thing,” Trish said, carrying the test out from the bathroom. “Because it’s positive. You’re pregnant.”

  The room sort of swung around in a disco ball splash of color and light. Violet grabbed the arm of the couch. “Oh, my. I’m going to have a baby. I’m going to have a baby.” She started to cry, tears of joy and relief. Excitement. A twinge of fear.

  Her friends crowded around her, giving her hugs and murmuring words of reassurance. “I’m happy, I am. I’m really, really happy.”

  Suddenly there were footsteps on the interior stairs that came up to Ashley’s apartment. Violet sat up straighter and wiped her face. Geez, it was Lucas and Mack, her friends’ significant others.

  “Ashley has a bigger TV than I do,” Lucas was saying. “We can watch the game up here.”

  “Go away, you guys,” Trish said succinctly. “I’m serious.”

  Violet sniffled and hid her face behind her hair as the guys stopped and took in the situation.

  “What’s the matter?” Mack asked, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Kindra’s fiance frowned at Trish.

  “Mack, just give us five minutes,” Kindra said with a quelling lift of her eyebrows.

  When neither guy moved, Ashley made a sound of exasperation. “We’re having a girl moment here, okay? We just found out we’re pregnant!”

  Lucas’s jaw dropped, his face turning chalk white. “You’re pregnant? Oh, shit, Ash. I told you those glow in the dark condoms don’t work!”

  There was a moment of stunned silence while they all processed this, then Trish burst out laughing.

  “I’m not pregnant,” Ashley said with a grin, smacking his arm. “And thanks for sharing our sexual habits with all our friends.”

  Lucas put his hand over his heart. “Whew. Damn, you scared me half to death. I mean…having a baby isn’t a bad thing, if you’re ready.” With an enormous sigh of relief, Lucas turned to Mack and clapped him on the shoulder. “Congratulations, Dad.”

  Kindra gave a squawk. “Hold on, there! I’m not pregnant, either. Though it wouldn’t be a crisis if I were, since Mack and I have been together for almost a year. Though it would screw up our October wedding…my God, I’d never fit in my dress.” She shook her head vehemently. “But no, it’s not me.”

  “Trish?” Lucas eyed her dubiously. Given that she was the least maternal of the four of them and wasn’t even dating anyone, Violet wasn’t surprised at his expression. Yet it made her wonder why he’d pass right over her and had concluded Trish.

  “Then who the hell is it?” Mack asked, putting his hand on his hips. “Oh no, it’s the dog, isn’t it? See, I knew that nasty bulldog was sniffing around Bitsy again. Damn, we’re going to have mutant puppies on our hands. Poodles can’t breed with bulldogs, it’s going to be just ugly.”

  Violet clapped her hand over her mouth, the urge to laugh mingling with the need to cry hysterically.

  “Your precious poodle isn’t having puppies.” Kindra stood up. “Violet is pregnant.”

  “Violet?” Mack’s eyes bugged out.

  “Yes, Violet.”

  “Well…”

  “Uh…”

  Really, just excuse her. They didn’t have to look so damn stunned.

  Violet found her voice. “Why do you both look so surprised?”

  They shuffled. Looked at each other. She wasn’t feeling up to mercy. They had insulted her with their assumptions that she couldn’t be the one knocked up.

  “Because I didn’t think you were all that serious with Frank,” Lucas said, tossing his hair out of his eyes. “We haven’t even seen him in weeks.”

  “Besides, I didn’t figure Frank had sperm,” Mack said.

  Kindra gasped. “Mack!”

  With a sigh, Violet folded her feet under her on the couch. It might be her imagination, but her denim shorts were jabbing her in the gut. “Frank didn’t get me pregnant.” Might as well come clean with them all at once.

  They all stared at her.

  “Then who the hell did?” Trish demanded.

  Ashley grabbed her hand, horror on her face. “Oh dear God, you were raped? Sweetie, why didn’t you tell us?”

  “No! I had a one-night stand, okay?” Even saying that seemed wrong, though it was true. Yet it had been something much more than bodies slapping, as Dylan had said. “I slept with the guy who picked me up out of the water the night I fell off Frank’s boat. His name is Dylan Diaz and we’re not dating or anything.”

  Which was her fault.

  “That’s funny,” Mack said, breaking the stunned silence. “The catcher for the Indians is named Dylan Diaz.” He reached for the remote control and flicked Ashley’s TV on. “What a coincidence.”

  Yeah. A huge one. Violet gave a sigh and braved a glance at the TV. Mack had found the Indians game and was pointing. “See? He’s behind the plate right now. Dylan Diaz. Wow. Weird. And he’s having a great season. He’s been pounding them out of the park the last few weeks.”

  “I know, it’s amazing,” Lucas said. “His average is through the roof all of a sudden.”

  “Violet?” Kindra was looking at her strangely. “Is he the father?”

  Violet couldn’t pry her eyes off the screen. There he was. Dylan was down in the catcher’s squat, and he jumped up, ball in his glove, and threw it back to the pitcher. She couldn’t see his face particularly well because of the mask, but she recognized his movements, the shape of his body, the muscles of his thighs.

  Oh, geez Louise, she missed him. “Yes, he’s the father.”

  “Whoa,” Lucas said.

  “That’s cool,” was Mack’s opinion. “The kid will be a ball player.”

  “That’s not cool!” Trish yelled. “Think of the legalities here. Custody, child support, it’s a paternity suit waiting to happen.”

  “I don’t want anything from him.” The room was starting to spin and whirl again and Violet clutched the couch. Undid the snap on her shorts. Sucked in some deep breaths.

  “Then we need to get him to surrender parental rights so he can’t request custody down the road.”

  Violet knew Trish was a lawyer, and she was only trying to protect her rights, but Violet just couldn’t think about this right now. “I think I’m going to faint.”

  Ashley pushed her head down between her knees. “Just take slow breaths, sweetie.”

  Violet stared at the hardwood floor, the grain of the wood undulating bigger and smaller, the black spots shifting.

  She didn’t know why she was so hot and light-headed all of a sudden. She’d gotten exactly what she had wanted.

  Except she was very much afraid she’d been wrong.

  Dylan was drinking a Coke as he headed down the hall from the locker room, his gym bag on his shoulder.

  “Hey, Diaz.”

  He turned to see one of the assistant coaches coming up behind him. “Hey, what’s up?”

  “I’ve been looking all over the damn building for you. They got a certified letter in the front office for you. They overheaded you, then asked me to play errand boy if I saw you.”

  “I was in the shower.” He couldn’t imagine what he would have gotten in the mail, and he didn’t really give a shit. “But thanks, I’ll take care of it.”

  Nothing seemed to mean a whole lot of anything for the past month, except for cracking his bat against the ball hard enough to force all the ugly, painful feelings right out of him.

  So far it wasn’t working, but it was good
for his career.

  At first he wasn’t even sure why he was so hurt, so upset, but now he realized it was because Violet had showed him a glimpse of something that he wanted. A home, family, love. A wife. Who loved him just as he was, with or without the ball career.

  She had shown him a glimpse of that and then taken it all away.

  He wanted to love Violet. He wanted to be with her, and every day he spent missing her.

  The secretary thrust an envelope in his hand the second he walked into the front office. “Legal’s down the hall if you’re getting sued,” she said, smoothing her hair back from her plump face.

  “Gee, thanks.” Dylan ripped the envelope open and pulled out a greeting card. It had a flower on the front and on the inside it read:

  Dear Dylan,

  Thank you. You hit a home run.

  With love,

  Violet

  Well. Dylan dropped his Coke can in the wastebasket and stared at the words again. Violet was pregnant. He had gotten her pregnant. And she was thanking him. With love.

  Shock gave way to pleasure. Elation raced through him. A baby. They were going to have a baby.

  He grinned at the secretary. He couldn’t help but be a little bit proud that he’d only needed one time up to bat. Not every guy could claim that kind of average.

  “Good news?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” Dylan handed her the envelope. “Can you throw this away for me, Kathy? I need to go see someone.” He needed to go to Violet, tell her how happy he was for her. Beg her for a chance to take things slow, to date and really get to know each other before their child was born.

  She had said she didn’t want that, but Dylan just couldn’t accept that. He wanted a future with Violet.

  “There’s something still in this envelope, Dylan.” Kathy pulled out a sheaf of papers stapled together.

  “What is it? Read it to me real quick.” His leg was jiggling and he dug his keys out of his gym bag. He could be at Violet’s in twenty minutes.

  “‘Dear Dylan’,” she read. “‘Please sign and notarize the following relinquishment of parental rights…’ Uh-oh.”

  Kathy shoved the packet of papers into his hand.

  Shocked, Dylan stared at it, the words blurring in front of him. It was a two-page document of legal bullshit, outlining how he would never have contact with his child or that child’s mother.

  It shouldn’t be news. It was everything Violet had asked for, everything he had agreed to. Everything she had reaffirmed that morning when he had dropped her off. But damn, it hurt deep inside, right about where his heart was, that he could want her so much, and she could have so little interest in him.

  And it made him angry, that she would shove this at him, like she didn’t trust him, and right now, when he was feeling excitement and pride that she was going to have his child.

  With a nasty curse, he ripped the papers right in two. Kathy jumped in her office chair.

  Stuffing the torn pages and the crumpled card back into the envelope, he strode out of the office.

  He had a few things he wanted to say to Violet.

  Eleven

  Violet glanced at her watch as she checked her tomato vines for ripe vegetables, on her knees on her gardening mat. Dylan should have gotten her letter by now. With a sigh, she picked a tomato and put it in her basket.

  She shouldn’t have listened to Trish. Her gut had told her not to send him that impersonal document, but Trish had scared the daylights out of her, insisting that without it Dylan could contest her custody at any point in her child’s life. So she had sent it, and now she regretted it.

  Whatever feelings he had for her had surely been killed by that move.

  Which should have made her happy, but only made her profoundly sad.

  How downright stupid that the first man to treat her with respect, admiration, and sexual interest was the very man she had intentionally hurt.

  She heard footsteps in the grass coming from the driveway, and when she looked up, she only needed to see as far as the ankles to know it was Dylan. She could feel his anger, emotion, before she even looked up and saw the fury racing across his face.

  “I’m not signing this.” He threw the certified mail envelope down, where it hit her in the knee and landed in the grass, the torn document sliding out.

  Violet picked up the pieces and put them back in the envelope, her heart pounding. “I guess not, since you’ve ripped it in half.”

  “How could you send that to my work?” He was standing there in jeans and a T-shirt, feet apart in sandals, looking angry and belligerent, yet his voice cracked.

  “I didn’t know your home address. And my friend, Trish, she’s a lawyer. She said we needed to do this or you could contest custody.” It sounded cruel, even as she said it. “I’m sorry.”

  “You could have just talked to me. We could have worked this out between us before we went straight to the lawyers.”

  He was right, and Violet sighed, setting her basket of tomatoes down. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I just feel really scared, Dylan, and unsure what to do.”

  Looking out over the common green space her condo and two others shared, he shook his head. “What is it that you want, Vi? Just tell me exactly what you want deep down inside. I want to respect that, I do.”

  She was going to cry. She already felt tears welling up. The tears had been coming pretty much nonstop in the last week since her stick had turned pink. It was time to be honest with herself, honest with him.

  “I want what I can’t have.”

  His swung his head to look at her, black eyes boring into her. “What’s that?”

  “I want…you.” Now that she’d said it, admitted it out loud, she knew that was absolutely what she wanted. Tears rolling down her cheeks, she added, “I want you and me. I want our baby. Together.”

  Dylan’s jaw moved. He squatted down in front of her. “Well, fuck me, Vi, that’s what I want, too.”

  She choked back a startled laugh.

  “So, what’s the problem?” His thumb wiped her tears away.

  “I don’t want you to feel trapped. I don’t want to force you into what you’re not ready for. And I don’t want you to regret that you got stuck with me when you could have any woman you want. I’m not the kind of woman a man would feel proud to have on his arm.” It hurt to say that, to admit her fears and insecurities, to acknowledge that she wanted him, but understood he had better options.

  But after everything she had put him through, she owed him complete honesty.

  Dylan stared at Violet and wanted to just laugh. Holy crap, she had put him through five weeks of hell because she was afraid he’d leave her for a bimbo? That was what he was hearing, wasn’t it?

  “I’ve had a six-foot-tall, built blonde on my arm before and it leaves a hell of a lot to be desired.” Dylan brushed her hair back and stroked her cheek. “You’re more attractive to me than any other woman I’ve ever met. When a guy cares about a woman, she becomes his standard, you see what I’m saying? Now come here.”

  He pulled her into his arms, breathing in her scent, squeezing her tight to him, sighing with pleasure. God, he had missed her. “I like your hair like this, by the way. I think it’s the first time I’ve ever actually seen it completely dry.”

  She sniffled against his chest. “Dylan, I really thought I had a logical plan and that it all made sense. I really thought I needed to use my head, not my heart.”

  “I know. And now we’ve both agreed that was stupid.” With a grin, he rubbed her back and kissed her forehead. “We’ll just take it slow, okay?”

  She nodded, her eyes shiny, her teeth digging into her bottom lip.

  “Now, is everything okay? You’re feeling okay? You’ve been to the doctor?” It was starting to sink in that he had gotten her pregnant. Which meant she was having a baby. His baby. In actuality, not in theory.

  “I’m fine, so far. I’m going to the doctor in two weeks for my first appointment.” She
kissed him softly. “Please come with me if you want.”

  That nearly did him in. “I’d love to.” Then, so he wouldn’t embarrass the hell out of himself and bawl, he gave her a smug smile. “And damn, I’m good, aren’t I? Home run first time at the plate.”

  Violet laughed. “I did hear you’ve been having a great season.”

  “I’m looking forward to a long career. With you.” He touched his lips to hers.

  She smiled up at him. “More baseball metaphors?”

  “Hell, yeah.” He pulled her up and stood next to her. “Now let’s go in and I’ll practice my swing.”

  Rubbing her finger across her lip, Violet peered at him from behind the veil of her long, lustrous hair. “I’d like to try batting, too.”

  Dylan went hard. He wasn’t sure what in the hell she meant by that, but it sounded kinky. “Another player has been added to the roster. Violet Caruthers, number sixty-nine.”

  She clamped her hand over her mouth and flushed a very charming pink. “Oh, Dylan, that’s awful. I like it.”

  He almost groaned. Instead he lifted her up a little, hands on her ass, so he could give her a very open, tongue-filled kiss. “I’ve never had sex with another player before, but there’s always a first.”

  With a smile, Violet touched his cheek. “I’m very happy.”

  “Me, too, gorgeous.” Instead of a dead body, he’d found a future. A family. Everything he’d been lonely for. Much better than a corpse.

  Violet kissed the corner of Dylan’s mouth. “I’m so glad I’m a klutz and fell off that boat.”

  “Let’s go inside, you can put that bikini back on, and we’ll reenact the whole thing, especially the part where you put your face in my crotch.”

  Violet was feeling so content, satisfied, and pleased with the way things had turned out, she didn’t hesitate. “Sounds fun.”

  The look on Dylan’s face was classic.

  And the last thing in the world she felt like was shy when she stepped into her condo and peeled off her T-shirt.

  Erin McCarthy

  Erin McCarthy sold her first book to Kensington Brava through author Lori Foster's website contest in 2002, and has since sold an additional nineteen contemporary romances and novellas to Brava and Berkley Publishing. Her debut, BAD BOYS ONLINE, was a Romantic Times Top Pick, and BAD BOYS IN BLACK TIE was a USA Today bestseller. Erin lives in Northeast Ohio with her husband, two kids, and two cats.