The Best Man's Baby

by Karen Booth

  “The man said serious. What else am I to presume?”

  “We’re so happy, Jules. We’ve always thought Logan was the only one for you.” Her mother’s ability to radiate warmth and happiness made everything worse. How would her parents feel when she told them her secret on Sunday? Would they only be happy for her if Logan was indeed the dad? Precisely the reason she didn’t want a paternity test. She didn’t want her baby to be judged because of who his or her father might be. It was such an old-fashioned fixation, anyway. She could be a mom on her own, with no need for a man. The baby was Julia’s, and that was all anyone needed to know.

  Julia sucked in a deep breath, not knowing what to say. Logan had put them in a horrible position. And admittedly, Julia had probably made it worse with the kiss, but the press had said they’d go away. She wanted that insurance. Still, playing fast and loose with the truth... Julia might be an actress, but she sucked at lying. “Logan and I aren’t together. He just said that to make the press go away.”

  “I knew it!” Tracy exclaimed, breaking her momentary silence. “At least Logan cared enough about me to do something about the problem.” She shot Julia a pointed stare. “Unlike my sister.”

  “What about the kiss? That’s what really made them go away.”

  Logan nodded in agreement. “True. The kiss was definitely Julia’s idea.”

  Don’t remind me.

  “The kiss was fake?” Her mother’s voice was rife with distress, just as it had been the day before when this all started. “No. It couldn’t have been. It was so sweet. It looked real.”

  I bet. Julia still felt that kiss all over every inch of her body. Damn Logan and his resolve-destroying lips. “It was just what they asked for. A kiss for the cameras. Nothing else. I am a halfway decent actress, you know.”

  Julia had thought she’d have to fake her way through it, that she was still too mad at Logan for the way he’d treated her. That wasn’t the way it had gone at all. The second his lips fell on hers, her body cast aside any hurt feelings and went for it. Her traitorous mouth knew exactly what to do, and sought his warmth and touch, his impossibly tender kiss. Her body knew how perfectly they fit together, physically at least, and was all too eager to find a way for them to squeeze three months of lost time into a few short heartbeats.

  Logan stepped forward. “Actually, it’s not entirely true that Julia and I aren’t together.”

  If Julia could’ve clamped her hand over Logan’s mouth and make it look like an accident, she would have. Tracy threw up her hands, stomped once on the hardwood floor with her jeweled beachcomber sandal and began pacing the room. “Which is it? Will you two get your act together so we can go back to enjoying my wedding week?”

  And to think that earlier today, Julia’s big concern had been shades of pink frosting. Now she was far more worried about shades of red. Namely the various hues of crimson coloring her sister’s face. Volcano Tracy was about to blow.

  “I spent the last six months worrying about everything that could go wrong,” Tracy continued, circling the room. “Would the church put us down for the wrong date? Would I find the perfect dress? Would the caterer serve fish instead of chicken? I never imagined that the person who would ruin it would be my own sister. You just can’t let me have the spotlight. You have to create all of this drama. You can’t live without it, can you?”

  Julia’s father stuffed his hands into the pockets of his flat-front khakis. “Now wait a minute, Trace. We’re just having a conversation. Your mother and I would like to know what exactly is going on with Logan and Julia.”

  Yeah, Dad. Get in line.

  “Julia and I had a long talk last night about...” Logan started, looking over to Julia as if he was waiting for her to say that now was a good time to come out with the baby news, which it absolutely was not.

  Julia felt as though she was going to be sick. She tried to send him direct messages with her eyes. One word and I’ll never speak to you again.

  “Julia and I had a long talk about things,” Logan finished, scratching his head. “No one should put the idea of Julia and me, together, out of the realm of possibility.”

  Julia would’ve let out a massive sigh of relief about the baby secret still being under wraps if she weren’t so annoyed. The two of them together was out of all realms. She’d wasted enough of her life on men who didn’t love her.

  The smirk on Tracy’s face showed zero amusement. She wagged her finger in the air. “Oh no. I’m calling BS on this. Jules, you told me you two were done. And with good reason, remember? I didn’t spend all those hours on the phone listening to you cry for nothing.”

  Tracy had indeed clocked a lot of time listening to her sob into the phone. She knew Julia and Logan’s long history, the one that had taken its first horrible turn when Julia broke up with Logan before they both went off to college. Tracy had listened to Julia complain year after year about the women Logan was linked to in the tabloids—always models, always stunning and perfect, one of them even becoming his fiancée for a short time. Even though his engagement hadn’t lasted, it ate at Julia like crazy, and Tracy had to suffer right along with her sister. Tracy knew exactly how dysfunctional they were together.

  “Tracy Jean. I don’t know why you’d be so rude to your sister,” their mother said.

  “Come on, hon.” Carter walked up behind Tracy and set his hands on her shoulders. “Why don’t you and I go in the kitchen and get a nice, cold drink?”

  Tracy shrugged her way out of Carter’s grip. “Oh, please. I love you, but you don’t see what’s going on, and you’re yet another person who thinks Logan can do no wrong. And Mom, don’t even start with rude. All I’m saying is that Julia and Logan have zero business being together. That ship has sailed. I mean, seriously, Jules? After what happened after the reunion?”

  Well, then. Was Tracy about to air Julia’s dirty laundry in front of their parents? Julia’s mind raced for diversion tactics. If only an earthquake could hit the coast of North Carolina right now. Or a hurricane, at least.

  “Did I miss something?” Julia’s father asked.

  Logan cleared his throat and bugged his eyes at Julia. As if that was going to help her figure a way out of this mess. Or keep Tracy’s mouth from running. Sweat dripped down Julia’s back, part nervousness, part the iron fist her dad used to rule the thermostat. “Dad, can we please turn on the air-conditioning?”

  “Julia and Logan slept together,” Tracy blurted, not giving her dad a chance to answer. “And then he dumped her.”

  Julia braced for a gasp of disgrace from her mother or a disapproving grunt from her father.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Julia’s mother said. “But couples have rough patches. You and Carter should know that better than anyone. You two broke up for an entire year before you got back together and got engaged.”

  “You’re both smart. I’m sure you’ll work everything out,” their father said, easing into his wingback chair as casually as if they’d all been discussing where to go to dinner.

  I’ll be damned. That in itself was pure evidence of how much her parents adored Logan. Talk of premarital sex—words spoken out loud, in the living room of the scandal-free state senator from New Hanover County and his wife no less, and not a judgmental peep came from either of them.

  “This really doesn’t seem like a topic for polite conversation,” Julia said. Or even impolite conversation. “Let’s get back to focusing on the wedding. Logan got the press to go away. Let’s be thankful for that.”

  Tracy arched her eyebrows and cracked a fake smile. “The only way it stays that way is if you two put on a convincing show. For everyone. The wedding guests, the people at your hotel. All of our friends and family. They can’t all be in on your little lie, or it’ll just get out and that will bring back the press with a vengeance.”

  Oh
no. Julia’s stomach sank. Tracy was right. They couldn’t trust anyone beyond these four walls with the truth. Julia didn’t even want to think about the return of those awful reporters, especially the guy with the big lens. They were going to have to put on a show. A convincing show of love and affection and romance. Great. Julia sighed. If that was what it would take, then fine. For now, she only wanted peace and calm. And somewhere to sit. And maybe a cheeseburger.

  Her grandmother’s antique cuckoo clock in the foyer chimed three o’clock, which really meant it was two thirty. The thing had never worked right. “The afternoon is wasting away. Trace, don’t you and I have a date to decorate the beach house for the rehearsal dinner? It’s our only real chance for sisterly bonding this weekend.” And I can un-ruffle a million feathers.

  “Honestly, Jules, you ruined it. I need a nap so I can calm down. I’m worried I might strangle you if we spend any time alone.”

  Julia swallowed, hard. That certainly clarified things. “Okay. I understand.”

  “Tell you what,” Logan interjected. “Jules and I will take care of the decorating.”

  There he goes. Logan Brandt to the rescue.

  “That would be wonderful,” her mother said. “Plus, it sounds like it’ll be good for you two to have some alone time.”

  Alone time. Good Lord.

  “Happy to do it,” Logan said.

  “Yep.” Julia nodded. Speaking as little as possible seemed like the only way to make a graceful exit from this house. Her entrance had been anything but.

  After a quick trip to the bathroom, Julia joined Logan in the car, and they were on their way to perform their new wedding duties.

  “I’m starving.” Julia tore open the wrapper on a protein bar she’d stuck in her purse. Her stomach rumbled, but gladly accepted the sustenance. “And this isn’t going to be enough. I need real food.”

  Logan nodded, surveying the road ahead, a wide stretch of shopping plazas, gas stations and eateries. “Unless you want to find a sit-down restaurant, your options are chain fast food or biscuits.”

  Ooh. The dilapidated sign for Sunset Biscuit Kitchen was straight ahead. It’d been years since she’d eaten there. It wasn’t exactly camera-friendly cuisine, but her pregnant appetite had her salivating at the thought of their fluffy, buttery pieces of heaven. “Biscuits.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.” Logan pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant, which was really more like a shack, with a battleship-gray exterior and a faded red roof. There was no drive-through or dining room—just a walk-up window and if memory served, lightning-fast service. “The usual? Fried chicken biscuit and a hash brown?”

  “How do you remember this stuff?”

  “I remember everything.”

  That was indeed her standard, very unhealthy order. But she wanted more than that. “Can you also get me a sausage and egg biscuit? And an extra biscuit with honey? You know. Just in case.”

  Logan nodded and smiled. “I like this whole pregnant and hungry thing. It’s adorable.”

  “Adorable?”

  “It’s a nice change of pace. I spend entirely too much time with women who order side salads and nothing else.”

  As if Julia wanted or needed the vision of Logan’s penchant for supermodels planted in her head. “Yeah, well, I’m going to have to spend every waking minute in the gym after this baby is born. But for now, I want to eat everything.”

  “I’m on it. One order of everything, coming up.”

  Logan hopped out of the car and strolled up to the ordering window. Maybe it was the aftershocks of the kiss, but she had to admire him as he walked away. How could she not? From a purely objective standpoint, one having nothing to do with hurt feelings or history, he was a spectacular specimen.

  Luckily, the line wasn’t long in the middle of the afternoon. Julia didn’t think she could endure much of a wait. Logan was back in a few short minutes, white parchment bag, two bottles of water and a fat stack of paper napkins in hand.

  He opted to drive and eat, and they went for an entire fifteen minutes without argument or conflict, Julia’s stress level dropping with each artery-clogging but oh-so-delicious bite—crispy buttermilk fried chicken tucked inside a light-as-air biscuit. But then Logan finished his sandwich.

  “I can’t believe you couldn’t keep our secret until we had a chance to talk about it. I had it all worked out and you ruined it.”

  “Our secret? Oh, no. That was your secret, not mine. You need to have your head examined. You made everything fifty times more complicated.”

  “I made the press go away, didn’t I?”

  “Yes. And apparently my parents would like to present you with a key to the city for doing so. In the meantime, they’re going to be that much more confused on Sunday when I tell them about the baby. They’re going to be asking themselves what exactly did all of that mean. Especially when you had to tell them that we talked about us last night.”

  “It doesn’t have to be confusing, Jules. If you’d think about reality for a minute and realize that I’m your best shot at giving the baby a real father.”

  She knew for a fact he wasn’t thinking straight. He was letting his macho brain run the show, and that never went well. He was relishing the idea of being her knight in shining armor, and although she appreciated the gesture, she knew how empty a promise it was. As soon as he realized the reality of what he was saying, of what he was getting into, he’d take it back. And then where would she be? Right where she was the last time he rejected her.

  Plus, she knew Logan. He hated every guy who had come along after him. Every last one. There was no way he would want to play Dad if it turned out that her ex was the father. She always stopped herself before she got much further in her thinking, wondering what that moment would be like. It was better for her to think of the baby only as hers—50 percent of her DNA, 100 percent of her heart. Julia wouldn’t allow paternity to cloud her feelings for her child. Her future was the baby, making it work, finding happiness in what would become the new normal. Mother and child. Everyone else could worry about themselves.

  “Right now, I’m focused on the only thing I can control, which is being a good mother. I can’t afford to depend on anyone else, especially not a man.”

  “It’s not a sign of weakness to count on someone.”

  “I’m not worried about how it might look if I agree with you. I’m worried about how bad it would feel if and when you changed your mind. Plus, let’s not forget the most damning detail.”

  He stopped at the stoplight that T-boned into Lumina Avenue signaling for the left turn. It was as if they’d turned back the clock thirteen years and he remembered exactly where they were going. “Well? I’m waiting for the most damning detail.”

  Julia sighed quietly and looked out the car window, admiring the gorgeous shades of pink and purple that colored the edges of the darkening late-afternoon sky. So beautiful. So romantic. “We aren’t in love, Logan.”

  Well, one of us isn’t. The realization had been there in her head from the moment she saw him yesterday. Everything she’d convinced herself of over the summer was wrong. She wasn’t over him at all. She was just going to have to try harder. It was a matter of survival. Of course, that wasn’t going to be easy when they were keeping up their charade for the public and the array of guests at the wedding. She could see it now. Holding hands. Pet names. Kissing. Good God, kissing. How was she supposed to try harder to fall out of love with him at the same time they were expected to kiss? This would require her greatest acting skills. No doubt about that.

  “Maybe we just need to figure out a way to fall back in love,” he said, as if the statement was of little consequence.

  The mere fact that he suggested they figure it out proved that he didn’t love her. No one who was in love found it necessary to figure it ou
t. “You can’t force it. Either it’s there or it isn’t.” Talk about a damning detail. If ever there was one, that was it.

  Logan slowed down the car and pointed up ahead. “That’s it, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’m so used to finding it in the dark. I was worried I might not recognize it.”

  “Well, it just got a new paint job. My parents did some sprucing up for the wedding. I can’t wait to see inside. This will be my first time.”

  Logan turned into the driveway of her parents’ beach getaway, the one that had once belonged to her grandparents on her mom’s side. The parking area was tucked underneath, the house up on stilts for the times when mid-Atlantic hurricanes lapped an extra twenty feet of water up over the dunes. She opened her car door and a waft of briny ocean, carried on a sticky breeze, hit her nose. It brought with it a wealth of memories, many starring Logan. He pulled plastic bins of party decorations from the trunk, and Julia led the way to the wood stairs up to the front door. Even with a fresh coat of butter yellow on the shaker siding of the house, every sensory cue shuffled images through her mind, like flipping through the pages of an old photo album. With the roar of the waves, the wind catching her hair and having him so near, distant moments felt like yesterday, the most palpable of which were the times when Logan had been her everything. And she had been his.

  “You okay, Jules? Carsick again?” Logan was at her side as she paused at the front door with the key in the lock. His hand went to her lower back, true concern in his warm and gentle eyes.

  It isn’t even funny how not okay I am. She nodded. “Yeah. I’m good. We should probably go inside and get started, huh?”

  “No time like the present.”

  Yes, it was now time to start, right where it all began.

  Five

  Logan followed Julia into the beach house, hardly believing his own eyes. Was this really the same place? Once dark, cramped quarters, the kitchen seemed nearly twice its original size. It was completely open to the living room thanks to the obliteration of an entire wall, the space crowned with high-beamed whitewashed ceilings. Where there had once been dark cabinets, wood paneling and avocado-green appliances sat their modern-day counterparts in white and stainless steel. “Your parents practically gutted the place. It looks incredible.”