by Taryn Quinn
Man, I needed to read up while she was sleeping. There was so many things I’d have to get. We’d have to go shopping in the morning. Or I could go shopping and Gina could watch her—no, I needed Gina to help me. I was supposed to work tomorrow, and as sheriff, I wasn’t the easiest to cover for. It could be done if necessary. Whatever I had to do to make this work, I would.
Her eyes had been blue. Like mine. But I knew animals didn’t always keep the eye color they had as babies. Was that the case with humans too? I’d Google that too.
I dug out my phone. I had to make a list of my lists.
So much was whirling through my head. Was she really my kid? The age lined up, more or less. She didn’t have any obviously disqualifying factors, like red curls. Although with genetics, that was a crapshoot. You never knew what gene might be recessive.
She seemed to look like me enough, and even if she didn’t, could I turn her away? Obviously, her birth mom wasn’t worth the paper her birth certificate had been written on. But if I wasn’t her real father, I should probably find out, if only to let her true dad know.
And risk that she ends up with another lackluster faux parent?
I rubbed at the headache brewing behind my eyes. I needed to contact my lawyer to see about a paternity test, just to be safe.
To be sure.
First, I had to establish Preston was still my lawyer, as we hadn’t been in contact for years, not since Mrs. Peabody had sued me for selling a piece of lawn equipment she’d left on the property during its sale. Since she was not the party actually selling the cabin and only lived next door—roughly the distance of a city block away—she’d taken offense to the sale. I’d taken offense that her good-sized acreage wasn’t enough to store her own damn lawn tools, but she’d won the suit and ridden off on her John Deere.
I’d ended up having to return the cash I’d made to one very peeved Bob Clancy.
Preston was a divorce attorney and had only agreed to represent me in that one-off suit because we’d gone to Syracuse University together. A paternity issue might necessitate finding another lawyer.
But before I got to lawyers and logical next steps, I had to make it through the night without accidentally harming this baby from ineptitude.
Maybe I should call the police. That was a different matter when you were the police, and you knew as much as they did about standard procedure with this sort of thing. Not that finding a baby was standard in any way. But if that note was to be believed, she wasn’t some random drop-off.
She was mine. My flesh and blood. That I hadn’t known about her didn’t make her any less real.
Besides, I wasn’t ready to share this information. Not yet. Telling Gina would be hard enough. She was my closest friend, and normally, I felt comfortable telling her just about anything—except for that one random dream I’d had about her painting my boat in really short shorts and a sports bra. It had been a scorching hot day, so her outfit had seemed appropriate.
The raging erection I’d had upon waking had not been.
But that was just biology. Gina was gorgeous, although I did my level best not to even acknowledge she was a woman. That wasn’t what we were about. So what if she had a killer rack and hips made for gripping while—
Yeah, in my mind, she might as well have been a dude.
Ahem.
Anyway, in theory, telling Gina shouldn’t be that difficult considering we’d been close for several years now. I’d gotten friendly with her when I stopped into the diner for lunch. From there, we’d discovered a mutual love of college basketball. What had begun as occasional nights at The Spinning Wheel eating barbecue wings while we watched the game had turned into so much more.
Fuck, Bonnie. Complication number two-thousand.
I didn’t want my dispatcher to find out about this. She was a traditionalist. If she learned I’d made a baby while having what amounted to a work vacation hookup in the city, she’d look at me differently. She probably wouldn’t want Gina spending time with me.
It had been enough of a trial to convince her early on that we were just friends. Bonnie had been wary like any other mom when her barely-of-age daughter started hanging out with a guy almost a decade older. My being the sheriff had only somewhat mitigated things.
I’d told Bonnie I had no interest toward Gina, and she didn’t have to worry about me hurting her baby. After that, she’d even started working dispatch at the station—which I was certain wasn’t so she could keep an eye on how friendly I was with Gina.
Almost certain.
Now I was bringing an actual baby into the mix.
I glanced at the boat. The little girl was still sleeping. Sadie was still yipping halfheartedly upstairs. I should go sit with her, even if I wasn’t quite ready to risk waking the baby by letting out the dog.
The front door burst open on a rush of cold air and a whirl of snowflakes. “Brooks, you’ve got some serious explaining to do—” Gina began, breaking off at the sharp cry that split the silence, followed by a deafening howl from my normally sweet-natured Retriever.
Her mouth fell open as she noticed the boat sitting on the living room floor—and the baby nestled within it.
Gina’s gaze shot to mine. Somehow I could feel her accusations without her saying a thing.
“What did you do?” she whispered.
But it was too late for soft words. The baby was screaming again, and Sadie was going nuts upstairs.
And I was staring at my best friend, feeling guilty for reasons I couldn’t explain. Guilty and regretful and…anguished. There was no other way to put it, even if I didn’t have the faintest clue why.
I hadn’t ever even really thought much about having kids. And I’d definitely never imagined I would be anything but happily married if I somehow had a family of my own in the far off future.
My reality was now very different.
“Shut the door.”
Gina didn’t move. If anything, she grew even more still. She might as well have been rooted to the floor, her flyaway dark hair half up and half down and her beautiful dark eyes wild. Her apron from the diner was still hooked around her neck but bagged loose in the front as if she hadn’t had time to remove it all the way before she drove to my place.
She was always by my side. Always.
I went to the door and closed it, leaning hard against my hands on the heavy wood. I drew in a deep breath and turned back to her, unsurprised she’d shifted just enough to meet my gaze once again.
“Bee, I have a baby.”
Three
I’d never had an out-of-body experience in my twenty-four years. Despite their prevalence in the spooky shows on the supernatural channel I liked to watch with Luna and Ryan, I had to imagine they were fairly rare among the general population.
Yet I was having one right now without the aid of scrying mirror or crystals or so much as a witchy thought.
I was possibly going to hyperventilate too, just to add some fun to the night’s events. Could someone lose the ability to breathe when they weren’t even in their body any longer?
Let’s find out, folks.
Since Jared was a trained officer of the law—and since he was more familiar with this whole baby concept than I was, apparently—he saw my distress and hurried forward to guide me past the boat to the couch.
There was a boat in the center of the living room. No water to speak of.
Upstairs, Sadie was howling. The baby that was Jared’s was screaming ever louder in competition with the dog.
And I was bent over with my head between my knees.
“I’ll get you some water,” Jared said and fled.
Typical man. Create a mess and disappear.
He’d hooked up with some random woman—I assumed she was random, but maybe she wasn’t. Maybe I’d served her at the diner. For all I knew, I could’ve seen her walking around with a belly full of Jared’s baby.
What was left from the hurried dinner I’d had of soup and crackers at the diner threatened
to bolt back up my throat. I coughed and cupped my mouth, shaking my head frantically when he held out a brimming glass of iced water as promised.
Watching me, he drank it down in one long gulp himself.
I was getting a headache from the literal cacophony of sound. That was not the usual here. Jared’s place on the lake was typically a respite from the hustle and bustle of the Cove.
When I could take no more, I stood up, put two fingers in my mouth, and whistled. I didn’t know if it’d work on these two females, but it used to work on the kids in Little League when I helped coach softball.
Dog and child instantly quieted.
“Wow,” Jared said, clearly awed.
I took that blessed moment of silence to look down at the baby. And shocked myself by starting to laugh.
Hard.
“You stuck her in a pillowcase?”
“I didn’t have anything small. She spit up on the blanket in the basket so I threw it out.”
“We have these new inventions called washing machines,” I reminded him, crouching near the boat despite my inclination to run away.
Like literally go right out the front door and never come back until I could rewind this night and pretend it had never happened.
Jared hadn’t gotten someone pregnant. Hadn’t made this tiny squalling girl with feathery dark lashes and apple cheeks with twin dots of red and a little nose that turned up slightly at the end. Her lips were puckered and moving as if she wanted something. Probably the bottle on its side in the boat.
Swallowing deeply, I grabbed it and lifted it to her mouth. She latched on immediately, her small hands grasping for it instinctively. I brushed her downy dark hair back from her forehead, and she kept sucking, watching me with her owl-like blue eyes.
Like his. They just had to be his eyes.
I hated myself for it, but I had to move. To pace off some of the ridiculous anger and sense of futility inside me. So many feelings were churning around in my belly with nowhere to go.
His baby was beautiful.
Of course she was. How could she have been anything else?
I went into the large kitchen I’d spent so many hours in, laughing while we made meals that were half flops and half successes. We liked to watch cooking competitions and try some of the stuff we saw, even though neither of us was particularly gifted in that way.
Didn’t matter. We’d had fun.
I went to the big farmhouse-style sink with the double basins and turned on the cold water. I let it flow over my hands and wrists until they were nearly numb and then splashed my face.
“I’m sorry,” he said miserably from the doorway.
It was a small comfort he felt bad. For what, exactly? Because he’d somehow had an affair with someone in the past year without needing to mention it to his best friend? So much for that. How could you sleep with someone and not tell your bestie?
“I would tell you if I had sex,” I muttered. And subsequently wished I would die.
Right on the spot.
“You would?” He sounded strangled.
I wrenched off the faucet and thought about it for a minute. In my universe, sex had been a nonissue for a while. Not the entire length of our friendship but close. When we’d started getting tighter, I’d actually had a boyfriend. Jared hadn’t liked him much, and in time, I’d come to agree.
But we’d never discussed my bedroom activities with Ray. It hadn’t occurred to me. Having a dude for a best friend wasn’t the same as a chick. Talking about penis size got awkward real quick.
Since I couldn’t answer his question without grabbing a pan off the rack hanging over the island and heaving it at his head, I breezed past him to go down the hall.
“Bee—”
I was already on my way up the stairs. It was cowardly, but I couldn’t deal with that baby right now. Not when she was so cute and sweet and his.
Sadie leaped on me as I opened the door to the bedroom where he’d stashed her. I hugged her close and buried my face in her thick, soft golden fur.
“There’s a girl. There’s a sweetheart. Daddy locked you up in here for no reason. You’re the best girl ever, aren’t you?”
Sadie swiped her big tongue all over my cheeks in silent agreement.
I closed my eyes at Jared’s heavy footsteps on the stairs. “We need to talk,” he said a moment later.
“You have a child to keep an eye on.”
There was hardly any accusation in my voice, I was almost sure.
“She’s a couple months old. Where can she go?”
His relentless calm made me want to kick him. “Couple months, huh? Got that nailed down.”
I’d surmised the same myself since I’d been babysitting since the age of thirteen and had taken care of kids of all ages. But hearing him admit it made me madder somehow.
It was ridiculous to feel betrayed. We were friends. He didn’t owe me full disclosure. I might’ve believed we’d told each other almost everything, but clearly, that was not the case and I’d just have to come to terms with it.
Maybe by the time his daughter turned eighteen.
“Well, considering I was only…with her mother for a couple of days last December, it wasn’t too hard to guess her age. She might have been premature, I guess, because she’s small—where are you going?”
With my hand on Sadie’s head at my side, I turned toward the door. “Downstairs.”
“With the dog?”
“The dog,” I enunciated carefully, “is smart and sweet. She will not injure the baby.”
But Jared didn’t move. Instead, he braced both hands on the doorjamb, reminding me just how big and broad he was. Not to mention how much larger he was than me, which secretly thrilled me when I was feeling especially female as we walked side by side down the street.
My thoughts were traitorous sometimes. Tonight, especially.
Sadie’s large plume of a tail swished against my leg as she let out a whimper in support. I glanced down at her and inwardly sighed at the pleading expression that usually meant she had to pee. “She has to go out. Speaking of that, have you changed your daughter’s diaper yet?”
It was surprisingly satisfying to watch Jared pale under his tan. “I don’t have any diapers.”
“I should hope not, unless you’ve been keeping other secrets from me.” I held up a hand. “Ones I do not need to know about, thanks.”
His jaw worked. “I wasn’t keeping a secret from you. I didn’t know she existed until tonight.”
Sympathy swam through me at the obvious pain in his voice. My first inclination was to wrap my arms around him and give him a rib-crushing Ramos hug. At least that was a concrete action I could take.
But the petty, small-minded woman inside me would not let the mothering side of me take control.
“I’m assuming you remembered the sex part though.”
He gave me a tight nod.
“And you recall that you did not tell me about that.”
“It was not pertinent.”
“Oh, no? I’d say it was extremely pertinent, considering the result’s dirty diaper is probably stinking up your living room.”
Even as I spoke, I felt bad. Judging from the scarce amount of information Jared had shared, his kid hadn’t had an easy go of it thus far. What kind of mother did she have to dump her off on Jared this way? And where exactly was she?
“Since we’re on the topic, what sort of woman did you get naked with, huh? Just wondering what kind of chick drops her infant on a clueless dude and takes off for what, a mental health vacay?”
“I’m not clueless. And she didn’t take off for a vacay.” He did air quotes. “She just took off, period.” His forehead pinched as he closed his eyes. “I don’t know her name. I don’t even know if she gave her one. She’s a couple of months old, and her own mother didn’t even care enough to tell me the kid’s name.”
Horror curled through me at the reality of just what he was describing. God, that poor sweet littl
e girl.
“We’ll give her one.”
His eyes opened as I heard myself. But it was too late. I couldn’t take it back or remove myself safely from the situation so I couldn’t get any more hurt than I was already.
It didn’t matter if my reasons were stupid or if I didn’t have any right to have them. My chest hurt just the same.
“You’ll help?” I bit my lip as he reached out to brush a curl away from my eyes. “Please, Bee. I need you. You said it yourself. I’m clueless.”
My lips twitched. I could never stay mad at him for long. Damn him. But if I didn’t stay mad, the pain would sneak in, and I didn’t want that to happen either.
“You told me you weren’t.”
“Well, in matters of life, I guess not, no, or at least I wasn’t until I went to the city for a law enforcement convention and hooked up with a woman who wasn’t at all who I thought she was.”
I stroked Sadie’s soft ear as she leaned her head against my thigh. “Did she leave you high and dry?”
“No. It wasn’t like that. It was honestly nothing but two nights in a hotel room. We didn’t make plans to connect afterward because we were blowing off steam. That’s all.”
“While you were blowing, did your hand slip on the latex?”
His direct glance nearly made me blush. “My hand never slips, Bee.”
“Then what happened?”
He pushed a hand through his short dark hair. “I don’t know. She said she was on the Pill too.”
“Sounds like you need a S on your chest if you can go through two forms. If she was being honest.”
“How the hell do I know? Now I’m questioning everything. Replaying every conversation and every—”
“Liplock?” I suggested, instantly wanting to seal my own lips shut with superglue.
“I think it means more to you than it did to me, since you’ve spent as much time thinking about it in the last few minutes as I have the entire past year.”
“Well, you knew about it and I didn’t. And if it was so meaningless to you, it seems even more likely you’d be like, ‘hey, got some this week, sucks to be you.’ But hey, what do I know, right?” I patted Sadie’s back, and she wiggled her rump excitedly. “C’mon, Sadie, let’s get some fresh air.”
