The Brennan Baby

Devlin seemed to notice Mark for the first time. “And you are?”

“Hoping you’ll leave, Dr. Brennan,” Mark replied sarcastically.

“You’re keeping your sister and brother-in-law waiting.” Gillian heaved an impatient sigh. “And you’re keeping us from...from—”

“Listening to the score of ‘My Fair Lady,’” Carmen called. “So get lost, Devlin. Now!”

“Sorry for interrupting.” Devlin looked down at Gillian, who assiduously avoided his eyes. But the baby grinned at him and flexed her little fingers.

“Are you trying to wave goodbye, little lady?” Impulsively, Dev offered her his finger and she closed her small fist around it. “Can you say ‘bye-bye’?”

“Ashley makes lots of sounds and knows the meanings of some words but the only one she actually seems to say in context is Mama,” Mark said, sauntering over to join them at the door. “Not that she’s stupid or anything, but she’s not even a year old and you can’t expect her to recite the Gettysburg Address, now can you?” He subjected Devlin to a scorching once-over, his gaze lingering on certain strategic areas.

“No, indeed,” agreed Devlin hastily, his eyes widening. “Well, see you around, I guess.” He disengaged his finger from Ashley who was trying to carry it to her mouth to sample.

“Say bye-bye to your new neighbor, Ashley,” cooed Mark.

“Ba,” said Ashley.

“Not bad.” Devlin patted her tiny arm. “Close enough to ’bye. Keep practicing, Ashley, you’ll get it.”

He left, and Gillian quickly slammed the door shut. The sound reverberated throughout the hall

“I think Dreamy Doctor Devlin was afraid I had designs on him.” Mark was scornful. “He is hot, I’ll grant you that, but I would never fall for the rat who abandoned my pregnant sister!”

“He didn’t abandon me,” Gillian came immediately to Dev’s defense. “He didn’t even know I was pregnant.”

“And now he’s living right across the hall from his own secret child!” Carmen moaned. “I can’t believe it. It’s a coincidence that only happens in a soap opera, but somehow it’s happened to you, Gilly.”

“And after all you did to keep Ashley a secret from him, it’s a coincidence that strikes me as a particularly unfair twist of fate,” said Mark.

“Nothing new there,” Carmen said trenchantly. “Since when has fate been anything but unfair to the likes of us?”

“I think we’ve been incredibly lucky,” Gillian countered, carrying Ashley to the toy-filled playpen by the window. She set the baby in it, handing her a bright scarlet teddy bear. “We all ended up at the Sinsel foster home, didn’t we? That was a fantastic stroke of luck. We found each other there and became like a real family—probably better than a real family because they can’t choose their relatives, but we did when we chose each other.”

“Oh, no! Not her Pollyanna routine again.” Mark groaned. “Carmen, stop her, please, I’m starting to feel queasy.”

Gillian smiled at his dramatics. “You know I’m right.”

“I know you’re optimistic to the point of dementia at times,” Mark retorted. “Is it any wonder why we got a divorce?”

The three of them laughed, and little Ashley watched them, chiming in with her own merry squeal.

“We’re lucky to have each other,” Carmen conceded. “But having Devlin Brennan living so close to Ashley is like that fairy tale where the uninvited wicked fairy crashes the party. Something bad is sure to result. That brother-in-law of his already has me spooked. The way he was staring at the baby, the way he asked if you needed anything...” Her voice trailed off. “It was like he was ready to accept you as a family responsibility. As if he knows the truth about Devlin and Ashley, Gilly.”

“There is no way he could know a thing,” Gillian insisted, refusing to listen to her own anxiety expressed aloud.

“Unless he’s psychic.” Carmen’s dark eyes grew round. “What if he is?”

“What if he isn’t, but happens to be very familiar with Devlin Brennan’s past history?” Mark speculated. “Suppose Ashley isn’t the first little Brennan crawling around unacknowledged by her daddy? Maybe the handsome doctor is a walking sperm bank with kids by different women all over the place. Those children could be instantly recognizable to the brother-in-law because he knows to look for them.”

“A multitude of Brennan spawns! Sounds like something out of that movie Village of the Damned, where all the kids looked alike.” Carmen shuddered. “Of course, they were aliens, but still!”

“I can see it’s time for me to reel you both back from the tangents you’ve gone off on.” Gillian rolled her eyes heavenward. “I’m absolutely certain that Cade Austin is not psychic and I’m equally sure that Devlin Brennan hasn’t populated the world with his look-alike offspring. In fact, nobody suspects anything except you two, whose imaginations have always been way too active.”

“You hope,” Mark said darkly.

Gillian shot him a quelling glance. “I’m going to move out of here as soon as I can find another place. But while I’m in this apartment, I refuse to live in a state of panic wondering what Devlin Brennan or his brother-in-law might or might not know. The truth is, neither of them know or care anything about Ashley or me.”

“Dadadadada,” Ashley sang as she tossed her toys around the playpen.

“She said ‘Dada,’” Carmen gasped. “It’s like she knows we’re talking about her father!”

“Carmen, if you say Ashley is psychic I’ll confiscate your deck of tarot cards and your palm-reading instruction book.” Gillian was stern “You’re starting to take that paranormal stuff way too seriously.”

“I’m sure the baby is just babbling,” Mark said tactfully. “It’s not as if she knows any word for daddy. Or what a daddy is, let alone who he is.”

“Join the club, Ashley. Daddies fall into the category of unsolved mysteries for all of us.” Carmen looked glum.

Ashley pulled herself to her feet by hanging on to the bars of the playpen and threw the red bear over the side. “Dada,” she pronounced forcefully.

“Bear,” Gillian corrected, handing her the toy

“Gilly, you said you haven’t seen Devlin since you broke up with him.” A worried-looking Carmen was unable to let the topic drop. “Suppose seeing you again starts him thinking and he starts counting backward. Suppose he notices that Ashley looks just like his sister, not to mention himself. I bet our little Ash is a dead ringer for their baby pictures.”

“I honestly think the brother-in-law has already realized that,” added Mark.

“I honestly don’t,” Gillian was quick to refute. “Anyway, Devlin Brennan is too interested in having a good time with all his friends and admirers to give Ashley or me a single thought”

“You hope again,” Mark muttered under his breath.

Gillian heard him. “I know he won’t,” she said firmly.

Two

Gillian was wrong.

Devlin did think about her, especially when he was alone in his apartment, right across the hall from hers. His mind would drift from the plot of “I Dream of Jeannie” or “Three’s Company” or whatever rerun was airing on TV to ponder why Gillian had ended their relationship so abruptly, so irrevocably, all those months ago.

He acknowledged that he had done his part to keep the split irrevocable. After Gillian told him it was all over between them—offering only a maddeningly ambiguous “this isn’t working out” as the reason why—he hadn’t said a word or done a thing to make her change her mind. He hadn’t called her or attempted to see her.

Was that what she’d expected him to do? To go crawling to her, begging to be allowed back in her life? The prospect appalled him, and he rejected it now as he had then. But suppose he had made one phone call to her in the days following their breakup? Just one. A single phone call hardly constituted crawling or begging. Twenty months later, Devlin finally conceded that point.

He frowned, remembering the night she’d called it quits. After dropping her bombshell, Gillian had gone home, leaving him alone to absorb the shock. And what a shock it was... For the first time in his charmed, blessed, golden life he’d been dumped!

Compounding his woe was his lack of anyone to share it He didn’t consider confiding anything about the breakup to any member of his social circle. Why bother when he could easily predict their responses?

The attitude of the jaundiced nonromantics in the group would be a cavalier “so what?” The others would proclaim that it was about time he felt the sting of rejection, that everybody else in the world had been dumped at one time or another and now, finally, it was Devlin Brennan’s turn.