Unexpected Father

“Had?” she repeated, obviously latching on to his use of the past tense. A tear streaked down her cheek.

A real honest-to-goodness tear.

In the six years he’d known her, he’d never seen Lilly cry. Oh, man. This was ripping them both to pieces—but for different reasons, of course.

Jason couldn’t stand that look of undiluted pain on her face, so he put an end to it. “Not had, Lilly,” he corrected. “You have a baby. A daughter.”

Chapter Two

If it’d been any person other than Jason Lawrence telling her this, Lilly might have thought it was a joke. But this no-shades-of-gray cop wasn’t the joking type. Heck, she wasn’t even sure he was the smiling type. Still—

A baby.

How could that be?

If this was the truth, then she would have been…what? She quickly did the math. She would have been two months pregnant when she was involved in the car accident. Two months, as in sixty days.

Yet she hadn’t known.

How could she have not known?

Her life had always been so organized. She’d known every appointment, every deadline. So, how could a missed period or two have escaped her notice?

Almost hysterically, Lilly slapped the plastic cup onto the table beside her bed so she could pinch herself. Hard. She felt it all right, the sting of the pressure on her skin. But that wasn’t definitive. Maybe she was still in a coma. Maybe she was dreaming about a pinch and a pregnancy.

Yes.

That was it. This had to be some weird dream, even though she couldn’t recall a single instance of a dream the entire time she’d been in a coma.

“It’s for real,” Jason volunteered as if he could hear the argument going on in her head.

He walked toward her, slowly, and held out his arm. Probably so she could touch him. Because she didn’t know what else to do, Lilly took him up on that offer. She reached out. Dreading, hoping and praying all at the same time. Her fingertips brushed against the smooth fabric of his bronze-colored jacket, which was nearly the same color as his short, efficient hair.

The jacket felt like…well, a jacket.

But Lilly went one step further. She slid her fingers over the back of his hand. Warm, human skin. Comforting in a primal sort of way.

And maybe in other ways, too.

She suddenly wanted to latch on to his hand, and it wasn’t totally related to her need to make sure she was truly conscious. Simply put, she needed a hug. Mercy, did she ever. Even though she was twenty-seven—no, make that twenty-nine—she suddenly felt as fragile as a newborn baby.

Ironic.

Since a baby was the exact topic of conversation that’d sent her heart and thoughts into a tailspin.

Lilly met Jason’s gaze again, to see how he was reacting to all of this touching stuff, but whatever he was feeling, he kept it carefully hidden in the depths of those smoke-gray eyes. No surprise there. She’d always believed Jason was born to be a cop.

Or a professional poker player.

Because that rugged stoic face gave away nothing. The only time she’d ever seen an overt display of emotion from him was the night his brother, Greg, had died. Understandable. She’d had an overt display of her own.

Well, afterward, anyway.

When Jason had gone and she had been alone.

“Are you okay?” Jason asked.

Lilly didn’t even consider a polite lie. “No. I’m not. It’s hard to be okay when nothing makes sense.”

She moved on to part three of the reality check. Not knowing what to hope she might see, Lilly clutched the hem of her roomy green hospital gown and jerked it up. Thank goodness she was wearing panties or Jason would have gotten a real eyeful. But even if she hadn’t had on underwear, she would have looked anyway. She needed proof.

And she got it.

She slid her fingertips over the thin, pinkish-colored scar. Right on her lower abdomen. Not some ragged wound caused by an injury, but clearly the result of surgery.

A C-section.

Jason leaned in closer. So close. Too close. He caught her gown and eased it back into place so that the soft cotton whispered over her thighs. Probably because her near nudity bothered him.

No, wait.

He didn’t think of her that way. He’d covered her probably because further examination wasn’t necessary. She had all the proof she needed.

Reality check was over. Now it was time to deal with the aftermath. And she dealt, all right. The breath swooshed out of her and because she didn’t want any tears to escape, Lilly squeezed her eyes shut.

“A daughter?” she said.

“Yes.” Jason’s voice was tight. Edgy. Exactly the way she felt.

He didn’t add anything else, and it didn’t take long for the smothering silence to settle uncomfortably between them. Lilly used that quiet time to try to put a stranglehold on her composure, to try to grasp what was happening.

But both were impossible tasks.

Only two hours earlier she’d awakened to learn that she’d lost nineteen months of life because of a car accident that she couldn’t even remember. Nineteen months. Heaven knew what toll the coma had taken on her body. And there was the inevitable toll that her absence had no doubt taken on her business. Sweet heaven, she’d lost so much. Now, Jason had informed her that she’d been pregnant and delivered a baby.

A baby who was almost a year old.

“Her name is Megan,” she heard Jason say.

At the sound of some movement, Lilly opened her eyes to find him searching through his wallet. He extracted something. A photograph that was a bit crumpled around the edges. He held it up so she could see it.

Her mouth went dry.

She took the picture, hesitantly, and pulled it closer to her so she could study it. The little girl had auburn hair. Not quite a genetic copy of Lilly’s own, but close. Darn close. It wasn’t straight but instead haloed her face in soft, loose curls. Just as Lilly’s own hair had done when she was that age.

Lilly caught her bottom lip between her teeth to cut off any unwanted sound she might make. At this point, any sound would be unwanted. And too revealing.

In the photograph, Megan was smiling. Not a tentative one, either. It went all the way to her eyes.