Baby Business: Baby Steps

A slightly panicked laugh burst from her mouth. “Loving them and keeping them alive are not the same thing. I’m an only child, never had any little siblings or anything to practice on. I never even babysat, because I was too busy being the nerdy straight-A student. So I don’t have anything more to go on than you do.”

“I somehow doubt that,” C.J. said, and there was no mistaking the bitterness edging his words. But now was not the time to pursue it. Especially when he asked, “Why do you think your cousin lied about being on the Pill? Why would she have taken that chance?”

Dana lowered Ethan onto his tummy in the playpen, then sat on the sofa in front of it, laying her cheek on her folded arms across the padded top. “Logic has never exactly been Trish’s strong suit,” she said, watching the baby. “Who knows? Maybe she …” She gulped down the pain. “Maybe she wanted to get pregnant.”

“That’s nuts.”

“No, that’s Trish.”

“Then why didn’t she tell me about the baby, for God’s sake?”

She shifted to look at him. “Because this wasn’t about you, it was about whatever was going on in my cousin’s head at the time. Although those I’d-rather-eat-scorpions-than-become-a-father vibes you give off probably didn’t help. And no, it wouldn’t even occur to her to fight that. Staying power isn’t exactly her strong suit. Heck, sitting through a two-hour-long movie is a strain.”

C.J. pushed out a groan. “And you have no idea where she is?”

“Not a clue. I did talk to the police, however,” she said, filling him in on the events leading up to her becoming Ethan’s caretaker, including her chat with the officer that morning.

“You think she’ll come back?”

Dana leaned to one side to see if his face gave more of a clue than his voice as to what he was really thinking, then stood up, retrieved the note. Handed it to him with a, “For what it’s worth.”

She watched him read it, watched his expression grow more solemn.

“C.J., until you know for sure that Ethan’s yours, maybe you shouldn’t get yourself anymore tied up in knots than you already are.”

Haunted eyes met hers. “And if he’s not?”

“Then I’ll deal,” she said quietly. “Somehow.”

He held her gaze in his for several seconds. “And if he is, then so will I.” He handed the note back to her, his gaze drifting to Ethan. “What a crappy thing to do to a kid,” he said, the steeliness underlying the softly spoken words sending a shudder up her spine. “No way am I turning my back on my own son, Dana. I’m not hurting financially, he’ll have everything he’ll ever need. But if she wanted you to have custody …” He shook his head, letting the sentence trail off unfinished.

Several seconds passed before she could speak. But no way in hell was she going to just sit here and nod and go, “Okay, sure, whatever.” That Dana didn’t live here anymore. “Excuse me? What happened to ‘no way am I turning my back on my own son’? I didn’t shove that birth certificate in your face in exchange for your checkbook, you big turkey!”

“But Trish left him with you!” he said, and a raw anguish she hadn’t seen before blistered in those deep blue eyes. “Not me.”

And with that, comprehension dawned in the deep, muddled recesses of her brain.

Dana sucked in a steadying breath and said, “C.J., my cousin is so many sandwiches short of a picnic she’d starve to death. But she certainly knew I’d recognize your name, and that I’d contact you. So in her own weird way, I don’t think she deliberately meant to shut you out.”

“Never mind that that’s exactly what she did,” C.J. said coldly, and Dana thought, Ah-hah.

“In any case,” she said, “we’ll deal with Trish later. Maybe. But right now, this is about Ethan. And if he is yours, damned if I’m letting you off the hook like she did.”

C.J. flinched as though she’d poked him with a cattle prod. “Dammit, nobody’s letting anybody ‘off the hook!’ Believe me,” he said, his mouth contorted, “nobody, nobody, knows more than I do that this is about a helluva lot more than money. But pardon me for needing more than fifteen minutes to get used to the idea of being somebody’s father!”

The last word came out strangled. His throat working overtime, C.J.’s head snapped toward Ethan, sprawled on his tummy in the playpen. The baby had been contentedly gumming a teething ring; now he lifted his face to them, his drooly grin infused with a trusting curiosity that twisted Dana’s heart.

She shifted her own gaze to C.J., thinking, This is not a bad man. Screwed up, maybe, but not bad. And expecting him to turn on a dime was not only unfair, but unrealistic. Especially when she remembered how she’d felt after receiving her own life-altering news not all that long ago. It takes time to regain your balance after getting walloped by a two-by-four.

At that, Dana rammed her fingers through her hair; it finally succumbed to the inevitable and came completely undone. “Look,” she began again, more gently, “this is a really bizarre situation, and I don’t know any more than you do what the next step’s going to be. I mean, it all hangs on what you find out, right?”

“Yeah. I suppose.”

“All righty then. So. Ethan and I are good for now. And you …” she pushed herself away from the playpen to take C.J. by the arm and steer him toward her door “… need to go home.”

Genuine astonishment flashed in his eyes. “You’re throwing me out?”

“What I’m doing, is giving you some time to adjust. Trust me, you’ll thank me later.”

At her doorway—which he did a remarkable job of filling—he twisted, his eyes grazing hers, rife with emotion. “Later, hell. I’m thanking you now.”

“Whatever.” Then, with a half-assed shove, she turned him back around. “But if you don’t leave immediately,” she said, so tired she was beginning to wobble, “I’ll have to sic the birds on you.”

C.J. looked over her shoulder at Ethan for a full five seconds, gave a sharp nod and left. Dana leaned back against the closed door, watching the small person happily smacking the bottom of the playpen, and thought, Well, this has been one swell day, hasn’t it?

Back home, C.J. turned on the air-conditioning, ignored his mail, which Guadalupe had left neatly stacked on the kitchen island, and changed into a pair of holey jeans he couldn’t imagine any woman putting up with. From the center of the bed, the cat did the one-eyed stare routine and it hit C.J. with the force of a tidal wave that his unencumbered bachelor days were, in all likelihood, history. Because while he’d be an idiot not to get proof that Ethan was his, he’d be a lot more surprised to find out the baby wasn’t.

C.J.’s stomach growled. His bare feet softly thudding against the uneven, cool tiles, he stalked to the kitchen and threw together a sandwich without paying much attention to the contents. One set of nitrates was as deadly as another, right?

Ignoring the air-conditioning, he cranked open the kitchen window over the sink, breathing in the scent of fresh cut grass from his neighbor’s yard that instantly suffused the still, stuffy room. Steve jumped up onto the sill, mashing his ears against the screen and chattering to the delectable whatever-they-weres incessantly chirping in the juniper bushes under the window. Still standing, C.J. attacked the sandwich, somehow swallowing past the grapefruit-sized lump in his throat as an image of Dana sprang to mind, barefoot in that matchbox of an apartment, her burnished, baby-food-streaked hair floating around her face.

The hard, unforgiving look in her eyes when she’d greeted him at the door, Ethan firmly parked on her hip. Now there, he thought as he took another bite of the sandwich, was someone with all her nurturing instincts firmly in place.

Unlike him. Who wouldn’t know a nurturing instinct if it bit him in the butt.

A plan, he thought. He needed a plan. Plans solved problems, or at least reduced them to manageable chunks. When in doubt, just bully your life into order, was his motto. So, still chewing, C.J. marched into his office. Steve followed, complaining; C. J. tromped back to the kitchen, filled the cat’s bowl, returned to the office. Sat down. Rammed both hands through his hair.

Thirst strangled him. Seconds later, ice cold beer in hand, he sat down again, yanking open desk drawers until he found a legal pad and a pen. He slapped the pad on his desk, to which Steve promptly laid claim. C.J. threw the beast off; he hopped right back up and settled on top of the phone, glaring. C.J. glared back, then picked up the pen, stared at the paper.

Nothing. Not a single, solitary, blessed thought came to him. But then, how the hell was he supposed to make a plan without all the particulars? Instead, all he saw were two sets of eyes, one blue, one glinty gray green. A child for whom he might very well be responsible, and a woman he had no business getting anywhere near. And, if he got the test results he expected, the two were inextricably linked.

As he would then be to them.

Because while he really wouldn’t turn his back on his own child—no matter how unlikely the situation in which he now found himself—neither would he, could he, take the baby away from Dana if her cousin didn’t come back. Not that she’d let him, he thought on a wry smile. Poleaxed as she undoubtedly was, she was also clearly already superglued to the kid.

Envy sliced through him, along with a sense of longing so sharp, so unexpected, it took his breath away.

The pen streaked across the room, dinging off the wall. What if he couldn’t do this, couldn’t be what both woman and child needed him to be? Not that he wouldn’t give it his best shot: Even going through the motions would be better than letting a child grow up believing he was a mistake. A burden. But what if that wasn’t enough? Would they both end up hating him? The boy, when he realized his father had been faking a connection he’d never really felt? And Dana. Oh, God, Dana. Could he deal with the inevitable disappointment in her eyes?

So what are you going to do about it, lamebrain?

Seconds later, C. J. found himself standing in one of the two guest bedrooms. The one he’d left empty, since guests had never been an issue.

As Steve writhed around his ankles, his questioning meow seeming to ask what the hell they were doing in here, C.J. stood frozen in the center of the room, visualizing a crib in one corner. And in that crib, a chubby little boy with blue eyes leaning over the side, smiling, arms outstretched …

… trusting in his father’s unconditional love.

C.J. shut his eyes and waited until the dizziness passed.