The Rich Man's Baby

Harrison. His name was Harrison Rivers, of all things. She would have remembered a name like that. So he really hadn’t told her. Her fantasies were unraveling more and more by the second.

His gaze locked on hers as he said to her brother, “I was the guy in the back shed with your sister.”

“NO!” Harrison’s brown-eyed girl practically shouted the denial. She swiftly moved forward and reached for his child.

My God. He had a child. His chest felt ready to explode with emotions he couldn’t name or begin to control.

He watched her perch the baby on her slim hip and tuck his little head under her chin. “This isn’t the guy.” She stared him in the eye, daring him to argue.

“Are you sure?” her brother asked, eyeing Harrison from head to foot.

“Of course I’m sure. Don’t you think I’d know?” she said sharply.

“You heard what I said.” Harrison stated quietly what his heart wanted to shout, “That baby is mine.” Then his throat closed up. They’d made a baby that day. All this time he’d thought they’d only made a little magic, a little bit of heaven that wasn’t meant to last.

His baby’s mother gulped like she was swallowing something distasteful. “No. No he is not,” she clearly lied, her face growing paler by the second.

Harrison captured her gaze again. Why was she denying this? He would have thought a woman in her circumstances would be pointing a finger at him and screeching, This is the guy who knocked me up!

“Then how did he know about the bike?” her brother asked, still unconvinced.

Her breath started coming so hard Harrison could hear it from where he stood. “Ah, lucky guess?” she fumbled, refusing to meet his eyes.

Harrison’s heart went out to her for what she must have gone through, pregnant and alone, but he wasn’t going to let her deny him. That child was part of him.

“Why would he be claiming to be the guy if he’s not the guy?” her brother argued. Maybe he wasn’t as mentally challenged as he looked.

“Why?” she parroted. She started shifting her weight from one bare foot to the other.

Man, she still had sexy feet. His body responded instantly with all sorts of throbbing and hardening. Just as it had over two years ago. Only, now he couldn’t blame his reaction to her on his grief and the way it had made him so out of control. So why did she still push all his hot buttons just standing there with bare feet?

He gave himself a shake and promised not to find out. He had never reacted to any woman the way he did to her, and instant fatherhood was complication enough.

“Why?” she repeated. “How the heck should I know? Maybe he’s some kind of pervert who wants to get his hands on Nat.” Her desperation became glaringly obvious in the way she struggled for an argument.

Again he found himself wondering why she wanted to negate his responsibility. Could she be so selfless as to want to spare him? But why would she think he wanted to be spared?

He asserted, “I am not a pervert. I’m a man who takes responsibility for his mistakes.”

Her eyes flared, and he instantly regretted his choice of words.

“My child is not a mistake,” she hissed.

He raised his hands in supplication. “I’m sorry. You know what I meant.”

“You’re right, I do. Just like I know what you meant when you said earlier that you’d hoped I’d gotten married and left town. So why don’t you head on back down the highway like you’d planned.”

“I can’t. Not now.”

“Wow.” Her brother laughed in disbelief.

“No, no, no,” she whispered, and slowly backed away.

Harrison pointed at the child. “Just look at him. He looks exactly like me. There are pictures of me as a baby on my grandmother’s piano. That’s what I looked like at…what? About eighteen months?” he asked the brother and received a nod in answer. “He looks just like me because I’m his father. I came through here the beginning of June over two years ago and saw the most beaut—I saw you, sitting up on that balcony, and, well, I lost my head.”

“And got something else,” her brother mumbled crudely.

Harrison glared into William’s hazel eyes, nowhere near the deep color of his sister’s, and thought if he had been her brother, he would have flattened the man who’d left his sister pregnant by now. But this idiot looked downright amused.

She didn’t. She looked…scared? What did she have to be afraid of? The only thing he was sure of at that moment was that he intended to accept his responsibilities, as he’d been raised to do, for this child. His child.

Holy smoke.

The spark back in her mesmerizing brown-and-gold eyes, she said challengingly, “What makes you think you weren’t just one of a ton of guys who’ve…who’ve ridden through here?”

“Nobody’s gonna buy that, Julie,” her brother said, butting in. He turned to Harrison. “She’s not like that. As far as anyone knows that’s the only time she’s even let a guy get close,” he said, defending her with an odd sort of pride.

Harrison blanched, vividly remembering his shock when he’d discovered she had been a virgin—after she no longer was one. She had been adamant that it had been her choice, that she had wanted him to be the one. A distinction that even now stirred something vaguely possessive within him. He’d never felt possessive about any woman before, which was why he’d known even then that he shouldn’t see her again. But now things were different. He had a son.

William gave his sister a fond look. “Fellas ‘round here don’t call Julie the ice princess for nothing.”

She gave him a virulent glare in return and growled, “You are such dead meat, Willie. I already said, He’s not the guy.”

Harrison willed her to look at him again, but she buried her face in the sleepy toddler’s soft hair. “Your name’s not Julie,” he half whispered, racking his brain for the name that floated just beyond his reach. It was more lyrical than Julie.

His inability to remember her name bothered him. But names hadn’t been important then. They had stepped to a different plane where such things didn’t matter. The only thing that had mattered was the connection he had felt to her the second their gazes had met. The connection that tugged at him still.

Finally she looked up into his eyes, and it hit him. “Juliet. Your name is Juliet.”

Her eyes welled and a single tear spilled down her cheek. His throat closed up again. She turned and ran with the child through the door to the back. Apparently, for her the connection had broken. For some inexplicable reason his pride felt pricked.

“That’s right,” her brother exclaimed. As he turned to follow his sister he added, “But everyone around here calls her Julie.”

Harrison shook his head. He would never call her that. Despite the fact there could never be anything other than parenthood between them again.

Chapter Two

“You what?” Harrison’s father, George Rivers, roared and jumped to his feet, nearly toppling his chair.

Harrison raised his eyes to the study’s high, coffered ceiling and willed himself to stay calm. “I said, I just discovered I’m the father of an adorable, eighteen-month-old boy,” he repeated, annoyed by the slight tremor of emotion in his voice. He would have to get a handle on that and soon. He had to keep his perspective to make rational decisions.

Unfortunately, he suspected that little boy had already undermined his determination to keep his emotions under control. Nathan was one more person Harrison had to fear losing—one more person with the power to change him like his father had been changed.

His father put his fists on the desk and leaned forward. “The hell you say. Who is she? You haven’t taken the time to see anyone from around here. Is she one of your classmates from Harvard?”

“Her name is Juliet Jones. And no, she didn’t attend Harvard.”

“Juliet? I don’t remember meeting any Juliet.” His father straightened and ran a weary hand over his balding head, massaging it as he went. “I don’t recall hearing you so much as mention a Juliet.”