Committed to the Baby: Claiming King's Baby / The Doctor's Secret Baby

Justice moved off a little and sat down hard on the stone bench. “I’m done exercising, Maggie. Why don’t you take your son into the house?”

Mrs. Carey, standing behind her boss, made a face at him that almost set Maggie laughing. But the truth was she was just too torn to smile about the situation. There her stubborn husband sat, with his son within arm’s reach, and Justice had withdrawn from them. Sealed himself off behind that damn wall of his. Well, Maggie thought, maybe it was past time she tore some of that wall down. Whether he liked it or not.

Giving into the urge, Maggie jostled Jonas on her hip a bit, then asked, “Jonas, you want to go see your daddy?”

Justice’s head snapped up and his eyes were wide and horrified briefly before they narrowed into dangerous slits. “I’m not his daddy.”

“You are the most hardheaded, stubborn, foolish man I have ever known,” Mrs. Carey muttered darkly. “Not enough sense to see the truth even when it’s staring right at you with your own eyes.”

“You might want to remember who you work for,” Justice told her without looking at her, keeping his eyes fixed on Maggie and the boy.

“I believe I just described who I work for,” Mrs. Carey told him. “Now I’m going back to the kitchen. Put a roast in for dinner.”

When she was gone, Maggie stared at Justice for another minute, while the baby laughed and babbled to himself. But her mind was made up. She was going to force Justice to acknowledge their son. No more of this letting him avoid the baby, scuttling out of rooms just as she entered. No more walking a wide berth around the situation. It was time for him to be shaken up a bit. And there was no better way to do it than this.

“Here you go, sweetie. Go see your daddy.” Maggie swung Jonas down and before Justice could get off the bench, she plopped the baby into his lap.

Both baby and man wore the same startled expression, and they looked so much alike that Maggie actually laughed.

Justice didn’t hear her. He was holding his breath and watching the baby on his lap as if it were a live grenade. He expected the tiny boy to start shrieking in protest at being handed over to a stranger. But instead, Jonas looked up at him and a slow, cautious smile curved his tiny mouth.

He had two teeth, on the bottom, Justice noted, and a stream of drool sliding out of his mouth. His hair was black, his eyes a dark blue and his arms and legs were chubby pistons, moving at an incredible rate. Justice kept one hand on the boy’s back and felt the rapid beat of the baby’s heart beneath his hand.

For days he’d steered clear of the child, told himself the baby was none of his concern. He hadn’t wanted to be touched by the child. Hadn’t wanted to look at Jonas and know that Maggie had found what she needed with some other man. Staying away had been much easier.

Yet now, as he considered that, he realized that for the first time in his life, he’d behaved like a coward. He’d run from the child and what he meant to save his own ass. To protect himself.

What did that say about him?

Jonas laughed and Justice turned his attention to Maggie, who was watching them both with tears in her eyes. His heart turned over in his chest, and just for an instant he let himself believe it was real. That he and Maggie were together again. That Jonas was his son.

Then the sound of a car engine out front shattered the quiet. A moment later that engine was shut off and the solid slam of a car door followed. Before he could wonder who had arrived, Mrs. Carey shouted from inside, “Jesse and Bella are here!”

Justice stared up at Maggie, the moment over. “Take the baby.”

Chapter Seven

“I can’t tell you how glad I’ll be to finally have this baby,” Bella said with a groan as she eased back into one of the comfy chairs in the great room. Her long, dark hair lay across her shoulder in a thick braid and silver hoops winked from her ears. A wry smile curved her mouth as she ran one hand over her belly. “It’s not all about wanting to sleep on my stomach again, though. I’m just so anxious to meet whoever’s in there.”

“You didn’t find out the baby’s sex?” Mrs. Carey asked.

“No,” Bella said. “We decided to be surprised.”

Maggie grinned. She’d felt the same way. She hadn’t wanted to know the sex of her baby before she saw him for the first time. And she remembered all too clearly what the last couple of weeks of pregnancy were like. No wonder Bella was fidgety. There was the discomfort, of course. But more than that, there was a sense of breathless expectation that clung to every moment.

“And,” Bella was saying, “I don’t think Jesse can take much more of this. The man’s on a constant red alert. Every time I breathe too deeply, he bolts for the phone, ready to call 911. He’s so nervous that he’s awake every couple of hours during the night, waking me up to make sure I’m all right.”

“That’s just as it should be,” Mrs. Carey said, from her seat on the couch, where she held Jonas in the crook of her arm and fed him his afternoon bottle. “A man should be wrapped up in the birth of his child.” She sniffed. “Some men, at least, know what to do.”

It was really nice having the King family housekeeper on her side, Maggie mused, but at the same time, she felt she owed Justice some sort of defense.

“To be fair,” Maggie said, “Justice didn’t know I was pregnant.”

“Would have if he hadn’t been too stubborn to go after you in the first place,” she countered with a sharp nod that said, that’s all there is to it. “If he had, then you would have been here, at home while you were carrying this little sweetheart. And I wouldn’t have had to wait so long to meet him.”

It would have been nice, Maggie thought, to have been here, surrounded by love and concern during her pregnancy. Instead, she’d lived alone, in her apartment a half hour away in Long Beach. Thank God she’d had her own family for support.

“I can’t believe you went through your whole pregnancy on your own,” Bella said softly, her hands still moving restlessly over the mound of her belly. “I don’t know what I would have done without Jesse.”

“It wasn’t easy,” Maggie admitted, pouring Bella another glass of lemonade before slumping back into her own chair. She shot a quick look at her baby, happily ensconced in Mrs. Carey’s arms, and remembered those months of loneliness. She’d missed Justice so much then and had nearly called him dozens of times. But her own pride had discounted that notion every time it presented itself. “I had my family,” she said, reminding herself that she’d never really been completely alone. Besides, she didn’t want these women feeling sorry for her. She hadn’t had Justice with her, but she hadn’t been miserable the whole time, either.

“That’s good,” Bella said softly, as if she understood exactly what Maggie was trying to do.

“My parents live in Arizona, but they were on the phone all the time and were really supportive. Both of my sisters were fabulous.” Maggie grinned suddenly with a memory. “My sister Mary Theresa was even in the delivery room with me. Matrice was great, really. Don’t know what I would have done without her there.”

“I’m glad you weren’t alone,” Mrs. Carey said quietly, “but a woman should have her man at her side when her children are born.”

In a perfect world, Maggie thought but didn’t say. Instead, she sighed and said, “I wanted to tell him. I really did. But at the same time, Justice had already told me that he didn’t want children.”

Mrs. Carey snorted. “Darn fool. Don’t know why he’d say that raised in this family, one of four kids. Why wouldn’t he want children? Especially,” she added, bending to kiss Jonas’s forehead, “this little darling.”

Maggie gave her a smile, delighted that Jonas had an honorary grandmother to dote on him. “I didn’t understand why, either, but he’d made himself clear. So I couldn’t very well show up here pregnant knowing how he felt about it. And besides…”

“You wanted him to want you for you, not for the baby,” Bella said for her.

“Exactly,” Maggie said on another sigh. She may have just met Bella King, but she had a feeling the two of them could be very close friends. But that wasn’t likely to happen either, since the minute Justice recovered, she’d be leaving again—and this time she knew it would be for good. There’d be no coming back here, not if Justice could turn his back on his son.

With a heavy heart, Maggie glanced around the room and idly noted the splash of sunshine lying across polished floors and gleaming tables. The scent of freshly cut flowers hung in the air, and the only sounds were those made by her hungry son as he devoted himself to his snack.

“I understand that completely,” Bella told her. “If I’d been in your situation, I would have done the same thing. You know, Jesse told me how happy you and his brother were together. And I can tell you he was really surprised when you two split up.”

Mrs. Carey huffed out a disgusted breath.

“He wasn’t the only one.” Maggie felt a quick sting of tears behind her eyes, and she blinked fiercely to keep them at bay. The time for tears was long past. “I would never have believed that Justice and I wouldn’t be together forever. But he’s just so darn…”

“Stubborn. Bullheaded,” Mrs. Carey supplied.

“That about covers it,” Maggie said with a laugh, relieved to feel her emotions settle again.

“So is Jesse,” Bella said, then went on to describe life with a husband who rarely let her walk across the room without an escort. She started in by telling them how her office at King Beach had been outfitted with a resting chaise and that Jesse made sure she took a nap every afternoon.

While Maggie listened, she tried to hide the pain she felt. The envy, wrapping itself around her heart, for what Bella shared with her husband. Jesse had already come into the room twice in the past hour, ordering his wife to put her feet up, getting her a pillow for her aching back.

It was easy to imagine that Bella’s whole pregnancy had been like that. With her eager, loving husband dancing attendance on her. And Maggie couldn’t help but remember what her own pregnancy had been like. Sure, she’d had her parents and her sisters, but she hadn’t had Justice. She hadn’t had the luxury of lying in bed beside the father of her child while they spun daydreams about their baby’s future. She hadn’t been able to share the excitement of a new ultrasound photo. Hadn’t been able to hold Justice’s hand to her belly so that he could feel Jonas moving around inside her.

They’d both missed so much. Maybe she should have come to Justice immediately on finding out she was pregnant. Maybe she should have given him the chance then to acknowledge their child, to let them both into his life. But she’d been so sure she wouldn’t be welcome. And frankly, his actions over the past few days supported her decision.

But then she remembered the look in Justice’s eyes just an hour or so ago when she’d dropped Jonas into his lap. There had been an unexpected tenderness on his face, underlying the surprise and wariness. Maybe, she thought wistfully, if she’d just stood her ground long ago, things might have been different. Now, though, she’d never know for sure.