Rachel Bailey - Return of the Secret Heir

JT leaned back in his chair, reeling from the double shock that had been lobbed his way. They were having a baby. Again. And he’d had no idea Pia had blamed herself for Brianna’s death all these years.

“If you want to cast blame, try your parents. Instead of supporting you, they put you in a situation where you had to escape. Or me for not standing up to them more so you could have walked out their front door.” And hadn’t he wished for fourteen years he’d done exactly that? “Besides, it was an accident, Pia, and you were a teenager.”

“Yes, I was. But I’m not a child now. Things will be different.”

You’d better believe things will be different. Forcing himself to harden his heart, he reached for his coffee again and gulped a mouthful. He wasn’t a child anymore either-he wouldn’t let himself be carried away by the baby or Pia this time. Wouldn’t let fairy-tale images of women who honored their promises cloud his reason.

“They’ll be different,” he said, “but just so we’re clear, I’ll stand by you.”

A smile flickered across her face, then left again just as quickly. “I know you will, but thank you for saying it.” She picked up her cat and held him against her chest and it struck him how maternal she was with the cat. She hadn’t had another baby, but she was still mothering someone.

Then her face paled. “JT, my job. Ted will be furious.”

She was probably right, but his mind was already reeling-he didn’t have room to sort through other details yet. “We’ll work something out.”

“You’re right, I’ll think about that one tomorrow,” she said with a grimace. “But in the meantime, I guess we should start making some plans.”

Everything inside him recoiled. “No.” Standing by her was a different proposition to becoming emotionally involved. He’d provide everything he could to Pia in her pregnancy, but there was one thing that no force of nature could make him do-plan ahead. “We’ll just take it as it comes for the moment.”

Memories of cuddling together and choosing names, of buying booties and making decisions about sleeping routines pushed at his mind, but he wasn’t going there. If the pregnancy went to term, they could talk about that then. It would destroy him to plan ahead, to become excited, to open his heart, and be crushed into the ground again. Those days when he’d lost first Brianna then Pia had been the lowest point imaginable. Beyond despair, beyond agony. Most of what he remembered was shrouded in darkest gray and was thick with a dragging weight that could draw him down if he let himself dwell on it.

“JT?” Pia asked, her voice uncertain.

He shook his head quickly to release the black cobwebs that covered his mind. “I have to go.” He jumped up, needing air, to get out.

“Okay,” she said faintly.

He clenched his fists, restraining himself from running out her front door, determined to walk out like a sane person. “I’ll call you later,” he said through a tight jaw and headed for the sanctuary of his car.

After an almost-sleepless night spent tossing and worrying, Pia was heading for the kitchen when she saw JT’s silver coupe pull up on the street. Eight o’clock on a Sunday morning was early to drop by, but when he emerged her entire body woke up and stretched in a way that had nothing at all to do with surprise. Rumpled dark hair and aviator sunglasses led her eyes down to a black polo shirt that pulled taut over his biceps as he reached into the backseat and pulled out shopping bags. When he stepped around the back of the car, the sight of faded denims sitting low on his hips incited thoughts of muscled thighs and…

She gripped the curtain and groaned. If she was to spend time with the father of her baby, somehow she had to find a way to rein in her recalcitrant mind. And her rebellious body.

But in some ways, it felt good to have thoughts that didn’t involve anguish. Even if they were about JT. She buzzed him into the foyer and before he could knock, she opened the door.

“Good morning, JT.”

“Morning.” He edged past her and deposited the bags on her kitchen counter. “These are for you.”

She reached for one and peeped in. It was full of pill bottles and packets-large ones, small ones, brightly colored, some in pastels, many with pictures of a pregnant woman on the front. She looked up at him with an arched eyebrow.

He shrugged muscled shoulders. “The woman at the drug store said you should have these.”

“All of these? There must be thirty different vitamins and supplements in there.” She felt queasy thinking about swallowing that many pills.

A frown line appeared on his forehead above the aviators he hadn’t removed. “I’m not sure. I just took anything she said was important for pregnant women.”

A smile crept across her face, imagining JT at the store, totally out of his depth but still trying to do the right thing by his baby. “Thank you. That was sweet.”

“It’s part of my responsibility. I told you I’d take it seriously.” He headed for the door. “I have to go back to the car for the rest.”

“More pills?”

“No,” he called over his shoulder, “breakfast.”

“Right,” she said to the empty room and sat down on a stool to look through the bags of supplements. She had work in her briefcase that she’d brought home for the weekend, but the events unfolding in her apartment were too bizarre not to have her full attention.

Within five minutes he’d covered her kitchen counter with eight bags of groceries and heaven knew what else. She might have been indignant…if she could stop thinking how good those broad shoulders that tapered to narrow hips looked in her small kitchen. She swallowed and refocused on the grocery store that now resided on her counter.

“How many people are coming for breakfast, JT?”

He threw his keys and sunglasses on her dining table and went back to his bags. “I read some websites overnight. They say you need a healthy breakfast.”

He unloaded a brand-new juicer onto the bench.

“I have a juicer in the cupboard,” she pointed out, unable to keep the wry amusement from her voice.

He glanced up. “I wasn’t sure. You need as much sleep as you can get, so I couldn’t ring late last night to check.”

She’d probably been awake-she’d spent much of the night staring at the ceiling and worrying about the baby, and listening to her body to see if she felt different now that she knew she was pregnant. Although…

Vitamins and supplements. Groceries. A new juicer. Internet research. “Did you sleep last night?”

“A couple of hours,” he said, placing an assortment of fruits and vegetables in her sink before washing them all thoroughly. Winston came over from his place on the window seat to join her watching the commotion. “Sorry, Winnie, but I don’t think he’s catering to cats this time.”

JT lifted his head, his dark-lashed eyes trained on her. “That reminds me. Ever heard of toxoplasmosis?”

“Should I have?”

“It’s a parasite carried by cats.” He stacked the washed fruit and vegetables on the bench, and reached for the juicer. “And it can be harmful to pregnant women.”

“You’re not suggesting I get rid of Winston?” she said, looking over at the innocent bundle of fur who’d been with her for eight years. She couldn’t imagine being without his soft, purring presence in her life.

JT squirted detergent into the sink and turned on the hot tap. “No, but to be on the safe side, I’ll clean his litter box from now on.”

She let out a sigh of relief that the solution was so simple. “He doesn’t have a litter box. He has a cat door to the courtyard at the back.” The courtyard was tiny, like the back of all the ground-floor apartments in the complex, but it had a small patch of grass and a few shrubs. That little oasis was the main reason she’d chosen to live here.

“Even better. But that means you won’t be doing any gardening. I’ll have someone do it weekly.” JT finished cleaning the juicer, then made her a celery, carrot and apple blend. “It’s best if it’s made fresh each time, but I can make more now and put it in the fridge if you’d prefer,” he said as he handed it to her.

For a moment, she wondered if he meant he’d be here to make it fresh each time, but surely not. “This will be fine for now, thanks.”

Watching him make his way expertly around her kitchen, she had to concede that under different circumstances, she’d enjoy a regular morning visit from a gorgeous man who wanted to feed her-a gorgeous man with lean hips, a tight butt and pecs she wanted to splay her hands across. She could get used to this.

A chill crept over her skin. If she wasn’t careful, she’d be in danger of letting impossible dreams of a picket-fence future unfurl in her mind.

Never mind that she hadn’t worked out how she was going to tell her boss about her pregnancy yet. Ted Howard was not going to take this well. She’d need to go to him with a plan. Another issue that had kept her awake last night.

From one of his bags, JT pulled out a small frying pan with the label still on the handle, and proceeded to wash it in the sink.

“I have a frying pan, too,” she said.

He spared her a quick glance. “You might have had the wrong size.”

Eggs came out of another bag and, sipping her juice, she watched him make an omelet. “Are you also making one for yourself?”

He opened a couple of drawers until he found her cutlery and pulled out a fork. “This isn’t about me.”

“You expect me to eat food you’ve made with you watching me?” The idea made her squirm on the stool.

“I’ll clean up and leave while you’re eating,” he said, not distracted from his task.

Despite a small part of her wanting to rebel at his treatment of her as his baby’s walking incubator-there was a fine line between cosseting and treating her as if she was incompetent-something inside her chest twisted at the thought of this man staying up during the night to research her body’s needs, then arriving early, loaded with supplies and cooking her breakfast, then leaving while she ate without tasting a bite himself. She couldn’t turn him out of her home unfed.

She walked behind him and found her own omelet pan and handed it to him. “Make one for yourself, too.”

He paused for a lingering moment, his eyes wary and assessing. It seemed neither of them wanted to play happy families. At least they were on the same page.

“Okay,” he said finally and pulled three more eggs from the carton.

Ten minutes later she was sitting across from JT with a cheese and tomato omelet, toast and a plate of fresh fruit laid out before her.

“This looks good,” she said and meant it. She usually just grabbed a yogurt and coffee.

“It might need salt,” he said, handing her the salt grinder. As she reached to take it and her fingers brushed the warm skin of his, sensation exploded in her veins like a shaken magnum of champagne. His eyes widened, locked on hers, and the world faded away, leaving only JT and her and this living electricity that was between them. Slowly, too slowly, reason shouldered its way back into her mind. She blinked away the unwanted response to the man she’d once planned to marry, and reached for her juice.

JT cut into his eggs, his voice only a little uneven. “I did some research last night on fainting during pregnancy. It could be a number of things-possibly low blood sugar or low blood pressure. I’d like us to see a doctor as soon as possible.”

“It was only once.”