Joanne Rock - Secret Baby Scandal

“Where did you go when you left New York?” He knew he needed to process this fast. To move past the shock of what she was telling him and start being a support to her and this new reality. But the truth of the situation was like waves at high tide, thrashing him over and over.

She’d had months to come to terms with this. He had minutes. And he didn’t dare make a mistake.

“The Caribbean. Saint Thomas has a good hospital in case I needed one. I rented a villa on the beach.” Her voice wavered. “I was trying to be discreet. To keep this out of the press and away from the old family drama until I spoke to you and we could figure out how to handle the future. But just when I had everything set and was ready to call you, I went into labor three weeks early.”

Now that knocked the wind out of his rising anger.

“Is he okay? Are you?” A stab of fear jabbed Jean-Pierre hard, outweighing every other emotion. His brother’s wife, Fiona, had lost a baby. He understood the danger.

“We’re fine. Thirty-seven weeks is within normal range. César was six pounds and fourteen ounces.”

The pain in his chest eased, a small sliver of the tension giving way to an unexpected tenderness.

“César,” he repeated, gaze shifting to the squirming blanket and restless tiny foot.

“For your great-grandfather and for my—”

“Grandfather,” he interrupted, knowing they both had Césars in their family trees. He remembered the roots of the Doucet family almost as well as his own. He’d been a guest at their home when he’d dated Tatiana, before his grandfather Leon had fired Jack from the Texas Mustangs after two seasons of poorly performing teams.

An old bitterness that would have to take a backseat now.

“Our son is five weeks old. We just flew in from Saint Thomas two days ago. His nanny, Lucinda, made the trip with me. She watched him tonight while I went to find you.”

That must have been the woman he’d seen earlier.

“May I see him?” Jean-Pierre didn’t want to interrupt a feeding, but the urgency of the infant’s small suckling sounds had slowed from when he’d first entered the room.

“Of course.” Tatiana shifted the bundle in her arms. She lifted the baby upright, her dress falling closed. “Here’s a cloth.” She nodded to a square of white cotton folded beside her on the love seat. “For your shoulder if you want to—”

She trailed off as he took the baby, who was possibly quieted by Jean-Pierre’s sure grip. At least half the Gladiators had kids, so he’d handled plenty during private team events. But holding this one...

“He has the Reynaud eyes.” They were brown and flecked with green. The tiny hands were covered by the sleeves of his shirt, the fabric folded over them. But the boy’s color was good—pink and healthy. A thatch of dark hair, spiky but soft, stood on end as if he’d been caught in a wind tunnel.

“I was only with you last year, no one else,” Tatiana said softly, her dark curls brushing Jean-Pierre’s shoulder as she leaned closer to look down at the infant. “He is yours.”

“No question.” He trusted this implicitly. He might not be happy with her decision to keep the news of her pregnancy to herself—and he was shoving aside a whole lot of unhappiness about that, in fact—yet he knew her well enough to know that she was careful with relationships.

“May I?” She reached for César. “Just to finish the feeding?”

Wordlessly, he passed the baby back to her. He watched as she slipped her dress off her other shoulder, vaguely aware that many women preferred privacy for such a moment. But he’d been denied too much time already, so he didn’t take his eyes off her as she cradled the tiny body to her swollen breast and helped him to find the dark pink nipple.

“You look so...” Beautiful, he thought. But the moment was too intimate already with them sitting almost shoulder-to-shoulder, her curls still clinging to the sleeve of his jacket. “At ease with him.”

He envied that, he realized.

“I’ve had more time with him.” She bit her lip, perhaps guessing how that statement might sting. When she turned to face him, her eyes shone with unshed tears. “No one warned me what an emotional time this would be.” She lifted a shaky hand to first one eye and then the other. “I knew pregnancy hormones could make women emotional, but I didn’t count on feeling so different after giving birth. You know I’m not the kind of person to make unguarded comments to the media, and yet tonight I was so nervous about seeing you and telling you, that I just blurted that remark with zero thought.”

As troubling as that seemed to be for Tatiana, it explained a whole lot of things as far as he was concerned.

“Having lived through puberty, I can assure you that I understand hormones are a powerful force of nature.”

She gave a watery chuckle. “I’ve made a good living on being rational. Logical. It’s like I’m operating on a whole new kind of software.”

She gestured to the handful of baby items strewn on the coffee table—a half-open diaper bag with the contents spilling out, a stack of newspapers and some folded sheets. Not a mess by any stretch, but for a woman who liked to show a perfect face to the world, the scene probably bordered on chaos.

“Maybe that’s why biology let men off the hook during pregnancy. So we can be the logical ones.” He forced a grin, trying to keep things light since it wasn’t going to do either of them any good to have a big confrontation about the ethics of keeping him in the dark about the pregnancy.

She’d been nervous to tell him. And he had to take some blame for that given the way he’d left things between them last winter.

“You’re going to be the voice of reason?” She arched an eyebrow, her voice steady and full of attitude.

That was more like it.

“Definitely.”

“Don’t forget I was in your backyard the summer you decided it was a good idea to jump off a second-story deck into your family’s pool.” A smile transformed her features as she shifted her gaze down to the baby in her arms.

And it damn near took his breath away. No wonder she’d looked so good tonight. She had that new-mother glow.

“A minor sprain was a small price to pay for the serious rotation I got on that dive.” He needed her smiling. Relaxed.

Trusting him.

Because he’d been formulating plans from the moment he understood the magnitude of the secret she’d been keeping.

“Nevertheless, I think I’ll keep my own counsel even while I’m under the influence of my hormones.”

“Fair enough. But because you’re a reasonable woman, I know you’re going to agree with me on this first order of business.” He reached to touch her arm where she cradled their son, needing a connection with her when he made his appeal.

“We need to tell our families.” Her gaze met his, the firelight reflected in their depths.

She was a beautiful woman. An intelligent, hardworking woman. And there was undeniable chemistry between them or this situation wouldn’t have arisen in the first place.

“That’s the second order of business.” They’d take care of that soon enough. “First, we need to get married.”

* * *

There was a unique brand of hurt in hearing a man you once cared about offer a sham marriage when he no longer cared about you.

Tatiana breathed through that hurt now, telling herself she could not afford to be any more emotional tonight than she already had been. But heaven help her, how could she not feel vulnerable when her arms were full of the precious baby they’d created, César’s soft breath warming her breast as he began to nod off after his feeding? She was exposed in every possible way, and maybe just for a moment she’d allowed herself to sink into the warmth of Jean-Pierre beside her as they’d marveled together at their tiny shared miracle.