Jules Bennett - Whatever The Price

Charlotte didn’t know if she was consoling the baby or herself, but everything would be okay … she hoped.

Now she had a marriage not just on the rocks, but on the verge of falling off the cliff. In addition, she would become Lily’s legal guardian in ninety days, she still had the Children’s Hospital wing dedication and charity dinner to finish planning, and if all of that weren’t enough to make her run straight out of the Hollywood Hills, now she was having a baby of her own with a man she loved but couldn’t stay with.

Would Anthony even want another child? How would he handle two when for years he hadn’t wanted any at all?

“Charlotte?”

Anthony’s questioning tone came from downstairs and pulled her from all the thoughts bouncing around in her head.

“I’ll be down in a minute,” she called back.

Charlotte stared at herself in the mirror. She may be the same woman she had been this morning, but she certainly didn’t feel the same. Her life had just taken another major come-out-of-nowhere blow and now she had to figure out how to deal with not one, but two babies and a possible divorce.

Or an even worse possibility—what if she miscarried again? How could she cope with another stab to the heart and loss like the last time? How much could one person truly handle before breaking?

Could her life be more of a mess?

She couldn’t tell Anthony about the baby yet. Fear of losing the baby and fear of their future held her back.

She’d obviously conceived when Anthony had come to “talk” last month, so that would make her four weeks along. Her miscarriage had occurred at seven weeks.

To keep Lily’s life as stable as possible and to see how seriously Anthony took his paternal responsibilities, she wouldn’t say anything yet. There were so many reasons to keep this baby a secret, but most of all to keep her own sanity. She just couldn’t pile another emotional issue on and give Anthony more leverage to make her stay. She wanted, needed him to stay for the right reasons.

Lily gave up fussing and moved straight into a full-throated cry with actual tears. Charlotte had the overwhelming urge to sit on the bed and join in, but that would solve nothing. And because Charlotte had never been one to sit around and cry when action needed to be taken, she straightened her shoulders and gave Lily an extra hug.

“Let’s go get you a bottle, sweetheart.”

Shifting the baby onto her hip, Charlotte padded out of her room and ran right into Anthony, who was standing outside her door.

“Oh.” She stepped back. “I didn’t know you were out here waiting for us.”

He hadn’t slept, or if he had, it was only for a few hours on his flight from New York to L.A. His eyes were red-rimmed, his hair a bit mussed and he still had on the dress pants and shirt he’d worn for the awards. He’d lost the tie and jacket and unbuttoned the top two buttons, the sleeves folded taut over his muscular forearms. Why he didn’t change on his plane was beyond her.

Charlotte couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sympathy for the man who was going to try to do it all in an attempt to prove to her that he could do it all.

Lily let out a loud wail.

“I need to feed her,” Charlotte explained, moving past Anthony.

“I’ll do it.” He slid the baby from her grasp and started toward the stairs. “I haven’t been spit up on for a couple days. I almost missed the smell.”

No matter what life threw at him, Anthony always kept his sense of humor. As she followed him down the wide staircase, she recalled that his humor had been one of the traits that had led her to fall in love with him in the first place.

A lump of guilt rose in her throat over keeping news of their baby from him, but the man had never even entertained the idea of kids before. Work had always been his fallback excuse.

So now wasn’t the time to reveal the truth. She needed to come to grips with this and figure out just how she was going to deal with this unexpected development. And he needed to get used to Lily before she hit him with the news of another baby.

Unexpected or not, Charlotte already loved this baby she carried. Children had always been her passion. In her volunteer work at the Children’s Hospital, she fell in love on a daily basis with some remarkable kids.

Walking toward the kitchen, Charlotte trailed behind Anthony as he tried to shift a very red-faced Lily. The jostling really wasn’t working—she was screaming louder—but he’d figure it out. All Charlotte could see was Lily’s little head bobbing up and down to the rhythm of Anthony’s awkward bounce. He needed to do this, to work on being a dad, so he could see exactly what he was getting into.

He filled a bottle with filtered water and went to get the lid off the formula. “It’s okay, Lily. I’m getting it.”

Charlotte resisted the urge to take the baby, mix the bottle and put an end to everyone’s misery. He was going to need all the practice he could get for when their own baby arrived—God willing. Still, her take-charge nature made it hard to do nothing. And since he was so set on proving to her that he could and would indeed be Superdad, she crossed her arms and leaned against the tiled center island.

Just as he balanced Lily in one arm and jerked the lid off the formula, the powder shot across the counter and down onto the gleaming hardwood floor. Unable to handle poor Lily’s hunger cries another minute, Charlotte stepped up. Silence and self-control be damned.

“Let me do it.” She scooped out the remaining formula from the canister and mixed the bottle. “Let me have her.”

“I was getting it,” he told her, relinquishing hold of his niece. “No need to take over.”

Lily’s pudgy hands reached for the bottle and the instant she started sucking, her cries ceased. Silence enveloped them and Charlotte found herself staring back into Anthony’s rich gray eyes.

“There was no need to have her so upset when we both know I can make the bottle faster.”

Charlotte started to move from the kitchen when he grabbed her shoulder to turn her back around.

“Is this how it’s going to be?” he demanded. “For the next few months are you going to undercut every attempt I make at trying to help, to show you that I can do this? Are you so determined to leave me that you won’t even give me the chance to prove myself as a husband or a father?”

Charlotte kept her gaze on the blissfully happy baby. No way could she look into his eyes right now. Not when he sounded so broken, yet so determined. She didn’t want his words to get to her. She couldn’t afford to lay her heart on the line again as far as Anthony was concerned. There were only so many times she could push her hurt aside and forgive him.

“I’m not undercutting anything,” she told him. “I just wanted her fed.”

He stepped closer, so close the arm she’d wrapped around Lily brushed against the hard plains of his abdomen. Beneath that cotton dress shirt lay rippled muscles that she’d explored with both her hands and her mouth. There wasn’t a part of his body she hadn’t seen or touched, but just that slight bit of contact sent a shiver rippling through her. He could always turn her on.

“I want to help. I need to.” He laid a hand over hers on Lily’s little belly. “Let me.”

Charlotte’s chest constricted at the warmth of his touch, his tone. He was holding out the olive branch … all she had to do was take it. All she had to do was look up into those smoky eyes and work with him, meet him in the middle. But pride, stubbornness and all those years of extending her own branch only to have it knocked aside had her shaking her head.

“I’ve got it.”

And with that she walked out.