Delores Fossen - Unexpected Father

And she got it.

She slid her fingertips over the thin, pinkish-colored scar. Right on her lower abdomen. Not some ragged wound caused by an injury, but clearly the result of surgery.

A C-section.

Jason leaned in closer. So close. Too close. He caught her gown and eased it back into place so that the soft cotton whispered over her thighs. Probably because her near nudity bothered him.

No, wait.

He didn’t think of her that way. He’d covered her probably because further examination wasn’t necessary. She had all the proof she needed.

Reality check was over. Now it was time to deal with the aftermath. And she dealt, all right. The breath swooshed out of her and because she didn’t want any tears to escape, Lilly squeezed her eyes shut.

“A daughter?” she said.

“Yes.” Jason’s voice was tight. Edgy. Exactly the way she felt.

He didn’t add anything else, and it didn’t take long for the smothering silence to settle uncomfortably between them. Lilly used that quiet time to try to put a stranglehold on her composure, to try to grasp what was happening.

But both were impossible tasks.

Only two hours earlier she’d awakened to learn that she’d lost nineteen months of life because of a car accident that she couldn’t even remember. Nineteen months. Heaven knew what toll the coma had taken on her body. And there was the inevitable toll that her absence had no doubt taken on her business. Sweet heaven, she’d lost so much. Now, Jason had informed her that she’d been pregnant and delivered a baby.

A baby who was almost a year old.

“Her name is Megan,” she heard Jason say.

At the sound of some movement, Lilly opened her eyes to find him searching through his wallet. He extracted something. A photograph that was a bit crumpled around the edges. He held it up so she could see it.

Her mouth went dry.

She took the picture, hesitantly, and pulled it closer to her so she could study it. The little girl had auburn hair. Not quite a genetic copy of Lilly’s own, but close. Darn close. It wasn’t straight but instead haloed her face in soft, loose curls. Just as Lilly’s own hair had done when she was that age.

Lilly caught her bottom lip between her teeth to cut off any unwanted sound she might make. At this point, any sound would be unwanted. And too revealing.

In the photograph, Megan was smiling. Not a tentative one, either. It went all the way to her eyes.

“Oh, mercy,” she whispered. Lilly pressed the picture to her chest.

This precious child was hers.

The connection she felt for Megan was instant. Not a gentle tug of her heart, either, but a feeling so intense, so right, that the tears she’d fought came anyway. Lilly didn’t even care that she was losing control. Seeing that tiny face was worth all the tears. It was worth humiliating herself in front of Jason. Worth the coma.

Worth everything.

Her baby.

Her own flesh and blood.

“I’ve missed so much,” she mumbled, knowing it was a total understatement. She’d missed carrying her child. Giving birth. And most importantly, she had missed nearly the entire first year of her daughter’s life.

“Yes,” Jason whispered.

Since there was a lot of emotion in his one-word comment, Lilly looked at him again. He still had on his cop’s face, but those eyes said it all. Or at least they said something. Exactly what that something was, she didn’t know.

Unless…

“She’s Greg’s baby,” Lilly clarified. Why, she didn’t know. She didn’t need to explain her sex life to Jason.

He nodded. “The doctors did a DNA test on Megan after she was born.”

What a waste of time. If Lilly had been awake during Megan’s birth, she could have told them there was no reason for such a test. Before that night with Greg, it’d been nearly a year since she’d had sex. And that one time with Greg hadn’t been unprotected, either, which meant something had gone wrong with the condom.

And then it hit her.

Her heart practically leaped to her throat. “Who has her? Both Greg’s and my parents are dead—”

“I have her,” Jason interrupted.

Lilly was surprised that her heart didn’t jump right out of her chest. It was already pounding, and his statement made it pound even harder. “You?”

That improved his posture. Not that he needed it. He was already soldier-stiff, which was his usual demeanor, but Jason seemed to take her simple question as a challenge.

“Me,” he enunciated through semiclenched teeth.

Oh.

Even with his adamant confirmation, it just didn’t register in her brain and was in total conflict with the image she had of Jason Lawrence.

He shoved his hands into his pockets; it seemed as if he changed his mind a dozen times as to what he was about to say. “You were in a coma so long that the doctors didn’t think you would recover. I didn’t think you’d recover. I was Megan’s next of kin.”

There was something in the way he said that. Especially the tone he used when he tossed out the last part. Next of kin. Something…territorial? Something that launched a flurry of mental speculation.

And it also launched an equal flurry of concern.

A moment later Lilly realized that her concern was warranted.

“I have custody of her,” Jason finished. He paused a moment. “Legally, Megan is my daughter.”

Jason braced himself for Lilly’s reaction. Or rather, he tried to. It was hard to brace himself for something he wasn’t sure he could handle.

“Oh, God,” Lilly mumbled. Not exactly the hostile accusation that he thought she might fire in his direction. After all, he’d just confessed to claiming her child. “You took Megan in. You’ve been raising her.”

It was a lot more than that. Yes, he’d taken the child in. Yes, he was raising her. But he also loved her. More than life. More than anything.

And he couldn’t lose her.

“I’ll bet taking care of a baby required some serious lifestyle changes for you,” Lilly commented. Not chitchat, though. Her eyes were too strained for that, and there was a slight tremble in her voice—which probably meant she was as thunderstruck as he was.

She’d just learned that she had a daughter.

And Jason had just learned that he might lose one.

“I made a few lifestyle changes,” he admitted. He tried to rein in his feelings. Failed. “It was worth it. Megan’s a sweet kid.”

Now there was a reaction from Lilly. Something small and subtle. But he could almost see the realization come to her. She’d had a child, but for all practical purposes, she wasn’t in the picture.

Jason didn’t think it was much of a stretch that Lilly would soon want to change that.

“Well…” Lilly started. But she didn’t finish whatever thought she’d intended to voice. Instead she looked down at the picture. She held it as if it were delicate crystal that might shatter in her hands. “She has my hair. Greg’s eyes, though.” She lifted a shoulder. An attempt at a nonchalant shrug. But there was nothing nonchalant about any of this. “Your eyes, too.”

Yes. The infamous Lawrence gray eyes that seemed to be the equivalent of a mood ring. Silvery pearl, sometimes, and on those not-so-good sometimes—gunmetal and steel. Megan had them in spades, along with the olive-tinged completion that was the genetic contribution from Greg’s and his Hispanic grandmother. Megan was a Lawrence through and through.

But Jason could see Lilly in the child’s face, too. The way Megan sometimes defiantly lifted her chin. The sly, clever smile that could melt away botched cases, heavy workloads, long hours at work and other unsavory things. At first, it’d been difficult for him to see the smile, Lilly’s smile, on the mouth of the child he loved.