Laura Altom - The SEAL's Miracle Baby

Jessie scooped the sleeping infant into her arms, cradling her against her chest. “The girl’s parents must be frantic.”

“I know, right?” Allen shook his head. “The thing is, out of all the missing persons’ files we’re working, none of them involve an infant. The chief’s guessing her folks must have been among those injured on the highway, and that they were taken to an outlying area hospital. We’ll run her DNA to have matched against the deceased in the morning. If you and your mom don’t mind caring for her until we find them, it’d sure ease our minds, knowing this little lady’s in good care.”

“Of course,” Jessie said, smoothing the infant’s matted curls. “We’ll be happy to keep her for as long as it takes you to find her true home.”

* * *

AFTER BUCKLING THE baby into the safety seat, Grady climbed behind the SUV’s wheel. Jessie rode in back, alongside their tiny new passenger.

Watching Jessie dote on the infant did crazy things to his insides. All at once, he was furious and sad and filled with resentment. How dare she deny him his own long-held dreams of becoming a dad? Of course, the moment that thought hit his head, he knew it was crazy, but sometimes that was exactly how he felt. Had he and Jessie married out of high school, like Allen and Cornelia, they’d already have school-aged kids. The notion incensed him—just how fast his life was passing by. On the surface, he was happy enough. But peel back his carefully shrouded emotional layers and he was a freaking disaster. Which was why, aside from holidays, he avoided Rock Bluff and all of its inhabitants, who reminded him of what he’d lost.

Back at the house, the women fussed and cooed, bathing the infant and dressing her in fresh-smelling, soft pink clothes. A pediatrician friend of Billy Sue’s stopped by, and pronounced the baby to be in remarkably good condition. Through it all, the exhausted tiny creature slept, blissfully unaware of how frightened she might be upon waking to find herself surrounded by strangers.

Grady wanted to join in the spectacle of adoring this miracle, but he’d been shut out. Not deliberately, but the fact that they assumed he knew nothing about babies, coupled with the sad truth that Jessie hadn’t even made eye contact with him since they’d returned to her parents’, told him loud and clear where he stood—on the outside, forever looking in.

Tired of lurking in the hall, hovering in the shadows just outside the nursery, Grady made his way downstairs to join his father and Roger in watching an old John Wayne war movie.

“How’s it going up there?” his dad asked during a commercial.

“Good,” Grady said. “They’ve got things under control.” Which was a damn sight more than he could say for himself. The sight of Jessie holding a stranger’s baby had triggered something in him that his knotted stomach refused to let go of.

His dad noted, “Your mom and I sure were hoping to get a grandkid or two out of you by now.”

“Before this whole mess with the twister,” Roger piped in, “Billy Sue and I were just talking about that same thing. We’re not getting any younger.”

“I could use a beer,” Grady said. “You guys want one, too?”

“You bet.” Roger shifted on his recliner. “And if you don’t mind, bring my pretzels from the pantry—and that horseradish cheese dip Billy Sue hides on the lower shelf of the fridge. Look way in the back.”

“Will do.” Grady was relieved his stab at changing the subject had been a success.

Rummaging in someone else’s pantry and refrigerator struck him as just about as uncomfortable as the whole grandkid speech. Come to think of it, since he’d stepped foot back in town, not a lot had been comfortable—except for those fleeting moments of shared laughter between him and Jessie in her mother’s car.

From upstairs he could hear the faint sound of infant whimpers, and then a full-on wail.

Cotton added excited yipping to the mix.

Arms full, Grady returned to the family room.

“On second thought—” Roger aimed his remote at the TV to notch up the volume to cover the baby’s cries “—Ben, maybe the last things we need are grandkids.”

“Maybe so,” his dad said, while, on the TV, John Wayne drew his gun.

With both older men engrossed in the movie, Grady took his beer and meandered out to the shadowy pool deck.

More power had been restored to the outlying areas affected by the storm, but the swath of greatest destruction was still dark.

The screen door creaked open and then banged shut.

Grady looked over to witness Jessie dart from the house.

In the low light, she couldn’t see him watching her as she retreated to a bench-seat covered swing. When she then started crying, Grady found himself in the unfamiliar territory of being unsure what to do. Since the day he’d earned his SEAL Trident, it had been drilled into him to make swift, fact-based decisions, but nowhere in any drill or manual had a situation like this been covered. Since Jessie had broken things off with him, his experience with women had resided solely in the realm of the temporary. Things were fun while they lasted, but the moment he was called out on his next mission, he cut things off with clinical precision. There were no hurt feelings, because he’d been clear from the start that whatever was shared was purely physical.

He might be brave in gunfire, but when it came to surrendering his heart? Forget it. Jessie had assured he would never love again.

Lord, he wanted to go to her, drawing her into his arms—not just to stop her tears, but figure out the reason behind them. But what good would that do? They were no longer friends any more than they were lovers. They were nothing. Strangers who’d happened to meet under difficult circumstances.

In stealth mode, using the shadows to his advantage, he crept from her line of sight.

But before retreating around the backside of the house, he made the mistake of taking one last look at her defeated form.

She sat sideways on the swing and hugged her knees to her chest. Moonlight shone in her teary eyes. The effort it took to stop from running to her damn near killed him. But for his own self-preservation—hell, self-respect—he had to avoid her like poison. Because to him, to his ego, to his carefully walled-off emotions, that was exactly what she was.

Chapter Five

Jessie raised the hem of the old high school softball T-shirt she’d changed into to dry her eyes. Crying about not having a baby wasn’t going to get her one, and those extra few tears shed over what might’ve been with Grady were just plain wrong. He wasn’t even worth her tears. He was a cocky cowboy-turned-SEAL who never would have settled for a broken mess like her.

She forced a deep breath and pulled herself together.

Before Grady’s arrival, she’d never been prone to crying jags—although, to be fair, she also hadn’t dealt with her entire town and life being blown to smithereens.

A coyote’s lonesome howl summed up her feelings.

“I hear ya, bud.”

Back in the house, the TV erupted with a WWII battle. From upstairs came the baby’s now frantic cries.

Jessie wandered into the laundry room for peace, only to encounter Grady sneaking through the back door.

She jumped. “Jeez! I didn’t even know you were outside.”

He shrugged. “Didn’t know I needed your permission to leave the house.” Then he winced. “Is it always this loud around here?”

“Yes, on the TV. No, on the baby. Wanna go grab a beer?” Jessie didn’t know why she’d asked the question. But standing close in the confined space, she realized that after all these years her racing heart still recognized the scent of his breath, and she’d go anywhere with him if for no other reason than to escape the current chaos.