Tara Quinn - My Babies and Me

“What did you say?” He stalled, looking for a way to explain his bizarre behavior without actually telling her what he thought she’d said.

She lay there, gazing up at him, the oddest expression on her face. Half fearful, half belligerent. Her chocolately golden hair was scattered about her face and tangled on the pillows beneath her, her lips bare and swollen, her eyes wide. She’d pulled the covers up to her chin. She looked about sixteen.

“I’m going to have a baby.”

The breath knocked out of him, Michael felt as though he’d been sucker punched. If he hadn’t been butt naked he’d have sunk to the floor.

“You...are.” He couldn’t, for the moment, think of anything more intelligent to say.

Still wearing that odd expression, Susan nodded. He hated the way she was looking at him. Hated seeing her so unsure. Hated everything about this damn evening. This day. This life.

“You’re going to have a baby.” He just couldn’t make sense of it.

She nodded again.

Susan was pregnant. His Susan. The woman whose career meant more to her than anything, including him, was going to be encumbered with someone else’s child.

He’d kill the bastard who’d done this to her.

“Who is he?” Michael reached for his slacks and, not taking time for underwear, pulled them on. He would hunt the guy down and kill him with his bare hands for not loving Susan more responsibly. Hell, for loving her at all.

“I don’t know yet.”

So intent was he on finding some shoes, a shirt, he barely heard the words when she first uttered them. But as he buttoned his shirt, cussing at every little buttonhole, her voice slowly sank in.

Whirling, he faced her. “You don’t know yet?” He had to be asleep, having the craziest nightmare of his life. There was no other way to explain the things he was hearing.

Unusually winded, Susan shook her head.

There’d been more than one man? “Well, when are you going to find out?” Didn’t they have to wait until after the baby was born to determine paternity?

“I’m not sure.”

“I’m going downstairs.”

Michael took the stairs three at a time—half sliding, half running in his hurry to get away from her. To get away from the whole sordid mess. With a Scotch in hand, and one small light on above the bar, he paced his living room, doing some quick desperate math. He’d seen Susan at Christmas, but he’d only been able to spare the one day and her whole family had been around. He’d been busy as hell all through the fall with year-end approaching, and dammit, this baby couldn’t be his.

His gut hard, he figured out that it had been a good four months since he’d made love to Susan. And there was no way she was four months along. Her belly was as flat as always. He knew. He’d just spent the past two hours intimately acquainted with it.

Not that he’d wanted the baby to be his. He finished off the shot of whiskey he’d poured. Not at all. Certainly no more than Susan wanted to be pregnant. He couldn’t think of anything she’d want less. Except maybe death. Or anything he’d want less, for that matter.

He also couldn’t get past the sick feeling of knowing that another man had done this to her. Dammit! Why hadn’t she been more careful?

“You’re angry, aren’t you?”

She’d appeared behind him, wearing a rumpled men’s shirt. She’d found the shirt he’d worn to work earlier and wrapped herself in it. The shirt reminded him of his meeting with Coppel.

“No.”

“Don’t lie to me, Michael.”

He turned toward her. She was right. Lying to each other was one thing he and Susan had never done.

“Okay, yeah, I’m angry.” So angry he could feel his nostrils flaring.

“Why? It has nothing to do with you.”

So why, if that was supposed to make it okay, didn’t he feel okay?

“For one thing, I’m angry as hell at the irresponsibility of whatever man did this to you.”

She frowned, dropping down to his leather couch, folding her feet beneath her. “Did what to me?”

Michael swore, out of all patience. “Got you pregnant, of course.” Did pregnancy make a woman stupid, too? He’d thought it only caused pickle cravings and crying attacks.

Susan laughed. Shocking him. “In the first place, Michael, a man can’t get me pregnant all by himself.”

She had him there.

“Secondly, I’m not pregnant—yet.”

The whiskey was clouding his brain.

“And in the third place, I haven’t slept with anyone but you in my entire life.”

Well, that was okay then.

Michael fell down to the couch beside her, feeling a little drunk, though he’d only had the one shot. “Thank God.”

Only him. In her entire life. He started to grin.

She grazed his face with one slim hand. “Would it really have mattered so much if there was someone in Cincinnati?” Her words were soft, easy, but the light in her eyes was soul-deep.

“It would.” In seven years’ time, they’d never discussed fidelity. Or infidelity, either.

“I’m glad.”

Pulling her into his arms, Michael held her, wondering if they’d just made some kind of crazy commitment in this relationship that wasn’t. And hoping, irrationally, that they had.

Slowly, though, as he sat listening to her breathing in the quiet of the night, Michael’s mind started to clear. He still had his good news to share. But first...

“Why did you say you were going to have a baby if you aren’t?” he asked, frowning in the near darkness.

“Who says I’m not?” She turned to look at him.

“You just did.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Susan...” His tension was building again. “You just said—”

“That I’m not pregnant,” she finished for him. “But I’m going to be.”

“When?”

“Soon, I hope.”

Aghast, he stared at her. “Why?”

“Because I want to be.”

“But...” He was adrift. Lost. He stared at a scrap of paper he’d been doodling on earlier and left on the coffee table. “...then you’d have a child.”

“I know.” It was the quiet conviction in Susan’s words that got to him. And scared the hell out of him. Who was this woman? Susan didn’t want children.

Did she?

“Will you give me a baby, Michael?”

Michael jumped up again. “No!” He hadn’t meant the word to be so loud—so harsh. “You’re kidding, right?” It was late; she’d been working long hours. That must be it.

As soon as she started to shake her head, Michael looked away.

“Please try to understand, Michael.”

Looking back at her, he nodded. He wanted to understand.

“Having a baby is something I’ve always planned to do.”

“Since when?”

“Since before you and I were married.”

“And you don’t think I should have known about this?”

“Probably, but we were young. We had so many goals.” She shrugged. “Neither one of us wanted a child then.”

“But you planned to have one later.” He was trying to understand. He really was.

“By the time I was forty.”

“You never mentioned it because you weren’t planning to stay married to me?” He supposed the question was a bit ludicrous considering that they weren’t married, but had she gone into the marriage knowing it wouldn’t last?

“I just figured that once we’d both done what we had to do, reached our career goals, we’d be ready to talk about having a family.”

He nodded. At least she hadn’t been planning their divorce before she’d even married him. And they’d never actually said they were never going to have children. He’d just assumed, since she was as career-driven as he was—since she put job above all else and completely accepted the fact that he did, too—he’d just assumed she didn’t want a family as much as he didn’t want one.