Nikki Logan - Their Newborn Gift

‘Molly, I told you to stay in the car.’ Lea pushed the girl’s fringe back from her forehead and laid a hand against her skin. ‘Did you climb all these stairs?’

It was only then he noticed the kid was wheezing. Badly.

She wriggled free of her mother’s fussing and looked straight at Reilly with enormous, chocolate-brown eyes. ‘Can I see it?’

Somewhere deep in his gut a vortex cracked open. He knew those eyes. His pulse began to hammer but he managed to keep his voice light even as he towered over the tiny girl. ‘See what?’

The kid looked to Lea and then back at him, her dark brows collapsing inwards. ‘Mum said she needed to see a man about a horse.’ She sucked her lip in between her teeth. ‘I wanted to meet the horse.’ A spasm of coughs interrupted her wheezing.

Lea slipped her fingers around to the girl’s pulse, concern etched on her face. She threw him a desperate look.

He stepped closer then put the brakes on. Not his problem. ‘Is she okay? Does she need a drink of water or something?’

‘Please.’

Reilly was only too happy to get away from the surreal scene for a moment. His thumping head now echoed through his whole body. He let the screen door bang shut behind him, knowing he could see out better than she could see in, and he turned to watch the woman and child framed in the doorway.

Lea was older than when he’d last seen her, but it only showed in the worry lines marking her hazel eyes. The rest of her was still as long and lean as when they’d first met. She loosened the little girl’s shirt, pushed sweaty hair back off her face and then lifted her into her arms. Two tiny sticks slid effortlessly around Lea’s neck, and mother and daughter had a low, private conversation punctuated with soft, loving kisses.

It was so foreign. Yet he couldn’t take his eyes off them.

I came away with something that night. His blood chilled. Not possible. Just not possible.

Five years ago, a frozen inner voice reminded him. Very possible.

Little Molly tilted her head and rested it on her mother’s shoulder, staring straight down the hallway, where he knew she couldn’t see him through the tinted mesh.

He recognised that face. It was in the one photo he had kept of himself as a child.

Oh, God…

A black hole opened up in his gut, and a million possibilities rushed in right behind it. Possibilities he’d thought lost to him for ever. He kept his heart rate under control by pouring two glasses of ice-cold water in the kitchen, and then he shakily tossed one back himself before steeling himself to return. Mother and daughter whipped around as the screen door opened, and he indicated the comfortable cane-seating further along the veranda. She lowered Molly into a chair. It dwarfed her, her little legs stuck straight out in front.

More sticks.

‘Thank you.’ Lea’s voice was as unsteady as the hands that took the water from him. She gently placed the other one out of reach. ‘Molly can’t be near glass.’

Reilly frowned. Lea tipped her own water up to Molly’s bloodless lips. The girl gulped greedily, then Lea drank from the glass herself, visibly mastering her breathing. Max, his house cat, chose that moment to appear and twist himself amongst Lea’s feet. She leapt six inches off the timber floor.

It was not a discussion to have in front of a child, but he had to know—right now. ‘Is she mine, Lea?’

Lea’s head snapped up, her eyes wide, fearful.

‘Kitty!’ Molly’s delighted squeal broke the silence. Reilly snagged Max up off the ground and dumped him unceremoni-ously in Molly’s chair. The girl fell on him with open arms. Max looked suitably disgusted.

Lea’s mouth opened to protest, but then she snapped it shut.

‘What—she can’t be near cats either?’ Shock was giving way to sarcastic fury.

Lea shot to her feet and spoke to Molly. ‘You play with the kitty, sweetheart.’ She crossed to the far corner of the veranda. Reilly followed.

‘She’s mine, isn’t she?’ He loomed over her intentionally. He wanted the truth from her almost as much as he wanted to smell her. Lea nodded and his chest constricted, bright light ex-ploding behind his eyes. His mind worked furiously.

‘Did you not think I’d care?’ he asked. Lea turned away from him. ‘Did you think I’d tell you to get lost?’

‘I wasn’t looking for a relationship,’ she whispered back over her shoulder. ‘I saw no need for you to know.’

‘No need?’ She winced and he struggled to keep the edge out of his voice. He knew what impact it had on his toughened workmen; Lea was not one of them. ‘I got you pregnant, Lea. I would have stood by you. By Molly.’

No matter what the world expected of him, he would have done that much.

She spun. ‘ I got me pregnant, Reilly. There was no need for you to stand by me. I was fine. I made the decision to go ahead with the pregnancy. It didn’t need a team.’

There was something in her tone, like the particular look in a stallion’s eye when he was about to turn. It screamed a warning at him. Suspicion stained his words. ‘I can’t believe it took you five years to find me.’

Her furtive glance told him it hadn’t. Ah. ‘You weren’t going to tell me.’

Her chest heaved. ‘No.’

‘Nice.’ He meant her to hear his mumble.

‘Don’t you judge me, Reilly Martin,’ she snapped furiously. ‘If you cared so much where your DNA ended up, you wouldn’t have distributed it so liberally across the district.’

Slap! Being true didn’t make it any less pleasant to hear. He could have little Mollies scattered across the state.

In theory; he’d loved and left enough women.

Anger boiled up furiously between them. ‘Did you think I was a good catch, Lea?’ He nearly spat the words at her. How stupid had he been to think he had been the reason they’d gone so long and so hard that weekend? To think that she might have felt the same indefinable connection he had, despite running out on him. ‘The heir to a country-western fortune. Had you been tracking the circuit long waiting to bump into me?’

‘I didn’t plan it! I might have made some bad choices five years ago, but that wasn’t one of them.’

‘You didn’t know who I was?’ He let the challenge roll out like giant rolls of straw shoved off the back of a feed truck. Her hesitation gave her away.

Blush-heat raced along her cheekbone. ‘Everyone knew who you were, Reilly. You’d just brought home the rodeo champion’s cup. You were Reilly Martin, king of the Suicide Ride. I practically had to join a queue.’

For what good it had done him. ‘I’m sure the challenge made me all the more attractive.’

Lea’s eyes flamed. ‘You don’t really need much help with that, Reilly. I’m sure you’re not going to tell me I was the first bar-room pick-up you’d ever pulled?’

Self-loathing added its weight to the discussion. ‘Not by a country mile, sweetheart.’

The blush doubled. It intensified the glitter in her eyes, and did unhelpful things to his resolve. He dropped his face from her gaze. ‘I’m not the point of discussion here. You are. Or rather, Molly is.’ He met Lea’s eyes again. ‘You cheated me out of knowing my daughter.’

Damn, that felt weird, coming out of his mouth.

Lea paled and her eyes widened. She struggled against something internal. ‘No one forced you to have sex with me. Fatherhood is a risk you were taking every time you went with any woman.’

‘Particularly a deceitful, immoral one.’

Pain streaked across her face. She sucked it up, took a deep breath. ‘Look, it happens, Reilly. Birth control fails. It’s why they print warnings on the boxes. You could have walked away first that night.’