Emily McKay - Baby for the Tycoon - The Tycoon's Temporary Baby / The Texas Billionaire's Baby / Navy Officer to Family Man

Her mother just shook her head, sweeping up the pile of diced celery and dumping it in the pot. “You’re always so eager to believe the worst of us.”

“That’s not true.”

“It most certainly is. All your life, you’ve been rebellious just for the sake of rebellion. Every choice you’ve made since the day you turned fifteen has been designed to irritate your father and grandmother. And now this.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Remember when you were fifteen and you and Bitsy bought those home-perm kits and gave yourselves home perms four days before picture day at the school?”

She did remember. Of course she did. Bitsy had ended up with nice, bouncy curls. But she’d been bald for months while her hair grew back out. Her father had been so mad his face had turned beet-red and her mother had run off to the bathroom for a dose of his blood-pressure medicine.

That had not been her finest moment.

“Or the time you wanted to go to Mexico with that boyfriend of yours. When we told you no, you went anyway.”

“You didn’t have to have the guy arrested,” she said weakly. She couldn’t muster any real indignation.

“And you should have told him you were only sixteen.”

Also, not her proudest moment.

“And don’t try to say we were being overprotective. No sane parent lets their sixteen-year-old daughter leave the country with a boy they barely know.”

“Look, Mom, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I was such a difficult teenager. I’m sorry I never lived up to your expectations. But that has nothing to do with who I am now.”

“Doesn’t it?” Her mom swept up the carrots Wendy had been chopping and dumped them into the pot, lumpy, misshapen bits and all. She added a drizzle of oil in the pan and cranked up the heat. “You’ve rushed into this marriage with this man we’ve never even met—”

There was a note of censure in her voice that Wendy just couldn’t let pass. “This man that I’ve worked with for years. If you’ve never met him, it’s because you never came out to visit.”

Her mother planted both her hands on the counter between them and leaned forward. “Jonathon seems like a very nice man. But if you married him solely to annoy us then—”

“Oh, Marian, don’t be so suspicious.”

Wendy spun around toward the kitchen door to see her father and Jonathon standing just inside. She and her mother had been so intent on their own conversation that neither of them had heard them enter.

The two men had obviously come to an understanding about the argument upstairs. Her father had his arm slung over Jonathon’s shoulders as if they were old buddies. The smile on his face was downright smug.

Jonathon looked less comfortable. In fact, he rather looked like he’d swallowed something nasty. Slowly his gaze shifted from her mother to her. Obviously, he heard everything her mother said to her. And he didn’t like it.

“I’m sure,” Wendy’s father was saying, “that our little Gwen here has grown out of her rebellions.”

Jonathon swallowed the tight knot of dread in his throat. “Mrs. Morgan, I assure you—”

But Wendy’s mother sent both of them withering glares and he was smart enough to shut up when a woman wielding a butcher knife sent him a look like that.

Wendy pointed the tip of her own knife in her father’s direction. “You stay out of this.” For the first time in years she felt as though she and her mother were actually talking. She wasn’t about to let her father muck it up.

Turning her gaze back to her mother, she continued as if the men hadn’t entered at all. “I’m not a rebellious teenager anymore. I’m a grown woman. With a job I love. I may not have married the next political golden boy and I may not be VP of Twiddling My Thumbs at Morgan Oil, but I’m successful in my own right. And a lot of people would be proud to have me as their daughter.”

“It’s not that we’re not proud,” her mother began. “But—” “Of course there’s a but. There’s always a but.” Her mother ignored her interruption, slicing to the point of the matter as easily as she sliced through the joints in the chicken. “But you’ve always delighted in rebelling against your father at every turn. If I thought for a minute that marrying Jonathon and raising Peyton was truly what you wanted—”

“It is.”

“—and not just another one of your rebellions then I would support you wholeheartedly.”

Wendy threw up her hands. “Then support me!”

“But I know how you are. If Mema or Big Hank, let alone your daddy, announced that the sky is blue, the very next morning you’d run out and join a research committee to scientifically prove that it’s not.”

“You make me sound completely illogical.” Wendy shook her head as if she didn’t even know how to defend herself against her mother’s accusations. “It’s like you haven’t heard anything I just said.”

“Well, you tell me whether or not this is just rebellion.” Her mom propped her fists on her hips. “Everyone in this family thinks Hank Jr. and Helen should raise Peyton, except you. Do you have any logical reason why you’re so darned determined to raise this baby?”

Jonathon had had enough. He stepped away from her father. Pulling Wendy back against his chest, he said calmly, “I believe that’s the point, isn’t it? Everyone in the family except for Wendy. And Bitsy. Since Bitsy didn’t want her brother raising her daughter, shouldn’t that be enough for everyone?”

Marian snapped her mouth closed, narrowing her gaze and setting her jaw at a determined angle. He’d seen that look often enough on Wendy.

“You didn’t know Bitsy,” she said to him, obviously making an effort to moderate her tone. “Bitsy was never happy if she wasn’t stirring up trouble. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but has it occurred to either of you that naming Wendy guardian might just have been her way of creating conflict from beyond the grave?”

He felt Wendy pulling away from him, tensing to speak. He tugged her back soundly against him and said, “I may not have known Bitsy. But I know Wendy. I know she’s going to make a wonderful mother.”

Her mom studied him for a second, apparently searching for signs of his conviction. Finally, she nodded. “Hank Jr.'s wife, Helen, sees that baby as little more than a crawling, crying dollar sign. Peyton is a fast ticket to a bigger chunk of Mema’s estate. Helen will fight you for that baby.”

“Helen has three boys of her own that she’s done a crappy job raising,” Wendy pointed out. “If she hadn’t shipped those boys off to boarding school the second they were old enough to go, maybe I’d see things differently.”

“Just be prepared. Helen’s like a bulldog with a bone when money’s involved.”

“That may be true,” Jonathon said. “But Helen isn’t here now. And we have all weekend to convince Mema that we’ll be the best parents for Peyton.”

Her mother harrumphed. “Don’t think Helen hasn’t figured that out as well. Mark my words, girly, you might be glad we came to visit you here instead of waiting for you to come to us. This might be your only chance alone with Mema to convince her that you and Jonathon are the happy, loving couple you want us all to believe.”

There were few things that terrified Jonathon. He thought of himself as a reasonable and logical man. Irrational fears were for small children. Not adults.

At nineteen, he’d spent a solid hour in the dorm room of a buddy, holding the guy’s pet tarantula in his hand to get himself over his fear of spiders. At twenty-three, about the time he’d made his first million, he’d spent three weeks in Australia learning how to scuba dive. That trip had served the joint purpose of getting him over his irrational fear of sharks and his equally irrational fear that FMJ would go under if he wasn’t available 24/7.