FIVE
Present day...
Moments later the bathroom door swung open and the mother of what was presumably his child emerged.
The cool steely gray of her eyes met with his. Eyes he remembered warming through the course of those hours they spent together. Eyes he’d watched go soft beneath him, and had made him wonder if a single night was going to be enough. Eyes that had haunted him for weeks after he’d been back in L.A., until he’d forced himself to put them out of his head. Get a new game plan and move on.
Which is exactly what he’d done.
Olivia.
Pinching the bridge of his nose, he gave his head a stern shake. One thing at a time.
Darcy took a nervous breath and then cleared her throat. “So, maybe we should start by getting a few things straight up front.”
Jeff nodded, checking the legal pad he’d started making a list on. “Agreed.”
Validate paternity.
Confirm/upgrade health care.
Establish child support.
Hire nurse.
Buy house with yard and security.
Start screening for nanny.
Private preschools (*gifted and talented programs?).
Top five universities in country.
Quality playgroups.
Safety reports *family vehicles.
“I don’t want to marry you,” she said abruptly, wincing almost as soon as the words left her mouth.
Jeff blinked.
Wait. She didn’t want to marry him?
He blew out a measured breath while mentally talking his ego down from the ledge. Because seriously, after slinking out of his bed without so much as a “thanks for the good time, sport,” that’s how she wanted to kick this conversation off?
“Not that I remember asking,” he said evenly. “But good to know we’re on the same page.”
Or maybe not quite so evenly after all, considering the slender brow arched in his direction, topping off an all too familiar look that did something to him not entirely bad, but not exactly welcome, either.
Their eyes held a beat before she glanced away. “And I’m not interested in picking things up where we left off.”
“Something the woman I’m seeing will appreciate, I’m sure.”
Yeah, and best to get that out there right away, even though he was fairly certain there wasn’t one thing about this Olivia was going to appreciate.
Especially if she ever got a look at Darcy. Because even having just spent twenty minutes losing her lunch, she was still a knockout. So far as he could see the pregnancy hadn’t done much to her body yet.
Before he realized where that thought was taking him, his attention was doing a slow crawl south of her neckline, roaming over the full curves and narrowing tucks of a figure that—
“That’s great about your girlfriend, but I’m not here to option my baby, either, so...” Her fingers came into his line of sight which happened to have stalled out around the navel he’d dipped his tongue into, snapping twice and then veering into the universal eyes up here mister flag. “...so whatever you’re thinking with that look on your face? Stop.”
“Optioning your baby?” he choked out. “Excuse me?”
Her shoulders squared up.
“Well, you were staring,” she shot back with an accusing jut of her chin. Then seeming to lose a bit of her bravado, she more quietly added, “With a sort of greedy, speculative look on your face. How am I supposed to know what you’re thinking?”
Jeff shook his head, opened his mouth once and then simply closed it again, because...
Really?
And then it was like the tension that had been accumulating since she’d first lunged past him...just snapped. And suddenly, all he could do was laugh. Which probably didn’t do much to alleviate the whole greedy, speculative vibe he’d been putting off, but oh, well. Apparently there wasn’t much lower he could sink to in Darcy’s eyes.
So instead, he simply rubbed his palms over his cheeks and looked across at the woman who’d turned his life upside down in a single night, and just when he thought he’d put it back to rights, showed up and sent him into a tailspin.
One he needed to pull out of and fast.
“Relax. I got distracted by your body. It doesn’t look like it’s changed much.” And at the risk of coming across like a jerk, he added the truth. “You look good, Darcy.”
“Oh.” Then after a moment she rolled her eyes as if making some painful, grudging acknowledgment herself. “Thank you. You look good, too. Even though it doesn’t matter.”
He couldn’t help the grin, but as it turned out, she didn’t seem to mind, answering with one of her own.
It caught him off guard, but he recovered quickly, suggesting they sit down and talk.
Darcy stepped away from the door and crossed over to the couch where Jeff set an empty can on the floor, out of the way but still within reach.
She looked down and her eyes fluttered through a few wet blinks. “You got a fresh can for me?”
She was looking at him like he’d just handed over the keys to a new Mercedes.
“I didn’t want you to have to put your face in the old one.”
Her hand moved to what was still the flat plane of her belly and she gave him a watery half smile he didn’t quite understand, but sensed meant something important to her. “You’re a thoughtful guy, Jeff.”
And there it was. Reassurance. Because she had to be scared out of her mind right now, coming to him when he was virtually a stranger.
Reaching for her hand, Jeff gave it a brief squeeze and looked her in the eyes. “Hey, this is all going to work out fine. Don’t be nervous.” He sat back, legal pad in hand. “So, where should we start—after, you’re pregnant, of course.”
She winced almost as if hearing the words was still new and shocking to her. But then maybe that was the best place. “When did you find out?”
“I didn’t know until a week ago. Which is late, but...” She offered a frustrated little shrug. “My cycle is irregular enough so I don’t really wait around for it and, normally I don’t have any reason to anyway. But the past few months...I’ve been running pretty much nonstop. I thought the stomach upset was nerves. Then it got worse and I thought I must have caught the flu everyone was talking about, except it didn’t get better.”
He was following her words, but a part of him was still stuck on this news being nearly as new to Darcy as it was to him. “Have you been to a doctor yet?”
“For the blood test.” She opened her purse, retrieved the printout she’d gotten from the lab and handed it over. “But my first appointment isn’t until next week.”
Jeff scanned the paperwork before setting it on the small table beside his chair. “So, if you don’t want to get married, or pick things up from where we left off...I think it makes sense to ask, what do you want?”
“I’d like you to agree to a paternity test.”
* * *
Darcy could see the wheels turning in his head, the man stepping back from the prospect of fatherhood with the idea maybe this child wasn’t his.
“Jeff,” she said as gently as she could. “You should understand, I’m only asking for the test for your benefit because I don’t expect you to take the word of some woman you knew for a handful of hours three months ago. But there are no other options. This baby is yours. Once you have the confirmation from a lab, the decision you need to make is whether you want to be a father to it. That’s what I need to find out.”
Jeff was watching her closely, his eyes so intense she had to fight the urge to squirm under his scrutiny. For a guy who could do irreverent like she’d never seen it done before, there was another, more serious, side to Jeff to balance it. And in this moment, the balance was a comfort.
“No other options? You’re telling me you haven’t slept with anyone else since we were together.”
She took a bracing breath, not insulted by his request for clarification. “I realize I haven’t given you much reason to believe this, but I don’t make a habit of going home with guys I just met. Or at all, really. There wasn’t anyone else.”
Jeff drew a long slow breath, his eyes still on her, but his focus seemingly directed inward. He nodded.
“Okay. So the test is basically a formality. I’ll have Legal look into it and set something up. In the meantime, I’m going to be a father. I may need to get used to the idea, but as to whether I’m up to the responsibility, there’s no deliberation necessary.” He pushed to his feet and walked back to his desk. “So how are we going to do this?”
“Could we start with the paternity test and go from there?” she asked. “This is still so new to me, too. I wanted to get in touch with you right away, but I haven’t worked out exactly how I feel about everything. I guess I just wanted to know where you stood before I started making too many decisions about a future you might want a say in.”
He let out a contemplative breath. “Okay. I can respect that. And I appreciate it. So we’ll take this one step at a time. Start with the test. You could think about whether moving is something you’d consider and we’ll set something up to talk in a week?”
She nodded, relieved by his easy accommodation and perhaps by the distance he’d established between them with that last parting comment. It would be an appointment. Because they were going to handle this like business.
Exactly the way she wanted them to.