Anybody's Dad

“She wants me gone. Trust me.”

Carole Anne smiled slightly. “But you like her.”

The corner of Chase’s mouth quirked. “Oh yes.”

“That’s all I needed to hear,” she said succinctly. “We’ll stand back and promise not to interfere. At all.” His mother looked pointedly at his father. “Won’t we, Carl?’ Though there was a softness in her voice, her sharp blue eyes warned his father there would be hell to pay if he so much as spoke to Tessa without Chase’s permission. His father finally nodded and Chase leaned forward, kissed her forehead and whispered, ”I knew I could count on you, Mom. Thanks.”

He left, glad his parents weren’t going to stick their noses into this. Chase wanted his baby in the worst way. But after spending several sleepless nights with Tessa Lightfoot’s image bursting across his mind, Chase wanted more. He wanted to see if he wasn’t fooling himself about this energy they shared, the way she could stir his senses into madness. He wanted to kiss her, really kiss her. But as he thought of her perfectly lush mouth, a mouth made for old-fashioned slow, wet kisses, Chase figured at this point, she’d just bite him.

Four

In her doctor’s office two days later, Tessa looked up from the magazine and frowned. The hint of a voice, a ma/e voice, pricked her attention and she strained to define it. When the receptionist called her name, she rushed past the partition and froze.

Chase. His shoulder propped against the wall, he was obviously receiving a thorough explanation of the birth process, via a wall diagram, from the pretty blond nurse. Tessa didn’t like that he was here, didn’t like that he’d used that oozing Madison charm to worm his way past the front desk of a women’s clinic, and she did not like the way Blondie was looking at him as if he could cure cancer.

Oh, you’re really keeping those emotions under control, aren’t you? She cleared her throat and something inside her leapt—she swore it was indigestion—when he dismissed the young nurse without a glance and came to her.

“What are you doing here?” she asked the instant he was near.

“I saw the appointment on your calendar when I was at the store on Saturday,” he said absently as he sketched her quickly from head to toe. “God, you look beautiful, Tessa.”

She couldn’t help the flutter in her chest, and unconsciously smoothed her vest and slacks. Then she shook her head, dismissing his compliments and focusing her attention on why he was here. To invade her privacy, her life. To take her baby.

I’m not visiting my child, he’d said. I want him. It terrified her to think just how determined Chase Madison could be.

“Mr. Madison,” finally came through tightly clenched teeth.

Chase sighed dispiritedly. She was upset. Well, he didn’t expect her not to be. But after his great sales job the other day, he’d hoped she’d be just a little glad to see him. Tessa was a hard nut to crack; this wall she built around herself, for his benefit he knew, was like coming up against ice. For a time she thawed, then something triggered the quick freeze job and Chase found himself back at the beginning. But he wasn’t giving up.

“You can’t be here.” She glanced around at the personnel and patients listening.

“I’m the father, Tessa. I have the right.”

“No, you don’t. It’s my body.”

“Your body’s nurturing my baby.”

“Yours?” a feminine voice asked.

They turned and Chase found a statuesque older woman wearing green hospital scrubs. Faraday was stenciled across the pocket.

“Tessa?” She frowned between the two. “Who is this?”

Tessa cast Chase a superior glance and said, “Test tube number 3—4—6 dash whatever,” then ignored him and his narrowing look as she looped her arm with Dr. Johanna Faraday’s, drawing her away and whispering quickly. Dr. Faraday spoke calmly, glancing intermittently at Chase.

“Well, at least he doesn’t have the warts and baldness you wanted.”

“What he has is the ability to charm the socks off your staff, my sister and my employees. He shouldn’t even be here.”

“Calm down, Tessa. And you’re right. An oh/gyn clinic isn’t the usual male stomping grounds, but the test proved he is 346-1010, and that gives him the same rights as any other father. Especially since he didn’t sign them away.”

“No, he didn’t.” She had to admit that. He was a victim of a computer foul-up as much as she was. But that didn’t change the fact that Chase was here, trying to wiggle into her appointment like he was...what? The father? Concerned about her? Hah.

Johanna tapped her pen against her lips, then tucked it behind her ear. “You’ve acknowledged him as the father?”

“As the donor.” She couldn’t think of him as anything else. She just couldn’t. Where Chase and his rights were concerned, she had to keep her emotions out of it.

Johanna looked thoughtful, then sighed with that I’ve-come-to-a-decision look. “He doesn’t have the right to accompany you in the exam, but in all honesty I can’t make him leave. Fathers have rights.” Johanna leaned a touch closer. “Is he going to give you trouble, get violent?”

Tessa cast him a quick glance. Chase? Violent? She didn’t know him well enough to make that judgment. But the man smiled more than a kid at Christmas. “I doubt it.”

Tessa felt as if she were losing control of the situation the minute Johanna Faraday motioned to Chase, then indicated her office. She sent Tessa a behave glance before they disappeared inside. Tessa sat, then Johanna addressed the man standing behind the extra chair.

“I must think of the welfare of my patient first, Mr. Madison, and Miss Lightfoot does not want you here.”

Her patient, Chase noticed, wouldn’t look at him. Instead she twisted the silken cord of her purse into a hangman’s noose. “Miss Lightfoot would rather I vanish off the face of the earth,” he said with a half smile and a glance in her direction. “But I’m not.”

“Why did you come here, Mr. Madison?”

He felt Tessa’s gaze on him, but looked at the doctor. “Because my baby is growing inside her and I have the right to know how well.” He glanced at Tessa.

Something flickered in her eyes, so brief Chase almost didn’t catch it. He wished he knew her well enough to decipher it. “She’s supposed to have a sonogram today. I want to know if everything is okay, with Tessa and my child.”

“For a man who offered no more than a few ounces of fluid, you’re asking for a lot.” Tessa glared up at him, hating that he looked so good, hating that he was being so reasonable. He didn’t give a hoot about her, just this baby and his, however small, part in its creation.

The fractured anger and fear in her words struck him hard, with insight and just enough frustration to want to shake her. “Yes, I didn’t have any part in this, and yes, I wasn’t consulted, but there is more than our feelings and rights at stake now. There is the child. Our child,” he gestured between himself and Tessa and out of the corner of his eye saw her shoulders stiffen. “And whether you like it or not,” he said, turning his gaze to Tessa and meeting her stare, “that infant—” he nodded to her tummy “—needs everyone who cares about him, protecting him and his rights.” God, Chase thought, he loved this baby already. He lowered his voice, speaking to Tessa as if they didn’t have an audience. “Think what you want, Tessa, but I didn’t come here to upset you. After what happened in the Golden Dragon, I realized how unbelievably miraculous this all is.”

Tessa felt a lump work in her throat, at the raw emotion playing across his features, lacing his voice with a tender roughness.

“And I only wanted some of the experiences I’ve already missed.” He held her gaze a moment longer, then looked at Dr. Faraday. “Take good care of her,” he said, then left without a word.

Both women stared at the empty doorway, then at each other.

Tessa’s eyes burned and she felt awful. “Oh hell, now what do I do?”

“He could stand beyond the curtain and listen.”

Tessa stared at her lap. This was so personal. And they hadn’t even really kissed, for heaven’s sake. But the look in his eyes, oh God, she felt as if she were cheating him. She was cheating him. Finally Tessa nodded and Johanna left the office to catch him. Outside the door she heard Johanna laying down the rules. She didn’t even look at him. God, she was being a coward, but every minute with the man had her feeling like a general losing ground in a battle. Still, the excitement in his voice hurt. Only the baby, she reminded herself. He wants this only for the baby.

The sonogram was under way when Tessa heard a nurse escort him in through the hall door. She glanced down and saw his shoes beneath the curtain, but even with Johanna talking louder than usual, he didn’t utter a word, didn’t move.

Then Chase heard the rapid, steady heartbeat. His breath caught in his chest, a violent surge of air that left him stunned. Alive. Alive, his brain shouted. His child. Flesh and bone and blood were growing, breathing in there, waiting to be born. Waiting to be loved and protected. And he rejoiced in the warm feeling racing through his body, pushing his pulse to match his child’s.

Then suddenly the heartbeat stopped.

“What happened?” Panic filled his voice.

Johanna’s was calm. “I just moved to a different area, Mr. Madison, wait. Listen? There it is again. Oh look, Tessa, her fingers.”