Excuse Me? Whose Baby?: Excuse Me? Whose Baby? / Follow That Baby!

“Excuse me?”

“You mean it’s a coincidence that you ran off and proposed to another woman one month after we…made each other’s acquaintance?” she said. “You can’t expect me to believe that!”

Jim frowned. He hadn’t seen anything odd about proposing to Nancy a month after loving, and losing, Dex. It had seemed perfectly natural.

He’d planned to marry Nancy for a long time, but their careers had gotten in the way. Especially hers. She’d left Clair De Lune to teach at a small college in Alaska, then jumped at an offer of a university position and research grant in Washington.

Along the way, she’d refused to accept any help from Jim. A word in the right ear, and she could have been working much closer to home. She’d wanted to succeed on her own merits, though, and he respected her decision.

Somehow the years had slipped away without his realizing it. He hadn’t wanted to press her and hadn’t felt any particular urgency about getting married. Not until recently.

“I figured nature was telling me something,” he mused. “That I was ready to settle down.”

She stared at him. “You can’t mean that you had any settling-down thoughts about me!”

No, he didn’t mean that. Did he? Jim tried to recall exactly what he’d been thinking and feeling four months ago, but he couldn’t.

He wasn’t accustomed to self-examination. For heaven’s sake, he was on top of his life, his business and, above all, himself, so why flail around in search of renegade emotions? “Certainly not. The timing was purely coincidental.”

“I see.” Having cleaned her plate, Dex eyed the plates of carrot cake, cheesecake and chocolate mousse arrayed on the cart’s lower shelf. “Do you always have three desserts?”

“Rocky didn’t know what you liked,” he said. “So he gave you a choice.”

“I have to choose?”

“Have all three. There’s more in the kitchen.” Jim watched in amazement as she took him at his word, plopping three plates onto the table.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a woman eat one dessert, let alone three. None of the skinny executive ladies he sometimes dated did, and as for Nancy…well, he couldn’t remember.

They hadn’t spent much time together since she’d moved away five years ago. Mostly they saw each other on holidays, when she came to visit her parents, or when he went to Washington on business.

It was time to get back to the subject that had brought him and Dex together. “How did you meet Dr. Saldivar, anyway?”

Busy making short work of the carrot cake, she didn’t immediately answer. She approached eating, like everything else, with total absorption.

Jim flashed back to their night of lovemaking. She’d brought him alive in ways he hadn’t known were possible. Her mouth, her hands, her breasts had excited him almost past bearing.

“One of my jobs is campus courier,” Dex said, serenely unaware of the direction of his thoughts. “I met her while delivering mail to her department. I don’t remember how the subject came up, but she said she needed a donor to help some of her desperate patients have children. So I agreed.”

“Maybe she was sincere,” he said. “Initially, anyway.”

“Dr. Saldivar didn’t see patients,” Dex said.

“She didn’t?”

“I found that out today. That’s why I’m so angry. It was a con job, pure and simple.” She patted the corners of her mouth with her cloth napkin. “How about you? How exactly did she get her hands on your sperm?”

The way she phrased the question was so startling that Jim choked on a bite of sandwich and went into a coughing fit. Before he could recover, Dex hopped up, ran around the table and grasped him from behind.

As he struggled to break free, he felt a fist prod into his stomach. Three short thrusts against his solar plexus threatened to launch his entire set of internal organs into outer space.

“Should I call the paramedics?” she shouted.

Somehow, perhaps because his life depended on it, he managed to wheeze, “No.” After a couple of swallows of iced tea, he added, “Not unless you plan to attack me again. Then I might need a stretcher.”

Dex resumed her seat. “It’s called the Heimlich maneuver.”

“I’ve heard of it. I just didn’t realize it was a new form of assault.” He waved away her response. “I’m kidding. It’s a good skill to know, but you were too quick off the launching pad. I could have coughed that food up by myself.”

“Better safe than sorry,” said Dex.

He didn’t have a response. Not a coherent one, anyway. Instead, as soon as he caught up on his breathing, he returned to her earlier question. “You asked about Helene.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have.” Dex quirked an eyebrow. “What went on between the two of you really isn’t my business.”

“Me and Dr. Saldivar?” He felt like coughing again, but restrained himself. “Not even remotely. Besides, don’t you think I’d have questioned her motives if she suddenly whipped out a vial and preserved a specimen?”

“She could be very persuasive.”

He laughed. “I suppose so, but in my case, she was doing me a favor. Making sure I was fertile.”

“Why?” Dex asked.

It was disconcerting, the way she asked such personal questions without blinking. It threw him off balance, and Jim wasn’t accustomed to anyone else getting the upper hand. Or forming one into a fist and plunging it into his midsection, either.

“There’s no need to go into details,” he said. “If you’re going to be living here, we need to respect each other’s privacy.”

“Whoa!” She stopped halfway through the slice of cheese cake. “I haven’t agreed to that.”

So she wanted to play hardball. Well, Jim was a master at that game.

“Fine. I’ll have my lawyer draw up the custody papers, you can sign Annie over to me, and that’ll be the end of it.” He folded his arms and leaned back to await the fireworks.

4

INSTEAD OF ARGUING, Dex regarded him calmly. “What amazes me is that a man who has everything could be so selfish.”

In his outrage, Jim forgot about maintaining the upper hand. “What makes you say that?”

“You just want Annie because she’s got your genes,” Dex said. “You can’t love her, because you don’t know her. And since you’re planning to get married, you can have plenty more children. Your wife probably won’t be crazy about taking care of a stepdaughter, anyway. So why deny her to some family whose empty arms are aching?”

Jim allowed himself a rare moment of self-searching. Was he simply latching onto this baby because her eyes matched his?

No, he decided. If he brought to fatherhood the same determination that had enabled him to build his business into a billion-dollar enterprise, he could make this child the happiest person on earth.

“My daughter will be privileged and loved and special,” he said. “Ask any of my employees what I’m like. Did you know I was voted Clair De Lune’s boss of the year?”

“A child isn’t an employee.” Dex regarded him coolly. Why wasn’t she as impressed by his accomplishments as all the other women he met? Jim wondered.