That's My Baby!

“Oh, God.” He didn’t remember letting go of her wrists to wrap his arms around her, but all at once there she was in his arms, and he was holding on for dear life as he rocked her back and forth. He buried his face in her hair. “Oh, God, Jess.” He knew about kidnapping. In the political upheaval he’d just witnessed, people had been kidnapped all the time. They never came back.

“It’s just like my dad predicted!” she wailed, hugging him tightly. “In Aspen I thought someone might be following me. Then a car tried to force me off the road one night. Thank God Elizabeth wasn’t with me. I got away, but I saw the same car following me another time, and I knew for sure then. Somebody has found out who I am. They’ve decided to snatch the Franklin heir.”

With growing horror he listened as the story came tumbling out. She’d traded in her car for a different one, packed up the baby and taken her to the Rocking D for safekeeping. For the past six months she’d been on the run. But it had been a creative run.

Using different disguises and modes of transportation, she’d tried to elude the kidnapper. But just when she thought she had, a man would follow her along a crowded street, far enough away that she couldn’t positively identify him, but close enough for her to suspect he was the same man. By keeping her wits about her, she’d stayed out of his clutches.

When she was finished, Nat held her tight for a long moment. Then he sighed. “We’re calling the police.”

“No!” She backed away from him. “The minute you do that, my parents will be all over this situation, and then my life as we know it will be over.”

“Your life as you know it is totally screwed up!”

“No, it isn’t.” She tucked her wayward hair behind her ears, which made her look like a schoolgirl. A sexy schoolgirl.

He was determined not to be distracted. “The hell it isn’t. You have a kidnapper on your trail and you can’t even risk being close to your baby as a result.”

“I can risk it now that you’re home.”

“Now, wait a minute. Flattering as that sounds, I can’t have you thinking I’m an adequate bodyguard.”

“You just said you’d changed. And I can see it. You’re more aggressive than you were seventeen months ago.”

“I’m not a trained bodyguard, and your parents are exactly the people who could—”

“Oh, gee, look at the time.” She glanced at her bare wrist and started back toward the bathroom. “Gotta run.”

“Oh, hell.” He clamped a hand on her shoulder to keep her from disappearing behind the closed door. Holding her firmly by the shoulder, he heaved a gusty sigh. “Are you telling me that if I call your parents, you’ll take off and leave me to deal with them?” He didn’t relish the thought of facing Russell P. Franklin alone and announcing he’d gotten the Franklin heir with child.

She glanced over her shoulder. Jess was the sort of woman who could be provocative without even trying. “I guess that’s about the size of it, Nathaniel Andrew.”

“That’s blackmail, Jessica Louise.”

She smiled a vixen’s smile. “I know.”

He couldn’t decide which he’d rather do, strangle her or kiss that saucy mouth until she moaned. He did neither. “You’re blackmailing your parents, too, you know. Your dad wants to put a private detective on your trail so bad he can taste it, but your mother won’t let him because she thinks you’ll go away for good if he does.”

“She’s right.”

Turning her to face him, he grasped her other shoulder and barely stopped himself from giving her a shake. “Jess, what if this kidnapper gets ahold of you? What if he decides, after getting the ransom money, to just kill you? Have you thought of that?”

She nodded. “That’s why I needed to talk to you and tell you about Elizabeth,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “So everything would be okay for the baby.”

The thought of something happening to Jess had the power to paralyze his mind, so he didn’t think about it for long. “Setting aside the issue of how the rest of us would fare in that event, let me emphasize that if you got yourself killed, it would not be okay for the baby.” Panic nibbled at him some more. “I’m a lousy candidate for a parent, and you know it.”

“I don’t know it, but if you call my parents, we’ll never get a chance to find out. They’ll have Elizabeth behind the gates of Franklin Hall before you can say boo.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.” Then he wouldn’t have to worry about the baby. He had a business in Colorado, after all. He could pay support, although the Franklins would probably scoff at the pittance the courts would ask of him.

“And I’d have to go with her,” Jess said softly.

Ah, there was the rub. The woman he loved would be safe but unhappy. And he would be…lost. Lost without hope of redemption.

“You see, it has to be this way if you and I are to have any chance. If Elizabeth is to have any chance.”

As he gazed into her eyes and saw the glimmer of hope there, his feelings of inadequacy threatened to swamp him. “I would botch the job of being Elizabeth’s father, Jess. We’ve been through all that, and you know how I feel about having kids of my own. I’ll admit that on the flight over I began thinking that maybe someday I could consider adopting an orphan from one of the refugee camps. But see, that would be different. The kid wouldn’t have that many options, and even having me as a parent would be better than nothing.”

“Oh, Nat.” She moved in close and combed her fingers through his beard so she could cup his face in both hands.

He loved her touch, and decided at that very moment that he wanted to shave so nothing interfered with the feel of her soft hands on his face.

“I’ve never met your father,” she said, “but I know you’re nothing like him. You would never beat a child the way you were beaten, or belittle them until they felt worthless, the way your father did.”

“You don’t know that. It’s the pattern I saw for eighteen years. Some of that behavior has to be lurking in me, waiting for the time when I have a kid, and that automatic conditioning kicks in.”

Her gaze searched his. “Don’t you at least want to see her?” she asked gently.

His stomach churned at the thought, but yes, he’d admit to a flicker of curiosity. “Maybe, from a distance.”

Jess smiled. “How far a distance?”

“One of those videophones would be about right.”

She held his gaze. “I think she has your eyes.”

That rocked him. All along he’d pictured her with woeful brown eyes, like the children he’d left in the camps. “Blue?”

“They probably are by now. The color was still a little indistinct when I…when I left her at the ranch.” Her breath caught and her eyes began to glow with longing. “Oh, Nat, please. Let’s call the ranch and tell them we’re on our way. It’s been an eternity. Please. It’s still only ten there. They won’t be in bed. Let’s call them now.”

One thing had become obvious—he wouldn’t in good conscience be able to shift this new and unwanted responsibility to Jess’s parents. Neither could he expect Sebastian to keep on taking the burden, although Nat wasn’t wild about heading out there to face this massive change in his life. He’d ten times rather hold up in the Waldorf for a few days and calm his fears by making endless love to Jess.

But it looked as if he needed to take Jess to Colorado. “Okay. Yeah. We’ll do that.”

“Oh, thank you!” She wrapped her arms around his neck and planted a kiss right on his mouth.

She might have meant it as a friendly gesture instead of an invitation, but it didn’t matter how she’d meant it. His body flipped to automatic pilot as he grabbed her and pulled her in tight. He couldn’t have kept his tongue out of her mouth for all the gold in Fort Knox.

With a little whimper of delight, she molded herself against him the way only Jess could do. Her body dovetailed with his as no other woman’s body had ever done. It was as if they’d been carved from the same block of stone so that when they came together, the seam of separation disappeared.

But she wasn’t stone—she was warm and pliant. When he pushed his hand into the invisible gap between them, she magically made way for him. He tugged at the sash of her bathrobe and the thick material loosened instantly, gaping open over the smooth curve of her breast.

He was there in an instant, cupping the weight, almost out of his mind with the joy of caressing her silken breast again. He brushed the erect nipple with the pad of his thumb and she gasped against his mouth. She’d always been so sensitive to his slightest touch, which had made him feel like a god when he made love to her.

Tonight her reaction seemed even more sensitive, and subtly different. Or maybe it was all in his mind. Once upon a time, he’d thought he knew every intimate detail about her. But in his absence she’d given birth to a child—his child. The knowledge made her body mysterious and exotic. He needed to reconnect with her, if only to convince himself that she was still knowable, still within his reach.

He lifted his mouth a fraction from hers as he rubbed her nipple with his thumb. “Did you nurse her?” he murmured.

Her breath blew warm on his lips. “Yes.”