The Best Man's Baby. Karen Booth
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of her curves, it all hitting him in an avalanche—he’d waited for a very long time to be with her again. The way she moved told him that she was far more comfortable with her body than she’d ever been in high school. As she unbuckled his belt and kissed him softly, she’d said they wouldn’t need a condom. She was on the pill. She’d also quipped, “When I remember to take it.” Then his pants had slumped to the floor and further clarification of birth control was the last thing on his mind. That night alone they could have conceived a baby many times over, and it had been only the start of their weekend together.
“So. Pregnant. That’s big. Really big.” Why he suddenly had so little vocabulary was beyond him. He only knew that his palms were starting to get clammy.
“I know. It is.” She gathered her napkin and placed it on the table. “I was surprised, to say the least.”
“So this wasn’t planned.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
“How far along are you?”
“Three months.”
Just say it. “And how is the dad feeling about all of this?”
She twisted her lips and turned to look at him with her wide brown eyes. He’d never seen them so unsure. “I don’t know, exactly. The truth is that I’m not completely certain who the father is.”
His heart was thundering in his chest. He knew she had men falling at her feet, but was it really this extreme? “Oh.”
“It’s either my ex, the guy who dumped me right before the reunion, or...it’s you.”
His heart came to a complete stop. In fact, the only thing that gave him any indication the earth was still spinning was the bat of Julia’s dark lashes. He sat forward and rested his elbows on his knees, nodding. Thinking. Processing. Once again, she’d surprised the hell out of him. He’d prepared for either answer. Not both. I might be the dad? Or I might not? He couldn’t live long without knowing for sure. He sat back up. “We have to have a paternity test. Right away.”
“I knew you were going to say that, but I don’t really see the point. It’s not going to change anything.”
“It’ll change a lot for me.” His brain hurt from the suggestion that they not find out who the father was.
“It doesn’t matter. Either way, I’m pregnant by a man who chooses not to be with me. Do you have any idea how terrible that feels? I need to focus on the good, for my own sake. I’m choosing to focus on the baby.”
Logan still couldn’t believe what she was saying. “I’m going to go insane sitting around for the next six months wondering whether or not I’m about to be a dad.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s just too bad. It’s not going to change the fact that we aren’t together. We’ll have to wait until the baby arrives and then we’ll know. It should be fairly obvious once the baby is born. I doubt we’ll need a paternity test.”
Ah. I see. “So the other guy isn’t black?”
“He isn’t.”
Well, that certainly made that aspect of things convenient. But still the logistics made no sense. Was he supposed to sit in a waiting room with her ex and hope like hell that the baby came out with a skin tone closest to his own?
“I’ve thought about it, and the most sensible thing is to wait until then and you can decide how involved you want to be. We’ll have to negotiate all of that. I’m hoping I can count on you to be sensible and flexible. I don’t want to bring in lawyers,” Julia said.
His head pounded. She was discussing this as if they were two multinational corporations preparing to merge. “What did the other guy have to say about all of this?” He winced at the thought of her having this conversation with any other man, even when he had no claim on her.
“He’s out. Like all the way out. He wants nothing to do with me. He was pretty sure I made up the baby so I could get him back.”
A low grumble left Logan’s throat. What kind of scum would think a woman like Julia would make up a baby to get him back? And how did she end up with a guy like that? “He’s out? What does that even mean? You get a woman pregnant, you accept responsibility. That’s the first chapter of the book called How to Be a Real Man.”
A tear rolled down her cheek. She wrapped her arms around herself and settled back against the couch. “Apparently he doesn’t agree.”
Logan had to fight back his rage. He sucked in a deep breath. If the baby was his, he’d take responsibility. “If it’s mine, we have to get married.”
A dismissive puff of air left her lips. “This is not the time for jokes.”
“It’s no joke. We’re getting married if the baby is mine. You grew up with both parents. I...” His voice cracked, thinking about his father. “I grew up with both parents until we lost my dad. A kid needs both parents. I won’t be able to live with it any other way.”
“I’m not getting married to you. That’s not happening.”
“Yes. You are. Unlike this other guy you were with, I’m a man and I accept my responsibilities. We have to get married if the baby is mine.” He wasn’t even sure what was coming out of his mouth anymore. It seemed perfectly sensible in his head a few seconds earlier.
“And none of that matters, Logan. You don’t love me. You want nothing to do with me romantically. Remember? You were very clear with your message after the reunion. Painfully clear. I can recite it if you want. It wasn’t hard to commit it to memory.”
He’d ended it definitively, there was no question about that. Clarity had been for the sake of them both. Of course, he’d never imagined she’d memorize his message. Had he been too cold? “What was I supposed to do? I get to the airport and you’re on the cover of a magazine that says sparks were flying when you were auditioning with Derek. That was a week before the reunion and you’d just come off a breakup. That told me everything I needed to know about any future between us.”
“There were no sparks with Derek. Why doesn’t anyone believe me?”
“There’s always some other guy around the corner, isn’t there? Some mess of a guy who you can try to fix.”
She shot him a final look of disgust before she bolted from the couch and stalked to the front door. “You can be such a jerk. Really. You have an uncanny ability to say the most hurtful things.”
He rushed to follow her. “Wait a minute. We’re still talking.”
She squared her body to his and poked the center of his chest, hard, even though he had a good fifty pounds on her. Maybe more. “If you think the next six months are going to be difficult for you, how do you think the pregnant woman feels? How about the woman who got dumped by both of the men who might’ve knocked her up? Did you even take two seconds to think about that?”
“I asked you to marry me. I’m willing to play my part.”
“You did not ask me to marry you. You were issuing a mandate. And that’s not happening, anyway. I’m not marrying someone out of obligation, and certainly not a man who broke up with me. I’m done making mistakes when it comes to you.” She opened the door and stormed out. It closed with a thud behind her.
Logan turned, his eyes wide open. No way he was getting any sleep tonight. Julia had given him more than enough to chew on.
His phone beeped with a text. What now? He wandered across the room and picked it up from the coffee table. It was from Julia.
We have to leave for the florist by ten.
Great. A whole day of wedding errands with the pregnant woman who drove him crazy, refused to marry him and might be carrying his baby.