HER BABY'S SECRET FATHER (4 page)

Jaynie nodded, rolled onto her side and fought off another wave of emotion. Would her eyes ever quit tearing?

She rose, gathered her clothes and hurried toward the shower.

“Hold on, Ms Winchester,” said the young nurse with huge blue eyes and shiny brown hair. “It’s time to check your fundus.”

“Oh, joy.” Jaynie screwed up her mouth, but dutifully got back on the bed.

As the student nurse prodded and palpated her abdomen, Jaynie focused on another problem. She’d been trying to ignore the tight, heavy feeling in her breasts that she’d woken up with. But now she couldn’t avoid it. Normally an average-sized woman, today she felt as if she had footballs on her chest. All she could think about was seeing Tara before she left the hospital, and using the breast pump. She’d leave her first mother’s milk for when her baby would finally get fed the traditional way, through her mouth.

She needs to gain at least one pound before she’ll be able to come home.
Well, Jaynie thought for sure that she had at least a pound’s worth of milk in her breasts right now.

After the nurse had left, Jaynie stood in the warm shower stream and tried to relax, shocked by her Pamela Anderson proportions.
My, my, my. I didn’t know I had it in me.
She smiled despite the ache in her chest.

Within the next half-hour she’d dressed, got discharged from the ward, and headed down the hall to see Tara. She wore her brand new super-sized nursing bra and a button-up cotton blouse, with a pair of elastic-waist denim pants that Kim had dropped off the night before. The second most important thing she looked forward to, after bringing Tara home, was getting back to her usual one hundred and twenty-five pounds. She’d only lost ten pounds with the birth, which meant she had fifteen to go.

Once she entered the brightly wallpapered hospital nursery, all thoughts passed from her mind except for Tara. She thought of how she’d feel holding her in her arms and offering her breast to feed for the first time.

Entering the NICU, she swore Tara had already fattened up a bit. Her baby looked busy, in constant motion, stretching, twitching and jerking, swatting at the air, very much alive.

Joy jumped in Jaynie’s heart at the sight. If only she could nurse her.

After cooing and patting her child, and being reassured by the nurse that all was well, Jaynie tore herself away to pay a visit to the electric breast pump. She washed her nipple with an antiseptic wipe, read the instructions on the machine, placed a small sterile plastic container on the apparatus, and plugged herself in. A strange tight suction latched on and rhythmically pulled on her tender breast. Weird sensations circulated through her flesh and head until a feeling she’d never experienced before, a soothing “let down,” occurred in her milk ducts. Automatically, she relaxed.

Her mind wandered to coworkers, friends, and then back to her daughter. “If they could see me now,” she mumbled with a chuckle, feeling somewhat like a dairy cow.

Being raised by a single parent herself, Jaynie had never intended to repeat her mother’s plight. At least that had been her conviction until the age of thirty-three had started breathing down her neck. She’d always known she wanted to have a baby, and realized statistically it was best to be married and have both parents to share duties, but time had marched on. If she’d waited too long, she might not have ever have had a chance to be a mother.

So she’d given her boyfriend Eric an ultimatum—either they got married or broke up—but he hadn’t budged, and that was the last she’d seen of him.

That was the day she’d started her research and formed the plan to become a mom without being married. Jaynie hadn’t wanted any of Eric’s gene pool in her child, and she would never even have considered such a dirty trick on a man—even a conniving jerk like her ex-boyfriend. Besides, she’d needed time to increase her bank account, so she’d patiently waited.

Instead of moping around with a broken heart, Jaynie had gone to work. She’d done more research on artificial insemination and found the well-reputed sperm bank. The cost had been reasonable, its reputation flawless, the technique ethical and, most importantly, anonymous. She’d never know who the donor was and he’d never know her. And, best of all, the office was close to Mercy Hospital.

Jaynie finished pumping her other breast, then collected and labeled the tiny, plastic, four-ounce bottle to leave at the nurses’ station for freezing. The container felt warm. Instead of rich thick milk, as she’d imagined, she saw thin, watery white fluid inside, like the non-fat milk she drank at home.

When she’d finished packing up, she swung the door open, stepped into the hallway—and practically bumped into Terrance’s gorgeous and substantial chest.

T
ERRANCE
held Jaynie’s arms to help steady her. His affable smile widened into a sexy grin. He scanned her with an easy gaze. She flushed, partly from their close proximity and the fact that he held his grip longer than necessary, and partly at being caught with breast milk in her hand.

“You okay?” He glanced at the container.

The heat spread, circling her cheeks. “Fine. I just made a deposit to Tara’s trust fund.” She rolled her eyes at the terrible joke, while desperately trying to draw attention away from the progressive full body-blush.

Terrance smiled before stepping back and cocking his head. “Have you been discharged from the hospital?”

“Yeah, about an hour ago.” Her hands danced from her waist to behind her back, in an attempt to hide the container. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, antsy.

“Who’s taking you home?”

She cleared her throat, finding it hard to choose her words. “I’m…taking myself home. My, um, car’s been in the parking lot since the other day, when I came to work.”

He folded his arms. “Oh, right. Tara was a surprise.” He lifted an eyebrow. “But where’s her father?”

Jaynie turned her eyes away and studied her hands, once again stumped for words.

“Strike that. I’ve stepped over the line.” He ducked his head to look into her face. “It’s none of my business.”

“No, it’s…”

He tilted her chin up. “Being there for her delivery and all, I forgot I’m just the respiratory therapist. We quit dating and you found someone else. Forgive me, okay?”

Thoughts of missed opportunities, and “what-ifs” flooded her brain. Tears brimmed, with annoying post-partum regularity, and Jaynie blinked a couple of times in defense. “Listen, I’d rather you hear it from me than at the hospital watercooler.” She looked at her feet and the sensible walking shoes she wore. “There is no father. I’m doing this on my own.”

She glanced up and saw a shift in his demeanor from concern to curiosity. She owed him an explanation, but decided not to delve too deeply.

“Tara and I are a family of two. And…I didn’t get involved with anyone after you. In case that’s what you’re wondering.”

Relief dawned on his face like a sunburst, but confusion quickly clouded his gaze.

“Well, if you were just looking for a—how shall I say it?—partner, you could have asked me, you know.”

The body-blush forged into a brush fire under her skin. She made a dry swallow. “You were adamant about never wanting to be a father. Remember?”

“Right.” He scratched his jaw. “Okay. Forget I said that, let alone thought it.” He looked flustered, with an appealing shade of crimson breaking across his cheeks that she suspected matched her own.

Sure, guys liked being in on the fun part, but the follow through? Forget about it!

“The dynamic duo—Jaynie and Peanut.” Terrance smiled, making it clear he wasn’t making a value judgment on her decision to go it alone. “Listen, if you need any help for anything, now or later, you know my number. Feel free to call. Anytime.” He stepped away, nodding toward the container in her hand. “You probably need to get that to the NICU.”

Jaynie glanced at the ceiling and gave a relieved smile. “Right,” she said, wishing she could get a grip on the excess emotions running rampantly in her brain.

Once she’d said goodbye, she wandered down the hall and pondered how none of the multitude of books she’d read had explained the rollercoaster ride of pregnancy, delivery and post-partum adequately.

How would she handle an empty house and nursery? Jaynie made a quick decision to close up the freshly painted and stenciled baby’s room the moment she arrived home. Being there without Tara would be torture. All she wanted was the most natural desire of any new mother: to hold and nurse her baby. Yet she couldn’t even do that.

Jaynie hovered over the incubator in the NICU. She wanted Tara to open her eyes and look at her, but the preemie was sound asleep. What could possibly be going on in her mind? Was she in pain? What kind of life started out being surrounded by cold, noisy monitors, blinking lights and strange hands poking and prodding, instead of feeling a mother’s love and embrace?

“I’ll do everything in my power to make it up to you,” she murmured to her daughter.

The Feng Shui plan popped into her head, and she used the outer hallway phone to call the pulmonary floor. The ward clerk answered in her usual harried manner.

“Hey, Annette, it’s Jaynie. Is Kim there?”

Maybe she couldn’t hold her baby the way she wanted to today, but she would get help making her future homecoming perfect.

“What’s up, Mommy?” Kim’s friendly chirp answered.

“Remember the Feng Shui reading is on for tonight, right?” Dead silence. “What time are you coming over?”

“Oh, shoot. ‘You Know Who’ just asked me to dinner. My mind went blank and I said yes. Can we make it tomorrow night?”

Jaynie felt a rock drop in her stomach. First night home without her baby…alone.

“Never mind, I’ll cancel,” Kim jumped back in.

“No!” Jaynie desperately wanted company, but Kim had been practically stalking the pharmacy doc for weeks, and things were heating up between them. Opportunity seldom knocked in Kim’s world of men. She’d dated some real losers.

As a friend, Jaynie didn’t want to stand in her way now that the new guy was showing some potential. “Keep your date.” She feigned a cheerful tone. “Tomorrow night will be fine.”

After hanging up, she paced the long, narrow hospital hallway feeling adrift. She needed her baby in her arms to help her feel like a mother.

This must be how surrogates feel.

All the reading and preparing she’d done hadn’t addressed the possibility of going home before her baby. She’d never even considered it. She thought about her own mother, two thousand miles away and unable to get off work until her scheduled family leave eight weeks down the line.

Feeling at odds, and unsure of what to do with herself, she made a quick decision. She’d approach one of the other mothers she’d seen in the NICU.

Her steps grew more confident as she set out on her mission to befriend another preemie mother. They might be strangers, but they had premature babies in common, to which no other person she knew could relate, and each might need the other for support.

Jaynie re-entered the quiet, institutionally drab NICU with new hope, determined to hang around for the rest of the day and form her own support group.

* * *

After comparing notes, encouraging each other, even having a long and enjoyable lunch in the cafeteria together, Jaynie and her new friend, Arpita Singh, stopped by the hospital gift store to check out the specially priced preemie car seats. She got so excited that she bought one—before figuring out how to get it all the way to the employee parking lot.

At four o’clock in the afternoon she could no longer put off the inevitable—going home. Thinking how ingenious she was, she plopped the large and awkward box into the seat of a hospital wheelchair and pushed it like a shopping cart to her car.

A dreary gray sky dripped a fine drizzle as she arrived at her SUV’s trunk. She navigated the cumbersome box out of the wheelchair to the best of her ability. With legs spread wide, balancing and wrangling the cardboard container, she heard a familiar voice.

“Let me get that for you.” Terrance jumped off his bike, laid it down, and quickly came to her aid. Dressed in skintight cycling shorts and a bright rainbow-colored, equally snug shirt, he wrestled the box from her arms. He lifted it like a feather, and waited for Jaynie to unlock the trunk of her car.

Like every other nurse in the hospital, she knew his routine. Run to work one day; ride his bike home. Ride to work the next day; run home. He had to be as fit as any Olympic athlete with his rigorous daily routine.

“You could have thrown your back out, trying to handle this all by yourself.” He raised an eyebrow and a lightbulb went on behind his hazel lamps. “Ah, I get it. You’re trying to get admitted back into the hospital, right?”

She laughed, and tried not to look at his outstanding legs. “You know, that’s a thought. Gimme that back.”

He pretended to fight her for it, then shoved it into the back of her SUV, closing the hatchback while they both laughed.

Terrance held his hand out to check on the drizzle that had quickly changed to light rain. He screwed up his face. “Could you do me a favor?”

Could she refuse the man who’d helped save her baby’s life? “Sure. What do you need?”

He flashed a charming, pretty-please smile, and pointed to the sky. “A ride home?”

A sputter escaped her lips before she could compose herself. “Of course.”

* * *

“So, after I spoke to Kim—” Jaynie clutched the steering wheel and took the corner cautiously, due to the rain “—I had to face the fact that I’d be going home to an empty house.”

“Then you’ll just have to have dinner with me.” Terrance shifted his long legs in the passenger seat. “I can’t let you be alone tonight.” He smiled.

Jaynie nodded, never even considered protesting.

“Here we are.” He pointed to the rustic, woodsy home almost camouflaged by overbearing oak trees in an older neighborhood in the hills of the Silver Lake district.

She’d always thought it suited Terrance perfectly.

“Come inside while I change?” He hopped out of the car and leaned back inside the door.

“I’ll wait out here, thanks.” Jaynie felt snug, and didn’t want to leave the comfort of her car heater. But, more importantly, she didn’t want to venture back into Terrance’s territory—the world that had always been so appealing.

Now was definitely not the time to dream about a man. In fact, having just delivered her baby, it should be the last thing on her mind. And, besides, there would be no man in her carefully planned life, just Tara and her.

Terrance removed his disassembled bike from the back of her car, placed both the frame and front wheel in his garage and walked on the redbrick path toward his front porch. At the halfway point, a large, worse for wear gray cat strolled up to meet him. He bent to scratch the tabby’s ears and let the pet stretch and press against his calf until the animal lost interest. Only then did he go inside.

A half-hour later, Jaynie found herself sitting across a cozy table in a hole-in-the-wall Greek restaurant on the outskirts of Hollywood, bumping knees with Terrance.

She glanced around. He had chosen the Mom and Pop eatery, and was most likely a regular, judging by the friendly greeting they’d received when they entered.

He’d changed into a cobalt-blue polo shirt, which he’d forgotten to button, affording Jaynie a glimpse of light-colored chest hair. And how could she forget the worn-to-perfection, snug-to-the-rump jeans? Looking like a classic male sculpture in modern-day clothes, Terrance had oozed confidence and seemed comfortable in his flesh when he’d walked her inside. He looked damn good in it, too, which made her ill at ease. This was not the time to notice such things—what was the point?

She finished the last of her pilaf, lamb kabob and grilled vegetables. Time had flown. They’d never lacked for conversation when dating, and ever since had maintained an easy banter at work. Tonight was no exception, and for the first time in days she felt pleasantly relaxed.

“So tell me about your cat?” she asked, before sipping her water. “I don’t remember him.”

Terrance wiped the corner of his mouth with a paper napkin. “His name is Papa Gino. I found him several months ago, eating from a pizza carton by one of the dumpsters at work. He was the sorriest-looking cat I’d ever seen.”

Jaynie made a sad face. “Aw.”

Terrance screwed up his mouth and gave her a bemused look. “So I stuck him inside my windbreaker, zipped it up and rode him home on my bike.”

“Ouch. Are you serious?”

“Would I lie to you?”

She shook her head. He had a good heart, she knew that much about him, and she could trust him. He wouldn’t lie. And now she had another reason to respect Terrance.

“Other than a few claw marks on my chest, he didn’t seem to mind. So he’s stuck around ever since, and he’s good company.”

She smiled.

Terrance grew serious. “Me having an independent cat is one thing.” He leaned forward. “But how in the heck are you planning to raise a child by yourself?”

Jaynie brushed the tough reality check aside with a quick wave of her hand. “I’ve been on my own most of my life. I know the ropes; I’ll make it work.”

“Oh, I have no doubt that you’ll rise to the challenge. It just seems like such a big responsibility.” He looked into her eyes. “I admire your fearlessness.”

Touched, she glanced away. “I’ll be honest. I’m scared, but resourceful.” She rolled her eyes and gave a courageous grin. “What I can’t find out about parenting in books, I’ll figure out…somehow.”

He nodded his head.

His agreement gave her a false sense of confidence, but the nagging tightness in her breasts alerted her to the need to go home and pump. The last thing she wanted was to be embarrassed in public by leaking through her blouse.

“This was great, but I’d better be getting home.”

“Do you have to go so soon?” Terrance sounded disappointed; it surprised her. “They’ve got astounding baklava here.” He studied her face and must have keyed in to her unspoken need. “I’ll get some take-out so you can eat it later.”

“That’s sweet of you, thanks.” She clasped a clump of unruly hair behind her ear, wishing she’d pulled it back into a ponytail.

“I aim to please,” he said, with a different kind of smile and a twinkle in his hazel eyes.

What was that about? The look took Jaynie by surprise and she had to work to ignore it. “I’m dreading walking into that house alone, but I’m really tired.”

“Well, in that case, you need your rest.” He rose and pulled out her chair so she could stand, then helped Jaynie on with her jacket, lifted her hair from underneath and fiddled with it while fixing her collar.

Jaynie liked the extra attention, but ignored the chill that tickled her neck.

“I’ll just have to go inside with you until you’re comfortable,” he said, walking away.