The Soldier's Baby Bargain (2 page)

“I don’t expect you to be thrilled about it—at least not right off the bat,” she said quietly. “It’s a shock. I know it’s the last thing on earth you thought would happen.”

Her hushed voice seemed to reverberate in the air between them.

“I want you to know I plan on sharing custody with you. I hope we can work together to make things as secure and comfortable for the baby as we can,” she said, breaking the taut silence.

His face looked rigid as he turned and stared out at the great lake. Faith took the opportunity of his averted gaze to drink in her fill of the image of him. He had a great profile—a strong chin, straight, masculine nose; firm, well-shaped lips
. Hard.
That was the impression one got when they looked at Ryan. Tough as steel, honed, fast nerves, a brilliant mind. His body had been hard and honed as well, but also warm, sensitive, delightful for a woman to mold against...touch.

She inhaled sharply, willing her straying brain to come to order. His aftershave tickled her nose, the subtle, spicy, clean male scent triggering a wave of sensual memories. She knew from
that
night that the scent clung especially rich there at his nape at the edge of his hairline.

Her cheeks grew warm.

“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation,” he said after a pause, forcing Faith to focus. “I can’t believe you’re going to have a baby.”

“
We
are,” she said softly. He turned his head and met her stare.

“Are you really happy about it?” he asked.

“I’ll admit that at first I was pretty bowled over. It didn’t take me long to get used to the idea...become excited,” she said quietly, her fingers brushing against her abdomen instinctively. She paused when she noticed Ryan’s stare on her hand. A warm, heavy feeling expanded in her belly and lowered. Her fingers seemed to burn beneath his gaze. How was it that he so effortlessly had this effect on her? She saw his strong throat convulse as he swallowed.

“So...you’re about three months along?” he asked gruffly.

“I just started my second trimester.”

“And the doctor says—”

“The baby is perfectly healthy. I’ve already had an ultrasound,” she said, wonder filtering into her tone. Some of the miracle of that day came back to her unexpectedly. He was the father, after all, the cocreator of that tiny miracle she’d seen on the screen.

His expression looked flat. Faith realized she was witnessing a highly unlikely event firsthand—Major Ryan Itani in a state of shock.

“Ryan, are you all right?”

“Of course,” he said. He blinked as if to clear the haze from his vision. “And you? You’re healthy, as well?” he asked in a voice that struck her as strained.

She smiled reassuringly. “I’m fine. Completely healthy.”

“What...what do you plan to do?” he asked after a moment.

“Do?” she asked bemusedly. “Well, have the baby, of course. Take care of it. Love it.”

“All on your own?”

“I don’t see why not. I have a good job. My practice is doing very well. I’m just as capable as any adult of taking care of a baby.”

“Your parents moved to Florida a year ago,” he said. “You don’t have any other family remaining in the area, do you?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean much. I doubt my parents would have been super excited to get involved anyway. They’re pretty involved with their own life. But I have good friends in town, like Jane.”

“Your office manager?” he asked doubtfully.

She gave him a surprised glance. “Did you meet Jane while I was seeing patients?” she asked, referring to earlier, when he’d waited for her at her office.

He nodded distractedly. “She introduced herself. Besides, you talked about her on Christmas Eve, remember? You’d spent that evening with Jane’s family.”

“Oh, right.”

An awkward silence settled. It struck her how bizarre this situation really was. She’d only met Ryan in person on two other occasions before Christmas Eve—at summer picnics for families of members of the 28th Wing while Jesse and Ryan had both been based in the Bay Area. She’d liked Ryan very much, and knew that Jesse’s admiration for him bordered on worship. Ryan and she were both from Michigan, and Ryan had regularly spent his summers in nearby Harbor Town, so they’d had that in common. She’d enjoyed talking to him. She may have been married at the time, but she wasn’t blind. Ryan was a very attractive man. Still, he’d never been in the forefront of her mind. Aside from those casual social events and constantly hearing his name mentioned by Jesse, Faith had known little else about him.

Christmas Eve had brought knowledge, of course, of the lightening strike of passion variety. But sharing a wild moment of lust with a man hardly qualified as true intimacy.

Now they were going to have a baby together. The strangeness of the whole thing was almost mind-numbing.

“You don’t have enough people around you for support, Faith. I’m sure Jane is a good friend, but it’s not the same as a family. We even talked about that very thing at Christmas.”

Her mouth fell open. He’d been so approachable one second, but now his serious tone sent a prickle of alarm through her. Surely he wasn’t going to start dictating terms to her, was he? “I’ll make do, Ryan. I’ll figure things out.”

“I’m all the way out on the West Coast.”

“Well, I’m not moving.”

He blinked, and she realized how emphatic she’d sounded. “Sorry—I know you weren’t suggesting that, but well...please don’t. Suggest it, I mean.” She met his stare, hoping he’d understand. “I like my life here. I grew up in this area and think it’d be an ideal place to raise a child. I missed it during the years I traveled around with Jesse. Plus, I love my job. I’m proud of the practice I’ve built.”

He studied his hands on the steering wheel. “You
should
be proud of it. You did it all on your own. Starting up this airline charter business, I know how much work that takes. How much dedication.”

“Thank you for saying that,” she said sincerely, some of her former tension draining out of her. “I don’t blame Jesse for his job, or for the fact that it required him to be out of the country for a large chunk of our marriage. It forced me to be independent. I built my practice from nothing into something that’s not only a thriving business, but an emotionally fulfilling one for me.”

He studied her through a narrow-eyed gaze that she couldn’t quite interpret. She avoided his laserlike stare, looking at her hands folded in her lap.

“I probably should get back to work,” she said.

His hands slid along the steering will and he shifted the car into Reverse. He did a neat two-point turn and soon they were once again traversing the gravel drive.

“You mentioned being here on business.” Faith attempted to bring the subject around to less charged topics. “How is your airline company going?”

“Really well. I’ve just been operating with the one plane, with one other pilot besides myself, and an administrative assistant who does booking and some marketing work, but I’m about to expand,” he said as he turned onto the highway.

“Really? That’s wonderful, Ryan,” Faith said enthusiastically. He’d mentioned to her casually while they talked at one of those Air Force picnics that he wanted to start up a charter airline business when he finally retired from the military. She’d been thrilled to hear when he paid her that unexpected Christmas Eve visit that he’d finally begun to live his dream. She was a little surprised at how gratifying it felt to her to know that Ryan was thriving and happy.

He gave her a sideways glance and smiled.

“Yeah. I’ve been flying a woman back and forth from this area to Lake Tahoe and San Francisco quite a bit—she has business to attend to in all those locations. Anyway, because I’ve been flying in and out of Tulip County Airport a lot because of this client, I’ve had my eye on a Cessna a man is selling there. I was going to make an offer on this visit. After I get a second plane, I’ll be able to hire another pilot.”

“That’s great news,” Faith said, even though her brain had gotten stuck on one thing that he’d said. “Tulip Country Airport is so close.”

“Yeah. Only a few minutes from here.”

“So...you’ve been back to this area several times in the past few months?”

He glanced at her, doing a double take when he saw her expression. “Yeah,” he admitted.

Her pulse began to thrum at her throat. “Why did you only come to visit me today?”

He stared straight ahead at the road, but she sensed the tension that leapt into his muscles. “You told me last Christmas you didn’t think we should see each other again.”

“Well, I know,” she said awkwardly. “But you came anyway. I was just wondering—why today?”

His jaw tightened. He didn’t immediately answer her, but focused on pulling into her office parking lot. Faith waited while he whipped the car concisely into a spot and put it into Park.

“I came because I’d hoped you’d had enough time to reconsider what you’d said that night,” he said quietly. “Everything about what you told me today aside,” he said, his gaze flickering down to her belly. “I was never convinced, like you seemed to be, that because of our...lapse, we should never see each other again. I came on that Christmas Eve to offer support to the widow of a good friend. Because it became more than that doesn’t make it wrong.”

Faith swallowed with difficulty, highly affected by the resonant timbre of his deep voice. An uneasy feeling settled in her belly. She shouldn’t automatically assume that Ryan was like Jesse, but the only proof that she had was Jesse’s joking, admiring references to the fact that Ryan could have just about any woman he wanted. He was in his mid to late thirties, and hadn’t seemed to settle down into a monogamous relationship. After their all-too-brief encounter, she’d begun to wonder if he didn’t consider sex in a similar vein to Jesse. Jesse and Ryan were both handsome, dashing pilots—the type of men that made female hearts flutter across the globe.

That was what had been behind her insistence that what had happened between them was a mistake.

That, and his references to their impulsive lovemaking ruining the potential
friendship
he wanted with her.

She hadn’t changed her mind in the past three months. It seemed a lot more difficult to bolster her logic, however, sitting just feet away from Ryan and inhaling his spicy male scent. The last thing Faith needed was to get involved with another faithless man—not that Ryan was interested. Besides, she had the baby to think about now.

“Faith, what are you thinking?” Ryan asked. She realized he must have seen the turmoil on her face.

“I still think it was a mistake what happened between us. Just because a baby is going to come of it doesn’t mean we should continue going down that wrong road. I know that when you showed up at my house on Christmas Eve, you weren’t thinking about being strapped down with a woman and a baby.”

“I’m not thinking of it as being
strapped down,
” he said forcefully. “And just because I wasn’t planning what happened doesn’t automatically make it a mistake.”

“I told you that I’m thrilled about the baby,” she said sincerely. “It’s a blessing to me. I’ve always wanted children. But the baby doesn’t make it right for us to...
reconnect,
does it?”

He touched her jaw, the gesture in combination with his determined stare setting her off balance. His fingers felt warm and slightly calloused against her skin. She blinked in disorientation when he stroked the line of her jaw with his forefinger. “I think what’s right is for us to spend more time together.”

“Because of the baby?” she asked weakly.

His stare bored straight down into the core of her.

“No. Because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since Christmas.”

Chapter Two

F
aith’s pulse began to throb at her throat. She wanted to look away, but was ensnared by Ryan’s eyes.

“Let me take you out to dinner tonight. We need to talk more,” he said.

A battle waged in her breast. Part of her—the part that was getting breathless at the sensation of his skin touching her own—wanted very much to agree. Another part was wary, though. Her attraction for him could get her into a lot of trouble, and that was a potential heartache she’d already had enough of to last for three lifetimes.

Her practical side whispered to her that he only
couldn’t stop thinking
about her since Christmas Eve because he felt guilty.

And yet she couldn’t just ignore him. No matter how confused her feelings, Ryan was the father of her baby. Besides, she thought, breaking contact with his hand, there was a topic she really needed to broach with him.

“All right. As a matter of fact, there’s something I want us to be on the same page about. It’s about Jesse,” she said.

He went still next to her, like a warrior suddenly sensing danger. “Okay,” he replied slowly. “I suppose it’s an inevitable topic, between us. Might as well face it head-on.”

She gave him a puzzled glance.

“I just mean that Jesse’s the common denominator between us.” He hesitated. Faith had the impression he was choosing his words very carefully. “He must be on your mind a lot. That’s understandable, especially now that...” He glanced briefly at her stomach and then out the front window. His jaw tightened.

Her heart went out to him. She knew from some of the things he’d said on Christmas Eve that he’d considered his actions to be the worst sort of treachery toward a friend. It didn’t matter to him that Jesse had been dead for almost a year when they’d gotten together. Anger splintered through her at the thought. Jesse didn’t deserve Ryan’s show of loyalty. Not when Jesse himself had been so faithless.

“The baby has nothing to do with Jesse, Ryan,” she said coolly, reaching for the door handle. “That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

He put his hand on her shoulder, halting her exit. For a few seconds she thought he was going to demand that she tell him what she’d meant.

“I’ll stop by your house tonight. Say six?” he said instead.

She nodded once, willfully ignoring her heart pounding in her ears, and stepped out of the car.

* * *

Ryan watched her through the window as she walked toward her office. Her figure still looked graceful and slender—from the back, anyway. He hadn’t been able to stop himself from noticing as they sat in the car, however, that her breasts appeared fuller than he recalled beneath the fitted, belted jacket she wore. His thoughts strayed to what she’d felt like on that night—petal-soft, exquisitely sensitive skin sliding beneath his fingertips...his lips.

The sound of the office door shutting behind Faith made him blink. His erotic memories scattered. What was he doing, sitting here fantasizing about Faith when he’d just gotten some of the most shocking, amazing news of his life?

His mind went over their conversation. He’d wondered incessantly if Faith knew about Jesse’s womanizing. Something about her tension-filled reference to Jesse just now had sent a warning bell going off in his head. Was Faith planning to tell him that Jesse would forever be the love of her life, that she deeply regretted their volatile, unexpected lovemaking?

Or was she going to tell him that she knew about Jesse’s infidelities?

Damn.

He didn’t know which possible truth pained him more. He dreaded the possibility of hearing that Faith would eternally be loyal to a man who was gone. He despised the idea of how much Faith would have suffered at the knowledge that Jesse had been unfaithful to her.

He took a moment to try to absorb everything that had happened to him in the past few hours. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t do it.

Faith was going to have a baby, and he was the father.

She planned to raise the child here in Michigan, thousands of miles from where he worked and lived.

Being that far away suddenly become a reality he couldn’t bear.

It was bizarre to realize that just last Christmas, his sister Mari had announced she was going to have another baby. Until a few years ago Mari had been Ryan’s only living family. Mari and her husband Marc Kavanaugh had had a daughter, and Ryan had felt blessed to add another name to the family list. Soon, he’d have another family member. It’d been amazing news to receive, even if there had been a hint of sadness mixing with his jubilation. He was thrilled for Mari, of course, but hearing about her pregnancy had made him wonder if he’d ever experience the same joy firsthand. Romance and women had come easily to him. Finding someone with whom he wanted to spend the rest of his life and build a family had proved to be much more elusive.

Strange, to consider in retrospect, that the same night Mari had announced she was going to have another baby, he’d driven the twenty miles from Harbor Town to Faith’s house and done the unthinkable. He’d created his own.

He’d beaten himself up for losing control that night, but Faith had been so lovely, so fresh...so sweet. Had his admiration for her just been the surface of a much deeper attraction, feelings that had to be repressed given her marriage to his good friend?

He suspected that was the case. The only thing he knew for certain, Ryan thought grimly as he turned the ignition, was that there had been an inevitable quality to what they’d done on Christmas Eve. There was no changing it now. He wasn’t sure he would, even if he could.

Instead of pulling out of the parking lot, he dialed a number on his cell phone.

“Deidre? It’s Ryan,” he said when Deidre Kavanaugh Malone, the client he’d flown to southwestern Michigan answered. Deidre was technically more than a client; she was extended family. Her brother Marc was married to Ryan’s sister, Mari. He’d known Deidre since they were kids spending their idyllic summers in Harbor Town. Deidre had recently inherited a large fortune and was currently one of the wealthiest women in the country, but she remained the friendly, brave girl he’d always known.

Several months ago, Deidre and Nick Malone, the CEO of DuBois Enterprises, had set the business and social world ablaze with the news of their marriage. The financial world had assumed that Deidre and Nick, co-owner and leader of the DuBois conglomerate, would be natural adversaries. As an insider and friend to the couple, however, Ryan knew that immense wealth, media speculation and glitz and glamour aside, Deidre and Nick were deeply devoted to one another.

“Hi, what’s up?” she asked.

“If it’s all right with you, I’m going to have Scott fly in commercial to take you back to Lake Tahoe in a few days,” he said, referring to Scott Mason, the other pilot that worked for his company, Eagle Air.

“That’s fine with me,” Deidre replied. “But is everything all right?”

“Yeah. I just got some news that is going to make it necessary to spend more time here in Michigan.”

“Good or bad news?”

Ryan considered the question as he put the car in Reverse.

“Shocking...confusing...but good,” he said. “Definitely good.”

“I can’t wait to hear about it.”

“You will, eventually. It’s not the kind of news that can stay a secret for long,” he said dryly before he said his goodbye.

* * *

At six that evening Faith smoothed the black skirt over her hips and turned to examine herself in profile in the bathroom mirror. She hadn’t gained a single pound so far with her pregnancy, something that her obstetrician insisted was perfectly normal for the end of the first trimester. Nevertheless her body weight seemed to be redistributing. There was a subtle curve to her once-flat belly and her breasts were starting to threaten to burst out of her bras. Faith kept having the strangest sensation that she was transforming...blooming like a flower.

She heard a knock at her front door. Topsy, her new puppy, began to yap loudly from the utility room. Her reflection in the mirror had previously been rosy-cheeked in anxious anticipation at going to dinner with Ryan. At the sound of his knock all of the color drained away.

She left the bathroom and hurried down the hallway to the front door. She couldn’t help but relive racing toward the front door to greet him on Christmas Eve. Tonight’s anxiety was worse, though. Much worse.

She swung open the front door. “Hi,” she greeted upon seeing his tall, broad shouldered shadow on her stoop. “Come on in. I’m sorry about the racket.”

“You got a dog?” Ryan asked, stepping into the foyer. Faith backed up, making room for him.

“Yes. A few weeks ago,” she said, switching on the foyer light. For a split second they both examined each other. Faith blushed. Was he, too, recalling the other time he’d entered her house and they’d stood in this exact spot, inspecting each other with a sort of breathless curiosity? He looked fantastic—male and rugged, wearing a pair of jeans that emphasized his long legs and narrow hips, a white shirt and a worn dark brown leather flight jacket.

“You look great,” he said.

“Thanks. You like nice, too,” Faith murmured, feeling embarrassed. She’d worried she’d overdressed in the black skirt, leather boots and forest-green sweater. They weren’t going on a
date,
after all. Despite that, she hadn’t been able to stop herself from taking extra time with her grooming, even spending the ridiculous amount of time it took to straighten her hair with a flatiron.

She waved toward the interior of the house. “I just have to put Topsy in her crate, and I’ll be ready to go.”

“Topsy?” he asked, and she realized he was following her. She glanced over her shoulder.

“Yes, she was the runt of the litter from one of my oldest patients, a golden retriever named Erica,” Faith explained breathlessly as they walked through the dining room and entered the kitchen. “All of Erica’s purebred puppies went like hotcakes, but we had more trouble finding homes for this litter. Erica had an unexpected love affair with a local playboy—a spaniel-poodle mix. I was able to find homes for all of Topsy’s brothers and sisters, but poor Topsy remained unclaimed.”

“And so you couldn’t resist adopting him...
her?
”

“Yes. Topsy’s a she.”

“You told me on Christmas Eve that you had a
strict
rule about pet adoption.”

Faith paused next to the gaited entryway to the utility room. She blinked when she saw Ryan’s mouth curved in a grin, his gaze warm on her face.

“If I took in every patient who needs a home that comes through my practice I’d be out of a home myself,” she said.

Ryan didn’t speak, just continued to study her with that knowing, sexy smile. Topsy yapped impatiently behind her.

Faith sighed and shrugged sheepishly. Ryan had her number, all right. “Well, I had a moment of weakness when I looked into Topsy’s brown eyes. And like I told you,” she said, her cheeks turning warmer even at the memory of their former meeting here in this house, “I had to take in Cleo—she’s diabetic, and I couldn’t convince anyone to do her injections every day. Smokey doesn’t count, either, because who wouldn’t give a home to a little thing like that?” Faith said, waving at the three-legged, pale gray cat that hobbled fleetly into the kitchen after them.

“There’s no reason to be apologetic because you have a kind heart,” he said quietly. He glanced down to his feet when Smokey brushed against his ankles. He bent and stroked the affectionate feline. Faith had been so offset by his candid compliment that she was glad for the interruption.

“Are you still serving as the president of the Animal Advocates Alliance?” he asked a moment later, standing.

“Oh, yes,” Faith said enthusiastically, glad for a safer topic. Ryan knew about her charity work from Jesse. She’d been extremely touched when he’d made a generous donation to both the Armed Forces Foundation and the Animal Advocates Alliance in Jesse’s name following the chopper crash that had killed him. She unhooked the gate that kept Topsy in the utility room. “The annual fundraiser ball is next week. I put a lot of hard work into it. Well?” she asked, glancing back at him. “Would you like to meet the Queen of Cute?”

“I can’t wait,” he said, walking toward her.

She started to open the gate wide enough for both of them to squeeze into the utility room without releasing the excited puppy, but noticed Ryan stared at her back door.

“What happened here?” he asked, pausing to look at the improvised “lock”—a thick piece of wood nailed to each side of the door. His eyebrows slanted in worry. “Nobody tried to break in, did they?”

“Oh, no. It’s nothing. The old lock came loose, and I haven’t had a chance to hire a locksmith to come and replace it yet.” She shrugged. “It’s not very pretty, but it’ll keep things out. I’ve had a real rush of patients at my office as the weather warms up, and I just haven’t had a chance to get it fixed.”

“I’ll come and put a lock on it tomorrow.”

“Ryan, that’s not necessary,” she said, set off balance by his steadfast offer.

“It’s not a big deal.” Instead of waiting for her to inch back the gate—or to protest his offer—he just stepped over it.

“Hi, Topsy,” he said.

Topsy wiggled in irrepressible excitement. She looked like a caramel-colored powder puff.

“I introduce you to Her Highness, Topsy-Turvy Blackwell.”

“I was hoping she’d be a little bigger,” he said.

“Oh, she’ll still grow quite a bit.”

“Yeah, but she doesn’t look like she’ll ever be much of a watchdog, does she?” he asked dubiously. He noticed her equally confused expression. “It is awfully isolated out here on this road.”

He was obviously worried about the baby, Faith realized. “It’s very safe here in the country, Ryan. I grew up in this house, and we’ve never had any problems. This area has one of the lowest crime rates in the state. It’s quite safe and close to the population I serve, as well. Lots of my patients live on farms hereabouts.”

Ryan didn’t seem entirely convinced, but he refrained from disagreeing with her. Instead he bent his tall frame to pet the vibrating puppy. “How come you named her Topsy-Turvy
Blackwell?
”