The Once and Future Father Read online

  Dylan’s mind went blank as he stared at her. At the one woman who had managed to somehow get past his defenses.

  She was pregnant.

  Not huge, the way Hathaway’s wife had been just before she’d given birth to their twins, but Lucy was pregnant, carrying a life inside of her, there was no missing that.

  She’d said she’d love him, no matter what.

  This, he guessed, was “what.”

  A wild, hot jealousy rippled through Dylan, born years before he had been, a seed his father had passed down to him and his father before him. For one horrid second, it felt as if that jealousy, that seed, had taken him over, changing the very world that was around him, sending it into tints of red and closing off his air.

  Dylan struggled to banish the feeling the way he’d banished his father from his life.

  This wasn’t why he was here. Lucy’s life was her own. He’d given it back to her when he’d withdrawn from it, leaving her alone.

  Whose baby was it?

  The question throbbed through his brain like a bad migraine.

  “Did you hear me?” Lucy demanded, her voice rising. “I said Ritchie’s not home. He’s working. I’ll tell him you stopped by.”

  Because it hurt just to look at Dylan, she began to close the door. But his hand went out, stopping her. She hadn’t the strength to oppose it.

  “What?” she demanded, trying to hang on to her temper, on to the angry tears that had suddenly sprung up inside of her, demanding a release. Why was he back now, after all this time? She was just getting her life back in order. She didn’t need this. And why was he looking at her like that?

  “This is about Ritchie,” Dylan said.

  She turned pale right before his eyes, holding the door now not so much to block him as for support, to keep from sinking down like a balloon that had suddenly lost all its air. His hand went out to steady her, but she ignored it, stiffening with her last available ounce of dignity. The message was clear. She didn’t need him to touch her.

  Lucy felt herself getting light-headed. “What about Ritchie?” she asked, holding on to the door for support.

  “Lucy, let’s go inside.”

  She didn’t budge. She didn’t have the strength to budge. Ritchie was her older brother, but she had always felt responsible for him. Especially after their parents had died in a train derailment the summer she turned eighteen. Ritchie was the one who could laugh, who could see the bright side of everything even when the chips were down. She was the strength that helped them go on.

  She didn’t feel very strong now.

  Summoning what reserves she had left, Lucy glared at Dylan. Why was he playing these games with her? Why did he have to be the one to come and tell her whatever it was he had to say?

  She clenched her teeth together and repeated. “What about Ritchie?”

  Dylan didn’t want to tell her this way. Not on the steps of the house where he had once held her in his arms, breathing in her scent and contemplating things he had no right to contemplate. But Lucy was making no move to let him in, standing instead like some steadfast soldier guarding the borders of her small country, refusing him access.

  He tried not to think of a time when things had been different.

  Dylan looked at her face. She was fiercely trying to protect herself against what she probably knew was coming. He had no idea how to couch this, how to make something that was so utterly devastating a little less so.

  Without a choice, Dylan gave her the news straight and braced himself for the consequences.

  “Ritchie’s dead, Lucy.”

  Lucy’s breath caught. She looked into Dylan’s eyes and knew he was telling her the truth. She knew even when she wanted to scream at him that he was lying, that he was playing some sort of horrible trick on her, the way he had when he made her believe he loved her. He had never said the words, but there had been feelings between them then, feelings she would have gone to her grave swearing were true.

  Except that they weren’t. At least, not for him.

  But now it was Ritchie who was going to his grave.

  Everything around her began to merge into one color, one huge mass. And then the world began to swim and swirl.

  “No,” she mouthed just before everything went black and swallowed her up.

  Dylan realized a heartbeat before it happened that she was going to faint. The golden hue of her skin had gone whiter than the snow on the mountain where they had once gone skiing. It was almost translucent.

  Dylan reached her side just in time.

  The swell that was her unborn child came between them. He felt something move, something kick just as he tried to gather her in his arms. The kick caught him by surprise and he almost dropped her to the floor. The sudden jolt when he caught her seemed to travel through the length of her. Dylan swallowed a curse.

  He felt the baby kick again. Amid his concern, jealousy threatened to take control of him.

  She’d gone on to love someone else while he had suffered in his own private hell.

  A hell, a voice deep inside him whispered, of his own making, not hers.

  But it had been the only choice.

  He wouldn’t allow himself to feel anything now. It wasn’t any more right now than it had been then.

  As gently as possible, Dylan picked her up in his arms. Shouldering his way into the living room, he placed Lucy down on the sofa. Probably the bedroom would have been a better choice, but he couldn’t bring himself to go there.

  Unbuttoning the three tiny buttons at her throat, he tried to remember what a man did in a case like this. And tried not to think about the last time he’d undressed her.

  He realized that his hand was shaking slightly.

  Dammit, whatever might have been between them was over now. She was carrying somebody else’s baby. He glanced at her left hand. There was no ring on her third finger, but that meant nothing. She could have taken the ring off because her hand had gotten swollen.

  He should have left this to Hathaway and Alexander. At least if he had, he wouldn’t have found out that Lucy was pregnant.

  Cursing himself for coming and Ritchie for being stupid enough to get himself killed in the first place, Dylan hurried into the kitchen to look for something to use as a compress. He found a single kitchen towel neatly folded on a rack. He’d once marveled how she managed to keep everything so neat, given Ritchie’s penchant for creating havoc wherever he went. Grabbing the kitchen towel from the rack, he held it under running water.

  Wringing the towel out, he looked around the kitchen. A sense of nostalgia permeated. As with the living room, nothing had changed in here.

  Only she had.

  Not his concern, he told himself tersely.

  The wet towel fell from his fingers when he heard the scream. Racing back, he found her trying to sit up. There was pain etched into the planes of her face. Lucy was digging her nails into the upper portion of the sofa, whether to try to drag herself up or to try to get away from pain, he didn’t know.

  “What’s the matter?” The question came out far more sharply than he’d intended.

  “The baby.” Trying to catch her breath, Lucy pressed the flat of her hand against her stomach. Her eyes were huge when she raised them to his face. “Dylan, the baby’s coming.”

  Chapter 2

  Her words cut through Dylan like a sharp razor. An edgy sense of panic hovered over him. “Are you sure? You just fainted, maybe—”

  “There’s no ‘maybe’ about it—the baby is coming.” Her eyes widened as another thrust of pain, on the heels of the last, began burrowing to the surface. “Now.”

  “Hang on,” he cautioned. Dylan could feel his own heart rate accelerating. Pulling out his cell phone, he dialed the precinct’s dispatch. “This is Detective McMorrow. I need an ambulance ASAP.” He gave the woman on the other end Lucy’s address, then flipped the phone shut. “They’ll be here in ten minutes.”

  Lucy’s breaths came in snatches, like
someone, already exhausted, climbing up the side of a steep mountain. The thick black hair that had been so seductively sensuous to touch was plastered against her face. Dylan could see that she was fighting pain with every fiber of her being.

  There was no use trying to distance himself from the scene. It got to him. Dylan couldn’t stand seeing her like this.

  Her eyes rose to his for a single moment before she shut them again. “I don’t think that’s going to be fast enough.”

  All the labor horror stories that Dylan vaguely recalled hearing came back to him now. Wasn’t the process supposed to go on for interminable hours? “You’re kidding, right?”

  Unable to answer, Lucy moved her head from side to side, her teeth sinking into her lower lip so hard he was afraid she was going to bite straight through it. Momentarily at a loss, Dylan took her hand and felt his fingers immediately caught up in a viselike grip. The strength of it took him by surprise.

  “No,” she said, finally managing to breathe, “I’m not. I can feel the pressure…it’s like…I’m being…pulled apart…like a giant…wishbone.” Lucy shrieked the last part of the word as a salvo of pain thundered through her. Her eyes were wide as she looked at him.

  He saw the fear and forgot his own. He forced himself to stop thinking of her as Lucy and start thinking of her as a woman who needed his help. After all, he was a cop and that was what he did, he helped people in need. He couldn’t let it get any more complicated than that.

  But it was, a voice whispered inside of him. No matter how hard he tried to block out the truth, this was still Lucy. And he was going to have to help her give birth to another man’s child.

  The realization hit hard into his soul.

  With fingers that were in danger of going numb, he managed to squeeze her hand, reassuring her the only way he knew how. Silently.

  “Okay, Lucy, if he’s going to come now, let’s get this going.”

  Dylan thought a minute, trying to remember a class he’d been forced to take in his earlier days as a policeman. The particulars he needed now were obscure. All he could recall was thinking that he hoped he’d never have to face the situation himself. And now here he was.

  Yes, here he was, and at the moment, he was all that Lucy had to cling to. It was probably his fault that she’d gone into labor in the first place. Maybe if he’d had a better way of telling her…

  Water under the bridge, Dylan admonished himself. Speculation wasn’t going to change what was happening now. And that was what he had to deal with.

  “I don’t think…I…have a choice.” Without consciously meaning to, she dug her fingernails into his flesh as he tried to disengage his hand from hers. Another contraction had seized her, holding her prisoner. Torturing her.

  Freeing himself as gently as he could, he turned her face so that she was forced to look at him. He willed his strength into her.

  “Breathe, Lucy, breathe. Small, shallow breaths. Concentrate on breathing.”

  “I can’t.”

  His voice was stern. “Yes, you can.”

  It wasn’t encouragement as much as an order. That was what she needed right now, someone strong to help her find her way. He stowed away any stray feelings that might have still been lingering and galvanized his resolve.

  Mechanically, Dylan lifted the hem of her dress and pushed it up to her waist, then as quickly as possible, he removed her underwear. He saw her body stiffen, not from his touch, but because the next contraction had begun on the perimeter of the one that was only now releasing her. She writhed in agony, holding her breath, as if that could somehow make it go away.

  “Breathe, dammit!” he ordered. Catching her chin in his hands, he forced her to look at him again. “Like this.” His eyes holding hers, he took in a long breath and released it in short pants. “Okay?”

  Anger, anchorless and sharp, raged through her. At him, at Ritchie, at the pain. But there was no outlet and she was not master of her soul right now. The pain saw to that.

  Lucy did as she was told, holding on to Dylan’s order as if it were a lifeline, a single thing to focus that would lead her out of this ring of fire she found herself in. She had a life inside of her. A life that was struggling to be brought into this world, and she owed it to her child to help in any way she could.

  And Dylan would help both of them. For this one thing, she could count on him.

  Closing her eyes, listening to the sound of Dylan’s voice echoing in her head, she began to push.

  She’d stopped breathing. His eyes darted back up to her face. It was contorted. Dylan realized that she was pushing. Damn it, where the hell were the paramedics? Why weren’t they here yet?

  “Okay, you’re doing fine, just fine,” Dylan said. “I can see it, Lucy. I can see the top of the baby’s head.”

  Dylan’s voice and the words he said barely registered inside the haze of pain surrounding her. And then they seemed to take on a breadth, a thickness of their own. The baby. Her baby. It was almost here. Hunching her shoulders forward, she fought off the waves of exhaustion that had come from the dark to encircle her and forced herself to push again. Harder this time. Longer. Until finally, too drained to continue, she fell back against the sofa cushion, gasping for air.

  “Don’t stop now,” he ordered.

  “Dylan, I’m so tired….”

  “He can’t do it alone, and he wants to be here now.” Dylan moved behind Lucy, gathering together the decorative pillows she’d scattered around and shoving them under her shoulders to help prop her up. “Finally know what it means to want to be in two places at once,” she heard him mutter under his breath. She opened her eyes to look at him and saw him smiling encouragingly at her. Then he slid back to take up the position where he’d been.

  “Okay, on the count of three, I want you to push again. Ready?”

  “No.” The response was more of a sob than a word.

  He raised his eyes to hers and the short, abrupt order on his lips softened in the face of the pain he saw. Damn, but she could still get to him like nothing and no one else ever had.

  “Yes,” he told her softly, “you are. Okay now, one, two, three. Push!” He felt every fiber of his own body tightening in concentration as he gave her the order.

  Lucy pushed. Pushed so hard she felt as if she had ejected every fiber of her body, turning it completely inside out. Pushed so hard she thought she was going to faint again as a border of blackness began leeching into the feverish red haze that was engulfing her.

  The final push came with a whining scream.

  Falling back, she barely had enough strength left to gulp in air. Lucy heard a small, piercing cry. Was that coming from her? Or somewhere else?

  But her own lips were closed now and the tiny, reedy wail persisted. Her lashes felt damp as she forced her eyes open. She could barely focus on Dylan. He was holding something in his arms.

  Her baby.

  She tried to wet her dry lips with the tip of her tongue, barely able to move it. “Is he…is he…all right?”

  When Dylan didn’t answer, a sliver of panic wedged itself in her breast, going straight for her heart like a sharp dagger. With her last ounce of strength, she raised herself up on her elbows.

  “Dylan?”

  He couldn’t ever remember feeling like this before. Awed, overwhelmed with something very odd squeezing at his heart. And all because of the tiny life he held in his hands.

  As if it had been stored on a delayed relay system, Lucy’s tone played itself back to him. He raised his eyes to hers. A hint of a smile tugged on his lips, as if afraid to intrude on a moment this sacred.

  “He’s a she.” His mouth curved a little more. “Your son is a daughter—and she’s more than all right. She’s beautiful.”

  Deprived of the warm shelter that had been hers only moments earlier, the infant began to squirm and cry. The thick thatch of black hair on her head was matted and plastered to her, and when she opened her eyes, they were the most incredible shade of
blue Dylan had ever seen. He raised his eyes to look at Lucy.

  “Are you able to hold her?”

  “Try and stop me,” Lucy said. Her heart was still racing, fueled by what she’d just been through and the exhilaration she felt now, seeing her daughter in Dylan’s arms. Weak, she still managed to hold out her own arms to him.

  Very gently, Dylan placed the tiny being against Lucy’s breast. The same bittersweet feeling flittered over him. He didn’t know what to make of it, what to call it, or how to store it. So he did the only thing he could, he locked it away in its entirety.

  “She’s messy,” he murmured.

  Exhausted as she was, Lucy could feel her heart constricting. She’d never known she could feel this much love at one time.

  “She’ll clean up,” Lucy whispered. In awe of the tiny being she held, Lucy lightly passed her hand over the dark little head.

  Watching, Dylan roused himself. It wasn’t over yet. He still needed to cut the umbilical cord. He hurried to the kitchen for a knife and was halfway back before he stopped. The knife needed to be sterilized.

  But when he turned toward the stove, intending to hold the blade over one of the burner flames, he saw only electrical coils. There were no gas jets.

  Damn. His hands bloodied, Dylan automatically felt in his pants pocket before he remembered. He didn’t smoke anymore. He no longer had a reason to carry matches.

  Frustrated, he looked around the kitchen. He didn’t have time to go rifling through drawers and cabinets. “You have any matches?” he shouted.

  “No, why?”

  “Because I need to—”

  Walking back into the living room, he stopped short when he saw a whiskey decanter on the small wet bar. He recognized it. He’d given Ritchie the decanter just before he’d left for good. It’d been to celebrate something, but he no longer remembered the occasion. The decanter was still half-full. Dylan snatched it up.

  “Never mind, this’ll do.” He removed the top and poured some of the contents of the decanter over the blade, covering it liberally. Except for the baby breathing, there was no other sound in the room. He could feel Lucy’s eyes on him, watching. “I have to cut the cord.”