by Joanne Rock
Their baby.
The idea still threatened to level him every time he thought about it.
Now he followed Delia and her father outside to the deck overlooking the water. The red cabin on stilts was one of many brightly painted houses the village website touted as “charming,” but Jager knew Delia’s upbringing had been rough. She’d worked hard to help her father make a living, checking nets and making repairs almost daily, manning the fish market when he needed to go back out to sea and cleaning fish for demanding customers.
Still, there was beauty here in the simplicity of a lifestyle rooted in a sense of community. Jager envied that, especially after the McNeill wealth had attracted the kidnappers who’d taken Damon’s wife.
Jager would never forget the naked pain in his brother’s eyes the day she’d gone missing. The day she’d been presumed dead by the police.
Taking a seat beside Delia, Jager ached to touch her. Hold her hand and tell her father in no uncertain terms that he would be taking take care of Delia from now on. But until she agreed to marriage, what right did he have to stake that claim?
Clamping his jaw shut tight, he studied the older man. Even in his seventies, Pascal Rickard possessed a much younger man’s vitality. His half arm didn’t seem to hinder him much, and he used the partial limb efficiently enough, easily swinging an extra chair into place at the rickety patio table so that they could all have a seat. When her father didn’t offer them anything, Delia returned inside, emerging a minute later with a pitcher of ice water and clear blue glasses. Jager stood to help her pour, passing around the drinks, and then they both sat again.
Had she always taken care of her father that way? Jager wondered. The older man sipped his water without comment while Delia spoke.
“Daddy, I’m here today because I need to ask you a few questions about my mother. About how she died.” Leaning forward in her rusted metal seat, Delia clutched her water glass in both hands, the tension in her arms belying the calm tone of her voice. “I know you don’t like to talk about her. But it’s important to me now because I’m pregnant.”
Jager hadn’t expected her to launch right into the heart of the matter. He guessed it must have been nerves that propelled the words from her, because she wasn’t the kind of woman to shock an old man on purpose.
Pascal’s face paled for a moment while he sipped his drink. Then he lowered the glass to the lopsided wooden tabletop.
“That’s why you’re here?” Pascal asked Jager, his hazel eyes the same shade as his daughter’s but without any of the tenderness.
“I have asked Delia to marry me,” Jager pointed out, reaching for her hand on instinct. “I hope that I will convince her to accept before our child is born.”
Long before then, actually. Tomorrow wasn’t soon enough as far as he was concerned.
Pascal grunted. Some of the color returned to his face, but his expression remained stony. Delia, at least, allowed Jager to hold her hand.
“I’m seeing an obstetrician later today,” Delia continued as if Jager hadn’t spoken. “And I need more details about mom’s medical history in case there could be genetic factors at work we should know about.”
The idea punched through Jager again as he turned to watch her. He’d lost his own mother too early, and Delia had never known hers. He guessed the vision of a child growing up without a mother was equally real for both of them. The thought had him twining his fingers through Delia’s slender ones, gripping her tighter.
Pascal thrust his lower lip forward in an expression of disapproval before he turned to address Jager again. “Delia doesn’t want to get married. Didn’t she tell you? She could have been settled by now, but she didn’t want to share her inheritance with developers.”
Defensiveness rose in him, all the more when he heard Delia’s soft gasp of surprise.
“Her fiancé had no plans of ‘sharing’ it,” Jager reminded him. “Something he failed to mention to your daughter. She had to discover on her own.” He pressed on, remembering how hurt Delia had been the day she’d wrecked that Jet Ski on the beach. “Didn’t it occur to you she’d want to know Brandon’s reason for marrying her?”
The old man shrugged, settling his empty water glass on the peeling, planked floor. “She seemed happy enough to put this life behind her when she was dating her big spender.”
“That’s not fair.” Delia shot out of her chair, stalking to the half wall surrounding the deck. “I thought Brandon cared about me.”
“And I thought you cared about making a better life for yourself,” her father retorted, tipping back in the wooden dining chair he’d dragged outside from the kitchen. “Brandon offered you more than a life as his mistress.”
Anger flared hot. Jager deliberately remained seated, facing her father head-on before he replied, “I am prepared to give Delia my home, my name and my life. I thought I made that clear. Right now, I would appreciate your help in protecting her health, so I’d like to know if this pregnancy poses a serious risk for her.”
“And if it does?” Pascal set the feet of his chair back on the floor with a thud. “What then? Are you still prepared to give my daughter your life and your name if she can’t carry your child to term? Or are you only willing to marry her for a McNeill heir?”
“Daddy, please.” Delia stepped closer, not quite between them, but definitely in an effort to placate her father. She touched his knee and dropped down to sit on an overturned milk crate beside him. “I will decide my future, but I need to know what I’m facing. If you don’t know about my mother’s medical history, maybe you could tell me the name of her doctor—”
Pascal cut her off with a quick shake of his head. “Celine didn’t have anything genetic.” The words sounded raw in his throat, far different from the taunting tone he’d taken with Jager a minute ago. “She never even told me until that night on the boat when you were born, but Celine had a cesarean as a young woman when she gave birth to a stillborn child. She’d been frightened of something going wrong again. Worried she’d disappoint me.” He swallowed hard and looked out to sea, unable to continue for a moment. “By the time I knew about it, it was too late. We’d only been married for two years.”
The anger Jager had been feeling toward him seeped away then, his own fears for Delia making it too easy to identify with him.
“Afterward,” her father continued, “when I got back to shore with you, the doctors said a cesarean can cause a uterine rupture later in life. It’s rare, but it happens. Your mother had no idea of the risk, I’m certain of that, because she wanted you. Desperately.”
Jager waited for Delia to ask him more, but she’d gone quiet. She studied her father, who remained silent.
Leaving Jager no choice but to step in again.
“Why was Celine’s first child stillborn?” he asked, wanting to give Delia’s doctor a complete picture of any relevant medical history.
Delia spun away from them on the milk crate, grabbing her bag and riffling through the purse before coming up with a tissue.
Had he said something wrong?
Pascal shook his head. “I couldn’t tell you. Celine never told me anything about that time in her life until the night she died.”
Damn it. Jager kept digging. “Was she from this village? Maybe we can speak to her doctor.”
Pascal folded his good arm over the injured limb, his mouth set in a thin line. Delia seemed to read this as a rejection of the question or refusal to reply, because she stepped closer again, slipping her hand around Jager’s elbow.
“I can find out about those things,” she assured him quietly. Her eyes were bright but there were no tears. “We should go.”
Jager wanted to argue, to find out what else they could glean from her father. But seeing the hurt in Delia’s eyes—a hurt he didn’t fully understand—he followed her outside
after a terse goodbye to Pascal. He didn’t want to gainsay her in front of her father, a stunt that definitely wouldn’t help his efforts to win her hand. He would simply call in every resource to learn more about Celine’s medical condition. For now, they had enough information for Delia’s obstetrician appointment.
It was good news that the uterine condition wasn’t genetic. Yet there was still the worry of why her mother had a stillborn child when she’d been a younger woman. Jager’s gut knotted as he opened the passenger door of the convertible for Delia.
No doubt she was upset about that news too, because she retreated to her side of the vehicle and didn’t have a single word to say on the ride to her doctor’s appointment.
Seven
Stepping out of the exam room an hour later, Delia smoothed a hand through her hair, still windswept from the car ride with the top down. While she was in the cold, antiseptic-scented room with the nurse and her new doctor, Delia had been very aware of Jager’s presence in the waiting area outside. The nurse had said she would bring him back to the doctor’s private office so they could both speak with the obstetrician at the same time.
After their meeting with her father, Delia had had a fair idea of how that encounter would go. Jager would ask the questions and push for answers.
With the doctor, she wouldn’t mind so much. But with her father...
She paused a few steps from the doctor’s office, closed her eyes and pulled in a deep breath. Remembering how close she’d been to hearing her father confess something—love for her? That she’d been loved by her mother?—pinched her emotions hard. Today had been the closest her father had ever come to showing some paternal warmth for her when he’d said that her mother had wanted her desperately.
How long had she yearned for scraps of his affection, even if that fondness was only a pale reflection of the love her mother might have given her? But the moment when he might have said more had evaporated forever when Jager interrupted, pushing the conversation in a more pragmatic direction.
He didn’t know, of course, how much those few words from her father had meant. How much she craved even a few. So she couldn’t blame him for stamping out any possibility that the stoic Pascal would share some tender memory from his past.
And yet, she did.
She’d wanted to see her father alone, but Jager had insisted on being a part of her pregnancy. She needed to start building boundaries with him fast before she lost her sense of self to the strong will of this McNeill male. The past two years had been full of hard work to prove to herself she was smart, independent and capable. Being pregnant couldn’t take that away from her.
“Ms. Rickard?” The voice of the doctor, a young woman fresh from her residency in Miami, startled Delia.
She opened her eyes and faced Dr. Ruiz. Tall and willowy, the physician wore a light-up reindeer pin on the lapel of her white lab coat over a red tartan dress.
“Yes.” Straightening, Delia told herself to get it together. “Sorry. I’m just...excited. About the baby news.” She babbled awkwardly, embarrassed to be caught doing relaxation breathing in the middle of the hallway. “It’s a lot to process.”
“Come on in the office,” the doctor urged, opening the door to the consultation room. “I’ll do what I can to help you both.”
Dr. Ruiz introduced herself to Jager and they settled into chairs around the obstetrician’s desk as she talked through the preliminaries. Yes, they’d confirmed her pregnancy. Delia was given a piece of paper with her summer due date written on it in black marker.
Her hand crept to her flat belly while she tried to take it all in. Once more, Jager took the lead with questions, sharing his concerns about her mother’s health history and the stillbirth. But when he launched into more questions about the uterine rupture too, Delia interrupted.
“My father made it clear that wasn’t a genetic condition,” she reminded him before turning to Dr. Ruiz. A filing cabinet behind the obstetrician had a magnet that said Keep Calm and Get Your Pap On caught Delia’s eye.
Jager reached over and rested a hand on the back of her chair, so that he was barely touching her. “But your father’s not a physician. Perhaps Dr. Ruiz will view the information differently.”
Delia felt the sting of defensiveness despite the inevitable rush of heat from Jager’s touch. Did he think she was incapable of relating her own medical history? “My mother had a cesarean. I’ve never had one. I’ve never even been pregnant.”
Dr. Ruiz gave a brisk nod and glanced down at her notes. “I think we’d all rest easier with some more information about your mother’s medical history.” Her red-polished fingernail trailed down over the chart. “She’s from Martinique?”
“Yes. She moved to Le Vauclin after she married my father, but she was raised in Sainte-Anne.” Delia knew so little about her mother or her mother’s family. According to Pascal, Celine’s parents had died in a car crash when she was in high school.
The doctor scribbled a note on a Post-it while her reindeer pin blinked on and off. “I may be able to requisition some more information.”
Jager squeezed Delia’s hand. “Thank you.”
She should be relieved. They did need more information about her mother’s health history. Perhaps fear for her baby was making Delia unreasonably prickly when it came to Jager taking command of the conversation with both the physician and her father. He had every bit as much reason to be concerned about this baby’s health as she did. Still, something about the way the events had unfolded today made her feel like an afterthought.
He would never cherish her the way he cherished his child, of course. It rattled her to think that; in some small corner of her heart, she nursed a hope that she could be more than just a surrogate for a McNeill baby in Jager’s eyes.
He took her hand in his. A show of tenderness for the doctor’s sake? Or did the paternal feeling he fostered for his child come through in the way he touched her?
His blue gaze found hers for a moment before flicking back to the physician. “We will be looking for the most advanced care for a possible high-risk pregnancy. Can you recommend the best doctors or hospitals for this?”
Frowning, Delia slid her hand out from under his. “High risk?” Her heart rate sped up. Since when did she need the most advanced care? “We don’t have any reason to believe I’m high risk.”
“Not yet,” Jager conceded with a nod. “But until we know the rest of your mother’s history, it would be wise to have a plan in place.”
The doctor paused in her note taking. “We’ve handled many high-risk pregnancies here. However, the most respected maternal fetal medicine facilities will be in the States. If you’d like a list—”
“We don’t need a list,” Delia informed Jager.
At the same moment, he nodded. “Thank you.”
After a few more tense minutes in the consultation room, they departed. Delia stalked out ahead of him, clutching her file of papers about pregnancy with the due date and a prescription for prenatal vitamins.
She’d left Jager to take the paper containing names of maternal fetal specialists he’d requested.
“Delia.” His voice was close behind her as she hurried through the parking lot with its lampposts connected by green garland swags dotted with red berries. “Please wait.”
Her toes pinched in her high-heeled sandals. She wanted to be home with her feet up, surrounded by the fairy-tale paintings on her living room walls, a cup of tea in her hand. How had her life spun so far out of control so fast? She slowed her pace.
When he reached her side, he turned her to face him, his gaze sweeping over her in a way that shouldn’t have incited a physical reaction and damned well did anyhow. It was like that one fateful encounter with him had stripped away all her defenses where he was concerned. Now she felt naked every time they were together.
“You’re angry with me,” he observed while a French Christmas carol hummed through a speaker system connected to the lampposts.
The chorus of “Un Flambeau, Jeannette, Isabelle” celebrated the beauty of a newborn child while he lay sleeping in a cradle. Something about the image resonated deeply. The lyrics were so familiar Delia could visualize the villagers admiring the new baby. Soon she would have a child of her own. More than anything she wanted to be a good mother. To stand beside the cradle of her newborn and protect that fragile life with a fierceness no one had ever showed to defend her.
“I’m frustrated that you commandeered our important conversation today.” She wondered what Christmas would be like this year.
“Commandeered?” His brows swooped down. “I participated. The same way you did.”
“I realize you are used to taking the lead,” she continued, feeling more sure of herself as she spoke. If she was going to be an equal partner in parenting, she needed to lay the groundwork for it now. “But we’ll need to find a way to rework our relationship so that you’re not still trying to be my boss.”
“I’m trying to protect you,” he clarified. “And our child. That’s different.”
“And you were so focused on your own agenda that mine fell by the wayside.” She straightened the strap on her sundress and felt his gaze track the movement.
She didn’t like this confusing intersection point between attraction and frustration.
“I thought we shared the same agenda.” Jager covered her bare shoulder with one hand, his fingers stroking a gentle touch along the back of her arm. “To find out answers that could help us protect your health, and the health of our child.”
Unwelcome heat stirred from just that simple touch. The classic Christmas carol gave way to a holiday love song.
“I’ve waited my whole life to have a meaningful conversation with my father about the night I was born.” In the past, she’d always backed away from the talk that he didn’t want to have. “There were more answers I wanted from him.”