Inheriting His Secret Christmas Baby

by Heidi Betts

  “Now,” the physician said, resting his hands on his knees. “There are two types of paternity tests. Both have long, hard-to-pronounce medical names that I’m sure you don’t care about, but suffice to say that one, PCR, involves swabbing the inside of the cheek, the other, RFLP, drawing blood.”

  “Which is more accurate?” Trevor wanted to know.

  “RFLP, the blood sample. We can do both, if you like. Each test is fairly accurate, but with both there would be very little doubt as to the child’s paternity.”

  Cocking his head, Trevor turned to look at Haylie. She stared up at him, her eyes and face telling him nothing of her inner thoughts.

  “Would you mind if we did both?” he asked. “To be certain.”

  She was silent for several seconds, then lifted one slim shoulder in a shrug. “It’s all right with me, but the blood test is definitely going to wake Bradley, and he is definitely going to shatter some eardrums.”

  “We’ll start with the buccal swab,” the doctor told her, “and I’ll be as gentle as possible.”

  Twenty minutes later, Bradley was once again sound asleep, this time in the backseat of Trevor’s Hummer as they headed back to Jarrod Ridge. The needle prick had woken him, just as Haylie warned it would, and he’d shrieked at the top of his lungs for a good three minutes. But after that, he’d wound down to a few ragged whimpers before drifting off again against Haylie’s shoulder.

  Breaking the silence inside the car, Trevor murmured, “The doctor said the test results could take a couple of weeks, depending on how backed up the lab is.”

  She nodded, twisting in her seat to look at him rather than out the window. “I think he’s right about not putting a rush on it. You want to keep this quiet until you know for sure whether Bradley is your son, and that would only rouse suspicions.”

  “I believe Dr. Lazlo will be as discreet as possible,” he agreed, “but things have a way of getting out, anyway, especially if employees get curious and start poking around.”

  “I don’t mind waiting, if you don’t. And I promise to be just as circumspect as the doctor. No one back home knows anything about you. I don’t think they’re even particularly curious about who Bradley’s father might be.” Her mouth turned down at the corners, eyes narrowing. “Heather had that kind of reputation. No one was surprised when she turned up pregnant without a man hanging around to claim the baby.”

  To Trevor, she sounded slightly embarrassed by that fact, as well as disapproving, but also…defensive. As though she hadn’t agreed with her sister’s behavior, wouldn’t have chosen that sort of lifestyle for either of them, but would stick up for Heather no matter what. Even now that she was gone.

  He couldn’t fault her for that. As it turned out, he had one sister more than he’d known about while growing up, but that didn’t keep him from feeling protective of both his full sister, Melissa, and his recently discovered half sister, Erica.

  For that matter, he felt protective of his entire family. The Jarrods were sort of like the Three Musketeers—all for one and one for all.

  None of them were perfect, but despite their mistakes and the occasional flaw in their personalities, he would still defend any one of them to the death. That Haylie felt the same way about her sister—and her sister’s child—didn’t surprise him.

  “That’s something else we need to talk about, actually.”

  “What?” she asked, her brows drawing down in confusion.

  “Where you’ll be staying until the test results are in.”

  “Oh. That’s no problem. As soon as we get back to your office, I’ll give you my address and phone number, all the ways to reach me. You’re welcome to visit Bradley anytime, if you like. Although, if you’d rather not until you know for sure…I’ll understand,” she finished quietly.

  Understand, but not necessarily approve, he thought with some amusement.

  Not that it mattered.

  “That’s not what I meant,” he told her.

  “I’m sorry. What did you mean then?”

  “I’ve been giving it some thought, and until we know for sure whether or not Bradley is my son, I’d like the two of you to move in with me.”

  Four

  For long minutes, Haylie was too stunned to respond. She sat there in the passenger seat of Trevor’s SUV with her mouth hanging open. Catching flies, as her mother used to say. But she couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d announced he wanted to give up his family’s millions and go to work as a fry cook at a fast-food restaurant.

  Shifting around to face him more fully, she wiggled inside of her overstuffed parka, loosening the zipper in an effort to cool down and breathe a bit more easily. The heating vents were blowing, but she didn’t think they were the reason she was suddenly feeling flushed.

  No, that would be confusion mixed with a fair dose of alarm.

  After swallowing a couple of times and barely resisting the urge to squiggle her ears to make sure she hadn’t misheard him, she managed to utter two rather strangled words. “Excuse me?”

  Without taking his eyes off the road, he said, “I think it’s best for everyone involved.”

  She really wanted to slap her ears and make sure she was hearing him correctly, because nothing he was saying seemed to make sense. Swallowing again, she cleared her throat and asked, “How so?”

  He shrugged one broad shoulder, made even broader by the thickness of his coat. “If Bradley is mine, then I’ve got some lost time to make up for. I’d prefer to keep him close by, start getting to know him…and get used to being a father.”

  His voice tightened with his last few words, as though the thought that he might truly be the father of a little boy he’d known nothing about until a couple of hours ago was something he’d prefer not to think about.

  Too bad said little boy was sleeping in the backseat at that very moment. And while Haylie certainly didn’t have the kind of money to gamble with that Trevor Jarrod had, she’d have been willing to bet the DNA tests would come out with a glaring “Congratulations, Daddy!” message stamped all over them.

  “I can understand that,” she agreed, “but it won’t take that long for the paternity results to come in. And Bradley is already four months old—surely another couple of weeks won’t make that much difference. Besides, I have a life back in Denver. A business to run. I can’t just pick up and disappear.”

  “Then leave the boy with me. You’ve had four months with him, I’ve had barely a day. And I have plenty of room, as well as the money to hire a round-the-clock nanny.”

  Haylie’s eyes went wide. She’d never considered herself a violent person, but right that second she was extremely tempted to reach out and slap the man sitting beside her. There were so many things wrong with what he’d just said, she didn’t know where to begin.

  The boy? A nanny?

  Leave Bradley with Trevor?

  “Absolutely not.”

  This time, it was her voice that came out strained, but not due to nerves. Oh, no, hers was all temper. She was skating past mere anger, headed deep into furious territory.

  “I may not be Bradley’s biological mother, but I’m the only mother he’s known for the past two months—and quite a bit before that, if the truth be known. There is no way I would leave him anywhere, with anyone.”

  The waterproof material of her jacket made a slick scratching sound as she crossed her arms. “I don’t care if you are his father,” she muttered with no small amount of aversion to the word.

  What was that saying about no good deed going unpunished? Boy, was she being smacked in the face with its meaning now.

  All she’d wanted was to do the right thing. To let a man know he’d fathered a child with a woman who never would have told him on her own, and whom he never would have run into again otherwise.

  She’d wanted to do the right thing by Bradley. He was a Jarrod, after all. And even though she didn’t need the family’s millions, didn’t believe a child needed that kind of mo
ney to grow up happy and healthy and well-loved, he still deserved to know where he came from, who his ancestors were.

  But no good deed… And here she was, only a handful of hours past her “good deed,” and it was already biting her in the butt.

  For several seconds, Trevor didn’t reply. Then his low voice carried over the short distance separating them, his words stopping her heart and freezing her blood.

  “I could take him from you, you know.”

  Okay, so that hadn’t been Argument Number One in Trevor’s big plan to convince Haylie to move in with him for the next couple of weeks. But something about the way she’d gotten up on her hind legs about not leaving Bradley with him put him on the defensive.

  On the one hand, he liked how protective she was of the infant. If the kid really did turn out to be his, he suspected he was going to have a lot of moments of feeling very grateful toward her for caring for his son the way she had.

  Sure, Bradley was her nephew, so he knew there had to be a strong bond there. But from the sounds of it, Bradley’s mother—this now-deceased Heather he had no recollection of ever meeting—had been a bit of a troublemaker. Or rather, gotten into her fair share of trouble.

  It would have been easy, even understandable, for Haylie to cut her sister off and say no more. No more cleaning up her messes, no more coming to her rescue.

  But Haylie hadn’t done that, had she? No, she had not only stuck by her sister through all of her screwups, but had taken over the role of mother to her infant son after Heather’s unexpected death.

  For that, Haylie deserved a whole row of gold stars. And if he turned out to be Bradley’s father, she would also have Trevor’s undying gratitude.

  “I’ll fight you for him,” she said through gritted teeth, breaking into his thoughts.

  She sounded completely outraged, on the verge of doing him bodily damage, and his opinion of her ratcheted up another dozen notches.

  Of course, she wouldn’t have a chance in hell. She could fight him from now until doomsday, but if he wanted to take primary physical custody of the little boy in the backseat, he had both the lawyers and the resources to see that it was done. Even before the DNA results came in, the argument could be made that she had come to him with claims of his paternity and, given that the child’s mother had kept both her pregnancy and the infant a secret from him…well, he imagined the courts would be only too happy to rectify the circumstances in his favor. That wasn’t the route he wanted to take, however, and was already regretting bringing it up. Instead, he preferred to finesse the situation. Something he was normally much better at.

  Considering the baby bomb that had been dropped on him only hours ago, Trevor decided to cut himself some slack. He was still reeling from the first moment the words “here’s your son” had slipped from Haylie’s mouth, let alone everything that had been spinning through his head since.

  And the fact was, he needed Haylie on his side. It wasn’t easy for him to admit that, even to himself, but he knew nothing about kids. Little ones, big ones; they might as well have been tiny green creatures from the planet Krypton.

  If Bradley turned out to be his flesh and blood, then no matter what Trevor had said about hiring a nanny, he was going to need her to teach him everything he needed to know about his own son. A nanny could change diapers and heat up bottles, but she wouldn’t know Bradley’s favorite brand of baby food, or whether he was ticklish or what made him laugh and cry.

  Haylie knew those things. She’d spent the last four months learning all there was to know about his son.

  Maybe his son.

  His possible son.

  No sense getting ahead of himself—or the paternity tests.

  Still, the Jarrods were big on family, which meant that if he ended up with the right to lay claim to the baby, he would never dream of shutting Haylie out of Bradley’s life. Bradley would need an aunt on his mother’s side, as much as a father and aunts and uncles on Trevor’s side.

  So it would be smart to make Haylie his ally rather than his enemy. And better to start down that path sooner rather than later.

  “Let’s try to avoid the threats and talk of a custody battle altogether, shall we? At least for the time being. I think if you consider what I’m suggesting, you’ll realize it’s best for everyone involved.”

  When he cast a quick glance in Haylie’s direction, he found her staring at him, one brow raised.

  “Really?” she asked, sarcasm heavy in her tone. “How do you figure that?”

  With a shrug, he returned his attention to the road. “Like I said, it’s only for a few weeks, and it will give Bradley and me a chance to get to know each other.” No, that didn’t sound quite right. What was a better word for getting acquainted with your possible progeny? “To bond.”

  From the corner of his eye, he saw her lips thin in what he thought was reluctant approval. He’d gotten one right, then…and annoyed Haylie in the process.

  “What about me?” she asked, her gaze focused straight ahead through the windshield, just like his.

  He frowned. “What about you? I already said that you and Bradley can move into my home together. I’ve got plenty of space, if that’s what you’re worried about. The two of you can have your own room and have the run of the place during the day while I’m at the resort.”

  “And what about my life back home? I do have a job, you know. A business to run, employees to oversee, a schedule to keep.”

  He shook his head and readjusted his hands on the steering wheel. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What is it that you do?”

  He couldn’t believe he hadn’t wondered about that before now. Chalk it up to yet another sign of his complete and utter shock at having a four-month-old child dropped in his lap. Literally.

  Now that the topic had been brought up, however, he realized a background check wouldn’t be out of the question. As soon as he returned to the office, he would make some phone calls and find the best person to do a bit of very quiet digging into Haylie’s life, both the professional and private sides.

  As long as they were at it, he’d see what they could learn about the sister, too. She might be deceased, but a good investigator should at least be able to determine whether Heather had actually been in Denver at the same time as Trevor’s visit. If she truly had frequented the club where Haylie claimed he and Heather had met, and if there were any other candidates for fatherhood lurking in the shadows.

  And even before Dr. Lazlo called with the paternity results, a background check would give him an idea of Haylie’s financial situation. Whether it was more or less likely that she was using her dead sister’s child to wring a few of the Jarrod family’s millions from him.

  “I’m an event planner,” Haylie supplied, oblivious to the thoughts and plans spiraling silently through his head.

  “And you own your own company?” he encouraged.

  She nodded. “A small one. I only have a handful of helpers, but the holidays are a busy time for us. I can barely afford to be away overnight, let alone for a week or two.”

  Ignoring the last part of her statement—temporarily, at least—Trevor asked, “What’s the business called?”

  Apparently, he was being too nice all of a sudden, because she cast him a suspicious glance before answering.

  “It’s Your Party.”

  “Cute,” he murmured, an idea springing to mind and starting to take shape.

  “Thank you.”

  “Do you specialize in anything in particular?”

  “Not really,” she admitted. “Or not yet. It’s only been three years since we opened our doors, so we’re still finding our footing and working to build a reputation as Denver’s go-to event-planning company.”

  “Bet you’re dealing with a lot of upcoming Christmas party preparations, huh?”

  “Definitely. November and December are very good months for us, thank goodness.”

  She smiled a little then, and something warm began to unfurl in his c
hest.

  No doubt about it, Haylie Smith was a damned attractive woman. If she were anyone else, and they’d met any other way, he was pretty sure he’d have put the moves on her already. Offered to buy her a drink. Flashed his famed Trevor Jarrod playboy grin…the one that came complete with dimples and teeth so white and sparkly he could pose for a toothpaste ad.

  But Haylie was off-limits, wasn’t she? Not only because of the big, bad paternity issue she’d tossed on his doorstep with all the grace of a heavyweight fighter going down for the count, but because he got the distinct feeling she wasn’t a woman who could be easily seduced.

  Unlike her sister. Which brought him right back around again to the brick wall of the paternity thing.

  “Ever planned a wedding?” he asked, returning to the kernel of an idea that had sprung up earlier.

  Her brows knit a bit at that, but she answered readily enough. “A few. Small ones on my own, especially when I was first starting out. A couple of bigger ones once I’d hired staff to help out.”

  He hit the blinker, making a left turn that would take them farther from Jarrod Ridge, not closer, and hoped she was distracted enough not to notice. “They’re a lot of work, I take it.”

  She chuckled. “Oh, yeah. Especially if you’re dealing with a high-strung bride or family members who turn the entire event into a ‘too many cooks’ situation.”

  “But you enjoy them?” he pressed. “Wouldn’t mind doing another?”

  The lines crinkling her nose deepened, and her confused gaze completely focused on him now. “Of course not. It’s Your Party, remember? No event too big, no party too small.”

  “Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night…” he paraphrased with a teasing note.

  “Exactly,” she agreed with a laugh. “Although I do recommend event insurance if a client is putting a lot of money into something or the weather forecast is bleak.”

  “Smart move—if folks take your advice.”

  For a second, she didn’t respond. Then her eyes narrowed and she said, “Why are you asking so many questions about my business?”