“You can’t just move in to my house without my approval,” she said, shaking her head, trying to fend away the sleep that was still trying to claim her.
“Oh, I don’t intend to move in here,” he assured her, looking around. Madeline sighed in relief and she relaxed her shoulders until he clarified his statement. “I have every intention of moving you in to MY house until you give birth to my child. But be assured… I won’t let you out of my sight as long as that baby is nestled in your belly.”
Indignation was clearly written on her features as she stood up and tried to get in his face. Sadly, the top of her head only came up to the middle of his massive chest and made her look tiny and not at all threatening as she had intended. She tipped her head back and glared at him. “I’m not going anywhere with you and you are NOT staying here. I have my rights. You can’t force your way into my home and taking me out of it would be kidnapping, because I am not willing.”
“Well then we’ve got a problem, because for all intents and purposes, you’ve basically kidnapped my unborn child,” he told her through gritted teeth. “I understand that I can’t take the baby back until it’s born… but I have no intention of allowing you to take it out of my sight either.”
“She’s not an IT!” Madeline screamed, stomping her foot and spinning around flopping on the couch thinking that her life had gone from fantastic to a bloody mess in about five seconds flat.
“You know for a fact that my child is a girl?” he asked, looking down at her still flat belly.
“I know in my gut that MY daughter is a girl, yes,” she answered, refusing to back down, despite his size. “No, I haven’t had any testing that shows scientific proof,” she said, when he raised his eyebrows. “But I don’t need it to know that she’s not a boy.”
“Okay,” he said, nodding his head. “I’ve learned never to question women’s intuition. Not when it comes to a child she might be carrying anyways …”
“There’s no might. I know I’m pregnant, the clinic took blood tests and I had an ultrasound to prove it,” she said, wishing instantly that she hadn’t told him that.
“So, that’s how you know for sure,” he nodded his head, looking again at the way her hand was settled over her belly. It was difficult to think, with the way the tiny scrap of thin pink satin hugged her like a second skin. It had been all he could do, not to stare at her. It was a sad time for his normally dormant libido to suddenly wake up and take notice of a woman for the first time since he’d buried his wife. That day seemed like forever ago to him now.
“You’re sure that there is only one? We had several eggs fertilized and I was informed that you received the whole batch…”
Madeline weakly nodded her head, looking over his shoulder at the clock and sighing heavily. “I’m quite certain. I’m equally sure that if I don’t get to sleep soon, I’m going to pass out at work in the morning.”
“If your job is so bloody important to you, what on Earth were you thinking, trying to become a single parent? What did you plan on doing? Having a daycare provider raise the baby for you? How about when the child was sick? Did you plan on sticking a sitter with a baby that was ill?”
“Of course not,” she answered, feeling annoyed by him. “There’s a daycare center at the hospital that I can leave the baby with when I’m working, and when she’s sick, we’ll both stay at home. Working in the lab, it’s not as detrimental to the patients, when I take a day off. What I’m planning on doing is no different than a married woman that lives in a two income family, you know. Women do it all the time; working full time at the same time as being a full time mother.”
“Yes, well… I have no intention of allowing MY child to be raised in that sort of environment. Not when I am perfectly capable of providing a much more stable home life, where the person raising the tyke will be an actual parent and not some stranger already spreading themselves too thin with other people’s children.”
“Just because she spends her days with a daycare provider doesn’t mean they’re the ones raising her,” Madeline argued, feeling defensive of her choice to make a go of parenthood by herself. It had been a difficult decision and she had fought it long and hard, often coming up with the same arguments that he had. That didn’t make hearing the same things she had said to herself, coming from someone else any easier.
“Well, you’d be right about that… Because I fully plan on being the one to raise her,” he informed her coldly, not willing to embrace any other reality.
“And I intend to see that I’m the one that raises her. She’s MY daughter. DNA not withstanding… without my body, there would be no baby and possession is nine tenths of the law,” she told him in a shaky voice. She was freaked out and felt desperation filling her, leaving her shaking in her fuzzy slippers.
“We’ll just have to see about that,” Eric said, confidently. “In the mean time, go… get some sleep before you fall over from exhaustion. This conversation can keep until morning, once you’re better rested. Perhaps by then, you’ll have come to your senses and realized that there is no getting rid of me as long as you have possession of my child.”
If sleep wasn’t threatening to overtake her even as she stood there, Madeline would have argued with him, but she could tell that it was going to win; weather she was standing or flat on her back. “Fine… I’m going to bed, but I’m not changing my tune. Come morning, after I call in to work, I fully intend on contacting my lawyer to have you forcefully removed from the premises if you refuse to leave on your own. One way or the other, by the end of the day tomorrow, this nightmare will be over and you are GOING to be out of my hair and out of my house… and you may not believe it, but I will NOT be joining you when you go back to your own place.”
Madeline flipped her long flowing hair over her shoulder and spun on her heel, stomping away. She wished that her actions would have sent more of a message to him, but she was afraid with what little she was wearing and the way his eyes had followed the sway of her hips as she walked away, all she’d managed to do was bring his attention to the fact that despite the fact that she didn’t much like him or what he was trying to do, she was very much attracted to the sexy cowboy who’d burst into her home and informed her he intended to do the same to her life, weather she liked it or not.
The real kicker here, was that if she was reading things right, he was just as physically drawn to her as she was to him. In the long run, that was going to make things very interesting indeed, she thought as she quietly closed her bedroom door and slumped against it. Her heart hammered hard in her chest as she thought about the way his eyes had heated as he scraped them slowly over her body time and time again while they argued.
If that man hadn’t been thinking about what two people normally did to create a child together the same way she had, when he’d told her that the child she already loved so much was his; she would happily eat her comfy fuzzy slippers. It was a safe bet that her favorite slippers would be just fine and live to see another day. It may have been only second hand knowledge gained from hanging with her friends and their husbands; but she knew the look a man got when he was sexually interested in a woman … and the big gorgeous man in her living room had unmistakably been wearing it on his face.
Chapter 6
Eric lay on the short couch with his long legs dangling over the edge. His arm was slung lazily over his face as he struggled to bring his body back under control. He was thankful that Madeline had finally disappeared behind a closed door where he wasn’t forced to look at her enticing body any more.
Guilt had flooded him the instant he’d recognized the signs of desire flickering to life within his body. In all his years on this planet, there had only been one woman who had ever stirred his interest in that way, and he’d buried her years before. He had thought he’d buried the need to push into a woman’s heat, right along with her, but he’d been sorely mistaken.
He groaned low in his throat and settled his big hand over the hard, unmistak
able proof of his desire; willing it to go away as easily as it had appeared. “Oh, Vic… I’m so sorry,” he mumbled as a tear slipped down his face and dropped onto the couch. “I swear to you… I’ll fight it with everything in me. It’s got to be just the circumstances… because she’s got our baby growing in her belly. As soon as the baby is born, this insane need will go just as quickly as it came. I’m a strong man. I can fight it for that long.” He wasn’t sure if it was his dead wife he was trying to convince or if it was more himself that needed to hear the words, but either way, he was determined to stick to them. Any other choice was unacceptable. There was no way he was going to cheat on Victoria, and despite the fact that she’d been six feet under for five years, he firmly believed that sleeping with any other woman would be doing just that… cheating.
Come morning, Eric’s eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep combined with endless shed tears. He had fought the desire all night long, and still his body insisted on ignoring his demands to settle at ease. Every time he had closed his eyes during the long night, all he’d been able to see was Madeline’s slim figure being hugged by that sleek fabric that accentuated her curves rather than hide them. Her impossibly long legs had been the main focus of his wayward thoughts; or rather picturing them wrapped around his waist as he drove into her repeatedly.
When she came out of her bedroom for the day, he swallowed a curse word and closed his eyes, not wanting to see her again, in case she was still wearing that barely there excuse for a night gown. She had tip toed past him into the kitchen and realizing she may be using this opportunity to escape him, he opened his eyes and leapt from the couch. His steps were long and ate up the length of carpet in four strides.
Standing in the kitchen doorway, he noticed that she was fully dressed in a soft flowing floral skirt that fell half way between her knees and Heaven. Eric had to work hard to swallow the lump that formed in his throat and forced his eyes to lift to the back of her head since she was facing the window just behind the stove instead of where he was standing.
“Are you ready to concede that I have every right in the world to be here yet?” he asked, walking in to the kitchen and taking a seat in one of the dainty chairs that sat beside the table. He couldn’t help but think how feminine Madeline’s house was. Clearly when she’d decorated, she hadn’t taken into consideration that there might someday be a man in her home.
Madeline gripped the edge of the counter in both hands so hard that she felt splinters pierce the sensitive skin of her palms. Yelping, she lifted them up and stared at the reddened evidence of the damage she’d inflicted. Eric stood quickly and went to her, taking her tiny hands in his, looking down at them.
“You have to be more careful,” he scolded as he carefully plucked the splinter out of her left hand. She watched silently in awe as he dropped the left hand and reached for the right. For a big man, she couldn’t believe how gentle he was with her. She had hardly even felt the splinter come out of her left hand. If she’d been the one to remove it, she would have had to go digging for it with a knife and would have done more damage to her hand than the splinter had in order to get it out.
“Thank you,” she said shyly after he dropped her right hand and remained at her side, looking down at her. “I owe you one… If I’d taken them out, my hands would have ended up cut to shreds.”
“A doctor that can’t remove a simple splinter?” he asked, chuckling in amusement. “I can’t imagine your practice is very successful.”
“I work in the lab think tank, not with the patients,” she informed him, lifting her head refusing to apologize for the fact that she had next to zero knowledge of how to doctor a wound.
“And I work with animals, and not even as a vet. Yet, I was able to take your splinters out with next to no damage at all,” he pointed out, looking down at her hands which she was still holding out in front of herself in disbelief.
“I never had any younger siblings… and my mom and my older sister always did all the doctoring that needed being done. As the baby of the family, everyone treated me with kid gloves, and as a result there are certain things I never learned.” Her voice came out defensive and she flinched slightly at the thought that she felt the need to defend herself against this man and what he thought of her abilities as a doctor.
“And, how pray tell, do you intend to deal with such tiny little problems with my child once you give birth? Take the tyke in to the ER every time a scrape, cut, splinter or sting takes place?”
“No…” Madeline said, shaking her head; placing her hand protectively over her abdomen. “I had intended on taking a class or two on basic first aid before she’s born. I really wish you would stop referring to Lillie Rose as your child. She’s MY daughter, and mine alone.”
“I don’t think so,” he argued, stepping closer to her, firmly entering her personal bubble; getting right in her face. “I never signed any waver, releasing those eggs. They belong to me and me alone. It isn’t MY fault that you’re walking around with one of them embedded in your uterine wall. Until MY child is born, you are good and stuck with me… and I have every intention in the world of reminding you on a regular basis, that the baby; while in your body… belongs to and with me.”
Madeline took a step backwards away from his imposing presence. “We’ll just see about that. Thank you for reminding me of my intent to call my lawyer. I’d managed to forget during the night, just how callous, nasty, unfeeling and pig headed you are when it comes to MY daughter. You may not have signed any wavers and you may be right about having rights,” she begrudgingly admitted as a tear made its way down her cheek and dripped off her chin, splashing onto the porcelain tiles at her feet. “But I signed paperwork too. You may not like it much, but as the woman who paid for the procedure and underwent it… the woman that now carries the child in question, I have just as many rights if not more so than you do. The paperwork that I signed states that I have sole parental rights where any child born from the procedure is concerned.”
“Well, clearly with this case being as messed up as it is, that paperwork isn’t worth the paper it’s written on,” he told her grumpily.
Madeline knew that there was a chance that what he was telling her was the truth and she nervously glanced across the room at the phone hanging on the wall. Swallowing her nerves, she pushed past him and walked over to the wall, picking up the phone. As she dialed her friend’s number, she turned and looked at him. “I’m tired of not knowing for sure what my rights are. I’m calling my lawyer right now.”
Georgia answered in a groggy voice that clearly told Madeline that she’d woken her friend up and guilt slammed into her so hard it almost choked her.
“Hey, girlfriend… I’m really sorry for waking you like this… but I really need to talk to your husband,” Madeline said quietly when Georgia finally stopped yawning.
Eric was silent as he watched the facial expressions play across Madeline’s face as she told the lawyer everything he’d claimed as the truth. She said that she had only a stranger’s word to go on and didn’t yet know if what he was claiming was true, but that she had every intention of finding out for herself as soon as she found out what her rights were assuming everything he’d told her was true. He could see the frustration, the anger, and the fear play across her features as clearly as he could see her face itself.
She may be fully dressed now, but Eric was frustrated beyond belief, because she was even more lovely and enticing now than she’d been the night before. Keeping his promise to his dead wife about ignoring the desire he felt every time he looked at this woman was going to be all but impossible to do. He may be strong enough to fight it … but ignoring it … yeah, where that was concerned, he didn’t have a hope in Hell. It was impossible to ignore the way his body leapt to life and a certain body part hardened in preparation for something that was never going to happen if he had anything to do with it. Just because he wanted her physically didn’t mean he had to do anything about it. It was a minor com
plication that he hadn’t foreseen, but he was strong enough not to let it get the better of him.
Madeline put her finger on the button to hang up and then immediately dialed the number for the fertility clinic, grasping the receiver, praying that there was a huge mix up and that Eric’s wife’s eggs had been given to some other woman, and that she had received her own… fertilized by some other cowboy. One who had signed the appropriate paperwork; giving up any and all claim to the child she carried in her womb.
“Yes… This is Dr. Madeline Randal. I had an implantation procedure done there a few weeks back…”
Eric watched her carefully as she asked if there was any truth to his claim that she’d received the wrong eggs. He saw the look of panic come and knew that she’d just been given confirmation that there had been a mix up, just as he’d told her.
“How could this have happened?” she asked in a whispered voice as she fell onto the floor clutching the phone in her hand; her back held up by the wall she’d fallen against.
In that moment, Eric wanted to know the same thing. This whole mess was unbelievable. He’d never known such unprofessionalism and irresponsibility could exist in a clinic that had been open to the public for decades. When Jeff had told him about the place and the doctor in charge there, Eric had checked them out thoroughly. Their record was spotless. Nothing but rave reviews from very happy clients. Of all the times for them to mess things up… it just figured that it would be with his child. Sometimes he swore, if it wasn’t for bad luck, he wouldn’t have any at all.
When at last, Madeline hung the phone up; she looked as defeated as he felt. She lifted her tear filled eyes to his handsome face and had to clear her throat before any sound would come out.
Baby Mine (Stubborn Texas Siblings Book 1) Page 4