The Sheriff's Nine-Month Surprise

by Brenda Harlen

  “No,” he denied. “But I married her.”

  He’d been upfront about his divorce from the beginning, but he hadn’t mentioned that his wife was the daughter of a man who’d been his father figure, mentor and best friend.

  And again, though she wasn’t sure she wanted all the details, she heard herself ask, “How did that come about?”

  “Hank got cancer,” he said bluntly. “When he realized he was dying, his biggest concern was his daughter. He didn’t want to leave her alone, without anyone to look out for her. I told him that I would and put a ring on her finger to prove it.

  “I wasn’t in love with her,” he said again. “But it wasn’t just a quick ceremony to appease her dad, either. When I spoke my vows, I intended to honor them forever.”

  Kate knew that marriage required a leap of faith, regardless of the reasons for it. She also knew there were all kinds of reasons that marriages—even good marriages—fell apart, and she couldn’t deny a certain curiosity about his. “What went wrong?”

  “We wanted different things,” he said.

  “That’s rather vague,” she noted.

  “There were issues that drove us apart and no compelling reason to stay together.”

  His follow-up response didn’t do much to expand on the first, but she decided to let it go. No doubt it was, if not painful, at least uncomfortable to talk about a failed marriage. And now that she knew some of Reid’s background, she could understand and appreciate why he was so determined to be there for their baby.

  Childhood wounds inevitably left a mark, and although she hadn’t been so young when she’d lost her mother, the sense of loss and emptiness was still with Kate every single day. She suspected that Reid’s experiences had left even deeper scars and that his determination to be there for his child was a way of ensuring his son or daughter had a better start in life than he’d been given.

  * * *

  Katelyn was quiet for a long while after Reid told her about his upbringing, probably questioning his suitability as a parent. He didn’t blame her for having doubts—he had more than a few of his own. But a few days earlier, he’d heard her argue a case that made him believe she’d give him a chance.

  Her client was a father seeking to alter a custody order. If Reid remembered the details correctly, the dad had worked long hours in the mines and wasn’t much of a hands-on parent for the first few years of the children’s lives. Now he was a manager, with a more regular schedule and weekends off, and wanted increased access to his children. The mother balked at the request because she was in a new relationship and the children were settled into routines that she didn’t want to disrupt.

  Listening to the lawyers, Reid couldn’t help but wonder if he and Katelyn would someday end up in front of a judge, arguing about who was entitled to what with respect to their child. He didn’t want their son or daughter to become a pawn in a game of one-upmanship, but he would fight to be part of the child’s life.

  For now, though, he continued to hope that wouldn’t be necessary. There was still time to convince Katelyn to marry him and give their baby a real family, but he understood her reservations. She was in court almost every day dealing with the aftermath of marriages that didn’t work—contentious divorces, property disputes, custody fights. Even if they’d fallen in love after dating a while, she’d undoubtedly have reservations about making any lifelong promises—and he didn’t know how to overcome those reservations.

  How could he claim to know anything about making a marriage work when he’d already failed to do exactly that? Of course, the circumstances of his first marriage were completely different. Hank had been dying and Reid would have done anything to ease the man’s worry in those final days.

  He hadn’t been in love with Trish and he hadn’t pretended that he was. And even though she’d claimed to love him, he suspected the feelings she professed to have were born of a fear of being alone. She wanted to love and be loved, and when Reid couldn’t give her what she wanted, she found someone who could.

  It was ironic that one of the reasons his marriage had fallen apart was that his wife wanted a baby and he didn’t. Now, by accident rather than design, he was going to be a father, anyway. The role he’d been certain he didn’t ever want was suddenly his.

  More surprising was the realization that he wanted to be a father to the baby Katelyn was carrying. In fact, he was starting to accept that he wanted to be a father and a husband—he wanted them to be a family. But first, he had to convince Katelyn that it was what she wanted, too.

  “Did the judge make a decision in that custody variation hearing you had last week?”

  “You were in the courtroom?”

  He nodded.

  “Since when does local law enforcement take an interest in a standard family law matter?”

  “I only popped in to check out the hot young lawyer at first,” he admitted. “But your arguments were compelling and, afterward, I found myself wondering if you believed them.”

  “You’re going to have to be a little more specific,” she told him.

  “You said the variation wasn’t about the dad’s right to spend more time with his children but about their right to have a meaningful relationship with both parents.”

  “Wow, you were paying attention, weren’t you?”

  “The case struck a chord,” he admitted.

  “Yes, I believe it,” she said. “It’s important for a child to be given the opportunity to develop a strong and lasting bond with both parents.”

  “What does that mean for us?”

  Her brow furrowed as she turned to stare out the window. “I would accommodate whatever reasonable visitation you wanted.”

  “I don’t want visitation,” he told her. “I want to marry you and raise our child together.”

  “We don’t have to be married to co-parent our child,” she assured him.

  “I don’t want our child to be co-parented,” he argued. “I want him—or her—to have a real family. And I think you want that, too, you’re just afraid to admit it.”

  “Of course it’s what I’d want if our situation was different—if our baby had been conceived in the course of something that actually resembled a relationship rather than as a consequence of a broken condom during a one-night stand.”

  “Two nights,” he reminded her.

  “A second night doesn’t miraculously turn a casual hookup into a relationship.”

  “And an unplanned pregnancy shouldn’t be used as a roadblock to the development of a relationship,” he argued.

  “Especially not when there are so many other obvious roadblocks,” she agreed.

  He turned onto Station Street. “Why’d you go to Echo Ridge looking for me?”

  She gave up the pretense that she’d been in Texas for any other purpose. “Because you’re the father of my baby.”

  He nodded. “Now let’s consider for a minute what might have happened if I hadn’t already agreed to take over Jed Traynor’s job here in Haven.”

  “You would have been in Echo Ridge,” she acknowledged, not sure where this new train of thought was leading.

  “Most likely,” he agreed, making the turn onto Main. “And you would have tracked me down at the Sheriff’s Office and told me about our baby, right?”

  She hesitated, but she couldn’t deny the truth of what he was saying or see how that truth would trip her up. “Right,” she confirmed.

  “Even though we’d gone our separate ways and you could have kept the news of your pregnancy to yourself.”

  “You’re the father of my baby,” she said again. “And fathers have specific legal rights and responsibilities.”

  He nodded and turned onto Page, then into the parking lot behind her building. “And when you told me about your pregnancy, you gave me the opportunity to exercise those rights and fulfill the re
sponsibilities.”

  “Because it was the right thing to do.”

  “And maybe,” he suggested, “because there was a part of you that wanted me to step up, not just to be a father but a husband.”

  Kate thought about his supposition for a long time after Reid had gone. Her initial instinct had been to deny it, of course, but there was some validity to his argument.

  She believed that a child had a right to a relationship with both parents; she didn’t believe that a child’s mother and father had to be married to parent effectively. Maybe marriage would make some things easier, but that was hardly a reason to get trapped into a legally binding arrangement.

  Except that the more time she spent with the sheriff, the less the prospect of marriage seemed like a trap. In fact, the idea of marrying Reid was starting to hold some definite appeal.

  Chapter Twelve

  Two weeks later, Reid had made little progress in his efforts to convince Katelyn to marry him. For every step he took forward, she took two steps back. Sometimes it was a struggle to even get her to spend time with him. She seemed to have a ready excuse whenever he called to make plans, but she was less inclined to turn him down face-to-face. He took that knowledge with him to her door early Friday night.

  “If you keep hanging around my apartment, people are going to start to talk,” Katelyn warned, but she stepped away from the door so that he could enter.

  “I’ve got nothing to hide.” He followed her into the living room, stopping abruptly when he spotted the playpen in the corner, an assortment of colorful blocks scattered across the area rug and a blond-haired, blue-eyed, chubby-cheeked baby wearing an orange T-shirt and brown overalls with a giraffe embroidered on the front.

  The baby was sitting upright and gnawing on a purple block, but he glanced up at Reid and grinned, showing off tiny teeth. “Da!”

  “Was I in a coma for—” he looked at the baby, estimated his age and added that to the time remaining in Katelyn’s pregnancy “—eighteen months?”

  “Ha ha.” She scooped the baby up from the floor and propped him on her hip. “That’s not Daddy, that’s Sheriff Davidson.”

  “Da!” he said again.

  “Don’t worry,” Katelyn said. “He thinks every man is ‘Da.’”

  “And who is he?” Reid asked.

  “This is Keegan,” she told him. “My godson. I’m babysitting for a few hours while Emerson—his mom and my best friend—has an appointment at the spa.”

  “Haven has a spa?”

  “Well, right now Andria has a modest setup in her basement, but she’s in negotiations with Liam to move her business to the hotel when it opens.”

  Keegan stuck his thumb in his mouth and dropped his head to Katelyn’s shoulder, snuggling in comfortably. Seeing her with the baby in her arms, Reid felt something move inside him—an unexpected warmth that seemed to start in the vicinity of his chest and spread outward.

  He’d spent a lot of time reading up on pregnancy and trying to prepare for the baby that would arrive in another six-and-a-half months, but he really didn’t know what it took to be a father. Watching Katelyn with Keegan, he was reassured that their child would at least have one competent parent.

  “You’re a natural,” he noted.

  “He’s an easy baby,” she said.

  His brows lifted. “Is there such a thing?”

  “Well, most of the time he’s an easy baby,” she amended, as the little guy twisted in her arms to reach toward the blocks on the floor. “He did give me some trouble a few months back when he was teething, but once those pearly whites broke through, he was a smiling—and drooling—baby again.”

  “How old is he?”

  She set Keegan down again, and he immediately grabbed the purple block. “Ten-and-a-half months.”

  “So we’ve got a while to wait before our baby will be teething and crawling?”

  “And opening cupboards and trying to stick toy keys in electrical outlets.”

  He noticed that her outlets were protected with plastic inserts. There were also clear rubber bumpers affixed to the sharp edges of the coffee table. “Do you babysit often?”

  “I try to take him for a few hours every couple of weeks, sometimes just to give Emerson a break, sometimes so that she and her husband, Mark, can have some time alone together.”

  “You’re a good friend.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Emerson claims I borrow her baby to pretend I have a life outside of work.”

  “I guess you don’t get out much.”

  “You’ve been in Haven long enough now to know there’s really nowhere to go.”

  “Maybe that’s why I always end up at your door.”

  She smiled at that. “Why are you really here?”

  “Because I was thinking about you, and while I was thinking about you, I realized I was hungry, so I decided to see if you wanted to grab a bite and catch a movie.”

  “Dinner and a movie—that sounds a lot like a date, Sheriff.”

  “Maybe, if you had to put a label on it,” he acknowledged. “Or it could just be a couple of friends-slash-colleagues hanging out.”

  “I appreciate the invitation,” she said. “But Emerson is picking up pizza and wings on her way back.”

  “Maybe just the movie later, then?” he asked hopefully.

  “Mark’s out of town this weekend so we’re having a girls’ night—no boys allowed.”

  “What about him?” Reid asked, jerking his head toward the baby, who’d traded in the purple block for a green one.

  “He gets a pass because his boy parts are in a diaper.”

  He sighed regretfully. “Okay, I guess I’ll head over to Jo’s and get my own pizza to take home and eat by myself.”

  She led him back to the foyer, a clear signal that his attempt to elicit sympathy and procure an invitation had failed.

  But when she opened the door, he found himself face-to-face with a slender woman with curly reddish hair and a stack of three flat boxes in her hand.

  “Well, hello, there,” she said, her green eyes sparking with curiosity. “You must be Reid.”

  “I am,” he confirmed, stepping back so that she could enter.

  “And Reid was just leaving,” Katelyn said.

  “Oh,” her friend said, sounding disappointed. “Have you had dinner?”

  “I’m going to pick up a pizza on my way home,” he said.

  “Why would you do that when we’ve got plenty of pizza—and wings—right here?”

  Keegan, having recognized his mother’s voice, abandoned his blocks and crawled to the foyer, where he was now attempting to pull himself up on her leg.

  “There’s my little man,” she said, smiling down at the baby.

  Katelyn took the boxes. “How much food did you get?”

  Emerson lifted the baby, rubbing her nose against his and making him giggle, then propping him on her hip. “They had a special on two pizzas and wings.”

  “We’re never going to eat all that,” Katelyn said.

  “Then I guess it’s a good thing we’ve got the sheriff here to help,” she said, winking at Reid.

  “I was just on my way out,” he reminded her, showing his willingness to accede to Katelyn’s wishes.

  “Don’t go without having something to eat first,” Emerson protested.

  He looked at Katelyn, silently questioning.

  “Fine—you can stay for a slice of pizza,” she relented, handing the boxes to him. “I’ll get plates and napkins.”

  “Can you hold Keegan for a sec while I grab drinks?” Emerson asked when he’d set the food on the table.

  Before he could respond—which would have been to suggest that he’d get the drinks—she’d shoved the baby at him, leaving him with no choice in the matter.

 
He looked down at the little guy who was looking up at him, lower lip quivering. “Oh, crap. You’re going to cry, aren’t you?”

  As if on cue, the baby’s big blue eyes filled with tears.

  “Hey, this wasn’t my idea,” he said, talking fast in the hope of distracting the kid long enough for his mom to return. “And I don’t blame you for being unhappy with the situation, but your mom will be right back, she just went to help—I assume, since she’s your godmother, you call her Aunt Katelyn, or maybe Aunt Katie—get drinks so that we can have dinner.”

  To his surprise and immense relief, the monologue seemed to do the trick. Though the tears didn’t dry up, Keegan’s lip was no longer quivering and he looked more curious than scared now.

  Reid kept talking. “What do you like to drink with your pizza? Is your beverage of choice milk or juice? And do you drink from a bottle or a sippy cup?”

  Of course, Keegan didn’t respond to any of the questions, but the little guy at least seemed to be listening.

  * * *

  So was Kate, who had paused in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room, plates and napkins in hand.

  “I’m running out of things to say now,” Reid continued in the same easy tone. “But I’m afraid if I stop talking, you’ll start crying and your aunt Katelyn will realize I don’t have a clue when it comes to babies and then she’ll worry I’m going to be a horrible father.

  “And while I’ll admit that’s entirely possible—and probably understandable considering that I have no memories of my own father and didn’t have any positive male role models in my life until I met Hank when I was seventeen—I’m going to do my best to be a good dad and hope like hell—

  “Heck!” he quickly amended. “I mean heck. I’m going to hope like heck that I don’t screw up too badly. I suspect swearing in front of a baby would probably count as a screwup, so maybe we can just keep that to ourselves?

  “And maybe you could actually smile and pretend I’m incredibly amusing and entertaining, and maybe that’ll help convince Katelyn to give me a chance—”