The Baby Deal Read online

  “I'm not sure,” she said under her breath, taking another, closer assessment of his appearance.

  There were a few lines just beginning at the corners of his eyes, but since he'd told her in Tahiti that he took every opportunity to get to a beach, maybe those lines were more an indication of sun exposure than of age. Especially since he lacked the creases an older man might have around his mouth.

  Of course he had the confidence and bearing of a man her own age, but if he was from the media-rich Hanson family and was well-traveled, social status and world experience could account for that.

  Actually, the longer she sat there trying to figure out his age, the more she realized that she couldn't and before she was even aware she was going to do it, she heard herself ask, “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-eight,” he answered without a qualm, but obviously with some confusion of his own at the question that had come instead of an answer to his inquiries about the father of her baby. “How old are you?” he asked then, as if turnabout was fair play.

  “Thirty-seven,” Delia whispered, stunned yet again tonight as she began to consider the fact that not only had she allowed herself to be seduced by a stranger on a vacation, but by a stranger who was so much her junior.

  “Thirty-seven?” Andrew repeated. “You? I've known twenty-year-olds who look older than you do.”

  “I'm thirty-seven,” she said once more. “And you're twenty-eight….”

  Andrew laughed slightly, still clearly unsure what was going on. “And that means what to you?”

  “It means you're nine years younger than I am,” she mused.

  “So you can do math, too?”

  “Better than you,” she whispered again.

  His well-shaped brows pulled together in a puzzled frown. “You really aren't all right, are you?”

  “No,” she confessed. “Only not the way you think.”

  But Delia began to wonder if she had an opportunity here that she'd believed she no longer had when Marta had revealed that she was pregnant. If Andrew was even half thinking that he might not be the father of her baby she had the opportunity to keep him in the dark about his paternity.

  It wouldn't require much. She could merely say that yes, she had met someone when she'd returned from Tahiti. Andrew would never know the difference. He'd go through his entire life without a thought that her baby was his, too. And she could go on with her own plans, the plans she'd had until tonight when she'd so coincidentally encountered him again-she could have and raise her baby on her own.

  Without a father to complicate it…

  That came from the back of her mind. In the voice of her mother. And it jarred Delia.

  Fathers are just complications, her mother had decreed numerous times. We don't need them. We do just fine without them.

  Except that the McCrays hadn't always done so fine without them.

  Maybe it wasn't wise to make her decision at that moment, influenced by childhood hurts and before she'd considered all the angles, but on impulse Delia said, “I haven't lost my mind and I also didn't meet anyone-or even date anyone—since coming back from Tahiti.”

  The frown on Andrew's face deepened. “And you weren't involved with anyone before Tahiti…?”

  “No.”

  Delia could see that his mental wheels were beginning to turn faster because he sobered considerably.

  “Artificial insemination?” he asked.

  She wasn't sure whether or not she was imagining a note of hope in that question, but the mere chance that it was there made her feel bad. It made her almost sorry she'd chosen this course after all.

  But now that she'd planted the seed, she knew it was going to sprout one way or another and so she said, “No, not artificial insemination.”

  Andrew stared at her but there wasn't appreciation or happiness to see her or anything good in his expression now. Now he looked as if someone had caught him off guard with a sharp blow to the solar plexus.

  He didn't speak. And Delia could tell that he was unable to bring himself to ask that final, inevitable question.

  But she answered it anyway.

  “Andrew, the baby is yours.”

  She saw him swallow hard enough to make his Adam's apple rise above his shirt collar.

  “This day can't be real,” he muttered to himself.

  Delia thought that could only mean that he'd had a particularly bad day that this news had topped off. But bad day or not, it was hardly a heartening reaction.

  She sat up straighter, drew her shoulders back and, fully intending to tell him she expected nothing from him, she said, “It's okay—”

  “Not by a long shot,” he said, cutting her off and standing abruptly.

  His dark eyes bored down into hers as he shook his head in denial. “I can't do this right now. I'm sorry. I…I don't even know what I'm supposed to say. Or do. I…I guess I have to think,” he rambled.

  And then he turned around and walked out.

  Out of the bar.

  Out of the restaurant.

  Chapter Four

  Tuesday was a bleak, rainy June day in Chicago. An unusually chilly wind gusted from the west. It was the kind of day that could drag down the energy level of a native Californian all by itself.

  But Delia’s energy level didn’t need help from the weather to be reduced. Although she hadn’t suffered any morning sickness, she was more tired than was normal for her. A good night’s rest was a must. And she hadn’t had it. In fact, she’d had almost no sleep Monday night. Not after Andrew’s hasty departure from the restaurant had left her stressed out.

  She’d still been awake and checking the clock until almost 4:00 a.m. Then she’d dozed off but for only a couple of hours before she’d awakened with a jolt.

  From a dream in which she’d been chasing Andrew down a deserted street, unable to catch him or to make him stop when she called to him.

  It had been a ridiculous dream, she told herself as she drove to the Meals Like Mom’s kitchens where she spent the lion’s share of every Tuesday making sure quality control was being upheld and dealing with any problems at that end of the business.

  A completely ridiculous dream. Chasing Andrew? The subconscious was a strange thing to come up with something that absurd. After all, she hadn’t even had any intentions of tracking Andrew down, let alone of chasing him or trying to catch him. For any reason.

  Yes, at one point when she’d first learned she was pregnant she’d contemplated contacting someone at the resort in Tahiti and seeing if she could at least garner Andrew’s last name. But she’d gone through a whole lot of contemplations since learning she was pregnant. Different contemplations for each of several stages she’d experienced.

  The first stage, she supposed, had been when she hadn’t had her period two weeks after arriving home from Tahiti. She hadn’t even entertained the idea that she might be pregnant then, though. Her cycles often varied and it wasn’t unheard of for her to miss one, so she’d written it off to travel and stress and time changes, assuming that in a week or two she’d simply get back on course.

  Then her second period had failed to appear. And she’d suddenly discovered herself in a state of alarm. Oddly enough, not alarm that she might be pregnant, however. Her initial fear had been that something else entirely was going on. She’d been terrified that she’d contracted some sort of sexually transmitted disease that had come from doing something as irresponsible as having unprotected sex with a stranger.

  Punishment. She’d been afraid she was being punished for the one rash act she’d ever allowed herself.

  So she’d taken her embarrassment to the doctor, confessed, and asked to be tested for STDs.

  It had been the doctor’s suggestion to also do a pregnancy test.

  Even though it was difficult for Delia to believe it now, the chance that she might have gotten pregnant in Tahiti hadn’t occurred to her, and the doctor’s insistence that a test be done for that, too, had been the first occasion
on which Delia had begun to think about that possibility.

  Pregnant?

  She hadn’t felt pregnant. Not that she had any idea what being pregnant felt like. But she’d felt just like herself and it had seemed as if pregnancy would make her feel different somehow.

  Of course she had been a little tired, but as a result of that she’d also been sleeping better than ever.

  And she’d also been a little more hungry than usual, but she’d been working hard to make up for the time she’d taken off for Tahiti.

  Her breasts had been more tender—attributable, she was sure, to the built-up hormones of the missed cycle.

  But pregnant? She still hadn’t accepted that as a genuine, honest to goodness likelihood.

  Except that it had not only been likely. It had been the reality.

  No, the doctor had assured her two days after her initial appointment when she’d returned to the clinic, she did not have any STDs. She was as healthy as a horse.

  She was just pregnant. According to the blood test, which the doctor had insisted—when Delia had questioned the results—was conclusive.

  Delia had taken the rest of that day and the next one off work.

  She’d gone home, closed her drapes, changed into her pajama pants, an old sweatshirt and her fluffy tiger slippers, and collapsed onto the couch.

  She hadn’t turned on her television or stereo. She hadn’t eaten. For a day and a half she’d done almost nothing but stare into space.

  And think, I’m pregnant?

  It had seemed inconceivable.

  Inconceivable that she’d conceived.

  A baby.

  In Tahiti.

  With some guy she didn’t know…

  That had been the second stage—total shock. And even worse, shame. And mortification.

  She was thirty-seven years old, for crying out loud. And there she was, an unwed mother. No different than a teenager. No different than her own mother…

  But somewhere in beating herself up had come stage three—the realization that she had come from her own mother’s transgressions. That so had Marta and Kyle. That they were good and valuable human beings who contributed to the world. That they were all grateful to be alive and to have each other. And that Delia’s own baby could be just as good and valuable and grateful to be alive…

  Father or no father.

  And that was when she’d entered stage four—she’d begun to come to grips with the souvenir she’d brought back with her from Tahiti. She’d reminded herself that she was a capable, successful single woman who owned two branches of Meals Like Mom’s, who made enough money to support a child on her own. That she was thirty-seven and that her childbearing years could be fast approaching extinction. That this might be her only opportunity to have a child at all.

  Stage five had begun then. Stage five, where she’d come to feel that this baby was a stroke of fate, one that had given her this child as a gift. A gift she was happy to accept.

  At about that point she’d toyed with the idea of calling the resort for Andrew’s last name. She’d wondered if she should—or could—locate him somehow. If she should tell him about the baby.

  But what if she actually did find him and tell him? she’d asked herself.

  Andrew had only been an indiscretion she’d had on a trip far away from home. The same thing she’d been for him—one wild night on a tropical beach. After a whole lot of sour-apple martinis. That was the extent of it. What could she realistically expect to come of something like that?

  Nothing, she’d ultimately realized. And there wasn’t anything she’d wanted to come of it. It wasn’t as if they’d had a relationship. They hadn’t even exchanged last names or places of birth or job descriptions or family histories. They hadn’t gotten to know each other in any way. Well, in any way but physically. And just the once. But that was nothing to build on. There was nowhere to go from that. No reason to pretend that something of substance had existed between them or ever might.

  And as for the feelings of Andrew and the baby…?

  Yes, she’d considered that, too.

  But given her own family history, Delia doubted that Andrew would welcome the news that unplanned fatherhood had resulted from their single night together. Instead she’d decided that it was far more probable that her pregnancy would be information Andrew would rather not have.

  And the baby? Well, Delia would make sure the baby did just fine. If anyone knew how to deal with a fatherless child and everything that child would think and feel, it was her.

  So that had been that.

  She’d gone from denial to disbelief to actually wanting this baby and being excited that she was going to have it. On her own. Alone. She’d accepted that. embraced it. And stayed her own course accordingly.

  Only now fate had added another twist. Now she’d met up with Andrew again.

  And if that wasn’t complication enough, she’d also learned that he was only twenty-eight.

  “Nine, count them, nine years younger than I am,” Delia said out loud. “Maybe being attracted to boy toys is a genetic thing.”

  In Tahiti it hadn’t seemed as if there were any age difference between them. If she had had any inclination whatsoever that there was, she wouldn’t have spent ten minutes with Andrew. Marta and Kyle wouldn’t have let her spend ten minutes with him since they felt the same way she did about older women with younger men. And with good reason.

  But there honestly hadn’t been any evidence of an age difference between Delia and Andrew. In fact, looking back and analyzing it, she was convinced that Andrew’s travels and the knowledge he’d gained from that, coupled with his take-charge attitude, had made him appear decidedly older than Kyle, who was also twenty-eight.

  But no matter how Andrew had appeared or seemed, the fact remained that he was twenty-eight. Only twenty-eight.

  “The father of my baby is a baby himself,” Delia muttered as she arrived at the Meals Like Mom’s kitchens and parked in her spot.

  She turned off the engine but she didn’t get out of her car. She just sat there, staring at the building’s brick wall in front of her, thinking, Andrew is not only a baby, but a baby who completely freaked out and ran away last night….

  Which didn’t make him appear or seem older than he was anymore.

  So she had probably been right to conclude that her pregnancy was something he would rather not have ever known about, she told herself.

  But it was too late now. He knew.

  He knew and he wasn’t still in Tahiti or some other place that allowed distance to aid this whole situation. He knew and he was in Chicago. He lived in Chicago. They might even be working together….

  No. That, at least, she had some say in, she thought to console herself when everything felt as if it were careening out of control. They didn’t need to work together. She could take her advertising somewhere else.

  It wasn’t much consolation, though. Not when she was still faced with the other two wrenches that had just been thrown into the works.

  Andrew did know about the baby.

  And he did live in the same city she did.

  But there was nothing she could do about those two things.

  There was nothing she could do about anything but her own situation. Nothing she could control except her own actions.

  And when it came to that, there was comfort in realizing that nothing else had changed.

  It didn’t alter her own plans in any way. She would still have her baby and would support and raise it on her own.

  And if seeing Andrew again the previous evening had served to remind her how pleasant he could be? How good he was at putting everyone around him at ease? How smart and charming and personable he was?

  Well, it was nice to know that her child would have the potential for some positive genes that went beyond Andrew’s staggering looks.

  And it didn’t make the slightest difference to her that one glance at him had made her heart skip a beat.


  She was sure that that had purely been a result of the shock of seeing him. Not due to the fact that he was knock-’em-dead gorgeous.

  And even sexier than she recalled, too…

  “That’s it for now. You can all get back to work. Except Andrew. You and I need to talk.”

  His brother’s edict only vaguely registered with Andrew. Of course most of what had been discussed during the meeting that he’d spent the last hour in had gone right over his head, too. He couldn’t concentrate. Or do much else. He hadn’t slept. He hadn’t eaten. He’d barely managed to get to the office in one piece since he’d been distracted by his own thoughts on the drive from his apartment, too. The truth was, in the short course of twenty-four hours so much had happened that he just plain didn’t know which end was up.

  “Andrew! Where the hell are you today?”

  Jack. Right. Jack.

  Andrew glanced around the conference room where everything had begun the day before, where this morning’s meeting had just been held. Everyone else was gone. The door was closed. Only he and Jack were there. But Andrew had no recollection of the other attendees leaving.

  Jack was sitting at the head of the table. Andrew was midway down one side, stiffly attempting to keep from slumping and giving in completely to the weight of all that seemed to have been dumped on his shoulders since yesterday.

  “Sorry,” he said to his older brother, even though he wasn’t quite sure what he was apologizing for. But Jack’s tone was impatient so he knew something was wrong.

  “Well?”

  “Well what?” Andrew asked.

  “Well, I just asked you what went on with Delia

  McCray after I left you alone with her last night. But seeing as how you missed it, I’m back to wondering what the hell is wrong with you. You spent the whole meeting staring into space, unfocused, not responding even when something was addressed to you, acting as if you weren’t really here, and now you still can’t answer a direct question. What’s going on?”

  Andrew shook his head and stared at the tabletop, unsure if he should be frank with his brother or not.