“Understood,” Mike agreed, then moved around the man. When he was at the door, he glanced back. “I’m glad she’s had you in her corner all this time,” he said with absolute sincerity.

  “Should have been you.”

  Mike sighed heavily. He could see Darryl’s point. “Yes,” he agreed without reservation, without even knowing what it was Jane had been left to face alone. “It should have been me.”

  Five

  Jane had baked ten dozen batches of Christmas cookies since dawn. She’d only burned the first three dozen, trying to get the timing down in the ancient oven in the tiny furnished apartment she’d rented until the baby was born. The apartment itself wasn’t bad, with its huge windows overlooking the river and its bright curtains and overstuffed furniture. The appliances, however, were a very different story. The stove was turning her holiday baking into an adventure.

  She’d taken a leave of absence for an entire school year, rather than battle the board of education over her suitability to teach. She had enough money left from her mother’s insurance policy to cover her expenses, including this apartment in a town just far enough from home to protect her reputation. Maybe it was a foolish, old-fashioned ruse, but she had to try to give her child a start that didn’t include speculation about his or her paternity.

  She had debated just staying in her own house and weathering the gossip, but in the end she’d concluded she and the baby would both be better off if they just turned up again in the spring. Maybe she was only postponing the inevitable questions, but she’d felt she would be better able to cope with them after she’d gotten through the pregnancy and had a healthy baby.

  There was an ironic twist to her decision, of course. In the end, she’d done exactly what she’d refused to do for Mike. She had left the hometown she loved.

  But it wasn’t as if it was going to be forever, as it would have been if she’d married Mike. And she was still close enough to have lunch every couple of weeks with her friends. They met at a restaurant midway between the two towns, caught her up on all the news and brought her anything she needed from her house. They were scheduled to get together again on Saturday and she intended to have her usual packages of Christmas cookies ready for them since it was likely to be the last time she saw them before the holiday.

  The apartment smelled of cinnamon and sugar and ginger and echoed with the sound of Christmas carols being played at full volume. In fact, the CD player was so loud, she barely heard the knock at the door. She turned the sound down, then listened just to be sure.

  “Who on earth...?” she murmured, wiping her hands on a paper towel and grabbing the last batch of cookies from the oven before going to the door. It was probably a neighbor complaining about the volume of the music or her landlord coming to beg a couple of cookies. The man had an insatiable appetite for sweets and a constantly—and futilely—dieting wife who refused to bake them for him.

  With her cheeks flushed from the heat of the oven and probably streaked with flour, Jane suspected she was quite a sight. Judging from the impatient pounding on the door, though, she didn’t dare pause to make any improvements in her appearance.

  “Okay, okay,” she muttered under her breath, throwing open the door.

  Her mouth gaped. “Mike? How on earth did you find me?”

  He shook his head, still staring. “Doesn’t matter.”

  No, she supposed it didn’t. The point was, he was here. She wasn’t sure which of them was the most stunned. His gaze went from her face to her unmistakably huge belly in the blink of an eye, then remained there as all the color drained out of his face.

  “You...you’re...”

  “I’m going to have a baby,” she said, supplying the words that eluded him. She regarded him intently. For a rugged man, he looked awfully shaken. “You aren’t going to faint, are you?”

  “Of course not,” he said at once. “But—”

  “I think you’d better come in and sit down,” she said, though that was the last thing she wanted. For months she’d dreamed of finding Mike on her doorstep, but the dream had eventually died. Now her own reaction was nothing like what she’d anticipated. She felt nothing, or so she swore to herself. She was just surprised, that explained the sudden racing of her pulse, the lurch of her heart.

  To give herself a little time to gather her composure, she left Mike in the living room and went into the kitchen to pour him a cup of coffee and herself a glass of milk. She added a handful of cookies to the tray and carried it back into the living room. Mike still looked dazed.

  “What? When?” he asked, apparently incapable of forming a coherent sentence.

  If she’d imagined him sweeping her up and dancing around at the sight of her body swollen with his child, this stunned reaction would have been a serious letdown, but she’d stopped counting on anything from Mike Marshall. Still, she had no intention of lying to him.

  “The baby’s due in three weeks, right after New Year’s. I got pregnant in April.”

  “April,” he repeated, then his gaze shot to hers. “You mean?”

  She tried not to be hurt that he hadn’t guessed it at once. “Yes, the baby’s yours, Mike.”

  The confirmation snapped him out of his daze. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” he demanded angrily.

  So much for the joy she’d hoped for. Jane stared him down, then said quietly, “I tried.”

  “Well, you didn’t try hard enough.”

  “I left messages at your apartment,” she said pointedly. “I called your office, only to be told you were away and weren’t to be bothered. What more would you have had me do?”

  “Write me a letter, keep calling.” He ran a hand through his hair in a familiar gesture of frustration. “Dammit, Janie, you should have found a way.”

  “Did it ever once occur to you to call me?” she retorted. “You knew we’d taken chances. Maybe you should have been responsible enough to check to see if there were any consequences.”

  “So now it’s my fault for not checking with you? Don’t you dare try to pull that, Janie. You know perfectly well you told me there was no risk.”

  She flushed at that. “That’s not exactly what I said,” she argued, but without much spirit.

  “It’s sure as hell what you implied.”

  She couldn’t deny that was exactly the impression she’d meant to give him. “Mike, it doesn’t matter, not now. I’m having the baby in a few weeks. I don’t expect anything from you. Not a thing. You’re off the hook. You can hop the next flight to San Francisco and forget all about this.”

  He stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. “And what if I don’t want to be off the hook? What if I want to be a father to this baby?”

  She fought the little frisson of hope stirred by his words. He was just feeling territorial.

  “Then we’ll work something out,” she said evenly. “I would never try to keep you from your child. That’s why I called you in the first place.”

  “But you still won’t marry me?”

  “Now? Under these circumstances?” she asked incredulously. “No, of course not. A baby doesn’t solve the problems we were having. It’s just an added complication.”

  “That’s how you view our child, as a complication?”

  “No, never,” she said fiercely. “That wasn’t what I meant at all.”

  “What, then?”

  “Just that it was difficult enough figuring out what to do when it was just the two of us involved.”

  “A baby should simplify it. We should both be thinking about what’s best for our child.”

  “But we obviously don’t agree on what that would be. We never have.”

  “How the hell do you know that? I only found out about this baby a few minutes ago. I don’t even know what I think.” He stared at her in frustration. “Jane Dawson, you are the most pigheaded woman I have ever known in my life.”

  “That kind of attitude will certainly win me over,” she said dryly.

  “I’m not trying to win you over. Obviously I’ve lost that battle. But I’ll tell you one thing and make no mistake about it,” he said, his voice climbing, “I am going to be a father to this baby and you can damned well get used to the idea.”

  “Well, that’s just fine,” she shouted back.

  In the silence that followed, another CD slid into place on the player and the pure, clear notes of “Joy to the World” filled the air. Jane couldn’t help it...she began to chuckle. When she glanced at Mike, she saw the fierce expression on his face begin to give way to a smile.

  He sighed, then said softly, “Merry Christmas, Janie.”

  “Merry Christmas, Mike.”

  “Think we can discuss this rationally?” he asked.

  “Maybe in the spirit of the season, we can try,” she conceded, then gave a little gasp as the baby walloped her with a ferocious kick.

  “What is it?” Mike demanded at once. “Are you okay?”

  “It’s nothing, just a little reminder that your kid’s getting restless. The baby gets a little rambunctious around this time of day, probably because it’s time to eat. A couple of cookies aren’t going to do the trick.”

  “We’ll go out,” Mike said at once.

  “I can fix something here.”

  “Do you have to argue about everything?”

  She grinned. “Pretty much.”

  “Well, just this once give in gracefully, okay?”

  His gaze settled on her stomach and a look of such yearning came over his face, that Janie felt something inside her shift. She had always imagined Mike looking at her with exactly that expression of awe when she was carrying his child. She had always imagined them sharing the wonder of it. Impulsively she moved across the room and stood in front of him.

  “Give me your hand.”

  He stared at her. “Why?”

  “Do you have to argue about everything?” she teased, echoing his accusation against her.

  He held out his hand and she placed it against her stomach. The baby didn’t disappoint her. The kick was another solid wallop. Mike’s eyes widened and he stared at her incredulously.

  “Oh, my God, that was him, her, whatever?”

  Jane nodded.

  “Do you know which it is?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t want to know.” The truth was it would have hurt too much to know if it was going to be the little boy she’d dreamed of giving Mike. She hadn’t wanted to deal with that until she had to.

  “It’s a boy,” Mike said with utter confidence. “If it’s not, we’re never going to have to worry about anybody messing with our daughter. She’ll blow ’em away.” His gaze on her softened. “You’re okay? No problems with the pregnancy?”

  “I’m healthy as a horse,” she assured him.

  “I want to know every detail,” he said fiercely. “And I want to go to your next doctor’s appointment with you.”

  Jane stared at him in shock. “You’ll be here that long?”

  “Honey, you couldn’t get me out of town now if you wanted to. I’m here for the duration.”

  When she opened her mouth to argue, he cut her off. “Get used to it, Jane. I’m here to stay.”

  “But your job...”

  “I’ve worked nonstop ever since you left San Francisco. I’m due for some time off. I’ll call tomorrow and make the arrangements.”

  The thought of Mike being around for the birth of their child left her feeling shaken. If he stayed that long, if he took care of her as he obviously intended, if he reminded her of how deeply she loved him, how would she ever manage to say goodbye again?

  * * *

  Mike didn’t sleep a wink that night. Only a part of his restlessness could be blamed on the too-short, lumpy sofa in Jane’s living room. There hadn’t been any question of him sharing her bed. When they’d gotten back from dinner, she’d walked into the bedroom and shut the door. A moment later she’d emerged and tossed some sheets and a pillow in the direction of the sofa. He’d gotten the message. What he hadn’t gotten was a moment’s sleep.

  He was still wrestling with the idea that he was going to be a father. He and Janie were going to have a baby. The thought boggled his mind. Over dinner he had pumped her for every single detail of her pregnancy, trying to hide his resentment over having already missed so much of this miraculous process.

  To think that she could have had this child and he might never have learned of it. The very idea of that made him so furious he wanted to break things. When he got past wanting to throttle her for not seeing to it he was informed, he thanked God over and over that she had decided to go through with the pregnancy. His next hurdle was to convince her to marry him so their child would bear his name.

  He could hardly wait to hear the explosion likely to greet that plan. He’d spent the whole night trying to come up with the right words to convince her. In the end he’d concluded he would just drag her off to a church and let a minister persuade her that her child deserved to be born within the sanctity of marriage. He liked that. It was exactly the right button to push.

  However well she might seem to be coping, it was obvious to him that she’d left her home because she didn’t want the stigma for herself or her baby of being an unwed mom. That stigma wasn’t likely to go away just because everyone back home missed the actual pregnancy. The only way to make things right for all of them was to get married. He just had to get the timing perfect.

  Jane was a morning person. She always had been. He figured she’d be up with the birds, which meant he had to get busy. He dug around in the kitchen cupboards and came up with the best china the place had to offer. He found a couple of candles tucked in a drawer and put them in the middle of the table in the apartment’s tiny dining alcove. Then he went to work in the kitchen.

  He made biscuits and an omelet and squeezed fresh juice from the oranges he found in the refrigerator. He had coffee perking and a glass of milk poured by the time he heard the first stirrings in her room.

  A few minutes later, she wandered into the dining area, barely covering a yawn. She stared at the fancy table and the huge breakfast, then sank into a chair.

  “You’ve been busy,” she said, regarding him warily.

  “You told me to make myself at home. Do you want jam for your biscuits?”

  “Yes, please.” She toyed with the food on her plate. “Mike?”

  “Yes.”

  “You can’t keep doing this.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ll be big as a barn.”

  “Maybe a bungalow,” he said, grinning. “Never a barn. It won’t matter anyway. I’ll still think you’re beautiful.”

  “That’s only because you haven’t seen my swollen ankles,” she said, holding out her feet. She was wearing fluffy blue slippers. “Look. And this is at the beginning of the day. They’ll only get worse.”

  “That’s because you’ve been on your feet too much. That’s going to stop, now that I’m here. You can keep them propped up.”

  “And do what?”

  “Watch TV, read a book, crochet little booties.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Jane, I intend to pamper you.” He glanced at her plate. “Finish your omelet. The baby needs protein.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I read that book you left by the sofa. Milk and protein for the baby’s bones, plus plenty of fruits and vegetables.”

  She regarded him with amusement. “Mike, I’m eight and a half months pregnant. I know what to eat. I know how to take care of myself. If you’re going to hover, you can leave now.”

  “I’m going to hover,” he said, then added with a touch of defiance, “And I’m not going to leave. Get used to it.”

  Six

  Mike was very big on routine. He always had been. Growing up in his household of rambunctious brothers and sisters, order and routine had been in short supply. He had always craved it. Jane suspected that was one of the reasons he’d been drawn to the calm and serenity in her house. Now he’d taken that need for order to new heights.

  By the third day of his visit, Jane was fairly sure he’d missed his true calling...drill sergeant. When he wasn’t stuffing her with food, promptly at seven a.m., noon and six with a couple of snacks thrown in at precisely two-thirty p.m. and eight, he was pushing the latest child care books on her to read. Judging from the stack he’d accumulated, she doubted there was a single title on parenting or prenatal care left in the local library.

  And then there were the walks. Not the sort of strolls she’d grown accustomed to taking every afternoon, no. These were more like forced marches. By the time Saturday rolled around, she could hardly wait to get out from under his watchful gaze for a few hours while she met her friends for lunch.

  When she appeared in the living room wearing her favorite maternity dress, the only outfit that didn’t make her look like a blimp, he popped up out of his chair.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m meeting Donna and some others for lunch.”

  “Where?”

  “At a little restaurant and craft shop in Lottsburg. I doubt you’ve ever been there.”

  He looked horrified. “But I know where Lottsburg is. It’s on a back road in the middle of nowhere. You can’t drive over there by yourself. I’ll take you.”

  “Mike!”

  “Stop arguing. I drive or you stay here.”

  “Dammit, Mike, I am not helpless.”

  “No, but the baby’s due any second. What if you go into labor while you’re on that country road all alone? Or what if there’s an accident? The steering wheel could hurt the baby.” He shuddered visibly. “No, I’m going and that’s that.”

  “Mike, if you’d been this bossy when we were together, I’d have thrown you out on your ear.”