Baby Under The Mistletoe

his hands, one on each thigh, remained tense.

“You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” she said.

“You’re sure.” This time, a statement instead of a question.

Soleil watched the storm of emotions in his gaze, and she grew more terrified by the second. Before she could come up with any lame excuses for not having told him sooner, he stood and looked as if he might explode.

“What the hell, Soleil? What the hell? You didn’t tell me? You were just going to go on your merry way without letting the other parent in the situation know this key piece of information? It didn’t freaking occur to you that the father might like to know he’s the father?”

“I-I-”

“You thought maybe you could slip this one by me?”

His voice was too loud now, nearly a shout, and Soleil was painfully aware of all the adolescent ears nearby that could be hearing the argument.

“Could you please lower your voice? The kids-”

“Oh, what, now you’re worried about being a good role model?”

“That’s not fair.”

“You don’t need your baby daddy? Is that it? Is that what you tell the kids here?”

She winced at his bad imitation of a street accent. Any other time, she’d have given him an earful for that kind of comment, but now she didn’t have any room to talk-not literally or figuratively.

“West-” she said as calmly as she could, but he was closing the distance between them now, and panic rose in her chest.

“It’s crap!” he said, in her face now, close enough that she could inhale his woodsy scent. “You don’t do this to people. This is utter crap!”

She didn’t have any right to lose her temper now. It was his turn, and she had to take whatever he doled out. She owed him that. So she bit her tongue.

“You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

Her apology seemed to take the wind out of his sails. His shoulders slumped, and he retreated a step.

Shaking his head, he said, “How could you? How could you do this? How could you keep this from me?”

“I wanted to tell you in person. I’m sorry it’s taken so long.”

“You wanted to tell me in person,” he repeated numbly. “All this time, you didn’t even call me.”

“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

“I think this warranted a phone call before now,” he said.

He didn’t sound calm so much as he sounded defeated. West Morgan, in the time she’d known him, had never sounded defeated. In fact, part of what had made her so willing to spar with him was that he’d seemed undefeatable.

“You’re right. I kept putting off deciding how to tell you, another day, then another and another until all of a sudden there you were driving down the road toward my goat.”

His expression turned wounded. “Did you really plan to tell me?”

Busted.

Her mouth went dry, and she worked to find the ability to speak again.

“Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to do. I knew it would be wrong to keep it from you, but I…I put off deciding. That’s the truth.”

“Okay.”

She could see him processing the information, trying to decide on his next course of action, which was what she feared most.

Captain West Morgan would have a very narrow idea of the right way to handle this situation. Get married. Settle down. Make the best of it. She’d become the target of his next mission: Operation Family.

With the echoes of their last argument and his 1950s cliches ringing in her head, she had no interest in becoming a cozy family of three. She had no interest in any of the things that would entail-the compromises, the subjugation, the loss of freedom.

“I decided on my own to have the baby, and I don’t expect anything from you. Just so you know.” Though she knew these words were wasted and unnecessary.

“Of course I’m going to be involved,” he said.

“Of course,” she echoed weakly.

“I’m the father. I won’t let my own child grow up without a father.”

He looked stunned but determined, and Soleil knew she wasn’t going to convince him of anything now. But she couldn’t help standing her ground-she was just as unyielding as he when it came to her ideals.

“You live in Colorado, and I live in California. So what? You’re going to commute here to do diaper duty and midnight feedings?”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do. You’ve had months to think about this, and I’ve had a couple of minutes.”

Right. It wasn’t fair of her to be sticking it to him now.

“Maybe I should skip lunch and go,” he continued. “We’ve both got a lot to think about.”

She cast a glance at him, so much larger than her, so much more male. So foreign, so other…

He both intrigued and repelled her, even now. She wanted to run away from him, and she wanted to reach out and knead the tension from his shoulders.

“I’ll be around. You’ve got my number,” she said. “Feel free to call if you want to discuss this further.”

His posture, beneath the gray wool fisherman’s sweater he wore, remained slumped. She hated to acknowledge that she’d been the one to take that toll on him. Even at her best, she’d never felt as if she’d beaten him. Until now. It was a bitter win, if it could even be called that.

He turned to go, and as she watched him walk toward the door, she had a bewildering urge to grab hold of him and beg him not to leave. But she didn’t.

Of course not.

It wasn’t in her vocabulary to ask for help.

Except now, walking out the door was the man she had a sneaking sense of dread she might need, whether she wanted to need him or not.

JULIA MORGAN had never set out to try online dating.

And as she sat in the Guerneville coffee shop, nervously scanning the passersby outside the window for a familiar face, she could hardly recall why it had ever seemed like a good idea.

It had all sort of, well…happened. First came the laptop computer her three sons had given her for her birthday. She’d never been a computer person, and she didn’t really see the need for it since she’d managed to teach for thirty years without one.

Then came her newfound love of e-mail. Who knew it could be so much fun. Instant communication with her friends, children and grandchildren. It was almost too good to be true. She could even get pictures of them on the computer, just like in all those commercials.

And, she’d figured out how to upload the pictures to the Internet and order prints from a Web site.

Amazing.

But that was what had led to the whole online-dating embarrassment. She didn’t dare tell anyone, because who would approve? Certainly not her friends, most of whom were either married, or if they were divorced like her, they were content or resigned to being alone. And she couldn’t tell her kids, who’d likely worry about her or decide it was time she move in with one of them for closer supervision.

Really, it had started so innocently. She’d accidentally clicked on an online-dating ad a few weeks ago, and before she knew it, she was putting in her zip code and looking through a list of single men her age. Then a little box had popped up telling her that all she had to do was upload her own photo, fill out a profile form, and she’d be able to contact any man she wanted.

She’d immediately turned off the whole computer and went to do some gardening, horrified at herself for even considering such a thing.

But there was one man she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about.