LITMIR.BIZ

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or so. This baby, small though she was, had to be getting on for about ten weeks old.

      Do the math, Jodie, do the math. Nine months plus two and a half equals almost a year. When you were busy “getting the old crush out of your system,” last fall, the mother of Dev’s baby must already have been pregnant….

      But where was the mother now? Who was the mother?

      “Here. Sit here,” Dev said, after she’d made her way inside. It was a pretty house, but the décor was too frilly and fussy for a man like Dev, with lace and florals and porcelain knickknacks everywhere. His mother’s taste. “I’ll take the frame. Do you want coffee, or something?”

      “No. I—No, I’m fine.”

      “Look, it’s obvious we need to talk. Let me get you something.”

      “Is—? Who else is around?”

      “No one. My parents are in Florida. They have a condo there. I made them go.”

      “You made them?”

      “Don’t you sometimes feel … haven’t you felt, these past few weeks, as if sometimes there’s just too much family?”

      “Ohh, yeah!”

      That she could relate to.

      But the baby …

      DJ had fallen asleep on Dev’s shoulder. “Hang on a sec,” he muttered, and picked up a roomy piece of cloth that turned out to be a baby sling. He draped it across his shoulder, tucked the baby inside and stood there, still swaying gently. “If I put her down now, she’ll just wake up again,” he explained. “She needs to go a little deeper before it’s safe.”

      “You’re very good at it.”

      “Yeah … not really. I’m getting there. I have a who-o-ole heap of help.”

      A heavy silence fell, during which the obvious reference to DJ’s mother wasn’t made.

      Dev said nothing about her.

      Jodie didn’t want to ask.

      “She’s adorable,” she said instead, feeling woolly and wooden about it, wondering if she should be angry. Or hurt. Or just cheerful. Wow, you have a baby, congratulations. You said you didn’t want kids, but whoever the mom is obviously didn’t get the memo.

      Unless of course …

      Well, accidents happened. Baby-producing accidents, as well as ones that break legs in three places and put people into comas and necessitate the removal of spleens. Dev and some unknown woman had had a contraceptive “oops” roughly eleven months ago, and here was a baby, and her mom had probably just run to the store for diapers and milk. She and Jodie would meet each other any minute now.

      “I can’t take this in,” she blurted.

      “I don’t blame you. Jodie, this was all set up for Tuesday. Does your family know you’re here? They couldn’t!”

      “Oh, my family … Didn’t you just ask me if I felt there was too much family? Well, there is! I said I was going for a walk and I didn’t need company. I just told them around the block, and that if I wasn’t back in forty-five minutes, send a search party. Coming here was an impulse.”

      “I’d better call your folks.” He rocked the baby in his arms instinctively.

      “It hasn’t been forty-five minutes.”

      “You’re going to be here for a while.” He’d already picked up the phone and hit speed dial, as if the matter was urgent.

      He has my parents on speed dial, she registered. But she liked his directness, the decisive way he moved. It was reassuring, somehow. Dependable.

      He spoke a moment later. “Hi, Barb?” Barb was Mom. “Just letting you know, Jodie’s here…. Nope, not my idea … No choice, at this point … I can’t argue it now, you have to trust me…. Of course I will … No. Just me. Please … Yep, okay, talk soon.”

      “What was that about, Dev?” She tried to stand up, but her legs wouldn’t cooperate. The walk had tired her more than she wanted.

      “We’ve both said it. Too much family.”

      “Right.”

      “First, tell me why you came. I mean, what made you think—? What gave you the idea—?” He broke off and swore beneath his breath. “Just tell me what made you come.”

      His difficulty in finding the right words made her flounder a little, and struggle for words herself. “I wanted to ask you … or to thank you, too, for coming to see me in the hospital those times.”

      “Just that?” He sounded cautious, looked watchful, as if waiting for a heck of a lot more.

      “Well, and for—I don’t know if I’m even the reason for this, or even part of the reason, but … not going back to New York when you planned.”

      “Hell, of course I wasn’t going back to New York!”

      She looked at him blankly and he understood something—something that she didn’t understand at all, but she could see the dawn of realization in his face, while her body stopped belonging to her and belonged … somewhere else, to someone else.

      It was a familiar feeling. Just the accident and her slow recovery? Or something more?

      He was muttering under his breath. Curse words, some of them. And coaching. He was coaching himself. He sat down suddenly, in the armchair just across from the couch, with the sling-wrapped baby cradled in his arms, as if his legs had drained of their strength just like Jodie’s had.

      “Pretend I’ve just been in a coma for nearly nine months, Devlin,” she said slowly. “Tell me anything you think I might not know. Pretend my family has a habit of shielding me from the most pointless things. And from the serious things, too. And tell me even the things you think I already do know. What did you mean, set up for Tuesday? What did you mean, no choice at this point? And this might be totally off-topic, but how is there a baby? And where is her mom?”

       Chapter Three

      She doesn’t know. She doesn’t understand.

      The realization kept cycling through Dev’s head, paralyzing him. Hell, he hadn’t wanted it to happen like this! He’d been so scared of the moment, sometimes—scared about what it would mean for his own bond with his baby girl. What if Jodie wanted the baby all to herself? What if he was suddenly shut out? He wasn’t prepared to let that happen, but how tough would he be willing to get about custody and access, when Jodie’s recovery was still so far from complete? What would be best for DJ?

      He’d wanted to get the revelation over with, so that at least he would begin to know where he and DJ stood, but the timing had to be right. It had to be done in the right way.

      With all the talk, the questions, the arguments back and forth between pretty much every member of the Browne and Palmer families for weeks, the conjectures that maybe at some level she knew, and that some tiny thing might easily jog a memory, no one had considered that Jodie herself might be the one to determine when they broke the news.

      Devlin had wanted her told sooner, and his parents had been on his side. The Palmers had wanted to wait, insisting she wasn’t ready for such a massive revelation. The doctors, therapists and counselors wanted to respect the family’s wishes, but had been growing more insistent with each stage in Jodie’s improvement, after the setback of the serious infection she’d had just after DJ was born.

      This was part of the problem. It had all happened in stages. It wasn’t as if she’d just opened her eyes one day and said, “I’m back. Catch me up on what I’ve missed!”

      All through the coma there had been signs of lightening awareness, giving

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