Suddenly a Daddy. Kathie DeNosky

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      Chapter 2

      That evening, when Heather answered the insistent knocking on her cottage door, she wasn’t the least bit surprised to find Jake standing on the other side. In fact, she’d been expecting him. She’d known that once he saw Mandy it was just a matter of time before he put it all together.

      “We need to talk.” Instead of waiting for her to invite him in, he took hold of her elbow and propelled her back into the living room, kicking the door shut behind him. “I want answers and I’m not leaving here until I get them, Heather.”

      “It never crossed my mind that you would,” she said calmly. She wasn’t going to allow him to upset or stress her out in any way.

      “That baby belongs to me, doesn’t she?” he demanded, cutting right to be heart of the matter.

      “That baby has a name—Amanda Grace. I call her Mandy. She’s almost seven months old.” Heather walked across the room to pull the nursery door closed to keep their raised voices from disturbing her daughter. “And if by belong, you mean are you her biological father? The answer is yes.”

      “What happened? I used protection.”

      Was he actually questioning that he was the father of her child?

      “I’m well aware of that. It obviously had a defect.” She raised an eyebrow. “Surely you’re aware that nothing is one hundred percent effective except abstention. And if we’d gone that route—”

      “We wouldn’t be having this conversation,” he finished for her.

      “Exactly.” She looked him directly in the eye. “But let me assure you, Mandy is your daughter.”

      He shook his head. “I wasn’t questioning that. She looks just like me.”

      Heather watched a muscle work along his lean jaw as Jake stared at her for what seemed like an eternity. She could tell his anger was bordering on outrage, but that was just too bad. As far she was concerned, not knowing he’d fathered a child was his own fault and she wasn’t about to let him turn the blame back on her.

      “Did you even think about getting in touch with me when you discovered you were pregnant?” he finally asked, his voice low and menacing.

      Heather had told herself that she wasn’t going to let him get to her, but his accusatory tone angered her as little else could. “I really don’t think you want to go there, Jake. Believe me, you won’t like hearing what I have to say.”

      “Go ahead. Try me.” He took a step toward her. “I told you I’m here to get answers.”

      “Then I would suggest you drop the intimidation tactics as well as the idea of being the wounded party in all of this because you’re not.” When she turned to walk into the kitchen to put a little more distance between them and the nursery, she fully expected him to follow.

      He didn’t disappoint her. “Did you or did you not consider letting me know that you were expecting my child?”

      Turning on him, she took a deep breath in an effort to calm down. She had a lot to say and she was going to savor every second of it. She’d wanted this conversation for over a year, but never thought she’d have the chance to have her say. She wasn’t going to allow herself to lose momentum by becoming overly emotional. She refused to give Jake that kind of power over her.

      “I not only considered letting you know, I spent my first trimester leaving messages that I needed to talk to you urgently.” She met his angry gaze head-on. “You never returned my calls, and I wasn’t comfortable leaving that kind of information with your secretary.”

      “I—”

      Holding up her hand to stop whatever lame excuse he came up with, she went on, “Then I spent the second trimester trying to convince myself that there had to be a reasonable explanation for you ignoring my requests to get back to me. It turns out I was wrong. There wasn’t a good reason, other than you really are an insensitive, self-absorbed jerk who uses women, then casts them aside.”

      He opened his mouth to no doubt refute her assessment of his character, but she cut him off again.

      “And somewhere during the course of my third trimester, I came to the conclusion that you really didn’t deserve to know about our daughter and that we were both going to be a lot better off without you in our lives.” She folded her arms beneath her breasts. “Any more questions?”

      Heather could tell by the stunned look replacing the angry expression on his handsome face that she’d gotten СКАЧАТЬ