Practicing Parenthood. Cara Lockwood

in the poorest of poor neighborhoods. Sure, he was a hard-nosed, hard-charging prosecutor, but life had never given him any real breaks. He’d had plenty of temptation to run drugs, to steal, to cut corners—but he’d never done any of it. He’d worked the worst jobs on janitorial staffs at two in the morning to put himself through college and law school, and eventually he wanted to be the highest prosecutor in the land, the attorney general. But for now, he’d accept a position as a federal prosecutor in Miami.

      Collin planned to take some time off before then. This was his last case before he took an extended sabbatical. And the months he wasn’t working as a prosecutor, he wanted to spend with Madison, getting to know those curves he fought to remember through the fuzz of alcohol he’d consumed that night. He glanced at the defense table. Where was she?

      Then attorneys from her firm, Reddy, Chester and Todd, arrived. Collin recognized one of them, Matt Todd, a guy he’d gone to law school with. Collin momentarily felt disoriented. Where was Madison? Surely, she hadn’t left the firm. Her uncle was a partner and there were rumors he’d make her a partner one day, too.

      “Matt? I thought Madison was on this case,” Collin said, getting up to shake Matt’s hand.

      “Not anymore,” Matt answered, trying to balance a briefcase and a large Starbucks cup while clasping Collin’s hand. “You haven’t heard?”

      “Heard what?”

      “She’s on sabbatical.” Matt placed his briefcase and coffee on the defense table. “Rumor has it she’s in the family way.” Matt lowered his voice as if this were the antebellum South when polite company refused to talk about pregnancy.

      “Pregnant?” Collin felt like he’d been slapped. “How far along?”

      Matt shrugged. “How should I know? All I can tell you is she was granted a few months off to figure it all out. At least, that’s the rumor. Everybody’s calling it a health issue, so it may be cancer for all we know...”

      Matt continued to talk, but Collin was barely listening. Madison was pregnant? Collin remembered that they’d used a condom, although little good it had done them since it had broken sometime during the act. Or acts... He’d made the assumption she’d been on the pill because she’d told him, “Don’t worry about it.” Looked like he should’ve been worrying about it.

      “...she gets to hang out on North Captiva for the summer, so it’s nice to be related to a partner.”

      “What do you mean? She’s on North Captiva?”

      “House-sitting for her uncle Rashad,” he said. “For the summer. That’s why I’m here, picking up her caseload while she has a health sabbatical or whatever.” Matt rolled his eyes, clearly annoyed by the new developments, but Collin hardly noticed.

      “The rumor is she’s pregnant, though?” Collin pressed. Suddenly the neckline of his crisp new shirt seemed too tight. Why hadn’t she told him if she was?

      “That’s what Rashad’s paralegal said. She’s a notorious gossip, but she also sits outside the man’s office and has bionic hearing...” Matt shrugged again.

      Collin felt hot and cold all at once. Madison was pregnant? With his child. Had to be his. She’d said that she hadn’t slept with anyone in more than a year...and something in his gut said Madison didn’t sleep around. She just wasn’t the type.

      He needed to find out if it was true.

      Because if she was carrying his baby, there was only one thing he could do.

      He wasn’t going to be like his own father who had never been a true parent. The man who’d never bothered to marry his mother, even after she’d given birth to two children. No, he’d vowed to be the opposite of that man in every way possible. Then he remembered the timing. He had the next few months off. He’d get on a boat, head out to North Captiva and find out if Madison was pregnant or not.

      Because if she was, there was no way he’d abandon his son or daughter. He’d have to marry her.

      That was all there was to it.

       CHAPTER ONE

      MADISON REDDY CLUNG to the edge of the small ferry that was shuttling her from the Pine Island Transportation Center to North Captiva, a small island on the west coast of Florida, just north of Sanibel Island. Known for the big shells swept into the Gulf from the currents in the Atlantic and for its lack of cars, North Captiva housed three hundred residents. They navigated the four-mile long island via golf cart and bike. Madison’s uncle Rashad had been more than generous in giving her time off from her job and a place to stay for a few months while she figured out what she was going to do. Her uncle had married but never had children, and in some ways, he had adopted her as his own.

      “Go there. Take a little time off,” her uncle had told her in his office when she’d revealed in tears that she was pregnant. “If you don’t want to have the baby, there’s an excellent clinic in Fort Myers. If you do, then that’s fine. You can spend your pregnancy there, have the baby and come back to the firm. Your job will be waiting for you.”

      It sounded like a plan from a hundred years ago—hide an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, have the baby in secret and then pop back up in society. But frankly, Madison was just grateful that Uncle Rashad had saved the lectures and was simply letting her, as a thirty-year-old woman, make her own decisions.

      Rashad had been like a father to her, ever since her father died when she was fourteen. Rashad was even more generous, she thought, than her father would’ve been, but that was how seriously he took his responsibility to look after her—and her mother.

      Still, she did need some time off to work this out. Her brain felt like muddled mush, and she needed some distance and a few weeks to decide what she’d do next. Her gut already told her there was nothing to decide. She was going to keep the baby, but she had to figure out how.

      “You can live with me, and we’ll raise her together,” her mother had offered over tea the previous afternoon. “Or him.” Her mom had retired from the firm last year, so she had ample time on her hands.

      “Mom, I can’t...ask you to do that. You’ve earned your retirement.” More than earned it, being a single mom. Her mother, whose cool blue stare never left her face, tucked a strand of dark auburn hair behind her ear as she studied Madison.

      “There’s no asking,” her mother had said as she leaned over the small table at the coffee shop and gave her only daughter a big hug. “You don’t have to ask me to do anything. It’s my pleasure. Whatever you decide, I’m with you.”

      It had felt good to have her mom in her corner, but her mother had always been on her side, the two of them an inseparable team since her father died. Even with the support, though, Madison wasn’t sure how she’d make it work. Could she really ask her nearly seventy-year-old mother to watch a baby for fifty or sixty hours a week? It didn’t seem right. She could get a less demanding job at another firm, but then what? Less money? Now she had a baby to think about.

      You could tell Collin, a small voice in her head whispered. Doesn’t he have a right to know?

      She instantly swatted the annoying thought away like it was a mosquito. Tell him, so he has an opportunity to weigh in and insist she get an abortion? Forget it!

      She assumed he’d be anti-baby. There wasn’t anything soft and fuzzy about the man, and he’d made it more than clear these last few months that he considered their one-night stand exactly that—one and done.

      But right now, all she cared about was holding down her meager lunch of saltines and water. She clung to the ferry’s railing at the back of the boat, willing herself not to hurl as the crystal blue ocean sped by. Madison always prided herself on having a stomach made of steel; she never got food poisoning, and only once in her life ever had the stomach flu. She never even got a hangover. But...this...this was different.