Unexpected Father. Delores Fossen

met Jason’s gaze again, to see how he was reacting to all of this touching stuff, but whatever he was feeling, he kept it carefully hidden in the depths of those smoke-gray eyes. No surprise there. She’d always believed Jason was born to be a cop.

      Or a professional poker player.

      Because that rugged stoic face gave away nothing. The only time she’d ever seen an overt display of emotion from him was the night his brother, Greg, had died. Understandable. She’d had an overt display of her own.

      Well, afterward, anyway.

      When Jason had gone and she had been alone.

      “Are you okay?” Jason asked.

      Lilly didn’t even consider a polite lie. “No. I’m not. It’s hard to be okay when nothing makes sense.”

      She moved on to part three of the reality check. Not knowing what to hope she might see, Lilly clutched the hem of her roomy green hospital gown and jerked it up. Thank goodness she was wearing panties or Jason would have gotten a real eyeful. But even if she hadn’t had on underwear, she would have looked anyway. She needed proof.

      And she got it.

      She slid her fingertips over the thin, pinkish-colored scar. Right on her lower abdomen. Not some ragged wound caused by an injury, but clearly the result of surgery.

      A C-section.

      Jason leaned in closer. So close. Too close. He caught her gown and eased it back into place so that the soft cotton whispered over her thighs. Probably because her near nudity bothered him.

      No, wait.

      He didn’t think of her that way. He’d covered her probably because further examination wasn’t necessary. She had all the proof she needed.

      Reality check was over. Now it was time to deal with the aftermath. And she dealt, all right. The breath swooshed out of her and because she didn’t want any tears to escape, Lilly squeezed her eyes shut.

      “A daughter?” she said.

      “Yes.” Jason’s voice was tight. Edgy. Exactly the way she felt.

      He didn’t add anything else, and it didn’t take long for the smothering silence to settle uncomfortably between them. Lilly used that quiet time to try to put a stranglehold on her composure, to try to grasp what was happening.

      But both were impossible tasks.

      Only two hours earlier she’d awakened to learn that she’d lost nineteen months of life because of a car accident that she couldn’t even remember. Nineteen months. Heaven knew what toll the coma had taken on her body. And there was the inevitable toll that her absence had no doubt taken on her business. Sweet heaven, she’d lost so much. Now, Jason had informed her that she’d been pregnant and delivered a baby.

      A baby who was almost a year old.

      “Her name is Megan,” she heard Jason say.

      At the sound of some movement, Lilly opened her eyes to find him searching through his wallet. He extracted something. A photograph that was a bit crumpled around the edges. He held it up so she could see it.

      Her mouth went dry.

      She took the picture, hesitantly, and pulled it closer to her so she could study it. The little girl had auburn hair. Not quite a genetic copy of Lilly’s own, but close. Darn close. It wasn’t straight but instead haloed her face in soft, loose curls. Just as Lilly’s own hair had done when she was that age.

      Lilly caught her bottom lip between her teeth to cut off any unwanted sound she might make. At this point, any sound would be unwanted. And too revealing.

      In the photograph, Megan was smiling. Not a tentative one, either. It went all the way to her eyes.

      “Oh, mercy,” she whispered. Lilly pressed the picture to her chest.

      This precious child was hers.

      The connection she felt for Megan was instant. Not a gentle tug of her heart, either, but a feeling so intense, so right, that the tears she’d fought came anyway. Lilly didn’t even care that she was losing control. Seeing that tiny face was worth all the tears. It was worth humiliating herself in front of Jason. Worth the coma.

      Worth everything.

      Her baby.

      Her own flesh and blood.

      “I’ve missed so much,” she mumbled, knowing it was a total understatement. She’d missed carrying her child. Giving birth. And most importantly, she had missed nearly the entire first year of her daughter’s life.

      “Yes,” Jason whispered.

      Since there was a lot of emotion in his one-word comment, Lilly looked at him again. He still had on his cop’s face, but those eyes said it all. Or at least they said something. Exactly what that something was, she didn’t know.

      Unless…

      “She’s Greg’s baby,” Lilly clarified. Why, she didn’t know. She didn’t need to explain her sex life to Jason.

      He nodded. “The doctors did a DNA test on Megan after she was born.”

      What a waste of time. If Lilly had been awake during Megan’s birth, she could have told them there was no reason for such a test. Before that night with Greg, it’d been nearly a year since she’d had sex. And that one time with Greg hadn’t been unprotected, either, which meant something had gone wrong with the condom.

      And then it hit her.

      Her heart practically leaped to her throat. “Who has her? Both Greg’s and my parents are dead—”

      “I have her,” Jason interrupted.

      Lilly was surprised that her heart didn’t jump right out of her chest. It was already pounding, and his statement made it pound even harder. “You?”

      That improved his posture. Not that he needed it. He was already soldier-stiff, which was his usual demeanor, but Jason seemed to take her simple question as a challenge.

      “Me,” he enunciated through semiclenched teeth.

      Oh.

      Even with his adamant confirmation, it just didn’t register in her brain and was in total conflict with the image she had of Jason Lawrence.

      He shoved his hands into his pockets; it seemed as if he changed his mind a dozen times as to what he was about to say. “You were in a coma so long that the doctors didn’t think you would recover. I didn’t think you’d recover. I was Megan’s next of kin.”

      There was something in the way he said that. Especially the tone he used when he tossed out the last part. Next of kin. Something…territorial? Something that launched a flurry of mental speculation.

      And it also launched an equal flurry of concern.

      A moment later Lilly realized that her concern was warranted.

      “I have custody of her,” Jason finished. He paused a moment. “Legally, Megan is my daughter.”

      Chapter Three

      Jason braced himself for Lilly’s reaction. Or rather, he tried to. It was hard to brace himself for something he wasn’t sure he could handle.

      “Oh, God,” Lilly mumbled. Not exactly the hostile accusation that he thought she might fire in his direction. After all, he’d just confessed to claiming her child. “You took Megan in. You’ve been raising her.”

      It was a lot more than that. Yes, he’d taken the child in. Yes, he was raising her. But he also loved her. More than life. More than anything.

      And he couldn’t lose her.

      “I’ll bet taking care of a baby required some serious lifestyle changes for you,” Lilly commented. Not chitchat, though. Her eyes were