The Once and Future Father. Marie Ferrarella

wasn’t why he was here. Lucy’s life was her own. He’d given it back to her when he’d withdrawn from it, leaving her alone.

      Whose baby was it?

      The question throbbed through his brain like a bad migraine.

      “Did you hear me?” Lucy demanded, her voice rising. “I said Ritchie’s not home. He’s working. I’ll tell him you stopped by.”

      Because it hurt just to look at Dylan, she began to close the door. But his hand went out, stopping her. She hadn’t the strength to oppose it.

      “What?” she demanded, trying to hang on to her temper, on to the angry tears that had suddenly sprung up inside of her, demanding a release. Why was he back now, after all this time? She was just getting her life back in order. She didn’t need this. And why was he looking at her like that?

      “This is about Ritchie,” Dylan said.

      She turned pale right before his eyes, holding the door now not so much to block him as for support, to keep from sinking down like a balloon that had suddenly lost all its air. His hand went out to steady her, but she ignored it, stiffening with her last available ounce of dignity. The message was clear. She didn’t need him to touch her.

      Lucy felt herself getting light-headed. “What about Ritchie?” she asked, holding on to the door for support.

      “Lucy, let’s go inside.”

      She didn’t budge. She didn’t have the strength to budge. Ritchie was her older brother, but she had always felt responsible for him. Especially after their parents had died in a train derailment the summer she turned eighteen. Ritchie was the one who could laugh, who could see the bright side of everything even when the chips were down. She was the strength that helped them go on.

      She didn’t feel very strong now.

      Summoning what reserves she had left, Lucy glared at Dylan. Why was he playing these games with her? Why did he have to be the one to come and tell her whatever it was he had to say?

      She clenched her teeth together and repeated. “What about Ritchie?”

      Dylan didn’t want to tell her this way. Not on the steps of the house where he had once held her in his arms, breathing in her scent and contemplating things he had no right to contemplate. But Lucy was making no move to let him in, standing instead like some steadfast soldier guarding the borders of her small country, refusing him access.

      He tried not to think of a time when things had been different.

      Dylan looked at her face. She was fiercely trying to protect herself against what she probably knew was coming. He had no idea how to couch this, how to make something that was so utterly devastating a little less so.

      Without a choice, Dylan gave her the news straight and braced himself for the consequences.

      “Ritchie’s dead, Lucy.”

      Lucy’s breath caught. She looked into Dylan’s eyes and knew he was telling her the truth. She knew even when she wanted to scream at him that he was lying, that he was playing some sort of horrible trick on her, the way he had when he made her believe he loved her. He had never said the words, but there had been feelings between them then, feelings she would have gone to her grave swearing were true.

      Except that they weren’t. At least, not for him.

      But now it was Ritchie who was going to his grave.

      Everything around her began to merge into one color, one huge mass. And then the world began to swim and swirl.

      “No,” she mouthed just before everything went black and swallowed her up.

      Dylan realized a heartbeat before it happened that she was going to faint. The golden hue of her skin had gone whiter than the snow on the mountain where they had once gone skiing. It was almost translucent.

      Dylan reached her side just in time.

      The swell that was her unborn child came between them. He felt something move, something kick just as he tried to gather her in his arms. The kick caught him by surprise and he almost dropped her to the floor. The sudden jolt when he caught her seemed to travel through the length of her. Dylan swallowed a curse.

      He felt the baby kick again. Amid his concern, jealousy threatened to take control of him.

      She’d gone on to love someone else while he had suffered in his own private hell.

      A hell, a voice deep inside him whispered, of his own making, not hers.

      But it had been the only choice.

      He wouldn’t allow himself to feel anything now. It wasn’t any more right now than it had been then.

      As gently as possible, Dylan picked her up in his arms. Shouldering his way into the living room, he placed Lucy down on the sofa. Probably the bedroom would have been a better choice, but he couldn’t bring himself to go there.

      Unbuttoning the three tiny buttons at her throat, he tried to remember what a man did in a case like this. And tried not to think about the last time he’d undressed her.

      He realized that his hand was shaking slightly.

      Dammit, whatever might have been between them was over now. She was carrying somebody else’s baby. He glanced at her left hand. There was no ring on her third finger, but that meant nothing. She could have taken the ring off because her hand had gotten swollen.

      He should have left this to Hathaway and Alexander. At least if he had, he wouldn’t have found out that Lucy was pregnant.

      Cursing himself for coming and Ritchie for being stupid enough to get himself killed in the first place, Dylan hurried into the kitchen to look for something to use as a compress. He found a single kitchen towel neatly folded on a rack. He’d once marveled how she managed to keep everything so neat, given Ritchie’s penchant for creating havoc wherever he went. Grabbing the kitchen towel from the rack, he held it under running water.

      Wringing the towel out, he looked around the kitchen. A sense of nostalgia permeated. As with the living room, nothing had changed in here.

      Only she had.

      Not his concern, he told himself tersely.

      The wet towel fell from his fingers when he heard the scream. Racing back, he found her trying to sit up. There was pain etched into the planes of her face. Lucy was digging her nails into the upper portion of the sofa, whether to try to drag herself up or to try to get away from pain, he didn’t know.

      “What’s the matter?” The question came out far more sharply than he’d intended.

      “The baby.” Trying to catch her breath, Lucy pressed the flat of her hand against her stomach. Her eyes were huge when she raised them to his face. “Dylan, the baby’s coming.”

      Chapter 2

      Her words cut through Dylan like a sharp razor. An edgy sense of panic hovered over him. “Are you sure? You just fainted, maybe—”

      “There’s no ‘maybe’ about it—the baby is coming.” Her eyes widened as another thrust of pain, on the heels of the last, began burrowing to the surface. “Now.”

      “Hang on,” he cautioned. Dylan could feel his own heart rate accelerating. Pulling out his cell phone, he dialed the precinct’s dispatch. “This is Detective McMorrow. I need an ambulance ASAP.” He gave the woman on the other end Lucy’s address, then flipped the phone shut. “They’ll be here in ten minutes.”

      Lucy’s breaths came in snatches, like someone, already exhausted, climbing up the side of a steep mountain. The thick black hair that had been so seductively sensuous to touch was plastered against her face. Dylan could see that she was fighting pain with every fiber of her being.

      There was no use trying to distance himself from the scene. It got to him. Dylan couldn’t stand seeing