Daddy's Double Due Date. Belinda Barnes

if we might reach a compromise. I want to help raise this child, Ashley. I would be willing to give you money each month to help out.”

      “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said, stepping back, away from his touch.

      “Hear me out,” he said, holding up a hand.

      He tried to gauge her reaction to what he had said so far. She didn’t say anything more, but didn’t move either, so he took that as a good sign. “Joint custody.”

      Ashley crossed her arms over her midsection in a defensive gesture, the same way she had done earlier. “No.”

      He doubted her spine could get any more rigid and hated upsetting her like this. Still, he couldn’t back down. “The baby would live with you for six months and with me six.”

      “No.” Her eyes bore into him. “I won’t give up my child.”

      The tremor in Ashley’s voice revealed her slipping control, and he hated himself for what he was doing, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the child he had lost. “I’m not asking you to give up the child exactly. I want to spend time with my baby. I want a chance to be a father.”

      She lifted her chin in a defiant gesture. “I’ll tell the baby about you when it’s older.”

      “When would that be?”

      “I don’t know. Later.” She watched Hunter as if trying to read him, but he schooled his features, unwilling to let her see how much she affected him.

      Before she had miscarried, the mother of his first child had been coerced by their parents into deciding it would be best to give the baby up for adoption. Yet Ashley stood firm, ready to fight to protect her child. Their child.

      “Can’t you understand? This baby means more to me than anything. I’m sorry, Hunter, but I can’t do what you’re asking.”

      “Can’t or won’t?” He didn’t understand the sudden heaviness in his chest or his need to touch her, comfort her. When he saw her shiver, he moved closer to encourage Ashley back through the double doors. With his hand at her spine, he steered her to the sofa. What he really wanted was to pull her into his arms and hold her, and that didn’t make any sense. “I didn’t come here to argue or upset you. Being a single woman, I’m sure you realize having a child will be financially draining. I want to make it easier on you. I’m offering to help.”

      “I’m not stupid, Hunter. You and I both know you’re not thinking of me. You want to buy this child, but you can’t,” she said, lowering herself onto the couch. “I won’t let you.”

      “Why? Isn’t that exactly what you did?”

      She flinched.

      Hunter cursed himself.

      “It isn’t the same,” she said, jutting her chin out, “and you know it. These are precisely the kind of problems I had hoped to avoid by requesting an anonymous donor.”

      Hunter felt like a jerk, but he’d already lost one child. Now, the future of this child was at stake. Later he would find a way to make amends once Ashley had agreed to his terms. “My sperm was intended to go to Lauren, my sister-in-law, but it was used to impregnate you. That makes me your child’s father.”

      “Did Lauren conceive?”

      Under the circumstances it was probably a blessing she hadn’t. “No. My brother has a low sperm count and they thought that was the problem. Now, I don’t know what to think.”

      “I’m sorry.” Ashley’s gaze met his. “If she had, would you have shared custody? What would your role have been?”

      Hunter knew where she was leading and stopped short of smiling at her cunning. “I would have been Uncle Hunter, but it would have been different, because I’d have seen the baby every day. I’d have known he or she was being well cared for and if the child needed me, I’d have been there.” And it possibly would have proven that he was no longer selfish and self-absorbed, contrary to his father’s belief.

      Ashley took a drink from her water glass and returned it to the coffee table. “I don’t think I could stand by and watch someone else raise my child.”

      He had thought he could, because he would have done it out of love for his brother. Now, he realized how painful it would have been to watch someone else raising his child, a child he would never be able to claim. “Then you understand my position.”

      “I do, but this baby is everything to me. It may very well be my last chance. I can’t—I won’t let you take this child from me.” She stared at him, then clenched her eyes shut as if struggling for composure.

      He knelt beside the sofa and placed his hand over her abdomen, ignoring the way her eyes shot open and the sudden look of panic that crossed her face. “I may not have been in your bed at the time of conception, but I am this baby’s father in every sense of the word. I could talk for hours about my rights as a father that every court in Texas would enforce, no matter how much you might want it to be otherwise. But I won’t. You said this could be your last chance. It could very well be mine, too, and I want to be there for my child.”

      She moved his hand to the sofa cushion. “Children are for loving. They’re for holding and kissing day in and day out. You can’t make a family six months out of the year.”

      “People do it all the time.”

      “Not with my child. That sort of uprooting is confusing. I don’t care who or what you are, I won’t subject my baby to that. And if you really cared about him or her, you wouldn’t either.”

      He hated to admit it, but she was right. “I do care.”

      “No, Hunter, I don’t think you do.” She stood. “And I don’t think we have anything else to discuss.”

      He pushed himself to his feet. “We haven’t resolved this.”

      “I have nothing else to say to you.”

      “Will you at least think about what I’ve said? I admit that a child needs a mother, but he or she will need a father, too. Let me assume that responsibility. Let me be a father to my child.”

      Her sudden anger caught him off-guard as she marched around him to the front door. “Is that what you see this as? A responsibility? What about love?”

      “This is my child. He or she would never have reason to doubt my love.”

      “Will that be enough?” she asked, opening her apartment door in silent invitation for him to leave.

      He walked toward her. “I don’t know, but neither do you.”

      She stared at him, giving no clue as to her thoughts.

      When she remained silent, he paused in the doorway, dug out the five dollars she’d earlier pushed into his pocket and pressed it into the center of the pink bouquet on the table. “Dinner was on me.” Then he left, waiting outside until he heard her throw the dead bolt on the door. He hated leaving with things still unresolved, but doubted he would make any more headway tonight.

      Okay, maybe things hadn’t gone so well, but she hadn’t slapped him. Actually, she had reacted far better than he’d expected. Far better than he would have had the tables been turned.

      All things considered, the fact she had talked to him at all gave him hope. And there was still time. Tomorrow, after she had calmed down, he would talk with her again.

      Hunter scratched his jaw as he strode to his pickup. While at his office that afternoon he had searched for case law to support his claim. He’d ignored the ringing phone and admitted she might have tried to call him. His time had been well spent as he had found five Texas Supreme Court decisions issued on appeal which left little doubt about a father’s rights—his rights. Odd that after finding cases to support his claim, he hadn’t used the information. Though he didn’t understand it, he chalked it up to the strain of reliving