Secret Baby Scandal
He nodded to one of the guards outside the locker rooms as they passed a secured area.
“I realize that.” Her heart hummed along at high speed even as she warned herself to be coolheaded. To ignore the feel of his hand on her waist when he ushered her through the heavy steel door that led to the parking garage. “I’m out of practice dealing with the media or I never would have been so flippant with a stranger. Obviously, I know better. I apologize.”
His terse nod gave away nothing.
“I’m parked over here.” He hit the fob on his key chain and the lights on a nearby gray Aston Martin coupe flashed twice. “I can give you a ride home and we’ll...talk.”
She wondered at that meaningful pause. Was he still stewing about her comment to the reporter? Regardless, she needed to do some talking of her own.
“Thank you.” The clamminess that she’d felt on her skin earlier returned. Her time to tell him was running out. “I took a car service to the game so I appreciate the ride.”
She’d timed her arrival so that she wouldn’t set foot in the stadium until a few minutes before the game ended, hoping to avoid her father and spend as little time away from home as possible.
The tail end of the silk scarf she’d tied around her head caught on one of the sequins of her dress and she struggled to untangle it as she walked to his car. She was hot, tired and out of sorts, so it was no surprise that she popped a whole row of sequins off. They bounced around the floor of the parking garage while Jean-Pierre held open the door of his sports car.
It wasn’t fair that he looked impeccable in a custom Hugo Boss suit while her life frayed at the seams. With an impatient swipe, she slid the scarf off her hair and lowered herself into the leather seat.
When he came around to the driver’s side, he wasted no time putting the car into Reverse and heading out the exit. Game traffic had thinned out by now, putting them on the highway in no time. At this rate, in ten more minutes they’d be at her front door. Her stomach tightened at how fast her time was running out to make her cool, calm announcement. If she could even remember that speech she’d practiced in her mind a thousand times. She toyed with the fringe on the edges of her silk scarf, watching the play of pink, green and blue threads over her fingers.
“You didn’t hear my answers in that interview, did you?” Jean-Pierre said suddenly, diverting her thoughts.
“No, I’m afraid not.” She seized on the reprieve with both hands. “I ditched the Coaches Club the second I recognized that reporter’s face on the big screen over the bar. I knew he was about to corner you with what I’d just told him, so I left before my father could blow a gasket and blast me in front of five thousand fans.”
She studied Jean-Pierre’s expression in the dashboard lights, his chiseled profile deep in five-o’clock shadow and a fresh scrape visible on his right cheekbone. He’d been lucky today. She’d spent enough time in her father’s world to see the toll that football could take on the strongest men.
“I told the media you were joking.” He glanced at her as they neared signs for the Lincoln Tunnel.
“Of course I was. I thought I was talking to a Gladiators fan and I was just messing around.” She knew from experience she didn’t need to stroke this man’s ego, but she also didn’t like the idea that he might think she’d been in earnest. “Obviously you and Henri are supremely well-matched. If you played ten games, I’d give you each five.”
“Very generous of you.” He downshifted as traffic slowed in a sea of brake lights. “And probably accurate given our stats in backyard games. But back to the interview. I not only told the reporter you were joking, I also assured him you were going to be my guest for the bye week and that you couldn’t wait to return to Louisiana for a visit.”
He said it so tonelessly that she hoped she’d misheard. Surely he wouldn’t have done that. He didn’t even like her anymore. He’d made sure she knew as much when he’d walked out of her home the last time.
“No. You. Didn’t.” The words were a soft scrape of air, her voice vanishing as they entered the tunnel, the regular intervals of fluorescent light flashing through the car and making her dizzy.
“Oh, yes, I most certainly did. What would you have suggested I say, Tatiana?” His grip on the wheel tightened for a moment before he loosened his hold again. He removed one hand from the wheel altogether and flexed his knuckles, as if forcing himself to relax. Or maybe he was nursing an injury.
And, oh, God, how could he have just told the whole world they were going to be spending a week together?
“I just—” She swallowed hard. Tried to channel her inner lawyer and come up with a quietly reasoned argument. But all the arguments that came to mind were conversational dynamite. “That can’t happen,” she said lamely.
“And yet, we’ll have to make a good show of it since your comment could cause the kind of media uproar that steals focus away from a team. I can’t afford that distraction right now.” He lifted a hand to his tie and loosened the knot, looking for all the world like a dissolute playboy with his unshaven jaw in his sexy car.
But looks were deceiving, and nothing about this man was dissolute or inclined to play. It didn’t matter that his weekly contests were labeled “games,” Jean-Pierre Reynaud was one of the most serious and hardworking men she’d ever met. He was relentless in achieving what he wanted, in fact. So she understood immediately that he wouldn’t back down on the good show for the media now that he’d promised it.
“You don’t understand—” she began, only to be cut short.
“It might be you who doesn’t understand.” He steered off the exit toward 42nd Street and she wished she could turn back the clock on this evening to make the outcome different. To give her more time. She took in his tight jaw, his tense shoulders. “I didn’t have time to consult you for a plan. You put me on the spot in front of my team, the league, the media and the fans.”
“You’re right. That part, I do understand.” Her breasts ached beneath her dress, the need to return home a sudden, biological need. Thankfully, all the lights on 10th Avenue went green and they surged through one after the other as they headed north.
“Excellent. You are already invited to my brother’s wedding.” He resumed laying out the calm, controlled plan that she knew would never happen. “We can attend the ceremony together and then you will stay in New Orleans until the Gladiators game against the Hurricanes the week after. I’ll have to commute back and forth for practices, but I’ll be around enough to ensure we’re photographed together. We can put a quick end to the old rumors about our families. And about us.”
Only a Reynaud would seriously contemplate “commuting” between New York and New Orleans. She would have laughed if she hadn’t been so upset, rapidly bordering on panicked. But she’d certainly learned how to deal with unexpected consequences. Now, Jean-Pierre would have to learn, too.
“Fine,” she agreed rather than waste her breath arguing, already knowing whatever plans he made now were about to be blown up anyhow. “You may not want me in New Orleans with you once you hear what I have to say.” She gritted her teeth as they hit Central Park West and neared her building. The ache in her chest shifted painfully. “Would you come in with me so we can continue this discussion inside?”
“Of course. We have a lot of plans to make.” He pulled in alongside the valet and handed over his keys.
On the elevator, she realized she had effectively put off her important announcement so long that very soon no words would be necessary and she would lose her window to tell Jean-Pierre herself. She wasn’t proud of that. But she was tired, aching and uncomfortable. And didn’t he bear half the blame for this impossible situation?
Yet, as soon as the elevator stopped on her floor and the doors slid open, she knew she couldn’t let him find out this way.
“We do have a lot of plans to make.” She spun to face him, the words spilling out fast. “But not the kind you think.”
“I don’t understand.” His jaw flexed, his gaze narrowing.
She drew in a deep breath.
“Remember that night last winter?” She didn’t wait for his reply, as she heard a long, high-pitched wail from inside her apartment. “I should have told you sooner, but you walked out the next day and said it was a mistake. Talking was all but impossible after a parting like that and then, well—” She shook her head, impatient with herself and the excuses that didn’t matter now, with her baby crying on the other side of her front door. “Come and meet your son, Jean-Pierre.”
Two
Son?
Jean-Pierre had taken hits from the toughest, strongest, meanest players in the NFL. Afterward, as he lay in the grass with his ears ringing and his vision blurred, he would struggle to snap out of the slow-motion fog that felt kind of like being underwater.
That was exactly how he felt walking into Tatiana’s apartment, her words slowly permeating his consciousness along with the cry of an infant. Dazed, confused and trying to stand up straight despite the floor shifting under his feet, Jean-Pierre stood in her foyer and waited for her to return from wherever she’d disappeared.
“Mr. Reynaud?” An older woman in a simple gray dress stepped into the living area to his right. “Miss Doucet asked if you wouldn’t mind joining her in the family room. It’s just past the staircase on the left.” She pointed the way and then went about her business, picking up a few things in the living room.
A bright blue blanket. A baby bottle.
Seeing that bottle was like the second hit when you were already down.
At the same time, it was enough to make the mental fog evaporate and get his feet moving.
Fast.
He needed answers now. Hell, he needed answers months ago. Tatiana had done a whole lot more than throw his career into a tailspin tonight with her unguarded remark to a member of the press. She’d been hiding the biggest possible secret that was going to bind their lives together forever.
“Tatiana?” Her name was a sharp bark on his lips as he entered the spacious suite overlooking Central Park.
Framed playbills lined the walls along with photos of Tatiana and her family. Tatiana with her father at her graduation from Columbia. The Doucets outside of a downtown skyscraper with the brass name plaque of her prestigious law firm. Every picture was a reminder of the life he might have had with her if her family hadn’t turned her against him.
A blaze crackled in a fireplace on the far side of the living area. And beside it, in that warm glow of flickering light, he spotted her on the dark leather love seat, cradling a tiny bundle of blankets to her breast. Tatiana’s dark brown curls shielded her body as much as the blanket, the firelight making the skin of one shoulder glow where she’d unfastened her dress to feed the baby.
Her baby.
His...son.
Something shifted inside Jean-Pierre, his whole world tipping on its axis as everything changed irreversibly.
“I am sorry,” she said softly, her hand shifting to cover a tiny foot kicking free of the cotton bundle. “I left New York in my sixth month so that no one would find out. I wanted you to be the first to know.”
He had moved deeper into the room, drawn to the sight of woman and child, trying like hell to focus on them and what they meant for him. To him. But his brain was scrambling to catch up on nearly a year’s worth of living in mere moments.
“What about your family?” Had he been playing games for Jack Doucet’s team while the guy kept this news hidden from him? If so, it was going to blow the Doucet-Reynaud feud wide-open again, because Jean-Pierre could not deal with that kind of duplicity. Lowering himself to the chair across from her, he sat with his back to the view of Central Park at night, his eyes on the only thing that mattered. He needed Tatiana to keep talking. To explain why he had no knowledge of this development in their lives.
“They only know I took an extended vacation. I couldn’t tell them before I told you.”
The tone she used suggested that was the only sensible approach, when in fact, none of this made sense to him. Who kept this kind of news from their family? Jean-Pierre might not be as close to his brothers as he once was, but damn straight they wouldn’t keep something like this from each other. He’d told her how much a secret like this had hurt his own family—had hurt his half brother. “I think I’m going to need you to spell this out for me more thoroughly.”
“I had so many things to organize,” she continued. “I needed a good midwife. And at first I requested a leave from my job. But then I realized I needed to change my role with the law practice so that I’d be doing legal research and writing briefs instead of taking cases to trial.” Her eyes were bright and worried as they flashed up to his.
At least she seemed to understand how thin her reasons sounded. But then, she’d always placed a higher priority on appearances than him. The framed photos on the walls around her sure never showed a single misstep in her perfect life. He wouldn’t be surprised if the pregnancy had thrown her into a panic trying to find a way to tell her parents.
“Where did you go when you left New York?” He knew he needed to process this fast. To move past the shock of what she was telling him and start being a support to her and this new reality. But the truth of the situation was like waves at high tide, thrashing him over and over.
She’d had months to come to terms with this. He had minutes. And he didn’t dare make a mistake.
“The Caribbean. Saint Thomas has a good hospital in case I needed one. I rented a villa on the beach.” Her voice wavered. “I was trying to be discreet. To keep this out of the press and away from the old family drama until I spoke to you and we could figure out how to handle the future. But just when I had everything set and was ready to call you, I went into labor three weeks early.”
Now that knocked the wind out of his rising anger.
“Is he okay? Are you?” A stab of fear jabbed Jean-Pierre hard, outweighing every other emotion. His brother’s wife, Fiona, had lost a baby. He understood the danger.
“We’re fine. Thirty-seven weeks is within normal range. César was six pounds and fourteen ounces.”
The pain in his chest eased, a small sliver of the tension giving way to an unexpected tenderness.
“César,” he repeated, gaze shifting to the squirming blanket and restless tiny foot.
“For your great-grandfather and for my—”
“Grandfather,” he interrupted, knowing they both had Césars in their family trees. He remembered the roots of the Doucet family almost as well as his own. He’d been a guest at their home when he’d dated Tatiana, before his grandfather Leon had fired Jack from the Texas Mustangs after two seasons of poorly performing teams.
An old bitterness that would have to take a backseat now.
“Our son is five weeks old. We just flew in from Saint Thomas two days ago. His nanny, Lucinda, made the trip with me. She watched him tonight while I went to find you.”
That must have been the woman he’d seen earlier.
“May I see him?” Jean-Pierre didn’t want to interrupt a feeding, but the urgency of the infant’s small suckling sounds had slowed from when he’d first entered the room.
“Of course.” Tatiana shifted the bundle in her arms. She lifted the baby upright, her dress falling closed. “Here’s a cloth.” She nodded to a square of white cotton folded beside her on the love seat. “For your shoulder if you want to—”
She trailed off as he took the baby, who was possibly quieted by Jean-Pierre’s sure grip. At least half the Gladiators had kids, so he’d handled plenty during private team events. But holding this one...
“He has the Reynaud eyes.” They were brown and flecked with green. The tiny hands were covered by the sleeves of his shirt, the fabric folded over them. But the boy’s color was good—pink and healthy. A thatch of dark hair, spiky but soft, stood on end as if he’d been caught in a wind tunnel.
“I was only with you last year, no one else,” Tatiana said softly, her dark curls brushing Jean-Pierre’s shoulder as she leaned closer to look down at the infant. “He is yours.”
“No question.” He trusted this implicitly. He might not be happy with her decision to keep the news of her pregnancy to herself—and he was shoving aside a whole lot of unhappiness about that, in fact—yet he knew her well enough to know that she was careful with relationships.
“May I?” She reached for César. “Just to finish the feeding?”
Wordlessly, he passed the baby back to her. He watched as she slipped her dress off her other shoulder, vaguely aware that many women preferred privacy for such a moment. But he’d been denied too much time already, so he didn’t take his eyes off her as she cradled the tiny body to her swollen breast and helped him to find the dark pink nipple.
“You look so...” Beautiful, he thought. But the moment was too intimate already with them sitting almost shoulder-to-shoulder, her curls still clinging to the sleeve of his jacket. “At ease with him.”
He envied that, he realized.
“I’ve had more time with him.” She bit her lip, perhaps guessing how that statement might sting. When she turned to face him, her eyes shone with unshed tears. “No one warned me what an emotional time this would be.” She lifted a shaky hand to first one eye and then the other. “I knew pregnancy hormones could make women emotional, but I didn’t count on feeling so different after giving birth. You know I’m not the kind of person to make unguarded comments to the media, and yet tonight I was so nervous about seeing you and telling you, that I just blurted that remark with zero thought.”
As troubling as that seemed to be for Tatiana, it explained a whole lot of things as far as he was concerned.
“Having lived through puberty, I can assure you that I understand hormones are a powerful force of nature.”
She gave a watery chuckle. “I’ve made a good living on being rational. Logical. It’s like I’m operating on a whole new kind of software.”
She gestured to the handful of baby items strewn on the coffee table—a half-open diaper bag with the contents spilling out, a stack of newspapers and some folded sheets. Not a mess by any stretch, but for a woman who liked to show a perfect face to the world, the scene probably bordered on chaos.
“Maybe that’s why biology let men off the hook during pregnancy. So we can be the logical ones.” He forced a grin, trying to keep things light since it wasn’t going to do either of them any good to have a big confrontation about the ethics of keeping him in the dark about the pregnancy.
She’d been nervous to tell him. And he had to take some blame for that given the way he’d left things between them last winter.
“You’re going to be the voice of reason?” She arched an eyebrow, her voice steady and full of attitude.
That was more like it.
“Definitely.”
“Don’t forget I was in your backyard the summer you decided it was a good idea to jump off a second-story deck into your family’s pool.” A smile transformed her features as she shifted her gaze down to the baby in her arms.
And it damn near took his breath away. No wonder she’d looked so good tonight. She had that new-mother glow.
“A minor sprain was a small price to pay for the serious rotation I got on that dive.” He needed her smiling. Relaxed.
Trusting him.
Because he’d been formulating plans from the moment he understood the magnitude of the secret she’d been keeping.
“Nevertheless, I think I’ll keep my own counsel even while I’m under the influence of my hormones.”
“Fair enough. But because you’re a reasonable woman, I know you’re going to agree with me on this first order of business.” He reached to touch her arm where she cradled their son, needing a connection with her when he made his appeal.
“We need to tell our families.” Her gaze met his, the firelight reflected in their depths.
She was a beautiful woman. An intelligent, hardworking woman. And there was undeniable chemistry between them or this situation wouldn’t have arisen in the first place.
“That’s the second order of business.” They’d take care of that soon enough. “First, we need to get married.”
* * *
There was a unique brand of hurt in hearing a man you once cared about offer a sham marriage when he no longer cared about you.
Tatiana breathed through that hurt now, telling herself she could not afford to be any more emotional tonight than she already had been. But heaven help her, how could she not feel vulnerable when her arms were full of the precious baby they’d created, César’s soft breath warming her breast as he began to nod off after his feeding? She was exposed in every possible way, and maybe just for a moment she’d allowed herself to sink into the warmth of Jean-Pierre beside her as they’d marveled together at their tiny shared miracle.
Carefully, she lifted the baby to her shoulder and tucked her breast back into her dress. Patting his back, she took comfort in the ritual, grounding herself in the actions of a new mother. She needed to be strong for her son, no matter that Jean-Pierre’s halfhearted suggestion called to old feelings inside her. She would tamp down those emotions right now.
“The last time we met, you told me in no uncertain terms that the mistake of us being together would never be repeated.” Grateful her voice didn’t quaver while uttering those damning words that had caused her no end of grief these past months, she straightened to face him. “Let’s not fool ourselves into thinking we can take a relationship from that level of animosity to marriage, no matter how cold-bloodedly we approach our goals. You may be a master strategist on the football field, but César and I are not components of an offense to be moved around at your will.”
Jean-Pierre cocked an eyebrow. “So I assume that’s a no to my proposal?”
Swallowing hard, she nodded. “Most definitely.”
“I’m going to ask again.”
“And I’m going to ask you to leave if you don’t respect my wishes,” she said firmly, praying he wouldn’t roll out his old charm, which could too easily whittle away her shaky resistance.
“Fair enough then. For now. Because I very much want to stay. May I take him?” Jean-Pierre offered, already reaching to lift César from her shoulder. “You must be exhausted.”
She wanted to argue since it comforted her to feel the baby’s warm body against hers, but she was indeed tired. And she couldn’t begrudge César’s father this time with him. Not when he’d been denied five weeks of his life already.
“Thank you.” She straightened the spit cloth that he’d tossed over his suit jacket, trying not to notice the attractive vision this powerful man made while holding his son—their child—with such tenderness. “While it’s tempting to hold him all the time, I’m learning to rest more often. I was so tired the whole first week.”
“I wish I’d been there to help you,” he said simply. “Parenting is a team sport.” He patted the baby twice, elicited the necessary burp, then tucked the infant in the crook of his arm as securely as he carried a football for a first down. “That’s why I stand by the marriage offer. I don’t call that cold-blooded. I call it keeping your eye on the end zone. It would benefit our son for us to work together.”
“I don’t think a child gains anything from parents who aren’t happy and yet force themselves to be together. We’d be better off trying to figure out how to effectively co-parent.” Feeling rumpled and flustered, she fastened her dress. What woman wanted to field a marriage proposal over the head of a newborn, her breasts sore and her body bone-weary from the physical odyssey of a first pregnancy?
She knew it was foolish to care, but she could only imagine how she looked right now. And yes, she wished she could have met Jean-Pierre in one of her sleek Stella McCartney dresses, but they were all still too small for her postpartum body to fit into.