Kitabı oku: «The Brennan Baby»

One

“At least have the grace to admit it, Dev,” said Devlin Brennan’s sister Kylie as she staggered into his new apartment, weighted down by the towering stack of compact discs in her arms. “You knew you’d be moving into your new apartment this weekend and that’s the only reason why you invited Cade and me to visit. To help you move all your stuff!”

“Well, there is that, of course.” Devlin’s blue eyes gleamed.

He and his brother-in-law, Cade Austin, were holding opposite ends of the long slate-gray sofa they’d hauled up four flights of stairs, having bypassed the endless wait for the busy elevator. Many new tenants were moving into the building this weekend, and all the noise and activity gave the place the feel of a college dorm at the beginning of the term.

“But I also wanted to spend some time with you, little sis,” Devlin added. He and Cade set the sofa down in front of the window.

“That’s the same smarmy tone you used to trick me into investing my allowance m your comic book collection back when we were kids,” Kylie said dryly.

Devlin cast an affectionate glance at her. Kylie was not one to be fooled, but he didn’t intend to stop trying. “How about this, then? I hoped the three of us could spend some time, uh, bonding. And what better way to bond with your family than while moving?”

“Feels more like bondage to me,” Cade growled

Devlin ignored him. “I missed you two. After all, I haven’t seen you since your wedding, and that was—what?—a couple months ago?”

“Our wedding was July first and today is September first, so it’s exactly two months ago.” Kylie was precise. “I wish you’d come visit us in Port McClain, Dev. We could bond there just as well as here. No, even better because in Port McClain we wouldn’t have to lug furniture from building to building Our house has—”

“Have I told you how great you both look?” Devlin offered his most winning smile, determined to divert her before she began making plans for his future visit. He was in no hurry to visit Port McClain. The small Ohio town where Kylie and her husband lived was filled with other Brennans—a host of aunts, uncles and cousins—and Devlin didn’t want to get entangled in the sticky web of extended family. “Marriage must agree with you,” he added gallantly.

“Absolutely ” Cade’s eyes met Kylie’s and she smiled at him.

Dev stirred uncomfortably. The smile his sister gave her husband was a private one, of such intimacy and warmth that he felt almost guilty witnessing it. He hoped they weren’t going to launch into an appalling display of mushy marital baby talk. Devlin eyed the door, lining up his possible escape route at the first sounds of it

“Dev, have you given any thought to getting married?” Kylie asked instead, turning her earnest blue eyes on her older brother.

Devlin groaned aloud. He would’ve preferred the romantic gobbledygook to The Question. “Sure. I’ve thought about it. And here’s what I think—I don’t want to get married.”

“Not ever?” Kylie was worried. “You’re just kidding, right? Seriously, Devlin, you do want to settle down sometime and—”

“Jeez, Kylie, you sound like Mom! Since the day of your wedding, she’s been asking when mine will be. Dad’s even starting to get in on the act. The last time I talked to him he actually said, ‘Well, son, met that special girl yet?’” He did a passable imitation of their father’s flat Midwestern tones.

“Well, have you?” Cade drawled.

Looking pained, Dev turned to his brother-in-law. “No offense, Cade, but before Kylie married you, the folks tended to focus their dreams of marriage and grandchildren on her. I was spared. But since Kylie’s taken the plunge, the heat is on me. Suddenly Mom can’t understand why I’m thirty-one and unattached. She worries about me eating right, she worries about me growing old alone. She fears I might follow in the footsteps of our late uncle Gene and turn into an irascible old bachelor. Every Sunday without fail, I get maternal angst long distance from Florida. Those weekly calls to the folks are driving me nuts!”

“Driving others nuts is a Brennan specialty,” Cade murmured. “Uh, present company excluded, of course,” he added when Kylie playfully socked his arm in protest.

“Cade and I aren’t entirely off the hook, Dev,” Kylie confessed. “Mom has let us know in no uncertain terms that she’s ready to be a grandmother and she hopes we won’t make her wait too long.”

“Nine months is about as long as your mother wants to wait for her first grandchild,” Cade added, amused. “But Kylie and I have decided to be a couple for a while, before we become a trio.”

“Good for you!” Devlin offered his endorsement. “I’m definitely not ready to be Uncle Dev yet.”

Him, an uncle! The idea boggled his mind. He pictured uncles as dull, somewhat grouchy older guys like his uncles Guy and Artie and the deceased Gene. No, he was not yet ready to play that role for the next generation. It was hard enough to remember that he was now somebody’s brother-in-law!

His sister’s marriage had affected him more than he cared to admit. He had always taken Kylie’s presence in his life for granted. She was his little sister, who both adored him and fought with him. During their peripatetic childhood as “Navy brats,” they were steadfast pals and allies—and occasional bitter enemies. But whether in positive or negative phases, theirs had been an exceptionally close connection over the years and across the miles. They were first in each other’s lives.

Not anymore. Cade Austin, her new husband, came first with Kylie now. Which was as it should be, of course. Devlin was happy for them, yet as he looked at the pair kidding affectionately with each other, he felt left out

He shook off the feeling. All those calls from his parents, warning him against the pitfalls of dying a lonely old bachelor, must be taking their toll on him.

“I’m perfectly happy with my life the way it is, and I don’t want or need to make any changes, not for a long, long time,” he announced, startling himself. He hadn’t realized that he’d spoken his thoughts aloud.

“Famous last words.” Cade smirked as he headed toward the door. “Come on, Dev, we still have half that van to unload.”

Cade was the chief executive of BrenCo, the family-owned company in Ohio. His voice and his demeanor were conducive to giving orders—and having them promptly obeyed. Devlin automatically started to follow him out the door.

Kylie, in the midst of slipping the CDs into individual slots in the six-foot-high revolving storage case, snickered.

Devlin stopped dead. “What?”

“If you thought you could get out of hauling stuff by having Cade on hand to take over, you thought wrong, brother. Cade is even better at giving orders—and seeing that they’re carried out—than Daddy.”

Which was no small talent, as Devlin knew. Their father, Wayne Brennan, was a retired Navy captain who excelled in orders.

“Does that mean you jump to Cade’s every command, Ky?” Devlin needled her. “Now there’s a sight I’d like to see.”

“Cade doesn’t order me around,” Kylie was quick to assure him.

“Yeah, right. Not much.” Dev chuckled. “Who would’ve ever believed it? When Cade Austin speaks, my little sister—the former formidable feminist—not only listens, she does exactly what she’s told, just like a good little obedient dimwit.”

“Devlin! That van isn’t going to unload itself!” Cade’s voice sounded impatiently from the stairwell at the same moment that Kylie tossed a CD at Dev.

He moved with catlike speed and precision, avoiding the flying missile while racing out into the hallway, laughing.

Where he almost smashed head-on into a young woman holding a baby in her arms. Dev managed to avoid the collision by centimeters, his finely tuned co-ordination serving him well. Taking a deep breath, he leaned against the wall and looked at his near-miss, who was standing in the middle of the hall.

“Hello, Devlin.” Her voice was cool and clear.

Dev’s dark blue eyes widened. He knew her. Oh, yes, he knew her quite well! “Gillian.” He cleared his throat. His voice sounded oddly thick.

“Mama, mama, mama,” the baby chattered, squirming in the young woman’s arms.

“So that’s your baby,” Dev said, recovering somewhat. “A little girl?”

Gillian nodded her head.

“Good guess on my part, huh?” Dev smiled wryly. The baby’s mop of dark brown curls with the pink barrette clipped in one thick lock was a dead giveaway to the child’s sex. The pink ruffled sunsuit and little pink sneakers with lacy socks were other conspicuous clues. No unisex fashions for Gillian’s kid. Nobody could mistake this little girl for a little boy.

Dev’s eyes slid over Gillian as he gave her his routine once-over. Though she was dressed in loose-fitting Jean shorts and a blue T-shirt, she was as unmistakably feminine as her small daughter’s little pink togs. Her red hair, which usually hung nearly to her shoulders in a neat bob, was pulled high in a scarf-tied ponytail. She was petite, just five-one, the top of her head not even reaching the shoulder of his own six-foot frame. Her figure was still curvy and rounded in all the right places; childbirth hadn’t changed that. Dev’s eyes lingered on her chest. Maybe her breasts were bigger....

His eyes happened to stray to her face and he realized that she was watching him stare at her chest. She lifted her brows and nailed him with her pale blue eyes.

Dev felt awkward, a condition he rarely experienced. “What’s the baby’s name?” he heard himself ask, even as he mocked himself for finding the need to make inane small talk. Gillian certainly didn’t.

“Ashley.” She shifted the wiggling baby to her other hip.

“Ashley,” Devlin repeated. “I treated a lot of Ashleys during my pediatric rotation in med school. I’ve often wondered what inspires one out of every three mothers these days to name their daughters Ashley. An interesting phenomenon, yet to be explored.”

“Sorry to be so unoriginal. If I’d known you hated the name, I’d have chosen something else,” she added, her tone caustic.

Dev smiled slightly “I didn’t say I didn’t like the name, just that there are a lot of Ashleys around.”

“Her name is Ashley Joy Morrow. Case closed.”

Devlin recognized the note of finality in her tone. She sounded like an officious bureaucrat, which he decided, she might well be. After all, she was a medical social worker who worked in after-care patient placements at the hospital. Didn’t her position place her firmly within Officious Bureaucrat Realm?

In that case, how could he resist baiting her? It would be positively un-American not to.

“Morrow. Then that would currently make you Gillian Morrow, wouldn’t it?” He gleefully reopened the name game and watched her stiffen in response. “Of course, I knew you as Gillian Bailey back in your wild and crazy single days.”

He felt a perverse pleasure at her frown of annoyance. Gillian had been the polar opposite of wild and crazy while he’d known her. Conservative and stable would be apt, but she would consider that a compliment and right now he was set on riling her.

“I still use Bailey. I was divorced right after the baby was born so I never got around to changing my name,” Gillian imparted the information reluctantly. “And I was never wild and crazy,” she added, stung. She’d spent her whole life trying not to be, though she’d certainly acted that way around Devlin Brennan during the three months they’d been together.

“Divorce?” Dev appeared genuinely surprised by the news. “Well, that didn’t last long, did it?”

“If you mean my marriage, no, it did not.” Gillian looked at the ground, then smoothed the baby’s thick dark curls with her fingers.

He noticed every nervous gesture she made. Clearly, her brief marriage was a sore subject for her. Being Devlin, instead of tactfully letting it go, he pressed her on it. “What happened? And where is Mr. Morrow now? Completely out of the picture—or simply off to one side?”

“I think you’ll understand if I don’t share the details of my divorce with you,” Gillian said frostily.

“Mama!” Ashley roared.

“She’s getting restless, I have to go inside.” Gillian moved toward the door on the right, exactly across the hall from the door of Devlin’s apartment.

“You’re visiting someone who lives there?”

“I live there. We moved in yesterday.”

Devlin felt winded, as if someone had kicked him in the belly. “You’re joking.”

“Why would I joke about that?”

A mirthless smile tilted the corners of his mouth. “Because I’m moving in there.” He pointed to his apartment with his thumb. “Right across the hall from you.”

They exchanged looks of mutual dismay, which each quickly attempted to conceal with a facade of cool unconcern

“Well, if you ever need a baby-sitter, don’t call on me,” Dev said glibly.

“Don’t worry about that. I don’t want you near my baby.”

She sounded a bit too fervent. Dev was insulted. “You don’t think I could baby-sit? I happen to be great with kids.”

“I’m sure your superficial charm is as effective with children as it is with women But that isn’t what—”

“Devlin, you are a dog,” the booming masculine voice interrupted her in midsentence. At that moment Cade rounded the bend, carrying an enormous cherry-red BarcaLounger recliner. His dark brows narrowed in an expression of disapproval at the sight of Devlin, lounging against the wall. “You knew if you wasted enough time, I’d drag this monster up here myself.”

Gillian moved quickly to stand against the opposite wall, ceding the right-of-way. Little Ashley made a loud crowing sound of delight, as if the sight of the big red chair pleased her.

Cade cast a startled glance at the child, and the baby smiled at him. Suddenly the chair slipped precariously in his hold. Devlin rushed over to grip the other side before it hit the floor.

Cade didn’t seem to even notice. “Is that your baby?” he asked Gillian, who nodded her head.

“How old is she?” Cade demanded to know.

“Eleven months.” Gillian began to inch away.

She appeared to be unnerved and Devlin couldn’t blame her. He found Cade’s insistent interrogation to be vaguely embarrassing, not to mention peculiar. Then again, maybe it wasn’t peculiar to Cade, Dev conceded. He didn’t know his brother-in-law all that well; maybe the man quizzed everybody in his path as a matter of course.

“Any other information you need to know, Cade?” Dev asked jokingly, trying to ease the tension that seemed to emanate tangibly from Gillian. He didn’t want her to be scared of his brother-in-law! “The kid’s birth weight, her blood type? Maybe her cereal preference?” He smiled at Gillian, inviting her to share in the humor. She did not smile back.

Cade’s frown deepened.

“Gillian, this is my brother-in-law, Cade Austin.” Dev felt obliged to make an introduction as an explanation for all the questions. “Cade, Gillian Bailey.”

“A close friend of yours, I presume,” Cade intoned darkly.

A delicate shade of pink colored Gillian’s cheeks. “I wouldn’t say that we’re friends,” she murmured.

“More like ex-acquaintances who decided to pass on friendship.” Dev was flippant. “She is also my new neighbor. Gillian just told me that yesterday she and the baby moved into the apartment across the hall from mine.” He inclined his head toward Gillian’s door.

She winced. She couldn’t have made her displeasure with the situation more obvious if she’d shouted it aloud for all to hear.

Devlin frowned, irked. Though he was hardly thrilled by the prospect of living in such close proximity to an ex-girlfriend, he knew he could handle it. And if he could, so could she. After all, it wasn’t as if he’d dumped her, turning her into a hurt and angry rejectee. She had been the one to break up with him. And shortly after, she’d married another man.

Not that he had been hurt or angry, not that he’d felt rejected, Dev assured himself. He had been surprised, yes, but he hadn’t really minded. There were plenty of women here in the lively university town of Ann Arbor, more than enough women working within the behemoth medical center to give him easy access to Gillian replacements. He hadn’t had a bit of trouble finding them, either, during the twenty months since their breakup.

Not that he was keeping count, of either the months or the women.

“You’ll be living across the hall from each other?” Cade’s gaze, laserlike in its intensity, traveled from Devlin to Gillian to the baby.

“Looks that way, doesn’t it?” Devlin stated the obvious. He’d had enough of the conversation. “Let’s get the chair inside.” He began walking toward his front door. Since Cade held the other half of the chair, he either had to drop it or go along.

Gillian watched the two men tote the chair into Devlin’s apartment, then quickly opened her own door and disappeared inside, clutching baby Ashley in her arms.

“We have to move!” She closed the door behind her and leaned against it, her face flushed, her knees suddenly weak and wobbly.

“Bite your tongue!” drawled the tall, blond young man, deeply tanned with sculpted muscles, who was sprawled across the sofa, sipping from a bottle of flavored iced tea. “We just moved you and the baby and all your stuff in here yesterday. Your next move isn’t supposed to occur until the end of the millenium.”

Ashley bucked and wriggled, and Gillian set her down on the floor. The baby stood alone for a moment, then took a few unsteady steps before deciding that good old-fashioned crawling provided the fastest means of locomotion. She took off on all fours at an impressive speed, heading for the small kitchen.

A voluptuous olive-skinned young woman with a thick mane of raven-black hair stood peeling carrots at the sink. She kept one eye on the approaching baby while studying Gillian. “What’s the matter, Gilly? You look shook.”

“Devlin Brennan is moving in across the hall, Carmen,” Gillian managed to choke out the words in a tight little voice. “I can’t stay here.” She appealed to the young man for support, her blue eyes anguished. “Mark, you know I can’t.”

“But, sweetie, you’ve been on the waiting list for this place for nearly two years and you finally got in. The rent is right, the location is right.” Mark’s tone was a mixture of sympathy and practicality. “You can’t just up and leave, not even if Satan himself is living next door.”

“I agree with Mark,” Carmen put in. “You can’t leave the day after moving in, Gilly. Where will you go? All the decent places are taken by now and you know that rents anywhere else are a lot higher than what you’ll pay here.”

“After all, this building is subsidized housing for hospital employees,” Mark reminded her. “And since you are one, you deserve to be here. Much more than Dr. Swoon across the hall,” he added with a disdainful sniff. “That rich yango could live anywhere else. Why doesn’t he?”

“He—he’s not rich” Gillian automatically defended Devlin, without knowing why. “He’s a resident doctor in orthopedics, still in training, and they get paid, but not all that much. Plus, he has loans to pay off from med school”

“My heart bleeds for him!” Mark exclaimed, giving his long blond hair a melodramatic toss. “After he finishes his residency, it will probably take one entire ski season, fixing bones broken on the slopes, for him to pay off his loans. Then he can start accumulating the typical yango props. The glam car, the ritzy golf club memberships, the palatial house. And let’s not forget—”

“I want to forget everything about him, Mark,” Gillian cut in. “Past, present and future.”

Mark sighed. “That won’t be easy with him right next door Uh-oh, Carmen, watch out. Ashley is almost under your feet.”

“Hi, Ashley! Did you come to see Aunt Carmen?” Carmen scooped up Ashley, who’d arrived in the kitchen and was circling her ankles. “What was Devlin Brennan’s reaction when he saw the baby?” she asked, turning curious dark eyes toward Gillian.

“He wondered why every mother seems to name her daughter Ashley these days,” Gillian said flatly.

“Not even a flicker of some kind of primal recognition?” asked Mark, his lips tightening in disapproval. “Honestly! The man has all the sensitivity of a Neanderthal.”

“I forget—is a Neanderthal more or less sensitive than a yango, Mark?” Gillian teased in a blatant attempt to change the subject.

“This is no laughing matter, Gillian,” Mark scolded.

“Then let’s find a matter to laugh about.”

“In Dr. Brennan’s defense, he would have to be psychic to guess that Ashley is his daughter,” said Carmen, sticking to the subject anyway. “After all, Gillian never even told him she was pregnant. Nobody would know who Ashley’s father is, not even us, if she hadn’t let us in on the deep dark secret.”

Gillian sighed. “I wish I’d never mentioned his name to anyone,” she muttered.

“You couldn’t keep it to yourself, Gilly,” Carmen said kindly. “And you did the right thing. As soon as you found out about the baby, you engineered that marriage of convenience to Mark.”

Mark blew Gillian a kiss, and the mood in the room lightened considerably. “Anything to help my favorite foster sister.”

“She’s your favorite foster sister?” Carmen feigned indignation. “What about me?”

“Did I say she was my only favorite?” teased Mark. “You’re both my favorites. Along with Debra and Stacey and Suzy and—”

“Okay, okay, we get it,” Carmen interrupted good-naturedly. “You have lots of favorite foster sisters.”

“I only hope I don’t have to marry them all.” Mark stroked his dimpled chin, looking pensive. “Even when it’s on paper only, a marriage is kind of hard to explain to my friends back in L.A.”

“I can imagine,” Carmen said, with feeling. “Even a cover marriage makes me want to run away screaming.”

“Gillian and I had a very amiable cover marriage and an equally friendly divorce,” said Mark. “But, oh, the teasing I’ve had to take about it! You simply can’t imagine!”

“Well, it’s all over now, and I’m sure you won’t have to endure any other cover marriages, Mark,” Gillian soothed. “At our ripe old age of twenty-six, I’m surely the only one stupid enough to—”

“You weren’t stupid, you were in love,” Carmen cut in. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Gillian.”

“Don’t make excuses for me.” Gillian crossed the room to flop down on the sofa beside Mark, her favorite foster brother who had done her the incredible favor of marrying her in name only to give her child a legitimate birth. As one who’d been born out of wedlock, Gillian had determined years ago that she would never let a child of hers bear that stigma. Mark had understood completely. His mother hadn’t been married to his father, either.

“Well, stupid or in love or whatever, Devlin Brennan was definitely a willing participant, Gillian.” Carmen’s dark eyes flashed and she nuzzled the top of Ashley’s silky head. “And it’s not fair that you’re assuming total financial responsibility for the baby. At the very least, that...that yango should be handing over a check every month to you for—”

“No!” Gillian exclaimed so forcefully that Mark jumped. “I don’t want any charity from him. I’ve had enough of being a charity case, thank you very much. I have no intention of letting my daughter become one.”

“It wouldn’t be charity, but I know where you’re coming from.” Mark reached over to pat her shoulder. “Don’t worry, Gilly. It’s going to be okay.”

How? Gillian wanted to cry. How could it possibly be okay if she had to contend with seeing Devlin Brennan every day, if she had to watch the parade of women through his apartment and his life? She stared fixedly at the olive green carpet until the weave seemed to blur and dance in front of her eyes.

The firmly suppressed memories escaped from the prison in her mind where she’d kept them locked away for the past twenty months. For a few moments she was swept back to the time she’d shared with Dev. Those three months had been the happiest, most exciting, thrilling, romantic time of her life.

But there had been a dark side that always shadowed that idyllic period. All during their too-good-to-be-true romance, she’d felt scared and insecure, not really believing that a man like Devlin Brennan could want a woman like her. Could want her! She’d always known their relationship was temporary, had been braced for the inevitable end. Something too good to be true generally turns out to be exactly that, and of course, her erstwhile romance with Dev had come to an abrupt end.

That she’d ended it herself was merely a technicality. She had read the warning signs and acted first, that’s all. She was well aware that wanting something or someone you can’t have was not only a waste of time and emotion, it was self-destructive.

She and Carmen and Mark and a few others among their many foster sisters and brothers had managed to develop a finely honed sense of their own self-preservation, but she’d seen far too many others who hadn’t. When you didn’t anticipate rejection, it arrived as a devastating surprise, breaking your heart and your spirit. Though rejection remained painful when expected, at least the hideous element of surprise was eliminated. Knowing what was coming gave you a chance to take some control, to avoid the passive victim role. To Gillian, that meant a lot. It meant everything.

So she’d broken up with Dev before he could break up with her, and she hadn’t looked back. Not until now.

Now unleashed and unbidden, a hundred images tumbled through her mind, all images of Devlin Brennan. Dr. Swoon, Mark called him. Cool, good-looking Dev was definitely a man to swoon over. He had thick, dark brown hair and deep blue eyes framed by dark lashes and brows. Gillian pictured him smiling, frowning, looking thoughtful. Looking amorous. His face was more than merely handsome, his slightly irregular nose and full generous mouth made it interesting, as well.

She remembered the sound of his laugh, the way he closed his eyes when he was about to kiss her. How he looked when he stepped out of the shower, water sluicing over his hard, muscular body. At thirty-one, he still had the wiry athletic build of the track star and swimmer he’d been throughout his high school and college years.

Gillian swallowed dryly as the video in her mind continued to play, featuring Dev as the leading man. He was extremely intelligent, but he tended to downplay it. Though he’d never mentioned the facts himself, others had told her that Devlin Brennan had graduated near the top of his medical school class and was now winning rave reviews as a senior orthopedic resident at the medical center. He had a laconic sense of humor and a gift for making friends. His smooth sexuality was a natural draw to women, guaranteeing him anyone he wanted. For a brief time he’d wanted Gillian...