“No. No, he hasn’t.” Casey set her wineglass down on the table and carefully unwrapped the curled phone cord from around her shoulders. “And by telling him the truth, I’ve just given him one, haven’t I?”
The next morning, Jackson was at the King family ranch, having called an emergency family meeting. He faced both of his brothers and was grateful that neither one of them had brought their wives into this.
“Did you actually see the DNA report?” Adam asked.
Jackson stopped pacing the confines of the elegantly appointed room and shot his oldest brother a look. “No, I didn’t.”
“Well, why the hell not?” Travis demanded from his seat in a dark brown leather chair.
Shifting him a glare, Jackson snapped, “I was a little shocked, okay? Having a child you never knew existed thrown at you all of a sudden is more surprising than you might think. Besides, I don’t need to see the report. You’ll know what I mean when you see Mia. She looks just like Emma and Katie.” He paused for effect, then added, “Prettier, of course, but then I’m the father.”
Adam chuckled and shook his head. “You’re sure taking this better than I thought you would.”
“You should have seen me last night.” Jackson had spent the entire night prowling through the home he rarely stayed in. The rooms were empty, the caretakers who lived there permanently were in their quarters and he’d listened for hours to the echoes of his own footsteps.
He’d tried to imagine the sound of a child’s laughter ringing through the big house, but hadn’t quite been able to do it. Hadn’t really known if he’d wanted to do it. But even as he told himself that, he’d realized a part of him was already making room for his child in his life.
Travis shook his head and scowled into his coffee. Adam on the other hand, sat behind his desk, his feet, crossed at the ankle, perched on one corner of it. “What does she want?” he asked quietly.
“She says, nothing.”
“Right.” Travis blew out a breath.
Jackson walked back across the floor to face both of his brothers. “Look, she just found out I’m the father. I told you she went to that sperm bank and—”
“I can’t believe you did that,” Adam interrupted.
“Not the point,” Jackson told him, refusing to go back over past mistakes. “Barn door open, horse gone.”
“He’s right,” Travis said, standing up to refill his coffee cup from the thermal pot on Adam’s desk. “How it happened doesn’t matter. What matters is what comes next.”
“What do you want to happen next?” Adam asked.
Hell if he knew.
He threw his hands in the air and let them fall to his sides again. This was something he was so not prepared to deal with. Something that had never once come up on his radar screen, so to speak. Now that it was there though, he had to step up and make the decision about how to go forward.
Images of Casey and Mia filled his mind. He was a father.
What the hell was he supposed to do with that?
“Jackson?”
Coming up out of his thoughts like a drowning man breaching the surface of a deep lake, Jackson looked at Adam and said quietly, “She’s my daughter. I won’t be kept away from her. Casey’s just going to have to deal with that reality. Mia is a King. She’s going to grow up knowing what that means.”
Adam and Travis exchanged glances and nodding, turned back to him.
“Of course she is,” Adam said.
“She’s family,” Travis put in.
“Her mother’s not going to like it,” Jackson told them.
“You’ll have to find a way to work around that.”
“I can do that,” he said, though inwardly, he admitted that a woman as stubborn as Casey wasn’t going to be easy to outmaneuver.
“There’s something else to remember here too,” Travis put in a moment later. He waited until both of his brothers were looking at him before saying, “You’ve got Marian to consider, in all this.”
“Marian.” Jackson whispered her name and shaking his head, realized he hadn’t given her a single thought since the night before. But it didn’t matter, he decided. He and Marian had a business arrangement. It wasn’t as if this were a great love match, after all. He’d tell her what had happened and let her know the engagement would have to be postponed. “She’ll understand.”
“What makes you think so?” Adam prompted.
“Because she wants this merger. And her father wants this marriage too,” Jackson told him. “Having King Jets linked to the Cornice family airfields will be good advertising for them and they know it. Our presence will bring in even more business for them.”
“Still not going to make her happy to hear about the baby,” Travis said.
“She’ll have to deal with it,” Jackson declared, unwilling to accept any other outcome. “I’ll simply explain that I just found out I have a daughter.”
Silence greeted him. Then he repeated the most earth-shattering part of that last sentence. “I have a daughter.”
Travis laughed. “I know just how you feel. Strange, isn’t it?”
Strange, yes, Jackson thought as he mentally repeated the word daughter. A part of him thrilled to it.
Which shook him some. He hadn’t planned on this happening. If someone had asked him flat out if he’d wanted to be a father, he would have said no instantly. But now, faced with the reality of Mia, he found himself wanting to know her. Wanting her to know him.
There was a kernel of something inside him that was already taking root, blossoming despite the strange situation he found himself in. There was a little girl alive right now because of him. Didn’t that mean that they already had a connection, however slight?
His brothers each looked at him with understanding and he appreciated knowing that he wasn’t alone in this. After all, they’d already proven they could survive fatherhood.
“Seems like the King brothers are going to produce all girls in this generation,” Travis mused.
“Give me a houseful just like Emma and I’ll be happy,” Adam said, then frowned. “Until boys start coming around.”
“We don’t have to worry about that just yet,” Travis said.
Jackson though, paled a little. He’d just discovered his daughter, now he had to worry about her growing up? Dating? Meeting guys like him?
Being a father just got a lot more complicated.
The following morning, Casey had Mia happily spending time in her walker, bumping around the floor, the plastic wheels making a whirring noise, alerting Casey to her daughter’s whereabouts at all times. Mia’s throaty laughter spilled into the sunshine-filled room and Casey was smiling as she bent over the graphics program on her computer.
Her home business, Papyrus, had really taken off lately. She designed and made exclusive brochures, gift cards, high-end stationery and invitations for every occasion from weddings to birthday parties. She had a small, but select clientele and that list was steadily growing, thanks to word of mouth.
She made her own hours, worked out of her home and had plenty of time to devote to her daughter. The best of all possible worlds. If there was a niggling seed of worry called Jackson King at the back of her mind on this beautiful morning, she made