He worked to take in the deepest breath he could. “Yeah.” But he didn’t glance at her.
“Look, Jonas.” She put a gentle hand on his forearm, and he turned to face her. “Under our agreement, which was nonbinding, all you asked for was a fiancée to help you save face. I agreed to that because I wanted to come to America, but I don’t think it’s working out the way you hoped it would.”
He definitely hadn’t saved any face. “Maybe not.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Jonas.” Chelsea’s eyes were soft. “It wasn’t like we had a grand love affair. You’ve never even kissed me, other than as a sister.”
“You’re a nice woman, Chelsea. I like that about you. You’re calm and steady, not like…” Her. Not like Sabrina, who kept him churned up, not knowing if she was a gypsy or a spy or a woman on a mission to destroy his heart.
“You’re in love with her, Jonas. Anyone can see that.” Chelsea smiled at him. “It looked like Cupid smacked you right on the nose with his quiver when you saw Sabrina. And when you held that baby—”
“Let’s go for a drive,” Jonas said. “I can’t think about it. I want to get a whiskey at Banger’s.”
Chelsea shook her head. “Running off is not saving face. As I recall, that was your primary goal.”
“You’re right.” He shook his head, trying to clear it from the mist of emotions clouding his brain. “Did you see that baby?” he asked, unable to believe his denseness. How could he not have ever suspected that Sabrina was pregnant with his child?
And everyone had known but him.
“I did see little Joe,” Chelsea said dryly. “He looks just like you. How much you want to bet that Joe is short for Jonas?”
He blinked. “I doubt it.”
She laughed. “Jonas, as the daughter of your aunt’s neighbor in Ireland, I feel I have a little leeway to tell you not to be such a hardhead. Why were you so intent on believing she wasn’t having your baby? I distinctly remember you saying that it nearly killed you when you came home for your brother’s last wedding, and she was sticking out like a house. That’s what you said—that she was sticking out like a house. Did it never occur to you to simply ask her?” Chelsea asked softly.
“I didn’t want to hear the answer,” he said. “I was so sure she’d found someone when she moved to Washington, D.C. Chelsea, I’ve done you a terrible disservice.”
“Not me,” she said, laughing. “I’m having a great time. I’m sorry you’re suffering, though. Listen, I hate to leave you moldering here at the punch bowl, but I’m starved. Will you mind if I head over to the buffet table and grab a plate?”
He shook his head, feeling lost and thick. Really thick. When Chelsea left his side, Jonas glanced up to the New Mexico sky, wide and vast and endless. I have really blown it. Why didn’t I just ask Sabrina if Joe was mine?
But Jonas knew why. At the time, he’d been terrified he’d spent over three years mooning after a woman he knew was way out of his league. She was wilder than him, she had more personality. She was a gypsy and Jonas was a heart surgeon—how was that going to work? A big part of his cowardice was not trusting the sexual attraction they shared. He’d never met a woman who could make him feel like a king and then a flunky at her feet. She’d turned him inside out from the day Jonas had met her. In fact, he remembered fainting. He’d thought he’d eaten something bad, but when he came to, she was standing over him in the living room. Jonas thought she was an angel staring down at him.
A very wild, very bad, superhot angel.
It had been all he could do not to look up her skirt.
Now my son is not wearing my name, the Callahan name. His birth certificate probably says Father Unknown on it, and—
“Damn it!” Jonas said, then cursed some more, electrifying the guests who’d ventured too close to the punch table.
This Father Unknown business was going to have to be fixed—pronto.
Chapter Two
“As far as I can see,” Sam said the next day, when his five brothers had corralled Jonas in the upstairs library where they held their weekly meetings, “you have some ’splaining to do. Where the hell have you been for all these months?” Sam shook his head. “You are not the one who was supposed to go off on a major soul-seeking mission.”
“That’s right,” Pete said. He lounged in one of the wingback leather chairs, comfortable in his position as the first-married of the Callahan clan. “I always felt you scoffed at those of us who were less settled than you. You’ve always been so…well, stodgy is the word that comes to mind.”
“Not too stodgy to fall for a gypsy,” Creed said gleefully. “Remember when Sabrina was in her Madame Vivant days?” He shook his head with a grin and held up a cut crystal glass. “Here’s to the joy of watching big bro go down like a sack of bricks.”
“That’s not fair,” Jonas protested. “The whole Madame Vivant escapade is exactly what threw me. None of us knew at the time that she and Seton were Corinne Abernathy’s nieces. It felt like some bell-wearing, exotic shyster had been let into our home by our fey little Aunt Fiona.”
“Speaking of, we still have no coordinates on Fiona’s whereabouts,” Judah pointed out. He shrugged. “I guess she’ll show herself when she wants to tip her hand.”
Judah didn’t seem too worried. As the father of twins, he had plenty of other things on his mind.
“I tried my best to find her and Burke,” Jonas said, feeling defensive as he glared around at his brothers. “You have to understand, Fiona is not an easy woman to outthink.”
“That’s for certain.” Rafe, the father of triplets with Judge Julie Jenkins, looked smug as he leaned against the fireplace. “And you were probably not the scout to send after her, bro. Not that we had much choice in electing you, as I recall. One day you were at Sam’s first wedding, and then poof! You took a look at Sabrina’s belly and off you went. It was an amazing thing to watch the studious, life-by-numbers-and-books guy go off on a major toot.”
Jonas wasn’t certain he felt a lot of sympathy in the room. Some gentle ribbing, perhaps, and maybe even a bit of pull-your-head-out-bro! He bristled. “Any one of you would have thought the same thing I did if the woman you loved was in a family way and hadn’t told you. What was I supposed to think?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said. He was enjoying his newfound happiness with his wife, Seton, and their quadruplets. Jonas was still shocked that his younger brother had married before him. That was really almost the sole reason he’d brought Chelsea home with him. He didn’t want to be poor Uncle Jonas, the doddering leftover to his many nieces and so far only nephew.
“Now that you’ve admitted Sabrina is the woman you love, what are you going to do about Chelsea?” Sam asked.
His brothers gazed at him silently. Jonas’s heart pounded a ridiculous tattoo that a cardiac guy like him knew meant his body was in fight-or-flight mode. Blast. “Let’s not go getting crazy here.” He gulped his whiskey and looked at them mutinously. “I have not yet asked Sabrina if that is my child, and you don’t know for certain, either, do you?”
They shrugged to a man. Either they weren’t going to enlighten him, or they didn’t know.
“Second, do you realize I was thirty-three when I first met her? I’m now going on nearly thirty-damn-seven. How long was I supposed to wait on her?” He sent a mulish glare around the room, pinpointing each brother. “Look, the common theory is that if a man isn’t married by thirty-five, there’s something wrong with him. I was beginning to wonder about myself!”