“Right. It’s just you and me, kid. Dry clothes, coming right up.”
Chapter Three
Jamie struggled with his guilt while his son struggled with his bottle.
When all the little things went wrong, one after another, when Jamie’s workday had been long and his baby refused to be comforted, memories of Amina brought him no comfort. On days like those—on days like today—instead of missing Amina, instead of wishing she were here to share the safe life of suburban America, Jamie would feel angry.
Amina could have shared this life. Amina could have seen their son growing day by day, but she’d chosen a different route, a path in life that had led to her death. She’d left Jamie alone to pick up the pieces, to protect her baby, to keep her memory alive for their son. And sometimes, damn it all to hell, Jamie was pissed off at the choices she’d made.
Being pissed off at a dead woman was unacceptable. The guilt was heavy on him now. It felt familiar.
He and Sam were dry, at least, both wearing white T-shirts and sitting together in the leather recliner. Jamie hadn’t been able to find a rocking chair that fit his size comfortably, and the recliner did the trick when it came to relaxing with the baby until Sam—or both of them—fell asleep.
Tonight, though, as Sam worked his way through swallowing and spitting up the contents of his bedtime bottle, relaxation seemed a long way off. Sometimes Jamie thought he’d never relax again—not for the next eighteen years, anyway. Not while he was the sole adult responsible for making sure Sam had all he needed for a good life.
Usually, these quiet moments with his son made everything fall into place. The troubles of his workday receded, unable to keep his attention when he held this baby and felt all the wonderment of a new life.
Usually, but not tonight.
As Sam grunted and sucked his way through the bottle, Jamie studied his son’s face. Sam looked like Amina. His arrestingly dark eyes were undoubtedly his mother’s. Jamie smoothed a hand over the soft, black hair on Sam’s head—also Amina’s. He let Sam curl his hand around Jamie’s index finger. Those fingers didn’t look like Jamie’s. Nor his toes. Did they look like Amina’s?
Jamie no longer remembered details like that, the shape of her thumb or pinky finger. He was forgetting. If he forgot Amina, there would be nobody to tell Sam about his mother. Amina had been the last of her family, the sole survivor when the rest had been wiped out by the war. For resisting the Taliban, her family name had been erased to the last distant cousin. Amina had only been spared by a matter of days, she’d told him, sent to school in London before the slaughter in her village had taken place.
Jamie wondered how the MacDowells would have reacted if the local sheriff suddenly had the power to walk onto their ranch and start shooting. His family probably would have been as defiant as Amina’s family had been. Perhaps that was one reason he and Amina had hit it off so quickly. They were kindred spirits. She could have been a MacDowell.
She should have been a MacDowell.
Instead, even while she was pregnant with Jamie’s child, she’d chosen to stay in a country where prenatal care was nonexistent. Hell, indoor plumbing was still a sign of personal wealth. Against Jamie’s medical advice and personal plea, she’d obstinately traveled with a documentary film crew. In a remote village, she’d gone into premature labor while on her crusade to persuade Afghanis to let their daughters attend school. She’d died not from a Taliban bullet like the rest of her family, but from a lack of medical care, like too many women in her country.
Tonight, Jamie was angry at a woman who’d lost her entire family years before she, herself, had died.
More guilt.
Sam worked greedily at his bottle.
No, Amina’s family weren’t all dead. Sam was here, and Jamie would do everything to ensure one member of that brave family had a life that didn’t end in tragedy.
Jamie bent his head as he lifted Sam’s tiny hand and planted a kiss on the perfectly formed fingers. If they weren’t his fingers and they weren’t Amina’s fingers, whose were they? A bit of DNA passed on from a great-grandparent? Or did those fingers, perhaps, come from another man, a man who had come into Amina’s life before Jamie?
More guilt for even thinking such a thought.
Jamie had too much time to think about things in the safety of his quiet ranch house. Afghanistan had been intense—life outside the wire more so. Emotions ran high, bonds were formed quickly, and Amina, his unit’s translator and general ambassador to the local population, had literally slipped into his bed after they’d worked together for only two short weeks.
At the time, he hadn’t been surprised. They’d had chemistry and a connection from their first meeting. For the first two weeks, they’d spent nearly every moment together, seeking out the smallest villages and encampments, offering medical care to the local population. Amina’s intelligence and her determination to better her fellow countrymen had made an impact on Jamie, if not on the villagers.
He hadn’t been surprised that Amina was sexually experienced, either, because she’d lived in London longer than she’d lived with her family in Afghanistan. Her appearance was Afghani, but her personality was Western. He’d fallen for her and she for him. When, in the dark hours before dawn, she’d silently come into the hut he used as both clinic and bedroom, he’d had no doubts as she’d slipped into his bed.
Now, however, thousands of miles away and a year and a half later, he wondered. Had she already been pregnant? Had she wanted Jamie to believe he was the father, so that her son would have an American protector?
Sam gurgled down a few swallows of formula and patted Jamie’s hand with his own. Jamie clutched the baby closer to his chest.
If Amina had wanted an American soldier to protect her coming baby, she’d gotten one. Jamie would never let Sam go, whether they shared DNA or not. The feel of this child in his hands was essential to his life. It had been from the moment a local midwife who’d trekked miles on foot stood outside the barbed wire and handed him a dehydrated newborn and the news that Amina was dead. Dead and already buried, in accordance with their laws.
And so Jamie had sworn on a legal document that Sam was his biological child. He’d gotten the required signatures of others in his military unit, fellow soldiers and civilian contractors who could vouch that they’d seen Jamie working with Amina the eight months before the birth of the child, an appropriate period of time that could make it possible for Jamie to be the father. If any of those witnesses had wondered how an infant born at only eight months of gestation had appeared to be full-term, they’d kept that to themselves as they’d scrambled to help Jamie find formula and bottles—a futile search.
IVs had kept Sam alive those first critical days. Jamie had still had a week left on his tour of duty, but he’d literally wheeled Sam’s stretcher onto the next medical flight to Germany. No one had questioned him. Jamie had gambled that forgiveness would be easier to gain than permission, and that gamble had paid off.
So far.
But in the quiet of nights like tonight, as Jamie looked at the son who looked nothing like him, fear crept into his chest. What if the State Department got around to that paperwork and a diligent clerk decided to order medical tests to prove the baby biologically belonged to the soldier?
The blood-type test would be ordered first. If the blood types were incompatible, then the soldier could not be the father of the child. If the blood types were compatible, it only proved that it was possible for the soldier to be the father, but the paternity was still in question.
Jamie knew his blood type. He knew Sam’s. It was possible that he was Sam’s father. But it was not a fact, not without further DNA testing, and if the State Department chose to order those tests...
He willed the fear away. Jamie sat Sam up to pat his back,