He reached for the box instinctively and caught it, then grabbed for her and pushed her gently back toward the bed. Her hands clasped his arms and held on.
Her eyes looked into his, their gray depths almost lucid. He felt her tension in the grip of her fingers.
“You are him,” she whispered.
She looked so grave. What was she talking about? “Who?” he asked, lowering his voice unconsciously.
“The father of my baby,” she replied.
“I’m…Lulu’s son,” he said, pulling the edge of the coverlet over her knees.
“Lulu?”
“She owns this place.”
The woman looked around the room. “The…clinic?”
“No, this isn’t a clinic. You’re staying at a bed-and-breakfast.”
She frowned, apparently trying to absorb that. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “You’ve been sick.” He held up the box and saw that it contained extra-strength cold medication. “I think you’ve had a cold.” He tossed the box at the bedside table and noted the empty toddy mug there. The brandy bottle stood beside it.
She fell back onto the mattress, then put a finger to her lips. “Sick. But…shh! Or they’ll report that I’m dying!”
He didn’t even try to understand what that meant. He reached for the bottle and held it up to the light. It was still mostly full, though he guessed even a small amount of brandy with strong cold medication could reduce someone to such a state.
“How many pills have you had?” he asked.
She put a hand to her head. “Um…five…eight. Not sure.”
“You should eat something,” he suggested. “Maybe drink some coffee.” He pulled the coverlet all the way over her. “I’ll go get—”
She caught his shirtsleeve with surprising strength, preventing him from straightening up. “I just want the baby,” she said. “Now. Before I…”
He guessed she’d been about to say, “Before I pass out,” because then she did just that.
“Oh boy,” Ben grumbled to himself as he placed a pillow under her head. She was crackers, but he probably was, too. After a year and a half of celibacy, making a baby with a gorgeous blonde didn’t sound half-bad.
But he preferred his women conscious.
His women, he thought with dry amusement. As though he’d had any. It had been him and Julie since high school. He’d never had another lover. And he didn’t want another one now. He fully intended to live out his life in quiet frustration, because there couldn’t be another woman with whom he fit so perfectly in every way. Like the damned wallpaper.
“Oh, my God,” his mother said, coming to lean beside him as he tried to assess the woman’s condition. “What did you do?”
He turned to her impatiently. “I didn’t do anything. She passed out, thanks to your heavy-handed toddy and a box of cold pills.”
“Did you tell her she has to be out tonight?”
“I didn’t get a chance to tell her much of anything. She mistook me for someone who’s supposed to get her pregnant.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. At one point she thought she was dreaming. What are you doing?”
His mother was walking around the room, putting the few things left out into the open suitcase on the luggage rack.
“I’ve got to move her so I can prepare this room,” she said. She took a cosmetics bag off the dresser and tossed it in.
“Where are you going to put her?”
His mother gasped in reply, her eyes widening as she stared at a newspaper she’d picked up with the cosmetics bag.
He went to read over her shoulder.
News Anchor Scammed by Casanova of Sperm Lab. The headline was two inches high, in bold print. The subhead read, Newswoman Courageously Turns Table on Sperm Lab Doctor Filling Orders with his Own Sperm.
“Poor thing!” his mother exclaimed as Ben scanned the story. “She goes to a sperm lab for help getting pregnant and learns that she’s been defrauded. But she had the courage to play out the story and bring the man to trial. Fortunately for her, the procedure didn’t work.”
It was a sad story. He suddenly understood her insistence about getting pregnant.
“And knowing that,” Ben said, “you can throw her out in the cold?”
“No,” Lulu said, dropping the paper into a pretty trash basket. “I can let you take her home with you.”
Ben glared at her. “Mom…”
“What else am I going to do? I have guests arriving in less than two hours.”
“You can find her a room at another—”
“The Buckley Arms is full—the crafters convention. And I’m it for B-and-Bs.”
He struggled to hold on to his good humor. “I’m not a B-and-B, Mom. I’m a working man with two little—”
“I know, I know,” she said, patting his cheek. “But she’s clearly in a state that requires she be looked after, and I can’t do that with an inn filled with guests. You, on the other hand, always manage to look after everyone in your life very well.”
“But she’s not in my life,” he insisted, “she’s in yours.”
“But I’m in yours, sweetie. See? It’s logical. Scientific, even. Mathematical, sort of. She’s in mine and I’m in yours, therefore she’s in yours, too.”
“God.”
Chapter Two
Vanessa and Roxie skipped after him as he carried a still-sleeping Natalie Browning, wrapped in a blanket, out to the van. His mother followed with the suitcase.
“She’s so pretty!” Vanessa exclaimed as he placed Natalie on the front passenger seat, tilting it back to help keep her in place.
“Like Sleeping Beauty!” Roxie said.
His mother slid the side door open and put the suitcase into the back seat.
Vanessa tucked Natalie’s feet in.
“If you kiss her, Daddy, she’ll wake up!” Roxie added.
His mother smiled at him and said under her breath, “And maybe you will, too, Ben.”
He sent her a dark look. “You’re already on dangerous ground, Mom. She can stay on the sofa tonight, but first thing in the morning she’s on her own.”
“Of course.” She reached up to kiss his cheek as he closed the door on his unexpected houseguest. Lulu blew kisses to the girls and hurried back inside.
Roxie stood between the two front seats when he climbed in behind the wheel. She looked down at the young woman, patting the disheveled blond hair with a pudgy little hand.
“I wish my hair was this color,” she said.
Vanessa, leaning over the back of the front seat, handed the seat belt to Roxie, who clicked it into place.
“Yeah, me too,” Vanessa replied. “I’d wear it long with lots of curls.”