Baby Mine (Stubborn Texas Siblings Book 1) (3 page)

The last two weeks had been Hell on Earth for Madeline. She’d been through every emotion in the book at least five times each. Her friends had been understanding but nothing they had said or done had been enough to shake her worry that something horrible would happen and the expensive procedure she’d put herself through wouldn’t take.

She sat on the edge of the examination table in the clinic, playing with the edges of the cloth gown she was wearing, looking nervously over at the woman who was silently standing at the counter with a vial in her hand,
wiggling it back and forth to shake its contents. Madeline’s eyes followed the plastic container as if she would have a clue what the color change the liquid inside took, meant.

Swallowing hard, she watched the woman’s facial features, trying to read her expression one way or the other. Finally giving up, she cleared her throat and asked.

“Well?”

The woman looked over her shoulder and offered a smile. “The test looks good. I’m going to have my assistant bring in an ultrasound machine to confirm, but it looks like the procedure was a success.”

A broad smile covered Madeline’s face as she lay back on the paper sheet covered bed. “Will we be able to tell how many babies I’ll be having?” she asked excitedly as she gripped the paper on either side of her body; anxious for that first chance to catch a glimpse of her unborn child or children.

“Assuming the test is correct, unless one or more are hidden behind each other, yes. I believe it’s early enough in the game to be able to see how many of the eggs took hold.”

Madeline’s eyes stared unblinking at the monitor as the doctor dragged the scanner over her flat belly. The wand paused as a group of cells showed up on the screen. “Well, hello there,” the doctor said, patting Madeline on the shoulder with the hand that wasn’t holding the wand. “We definitely have one that took,” she assured the excited new mommy to be.

After carefully examining the remainder of her uterine wall for any more embryos, the doctor turned the machine off. “Well, one is better than none. Congratulations, Madeline. You’re going to be a mother. My advice is to choose a personal OBGYN as soon as possible and get in to see them. I’ll write you a script for prenatal vitamins. Do let us know how everything turns out…”

“Oh, I will,” Madeline assured the woman excitedly. “Will you thank Doctor Novak for me?” she asked, as tears of happiness filled her eyes. The man who’d extracted her eggs had been a God send, and she knew that since he was also the man who’d told her about the sperm donor program in the first place, that she owed him a lot.

Promising herself that she would send the good doctor a thank you card, she hopped up and gathered her clothes from the floor. Now that she knew for sure that she was going to have a baby, she had a lot of plans to make.

Outside in the bright summer sun, Madeline looked up at the blue sky. A few wisps of clouds dotted the sky, but the sun shone through them, giving off a warm peaceful promise. She felt like she was on top of the world. All of those years of working hard and careful living had paid off because she’d been able to save her money. That little nest egg she’d built had made this day possible and she wasn’t going to allow anything or anyone to rain on her parade.

A secret smile covered her face as she began to stroll towards her car. Her hand settled over her stomach just before she climbed behind the wheel. “We are going to be so happy together, little one,” she promised. Her eyes caught the flower bed just to the side of the building she’d just left. It was filled with li
lies and roses. In that moment, Madeline decided that should the baby turn out to be a girl, she was going to name her Lillie Rose. It was a fitting name for what she was sure would be a beautiful baby girl. She’d worry about a boy’s name when and if she found that she needed to come up with one.

Something in her told her that it wouldn’t be necessary. She knew in her gut that the child she carried was a girl. She had no idea how she knew, but there wasn’t a doubt in her mind. She already felt such a connection to the baby that grew within her… A soft look of complete bliss and awe came over her face as she stuck the key in the ignition and pointed her car towards town. If she was already this much in love with the tiny life she carried now, she could hardly fathom how much more attached she’d become by the time she gave birth.

In the mean time, she had some supplies to start stocking up on. After all, there was no time like the present.

Later that night, after all of her friends had come over and helped her set up the nursery, celebrated over dinner and then left, Madeline stood in beside the beautiful white crib with purple and pink butterflies etched into the wood. She
ran her hand lovingly over the top railing, smiling peacefully.

As she glanced at the butterfly bedding she’d picked out, Madeline could picture her daughter snuggled in, sleeping with her head resting on the tiny pillow she’d found, covered by the soft pink blanket; her itty-bitty hand curled loosely around the butterfly rattle that Madeline hadn’t been able to leave at the store when she’d seen it.

Tears of happiness filled her eyes and she settled her hand on her stomach, looking down at the flat expanse of skin. “I’m going to take good care of you, my Lillie Rose. I promise… There won’t be a thing you will ever want for.”

Taking one last look at the room, Madeline smiled through her happy tears and turned to leave, shutting the light off and gently tugging the door closed behind her.
The following week, when she had her one day off, she would paint the room… the top half pink with purple butterflies and the bottom purple with pink butterflies… and perhaps a few white lilies and red roses thrown in here and there, just because she could.

Not having to ask anyone else for their opinion on how to prepare for her daughter’s birth was fantastic. There would be no one to tell her that she was spoiling the child… no one to argue that the room was too girly when there was no scientific proof that she was in fact having a girl. Being a scientist, she knew that gut instinct was in no way considered reliable; but being a mommy to be, she knew that it was all she needed. There wasn’t a soul alive that could convince her that she was wrong. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she wasn’t.

A week later, Madeline stood back in the doorway beside Trina who’d happily leant her artistic talent to help paint the nursery. “We did good work,” she proudly announced.

“Yeah, we did,” Trina happily agreed. “That little tyke of yours is going to love it. It’s like being outside in the middle of nature.”

“That was the idea,” Madeline said, nodding her head, looking around the room in awe of just how well it had turned out. “What do you think about painting her name in the middle of that far wall in big purple letters?” she asked, looking at the large blank spot in question just over where the crib sat.

“Shouldn’t you wait until you’ve got confirmation that you’re having a girl? Undoing that sort of decision would be next to impossible without painting over the whole wall… As it is, if this turns out to be a boy, he’s going to feel awfully uncomfortable
in this room once he gets older.”

“Oh, it’ll be fine. It’s not a boy,” Madeline assured her friend as she contemplated the placement for the lettering of her daughter’s name on the wall.

“What, they have tests now to determine the sex of the baby this early on in pregnancy? When did they develop that little gem, and why is this, the first I’ve heard of it?” Trina asked, looking at her friend with wide eyes.

“No, they haven’t developed any scientific tests… I just know. I can feel it. Call it a
sixth sense… I know it doesn’t make a lick of sense for a woman who deals in scientific facts to believe in something as lame as a gut instinct, but there is something in me that is so sure of this, that I’d be willing to wager an entire year’s salary that I’m right… This baby is a girl.”

“You’re right… It doesn’t make any sense,” Trina said, shaking her head in disbelief. “You of all people, Maddie… You forget
; I know you. You don’t believe anything unless you have scientific proof in front of your face. And sometimes, only if you have more than one opinion, telling you that the fact is indeed a true fact. But, hey… I’ve never been pregnant, so I’m going to have to take your word on it. Somehow, pregnancy has short circuited your brain,” she said, chuckling. “Listen, hon… as excited as I am for you, I have to get going. My husband will be home soon, and I need to get dinner on the table before he walks through the door. I’m still trying to convince him that the time has come for us to become parents… In order for that to happen, I have to butter him up first. I’m fixing his favorite tonight,” she said, grinning from ear to ear. “With any luck, our children can grow up together and be best buds.”

The two friends hugged and Madeline watched as Trina walked out the door. She sighed heavily and walked into her bedroom. It had been a long day and she knew she had to work the following morning. The sooner she got to sleep, the better. That was one thing she’d found about growing a baby… it was tiring work.

Several hours had gone by and Madeline was sound asleep when a loud pounding sounded at her front door, followed by someone practically lying on the doorbell. She moaned, and squinted at the bedside alarm clock, waiting for her eyesight to come into focus.

“
Eleven fifteen? Who in their right mind would be so insistently knocking on my door at this time of night? Especially in the middle of the week?” she asked as she climbed out of bed and slipped her feet into her fuzzy slippers. She ignored her robe, figuring it must be one of her friends and stumbled towards the front door, yawning widely, wondering what was so important to bring any of them to her door in the middle of the night.

Standing on her doorstep, looking huge and threatening was a tall muscular cowboy. He was wearing old worn out cowboy boots, tight skin hugging blue jeans, a leather belt with a large belt buckle and a tucked in red and blue plaid button up shirt. On his head, a black Stetson covered dark brown hair. His eyes were a bright blue with tiny little dark blue specks. Ridiculously long eyelashes framed his eyes, drawing hers to them almost against her will.

His nose looked as if it might have been broken a few times and his lips were thick and made her think of long slow kisses that would heat a woman’s blood with little to no effort.

When he spoke, his voice was deep with a slow drawl that told her that he was Texas born and raised. If it weren’t for
the heat and anger behind his words, she would have wondered if he was actually one of her wildest dreams come to life.

“I’m looking for a Doctor by the name of Madeline Randal. I was told I could find her at this address.”

“Yes…” she said awkwardly, trying not to cringe at the way his eyes scraped hungrily over her small frame. With all of the daydreams she had entertained about having a hot fling with a cowboy over the years, she could only imagine that this man was used to women having those sorts of thoughts about him. He was eye candy, plain and simple. “I’m Madeline Randal… and you are?” she asked, ducking her body behind the door to try to hide it from his view to keep him from seeing the way her nipples had puckered in response to his open appraisal.

He pushed his way past her into her house and the small living room seemed to shrink as his big frame stepped into it. Sighing in resignation, Madeline closed the door and went into the room, sitting daintily on the couch to see what this unbelievably sexy cowboy could possibly want with her.

His footsteps were quick as he paced the room, looking around him at the tiny little house that if he wasn’t careful, his child or children may very well end up growing up in. Finally, he found his voice; impressed that it didn’t come out as shaky as he had expected it to.

“
My name is Eric Schmidt. There was a huge mistake at the fertility clinic,” he informed her, running his massive hand over his head after removing his hat out of respect. “Make a long story short, they messed up… big time.”

Remembering the man she’d chosen as her child’s father, Madeline settled
her hand over her stomach and sucked in a harsh breath. “There’s no mistake. I have paperwork that clearly states that I have sole rights where my child is concerned. I was assured that all donors sign away any and all parental rights before their deposit is made… The donor I chose wasn’t even supposed to know my name…”

“Under normal circumstances, that would be true… Had they implanted your eggs and your donor’s
sperm. Sadly, that isn’t what happened. There was an accidental switch made, and you received my wife’s eggs… fertilized with my sperm.”

His words hung in the air and Madeline could hardly breathe past the panic that threatened to overwhelm her. Her hand shook as it rested on her belly and she fought back the bile that rose in her throat. “No… That isn’t possible,” she denied in a panicked whisper.

“Believe me, I wish you were right,” he said, facing away from her to stand looking out the window into the postcard sized back yard. “When she passed on, I was determined to allow her dream of our children being born, to die with her. Imagine my shock when I was notified that I’m going to be a father after all.”

“No!” she denied, in full fledged panic mode. “I’m this baby’s mother,” she insisted, hugging herself protecting the fragile life within. “Name your price,” she said desperately. “You didn’t want to be a father… I don’t expect anything from you. Tell me what it’s going to cost me to convince you to turn around and walk away and leave me to raise my daughter in peace.”

“There isn’t enough money on the planet to make me walk away from my child,” he informed her; looking threatening and scary as he loomed largely over her. “I gave my wife my word when those eggs were fertilized that when and if they grew to be babies who were born, I would be a father to them, and that’s what I fully plan on doing. I don’t care who I have to run over to make that promise a reality.”

“Well, I’ve gone through great physical and financial stress to get to this point,” she told him shakily. “I have the paperwork that claims that I have sole rights over any child born from the procedure I underwent. I don’t have to put up with you or your threats,” she said bravely, hoping against hope that it was true. She needed to get this man out of her house so that she could call
Georgia. Her husband was a lawyer and he would be able to advise Madeline better as to what her rights were, assuming what this man was telling her about the mix-up at the clinic was true.

He lifted a single eyebrow at her in disbelief. “What? Are you insane or just plain in denial?” he asked shaking his head. “I’m not going anywhere as long as you have my child inside of you,” he informed her boldly, making himself comfortable in the rocking chair that sat across from the couch. As he kicked his boots off, it became clear to Madeline that he wasn’t joking. This man intended to stay right there in her living room for the duration.

“You can’t just move in to my house without my approval,” she said, shaking her head, trying to fend away the sleep that was still trying to claim her.

“Oh, I don’t intend to move in here,” he assured her, looking around. Madeline sighed in relief and she relaxed her shoulders until he clarified his statement. “I have every intention of moving you in to
MY
house until you give birth to my child. But be assured… I won’t let you out of my sight as long as that baby is nestled in your belly.”

Indignation was clearly written on her features as she stood up and tried to get in his face. Sadly, the top of her head
only came up to the middle of his massive chest and made her look tiny and not at all threatening as she had intended. She tipped her head back and glared at him. “I’m not going anywhere with you and you are
NOT
staying here. I have my rights. You can’t force your way into my home and taking me out of it would be kidnapping, because I am not willing.”

“Well then we’ve got a problem, because for all intents and purposes, you’ve basically kidnapped my unborn child,” he told her through gritted teeth. “I understand that I can’t take the baby back until it’s born… but I have no intention of allowing you to take it out of my sight either.”

“She’s not an
IT
!” Madeline screamed, stomping her foot and spinning around flopping on the couch thinking that her life had gone from fantastic to a bloody mess in about five seconds flat.

“You know for a fact that my child is a girl?” he asked, looking down at her still flat belly.

“I know in my gut that
MY
daughter is a girl, yes,” she answered, refusing to back down, despite his size. “No, I haven’t had any testing that shows scientific proof,” she said, when he raised his eyebrows. “But I don’t need it to know that she’s not a boy.”

“Okay,” he said, nodding his head. “I’ve learned never to question women’s intuition. Not when it comes to a child she might be carrying anyways
…”

“There’s no might. I know I’m pregnant, the clinic took blood tests and I had an ultrasound to prove it,” she said, wishing instantly that she hadn’t told him that.

“So, that’s how you know for sure,” he nodded his head, looking again at the way her hand was settled over her belly. It was difficult to think, with the way the tiny scrap of thin pink satin hugged her like a second skin. It had been all he could do, not to stare at her. It was a sad time for his normally dormant libido to suddenly wake up and take notice of a woman for the first time since he’d buried his wife. That day seemed like forever ago to him now.

“You’re sure that there is only one? We had several eggs fertilized and I was informed that you received the whole batch…”

Madeline weakly nodded her head, looking over his shoulder at the clock and sighing heavily. “I’m quite certain. I’m equally sure that if I don’t get to sleep soon, I’m going to pass out at work in the morning.”

“If your job is so bloody important to you, what on Earth were you thinking, trying to become a single parent? What did you plan on doing? Having a daycare provider raise the baby for you? How about when the child was sick? Did you plan on sticking a sitter with a baby that was ill?”

“Of course not,” she answered, feeling annoyed by him. “There’s a daycare center at the hospital that I can leave the baby with when I’m working, and when she’s sick, we’ll both stay at home. Working in the lab, it’s not as detrimental to the patients, when I take a day off. What I’m planning on doing is no different than a married woman that lives in a two income family, you know. Women do it all the time; working full time at the same time as being a full time mother.”

“Yes, well… I have no intention of allowing
MY
child to be raised in that sort of environment. Not when I am perfectly capable of providing a much more stable home life, where the person raising the tyke will be an actual parent and not some stranger already spreading themselves too thin with other people’s children.”

“Just because she spends her days with a daycare provider doesn’t mean
they’re the ones raising her,” Madeline argued, feeling defensive of her choice to make a go of parenthood by herself. It had been a difficult decision and she had fought it long and hard, often coming up with the same arguments that he had. That didn’t make hearing the same things she had said to herself, coming from someone else any easier.

“Well, you’d be right about that… Because I fully plan on being the one to raise her,” he informed her coldly, not willing to embrace any other reality.

“And I intend to see that I’m the one that raises her. She’s
MY
daughter. DNA not withstanding… without my body, there would be no baby and possession is nine tenths of the law,” she told him in a shaky voice. She was freaked out and felt desperation filling her, leaving her shaking in her fuzzy slippers.

“We’ll just have to see about that,” Eric said, confidently. “In the mean time, go… get some sleep before you fall over from exhaustion. This conversation can keep until morning, once you’re better rested. Perhaps by then, you’ll have come to your senses and realized that there is no getting rid of me as long as you have possession of my child.”

If sleep wasn’t threatening to overtake her even as she stood there, Madeline would have argued with him, but she could tell that it was going to win; weather she was standing or flat on her back. “Fine… I’m going to bed, but I’m not changing my tune. Come morning, after I call in to work, I fully intend on contacting my lawyer to have you forcefully removed from the premises if you refuse to leave on your own. One way or the other, by the end of the day tomorrow, this nightmare will be over and you are
GOING
to be out of my hair and out of my house… and you may not believe it, but I will
NOT
be joining you when you go back to your own place.”

Madeline flipped her long flowing hair over her shoulder and spun on her heel, stomping away. She wished that her
actions would have sent more of a message to him, but she was afraid with what little she was wearing and the way his eyes had followed the sway of her hips as she walked away, all she’d managed to do was bring his attention to the fact that despite the fact that she didn’t much like him or what he was trying to do, she was very much attracted to the sexy cowboy who’d burst into her home and informed her he intended to do the same to her life, weather she liked it or not.

The real kicker here, was that if she was reading things right, he was just as physically drawn to her as she was to him. In the long run, that was going to make things very interesting indeed, she thought as she quietly closed her bedroom door and slumped against it. Her heart hammered hard in her chest as she thought about the way his eyes had heated as he scraped them slowly over her body time and time again while they argued.

If that man hadn’t been thinking about what two people normally did to create a child together the same way she had, when he’d told her that the child she already loved so much was his; she would happily eat her comfy fuzzy slippers. It was a safe bet that her favorite slippers would be just fine and live to see another day. It may have been only second hand knowledge gained from hanging with her friends and their husbands; but she knew the look a man got when he was sexually interested in a woman … and the big gorgeous man in her living room had unmistakably been wearing it on his face.