Lisa spent the early hours the next morning holding her daughter, staring at her, marveling at her. Getting her to nurse and praying her milk would come in soon. One of the nurses helped her give Jacqueline a bath, and there were lessons in diaper changing.
Wouldn’t her friends at the ad agency get a kick out of her excitement over changing a diaper.
Every few minutes as the morning progressed, Lisa glanced toward the door. She did it unconsciously at first, before realizing what she was doing. But it took no great thought to know she was looking for Jack.
Would he come?
Of course he would. He’d said he would bring her clothes and things. If nothing else, he would keep his word.
But she wanted him to come because he wanted to see her, not just to run an errand.
He’d been so wonderful yesterday, so kind and gentle. So loving. She had felt so close to him—until he’d entered her hospital room and she’d sensed a distance between them that hadn’t been there before, not even the day they’d met.
“Is he tired of us, do you think?” she asked her daughter.
It could be. She had a team of nurses to look after her now, and tomorrow Belinda would be home. Maybe Jack was ready to wash his hands of her. She’d been such a burden to him she really couldn’t blame him. But she prayed she was wrong.
Finally, around ten o’clock, he arrived. With him he brought her suitcase and a beautiful arrangement of pink carnations surrounded by baby’s breath.
“Oh, Jack, how pretty! You shouldn’t have.”
Jack felt the hole in the pit of his stomach, the hole he’d felt yesterday when he’d realized she no longer needed him, grow larger. You shouldn’t have. Wasn’t that what you said to a casual acquaintance? It sounded that way to him.
“You’ve done so much for me already,” she said.
The hole in his gut got bigger. “Well,” he said with a shrug, trying to put a good face on it, “you have to share them with the little cupcake there. How is she?”
Lisa looked down at the yawning baby in her arms. “She’s tired. We’ve had a busy morning, what with feedings and baths and diaper changes and all.”
“Maybe I should go and let the two of you get some rest.”
“Oh, but you just got here,” Lisa protested.
“I’ll, uh, come back later.”
He left so fast Lisa was dazed. The tears came without warning. He didn’t want her anymore. Didn’t want anything to do with her. But he was such a nice and decent man he probably would come back, simply because he’d promised.
“Oh, Jack.” He was slipping away from her and she didn’t know why, or how to stop it.
Later that morning the florist brought more flowers—from Dane, from Belinda and her husband, who weren’t even home from Hawaii yet, and even a bouquet from Roger’s parents, with a separate arrangement from his grandfather, which included a note swearing Lisa would never have to worry about Roger bothering her again.
In the afternoon Trey and Stoney came. Lisa thought it was sweet of them, and they made quite a fuss over the baby. Trey brought her a pink teddy bear, and Stoney a stuffed bunny rabbit.
“Oh, thank you!” Lisa exclaimed. “Her first toys.”
Trey grinned, while Stoney blushed.
Just before supper a beautiful, black-haired, blue-eyed woman came to her room, and Lisa knew instantly that this must be Jack’s sister. She was a petite feminine version of Jack and Trey.
“Hi. I hope you don’t mind my dropping in. I’m Rachel Lewis, Jack’s sister. I wanted to introduce myself and bring you some…” She glanced around the room and grinned. “Oh, my. Some flowers.”
“How sweet of you,” Lisa said, thrilled to meet her. “I’m so glad you came.”
“I couldn’t stay away. Jack came for supper last night and told us what happened. He said you were all right, but I had to make sure for myself. Belinda would have my hide. She might have it, anyway, because I haven’t even so much as called you since you got here.”
“I imagine you’ve been a little busy. Haven’t your nephews been staying with you?”
Rachel laughed and rolled her eyes.
Rachel stayed and visited for nearly half an hour. She left when the nurse brought Lisa’s supper tray. By then, Lisa felt as if she’d known the woman her entire life.
Lisa had no sooner finished eating when Belinda arrived.
“You’re here!” Lisa declared, more glad than she could say to see her best friend at last.
“You didn’t wait for me,” Belinda scolded. “You weren’t supposed to have the baby until I got home. But what the heck, I love you, anyway.” She enveloped Lisa in a big hug. “Are you all right?” she demanded. “We heard the most incredible story about Jack delivering the baby.”
“It’s true. He was wonderful.”
“Well, where is he? And where is this alleged baby?”
Lisa felt her hope shrivel and did her best to hide it. If Belinda was asking where Jack was, then he hadn’t come with her. This morning he had stayed barely five minutes, and she hadn’t seen him since. She knew he had work to do, and it was a long drive between the ranch and town. But she had hoped…
“Could I get an introduction here?”
Lisa looked at the man at the foot of her bed. The family resemblance was stunning. He and Jack could have been twins. The two of them and Trey could have been triplets, so alike were they.
“You’re Ace.” She couldn’t help but smile as she held out a hand to him. His grip was firm and warm, his hand as callused as Jack’s. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to meet the man who could get this one—” she put her other hand on Belinda’s shoulder “—to the altar.”
“And you must be Lisa,” Ace responded with an easy smile. “I’m glad to finally meet you, too. It sounds like you’ve had an, uh, eventful stay so far.”
Lisa chuckled. “I’ll say. You folks in Wyoming sure know how to show a lady a good time.”
“Oh, yeah, right.” Belinda took off her coat and tossed it on the nearby chair. “Car accidents, amnesia, blizzards, power outages, kidnapping and roadside childbirth. Be glad we don’t really like you, or we’d have thrown in something really cool, like an influenza outbreak, to cap things off.”
“And all this without your even having to be here,” Lisa added. “I can’t wait for you to see Jackie.”
“Who?”
“My daughter. Jacqueline Dana.”
“Oh, my God.” Belinda looked dumbstruck. “You named her after…I think I’d better sit down.”
“You knew everything else that’s happened. Didn’t Jack tell you?”
“He didn’t say a word.” Belinda looked at Ace, who shook his head. “That rat. I’ll murder him for not telling me something that important.”
“Give the guy a break,” Ace said. “We haven’t even seen him yet, only talked to him on the phone. We just got in and haven’t even picked up the boys yet. Belinda couldn’t wait to see you.”
A moment later the nurse brought Jacqueline to the room.
Ace could see he wasn’t needed or wanted here. No one even seemed to remember he was there. “I’ll leave the two—three—of you to visit. Lisa, it was nice meeting you.”
“Ace, thank you for coming,” she said earnestly. “And thank you, both of you, for letting me stay at your ranch. I can’t tell you how much it’s meant to me.”
“You’re welcome,” he told her. “But don’t start thinking of leaving. I know for a fact that Belinda won’t let you.”
“He’s right of course,” Belinda said when her husband left. “You’re staying with us until you decide what you want to do, and I won’t hear any arguments. And if you don’t let me hold that baby in the next two minutes, I’m going to hit you over the head and make off with her. I’ll change her name to Lelani and tell everyone we brought her home from Hawaii.”
Laughing, Lisa carefully placed her daughter into the arms of the best friend she’d ever had.
“Now,” Belinda said, “suppose you tell me why you named this beautiful angel after a man you barely know. And don’t tell me it’s because he delivered her. There’s got to be more to it than that. Spill it, girl.”
“Oh, Belinda…” Lisa broke down and cried.
The Flying Ace headquarters was a madhouse of confusion that night when Ace, Belinda, their sons and housekeeper returned.
Jason, Grant and Clay were wild about having their parents home and being back in their own house. They regaled their parents with all their exploits—the snow fort they’d built in the backyard at Standing Elk, the snowball war they’d had with Grady and Rachel, the day they got out of school because of the blizzard.
“Man, it was cool!” Jason exclaimed.
Jack watched it all with an ache in his chest. For the first time in his life, he truly envied his older brother.
It took two hours for the boys to wind down enough to go to bed. When they finally did, Ace and Jack settled in the office so Jack could fill Ace in on ranch business.
“That’s pretty damned interesting,” Ace said an hour later.
“What is?”
“You’ve just talked for a solid hour about the blizzard, the cattle, the fences, and you haven’t said a single word about Lisa. I gotta wonder about that.”
Jack shrugged. “I told Belinda all of that over the phone last night, and you’ve met her. Nothing else to say.”
Ace leaned back and placed his hands behind his head. “Except, according to Rachel, you love her.”
Jack shot him a narrow-eyed glare. “She’s right. I’ve loved Rachel since she was a kid.”
“Very funny, bro. I’m talking about Lisa.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.” Jack wasn’t ready to bare his soul to Ace or anyone.
“Isn’t there?”
“No.” Jack stood and headed for the door. “No, there isn’t.”
Jack would have kept on walking, but Belinda was suddenly blocking the doorway.
“Oh,” she said with a gleam in her eye, “I think there is. I think there’s a lot more to talk about.” She placed one hand squarely in the middle of Jack’s chest and shoved. “Sit down.”
“Well, hell,” Jack muttered. But he sat, because there was no getting around Belinda when she got that steely-eyed look about her.
“Very good,” she said, as if he were a puppy who’d just piddled on the paper instead of the floor. “The first thing you should be aware of before you start denying things is that Lisa and I are very good friends. She tells me everything.”
“And your point is…?”
“My point is, what is this nonsense about you not being able to love a woman and not knowing how to be a husband or father?”
“She said that?” Ace asked his wife.
“I had to browbeat her to get it out of her.”
“You browbeat her?” Jack cried, outraged. “That woman has been through pure hell this past week. You had no business—”
“Looks like Rachel was right.” Ace’s grin was huge. “He’s nuts about her.”
“I’ve heard enough.” Jack moved as if to get up, until he saw the look in Belinda’s eyes.
“I’ll just come after you.”
“Look, you two,” Jack said with what little patience he had left. “No offense, but this is none of your business.”
“No offense taken,” Belinda said sweetly.
When Belinda got sweet, a man had better look out.
“However,” Ace said, “I’m remembering a certain early-morning trip to the family cemetery a while back.”
“Early-morning kidnapping was more like it,” Belinda corrected.
Jack groaned. The two of them, Ace and Belinda, had been eaten alive with guilt for having feelings for each other, each of them letting the ghost of Belinda’s sister, Ace’s late wife, stand between them. Jack had finally gotten fed up watching them tap-dance around their feelings for each other. Never were two people more suited to each other or more in love than they had been, but they were letting Cathy stand between them as if she were still alive. In pure frustration Jack had dragged them to the cemetery one morning and pointed to Cathy’s grave, demanding that they acknowledge that she was dead and they weren’t.
It hadn’t been the nicest thing he’d ever done, but the results were there before him now—a man and woman, husband and wife, deeply in love and more suited to each other than any two people in the world. Jack had no regrets.
Except now it looked as though they were going to use that little incident as an excuse to butt into his life.
“So,” Belinda said, “we feel we owe it to you to get to the bottom of your problems.”
“I don’t have any problems.” The lie had come way too easily.
“You are the problem,” Ace said tersely, “if you believe any of that garbage about not being able to be a good husband and father.”
“Hell, Ace, what do I know about that sort of thing? You know I never had a father at all until I was twelve, and then the one I got…well, King Wilder never won any prizes for fatherhood.”
“So what?” Ace cried. “I had the same lousy father you did. Are you saying I’m no good at raising my sons?”
“No!” Jack stared in shock. “Of course not. You’re a great father.”
“Hallelujah,” Belinda said. “If Ace is a great father—and he’s the best—and you and he had the same father, then you’ve got no excuse in that department, buster. Maybe Rachel was wrong. Maybe you really don’t love Lisa. Or maybe you just don’t want to raise another man’s child as your own.”
It was on the tip of Jack’s tongue to protest that Jacqueline Dana was not another man’s child, she was his. Hadn’t he felt her move in her mother’s womb? Hadn’t he helped bring her into the world? Weren’t his hands the first touch she’d ever known?
But he bit back the words and pushed himself from his chair. “I have to think.”
“Think real hard,” Belinda called after him as he left the room. “Before you lose the best thing that ever happened to you.”
Ace and Belinda listened as Jack’s footsteps faded, then the back door slammed.
“Do you think we were too hard on him?” Belinda asked.
“Not nearly as hard as he’s obviously been on himself. At least he’s thinking now. With any luck, he’s thinking straight.”
“It’s about damn time,” Belinda muttered.
The next morning after he finished his chores, Jack stood beside his rig and stared at the pile of Lisa’s belongings in the back. He’d gone by the garage yesterday after leaving the hospital and gotten them from the trunk of her car. Two more suitcases, several boxes, a portable crib, a computer. The trunk had been crammed.
He supposed he should haul it all up to the house and unload it, so she would have it there when they brought her home later that day. She was supposed to be discharged around two.
He’d overheard some of the arrangements last night that Belinda and Donna were making. Donna was going to move upstairs into the guest room so they could put Lisa and the baby in Donna’s room downstairs off the kitchen. It seemed they’d decided Lisa didn’t need to be climbing stairs all day.
After witnessing firsthand what she’d gone through giving birth, Jack had no quarrel with that. If he had his way, she wouldn’t get out of bed for the next month.
But dammit, he didn’t want her in the downstairs room off the kitchen in his brother’s house. He wanted her in his house. He wanted…hell, he wanted too damn much.
What he wanted most just then was to know where he stood with her. And by God, he was tired of guessing. He was going to find out.
When Jack got to the hospital, he figured he had the worst case of cold feet in history. But this was too important for him to let that stop him. He entered Lisa’s room, ready to fight for his life, because no less than that was at stake.
“Jack, you came.”
He nodded once. Her smile looked sad around the edges and scared the hell out of him. “I came. Lisa, I—”
“Would you do something for me?”
“Of course.”
“I know I’ve asked too much of you already, but—”
“You’ve never asked anything of me. Whatever I’ve done, I’ve done because I wanted to.”
“All right,” she said slowly. “But this time I’m asking.”
“All right, what is it?”
“Would you…” She paused and shifted the baby in her arms. “Would you hold Jacqueline Dana?”
Jack’s heart gave a hard thump somewhere near his throat. Sweat broke out on his palms. “Hold her?” He was dying to hold her.
“Please? If you don’t mind, that is.”
He swallowed hard. “I…of course I don’t mind. But it’s been a while since I’ve held a baby that small. Shouldn’t you get one of the nurses to hold her for you?”
“No. I want…I want to be able to tell her, when she’s older, that the man who delivered her, the man she’s named for, held her in his arms.”
Everything inside Jack went numb. If that wasn’t a goodbye, he didn’t know what was. She was through with him. Or would be, once this was done. He wanted to throw back his head and howl in protest. He wanted to gnash his teeth. He wanted to weep.
Instead, he held out his arms. “Give her here,” he said, his voice rough with emotion.
The ache in Lisa’s throat grew almost unbearable as she placed her sleeping daughter in Jack’s arms.
She’d made her decision last night. She would not try to hold on to him. He had already stepped back from her. Now Belinda was home, and there was no longer any reason for her to lean on him, to need him. He had his own life to live. She had conveniently ignored that fact from the beginning. The blizzard had altered everything, sealing them together inside that little house.
But that was long past, and now that he didn’t have to worry about her all the time, he could get back to his own life.
Seeing him hold the child he had delivered from her womb was the most precious sight in the world to her. The way he gazed down at the baby with so much love in his eyes. The way his callused hands held her so gently, one finger stroking her hair.
Oh, God, she was going to humiliate herself and fall apart if she didn’t get a grip.
“Hello, little cupcake,” he said softly to the baby. “How are you doing today? Are you being nice to your mama?” He eased down until he was sitting on the edge of Lisa’s bed. “I guess the two of you don’t need me anymore, huh? You’ve got all these nurses here at the hospital, and pretty soon you’ll have your aunt Belinda and Donna and everybody else to look after you. Maybe someday your mama will tell you about conking herself out and losing her memory. You probably won’t believe it, but it’s true, I swear.”
Jack was silent for a long time, just staring down at the baby in his arms.
No. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t surrender without a fight. He stood and leaned down. “Take her.” His voice came out more harshly than he’d intended.
“Jack, I’m sor—”
“Wait.” He held up his hand, palm forward. “Wait. This is all sounding like a big goodbye scene, and before we go that far, I have a question to ask you.”
With her heart breaking, Lisa shifted the baby in her arms. “A question?”
“That’s right.” He stood beside the bed and stuffed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “The other night, when you thought I was asleep, did you mean what you said?”
He didn’t need to explain. Lisa remembered perfectly what she’d whispered in the dark when she’d thought he was asleep.
“You were awake?”
He nodded. “I was awake.”
Heat stung her cheeks. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I…I don’t know. Did you mean it?”
She picked at an imaginary piece of lint on the baby’s blanket. “That you were the most loving man I’d ever dreamed of knowing? Yes.” She looked up at him. “I meant it.”
Jack balled his fists to keep from reaching for her. “What about the rest? Did you mean that, too?”
She swallowed and held his gaze. “Yes. I meant it.”
“You said…you said you loved me.”
“Yes. I did. Am I…am I alone in this?” Slowly Jack took his hands from his pockets and sat on the edge of her bed. “No.” As he reached for her, his hands shook. “No, you’re not alone, Lisa. I love you. If you’ll have me, you’ll never be alone again, I swear it.”
Her eyes, those beautiful green eyes, filled with tears. “Jack?”
“I love you, Lisa Hampton. I don’t know anything about being a husband, but if you’ll help me, I’ll learn. If love counts for anything, I’ve got it licked. As for her,” he said, looking down at the baby and stroking her cheek with a fingertip, “I’ve been her slave from the minute she was born. Before that, even.”
“Oh, Jack.”
“I want us to get married. I want us, the three of us, to be a family. I want you and Jacqueline Dana to share my home, my life and my name. If you need to stand on your own, that’s fine. Just let me stand beside you. If you want a large family, let me give you mine. If you want more children…marry me, Lisa. Marry me.”
“Oh, Jack, yes, yes.” She lay her head on his shoulder, with the baby cuddled between them, and wept tears of joy.
When Belinda and Ace arrived to take Lisa and Jacqueline home, they found Jack sitting in a chair holding the baby while Lisa stood beside them, dressed and running a brush through her hair.
“You’re all ready?” Belinda asked.
Lisa whirled toward the door. “Belinda!”
“Good grief,” Belinda said. “Lisa, you’re…you’re practically glowing.”
“There’s been a change of plans,” Jack said. “Oh, really?” Belinda asked, a slow smile starting across her face.
“Yes, really.” Jack rose and stood beside Lisa, the baby in one arm, the other arm going around Lisa, and faced his brother and sister-in-law. “Lisa won’t be going home with you. She’s coming home with me.”
“Well, now.” Ace folded his arms across his chest. “Since Lisa doesn’t have a father here to speak up for her, I guess that leaves it up to me. Are the two of you planning to live in sin?”
Lisa burst out laughing.
Jack raised an eyebrow. “Not that it’s any of your business—”
“You wanna watch that, Jack,” Belinda warned with a gleam in her eye.
“We’re getting married,” Lisa told them. Belinda shouted. “Hallelujah!” With their daughter cradled in one arm, Jack looked down at the woman who was his life. “Let’s go home.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Let’s.”