Living With Lies Trilogy (Books 1, 2, and 3 of The Dancing Moon Ranch Series) (16 page)

She had to brace herself before calling her parents though. They'd managed to adjust to the sperm switch, and the uproar of her having the baby of a dead man was a moot point. But now they'd have to come to terms with the fact that she was married to the seedy-looking cowboy they'd met at the ranch.

"Okay, here goes," she said. "Just don't be offended by anything they say. Anything my mother says, that is. My father will be in the background as usual. But you'll understand why I didn't want my mother staying with me after my baby was born the first time, when he was still my baby, and Marc's, that is, before he became your baby and everything got too complicated to explain to them—"

"Honey, just call."

"Yes... well... here goes..."

Grace's mother picked up the phone on the second ring. "Hi Mom," Grace said. "I just wanted to let you and Dad know that I had the baby and married the father. Well, I married the father first then had the baby. His name is Adam, the baby's name that is. The father is Jack. And the baby weighs ten-pounds-four-ounces and is twenty-two inches long and has big hands and big feet and a head of dark hair." There, it was done.

After total silence, while Grace waited for her mother to digest what she'd heard, her mother said, in a cautious voice, "Grace, did you say you married the baby's father?"

"Yes, just before we left for New Jersey," Grace replied. "Jack suggested it and I agreed. So your grandson is legitimate."

"Did you say New Jersey, Grace?"

"I told you about the umbilical cord blood transplant, Mom," Grace said. "I'll explain later. Right now I'm nursing the baby."

"Is the father there with you... now, while you're doing that?"

"Of course, Mom. He's my husband."

"But he's a cowboy."

"Yes."

"You don't ride," her mother stated the obvious.

"I did at camp," Grace replied.

"Does he... do all that rodeo stuff?" Definitely negative vibes coming through.

Grace looked at Jack, who smiled and nodded, enjoying the exchange. "Yes. Bull riding, calf roping. The works. He's a cowboy, Mom."

"Oh." Silence.

"Mom?"

"Well... yes, this is all very sudden, Grace. I really don't know what to say."

"That's a first. But it's all okay. He's good to me. Talk to you later, Mom. My son needs another quart of milk" She hung up before more questions could get through.

She moved Adam to the other breast. After he clamped on, Adam let out a little soft moan, and soon he closed his eyes and smacking sounds could be heard.

Jack smiled. "He's a real chow hound," he said, eyes on his son. "You doing okay with this?"

"Not exactly," Grace said. "Every time he latches on he acts like it's his last meal."

Jack stroked Adam's soft hair as he nursed, then moved his hand to Grace's breast and held it there, and said, "I'm proud of you, honey, proud of everything you did in there, and now seeing you like this." His hand remained on her breast.

"You mean like Dolly Parton?" Grace said, more aware of Jack's hand on her breast than the baby on her nipple.

"No, like Adam's mother. Your breast feels hard so you must be uncomfortable with so much milk, and you could let the doctor give you something to dry you up, but you're not." He removed his hand from her breast.

Grace looked up at Jack, and said, "What I need is another baby. I still want Marc's baby. Susan doesn't want him and there's this little empty place in my heart for the baby I set out to have." She brushed her finger over Adam's soft round cheek and he stopped sucking and looked up at her. She smiled and said to Jack, "You're right. He's absolutely perfect, and he's going to look just like you, which makes me very happy." She looked at Jack then, and added, "And if you say he's well hung, I guess that's good too."

"It is. He'll appreciate it later," Jack said. "And speaking of that, I read the book on circumcision and watched the DVD."

"And?"

"Maybe we'll wait some," Jack said. "I want to find out more."

"Everything was pretty much laid out in the book and on the DVD," Grace said. "What more do you need to know?"

"If it really makes a difference in bed."

And there was only one way he could find out, Grace realized, but that was still a few weeks away. And she was becoming increasingly anxious to prove the survey wrong.

***

After Susan and Sam finished at the cord blood bank, where they took Ricky to have his blood drawn for testing, they stopped by the hospital to see Adam, who was asleep in a hospital infant crib beside Grace's bed. Sam, who stood with Ricky in his arms, said to Jack, who sat looking into the crib, "You have your boy now, bro. He's a fine little guy."

Jack reached over and touched Adam's cheek, and Adam gave a little sleepy smirk, which brought a smile to Jack's lips. "Grace did all the work," he said. "All I did was deposit sperm in a cup." He smiled at Grace and winked.

Grace looked beyond Jack and saw a nurse standing in the doorway, with a very curious look on her face. "Well, you may have gotten off easy up to this point," Grace said, "but your job is just beginning. You get to tell him all about boy things, the facts of life and all that stuff."

Until now, Susan hadn't said anything. Then she went up to stand by the bed, and said to Grace, "You're so lucky it's all over. He's a real sweet baby."

"Yes, he is," Grace said, looking through the clear plastic walls of the crib at her son. "He already reminds me of Jack, with that mop of dark hair. And look at the size of those hands. And five perfect little fingers on each." Grace reached inside the crib and lifted Adam's little hand and held it, and her heart filled with love, and when she looked at Jack and saw him watching her, she felt as if he might be starting to love her a little more too.

A light knocking in the doorway caught their attention. A man, with an emblem on his gray shirt, with the insignia of the lab that would be preparing the cord blood for transplant, stepped into the room. Already knowing who Sam and Susan were, he introduced himself to Grace and Jack as a representative from the blood bank, and said, "Your son's blood kit is at the lab and technicians are running tests for viability and to determine if there's a close enough match for a transplant. If there is, the cord blood cells will be processed for transplantation. We believe there's an excellent chance since you men are identical twins."

Susan looked at the man, her fingers laced together above, but not touching, her belly, and said, "When will we know?"

"We'll know by tomorrow," the man said, "but there's also a chance there won't be enough stem cells in the cord blood to engraft. We can manipulate the stem-progenitor cells in the lab with a goal of increasing their numbers, but it has to match up with your son's blood first."

"What about this baby?" Susan said, pointing to her belly with a stiff finger. "Is there any chance at all with him?"

"A remote one," the man said. "It's your brother-in-law's DNA we're looking to for a match, but we'll check your baby's blood too, on the unlikely chance he's a match."

Susan clasped her hands together and started to rest them on her belly then snapped them away and dropped them to her sides. Tears filled her eyes and she started shaking.

Sam put his arm around her and pulled her against him. "Honey, it's going to be okay." He looked at the man from the lab. "Assuming there's a match with my brother's son, how soon before we can start our son on chemo?"

"Right away," the man said, "but you do understand that stem cell transplantation carries a ten percent mortality risk for the recipient due to infection. Chemotherapy will empty your son's bone marrow and suppress his immune system so he'll have to be in isolation for a month, but even after cord cells have been injected into his bloodstream and begin to create healthy marrow, recovery will still take three to four months, if all goes well."

"We understand," Sam said. "Call us at the hotel as soon as you know." He tightened his arm around Susan, and left.

After the man from the lab had gone, Grace said to Jack, who was reaching over the infant crib to stroke Adam's cheek, "Susan doesn't want her baby. You saw the way she reacted. Before Adam was born I couldn't keep my hands off my stomach. Sometimes I held them beneath, like cradling him in my hands, and other times I rested them on top, but Susan never touched her stomach. Not once. In fact she made a conscious effort to avoid touching it. Please talk to Sam. At least tell him we'll take the baby."

The look of affection on Jack's face of moments before, as he gazed at Adam, changed to discontent. More than discontent, protectiveness. And Jealousy. And it came to Grace that Jack was afraid if she had Marc's son she'd love him more than Adam, because Jack assumed she loved Marc more than she loved him.

She put her hand out for Jack to take, and when he did, she said, "I didn't make empty vows to you, Jack. I vowed to love and honor you in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, and I intend to stand by that. Marc and I had five wonderful years to get to know and love each other, and I hope the same for us. and I could never love Marc's son more than I love Adam. I want both babies. I can love them both."

Jack released her hand and went to stand at the window. "You feel that way now, when you have help here and Adam's sleeping most of the time," he said, looking out, "but when we're back at the ranch and he's older and demanding your time, and you're exhausted because you can't sleep at night because he's keeping you awake, and he starts fussing and crying to be fed or changed or just being held, things will change, and if you had another one also demanding your full attention—"

"I am not Lauren," Grace said, cutting Jack short. "I will not kill your son, and it makes me mad that you're comparing me to her. You can compare me in any other way—Lauren's beautiful, she's a champion rider, she can probably knit and paint and cross-stitch and do all the things I can't—but I will never kill your son. Now, if you don't mind, I'm tired. It's been a very long day." She clamped her jaws shut.

Jack turned from the window, stared into the crib for an inordinate amount of time, then kissed Grace on the forehead, and said, "Thank you for my son." And left.

We don't want to rush into something we could later regret.

Which was exactly what Jack did when he made a snap decision to marry her. But now, Grace had the sinking feeling that Jack wanted to start undoing it.

The rest of the evening was a blur of nurses coming in to check Grace, and hand her Adam to nurse, and make sure everything was functioning as it should be, but she was so exhausted from the stress of the flight, and the difficult birth, that she managed to drift back to sleep each time. But during those short periods of wakefulness in between, she wondered if she should simply ask Jack for an annulment and set him free.

But the next morning, in the light of a new day, seeing the gold band on her finger, and feeling the warm weight of her baby in her arms, and knowing she had a man in her life who was worth loving, she allowed herself to feel a certain amount of satisfaction.

We'll take things one step at a time.

Which was exactly what she intended to do, starting with red wool socks to keep Jack's feet warm, and a fire burning on the hearth when he came in from the cold, and the smell of bread baking in the oven, and now, as his wife, a whole lot of lovemaking.

Even Jack seemed to be in a better frame of mind by morning, arriving with a dozen red roses for her and a smile on his face, and even giving her a solid kiss on the lips.

"You look better this morning," he said. "How's my boy?"

"Full. Finally. He had no problem emptying out a breast in record time, and then he fell asleep halfway through the other. I'm a little lopsided at the moment." She started to add that another baby would take care of the problem, but decided to set aside the idea of adopting Marc's son, at least for the moment. She wanted to enjoy her new family. "It's okay if you wake him up and hold him," she said. "He'll go back to sleep afterwards."

Jack smiled and lifted Adam out of the crib. Bracing his head, he sat on the chair by Grace's bed, cradling his son the way only a father who'd handled a baby would do. It saddened Grace to think that Jack was probably remembering Jackie. How could he not? He was still a devoted father to his dead son, tending his grave with love.

"His eyes are wide open," Jack announced, and smiled down at his son. "I can tell from the way he's looking at me with a little frown that he recognizes my voice."

"I'm sure he does," Grace said, touched by the way Jack was looking at his son, with absolute, unwavering love. It was a special moment, seeing Jack so happy. She hadn't seen him that way since she'd met him, and she wanted to keep that happiness on his face forever.

"Hello?" a voice came from the hallway, breaking their special moment.

Grace looked up to see the man from the laboratory.

And the look on his face said it all.

His words, "He's not a match," confirmed it.

CHAPTER 13

When Sam stepped into Grace's hospital room, just over an hour after Grace and Jack received the news that Adam wasn't a match, Jack knew something was drastically wrong. He walked over to meet Sam, and said, "What's happening?"

"It's Susan. She's in labor," Sam said. "The shock of learning the baby wasn't a match sent her into hysterics and she broke her water. Labor started right after."

"Where's Ricky?" Jack asked.

"That's another problem," Sam said. "He's in the children's wing. He might need another transfusion. Man, I don't know whether I can take much more of this." He lowered himself into a chair, shoulders slumped, and drew in a long, ragged breath.

Jack crouched in front of Sam and looked at him. The past few months had taken its toll. Eyes shadowed by dark circles. Lines of worry around his mouth and between his brows. Even a dusting of gray hair appeared at his temples. He'd also lost weight. Jack noted it earlier in the week from the way his clothes hung on him. But Sam's problems weren't confined to the issues with Ricky and his failing health, coupled with an unwanted baby. The marriage was in serious trouble. Things hadn't been good between Sam and Susan for years, but the current problems added weight to an already bad situation.

"What can I do?" he asked.

Sam shook his head. "Hell, I don't know. Maybe go sit with Ricky. I have to get back to the labor room. Susan was pretty unstable going into this and now with little hope for Ricky." He paused and drew in a long breath, then let it out slowly, his shoulders seeming to slump further as he exhaled. "We're still planning on sending the baby's cord blood in for testing," he added, "but that's pretty much a dead end. So I guess Ricky goes back on the bone marrow list."

Jack looked at Grace with Adam, who'd just been fed and was sleeping comfortably in his mother's arms. How blessed could a man be? A healthy son, perfect in every way, and Grace, the kind of mother he could only have dreamed about for his son, and she was his wife now. But while he was blessed, Sam was going through hell.

Sam looked at him intently, and before he even asked, Jack shook his head, and said, "I won't do it again. I was willing to donate the first time, but Susan can't handle another child. She's having one right now she doesn't—"

"Just stop right there!" Sam cut Jack off short. "Susan said some pretty disturbing things a few days ago, but she's gradually becoming resigned to things. She actually wants the baby."

"Did she say that?" Jack asked, dubious. For years, Sam had been defending Susan's actions and rationalizing her behavior. Suddenly becoming maternal for the child of a stranger was not likely at this late date.

"Well, she didn't say it in so many words," Sam admitted, "but she's talking about how to introduce him to Ricky, since Ricky's been the complete focus of our attention for three years. She's adjusting to it. Hell, look what I'm going through, and I'm not having the baby. Sure she's unsettled right now, but things will change when we're back home."

Jack glanced over and saw Grace glaring at him.

Talk to Sam. Tell him we'll take the baby.

Grace might as well be yelling the words it was so clear from the look on her face.

Still, Jack couldn't bring himself to ask Sam if they could adopt the baby. All he wanted was to take Adam and Grace home and start building a life with them. Just them. He wanted to put all his energy into his son, and make sure Grace didn't get overwhelmed with things when she got home. She'd need time to adjust to being a mother, and to being a wife again. But in the meantime, Susan was giving birth to a child she didn't want, and she and Sam could lose the only child they had, and if Ricky didn't get a bone marrow transplant his only hope was another savior sibling. And that was something he wouldn't do. Not again.

He stood, gave Sam a pat on the shoulder, and motioned for him to join him in the hallway. Once outside the room, he said to Sam, "When you get home, help her with the baby and get Mom to help too, at least with watching Ricky so Susan isn't overwhelmed. But she'll adjust. Look how she adjusted to all the problems with Ricky. She'll come around with this baby too. If she starts to show signs of depression—" Jack stopped. He still couldn't bring himself to say,
Grace and I will take the baby
. "—you can look into having a doctor put her on an antipsychotic medication. Postpartum depression's a chemical imbalance," he said, parroting what Lauren told him. But he didn't believe postpartum depression would be the issue with Susan. Wanting nothing to interfere with her life was more likely. "Let's just wait and see what happens when the baby's born. He'll be a healthy, happy baby."

"He's also the son of a dead man," Sam said. "Susan can't seem to put that aside. This lab mix-up really screwed her up. And I need to get back to the labor room now."

"I'll sit with Ricky," Jack said. "Hang in there, bro. Things will turn out."

But as he watched his twin walking away, head down, shoulders slumped, Jack saw a defeated man.

***

Two hours later, Sam, looking even more strung out than before, came to Grace's room and announced to Jack and Grace in a sober voice, "He was born a few minutes ago, weighing in at eight pounds, four ounces, twenty one inches long, and bald. But he's healthy and alert, and has blue-gray eyes. The doctor prepared the cord blood for the lab."

"That's great news," Jack said. "And Susan?"

"Not so good," Sam replied. "When they gave her the baby to nurse she told the nurse to put him on formula, that she was too tired to nurse him." Sam slouched into the chair. "She didn't even hold him... just said she would later, that she wanted to see Ricky. So the nurse took the baby to the nursery and they wheeled Susan to Ricky's room. She's still there."

Grace said to Sam, "What did you name him?"

"That's another problem," Sam said. "We didn't come up with anything, and Susan just told me to name him whatever I wanted."

"Then how about Marcus Allen Hansen?" Grace suggested. "He was supposed to be Jack's child, and he ended up being Marc's, so Allen would give him Jack's middle name." She looked at Jack, who she knew wasn't fooled by her ploy of giving the baby his middle name in preparation for the baby becoming his legal son. But when Jack drew in a long breath and said nothing, she knew he wasn't going to challenge her.

Sam shrugged. "That's fine. I'll tell the nurse. She was wanting to put something other than Baby Boy Hansen on the birth certificate."

"What about circumcision?" Grace asked.

Sam shrugged. "We hadn't thought about that."

"Then don't. There's plenty of time," Grace told him. "And don't put him on formula. I have way too much milk and he needs first milk. I'll nurse him along with Adam. I want to do this for my husband's baby." She caught the dark look on Jack's face and realized what she'd said. Marc was no longer her husband. Jack was, and it was clear that Jack felt as if he'd been shoved aside.

"I didn't mean that the way it sounded," she said to Jack. "You're my husband now, but Marc
was
my husband and I still have to think of him that way because he was never my ex-husband. It's kind of complicated, but he doesn't replace you now." That still didn't come out the way she intended, other than it was complicated.

"It doesn't matter," Jack said, in a morose tone, which made Grace realize it did matter.

It mattered because... maybe Jack was beginning to love her...

Sam squeezed Grace's shoulder. "Thank you," he said. "When Susan's feeling better I know she'll want to take over, but for now the baby needs to be held. I'll have the nurse bring him in."

"And his crib," Grace added. "He needs to be with us."

A few minutes later, a nurse rolled in the crib and handed the baby to Grace, who opened her gown. When she pinched her nipple and put it in the baby's mouth, he clamped down and started sucking. Grace looked at his face, features so unlike Adam's, but not really Marc's features either. And his eyes, though not a true color yet, would not be brown. But they didn't appear to be clear blue like Marc's. Maybe gray, or a combination of muted colors… like Susan's, Grace realized with a little twist in her stomach, and shoved that thought away. And his hair... Typical Templeton baby. Bald. But when he did get hair, she hoped it would be closer to Jack's.

Jack stood looking at her for the longest time before dragging a chair close to the bed, and saying, while watching Marc suckle, "Just don't get too attached to him. If Susan wants him back, there's nothing you can do."

Grace said nothing, but after a while, as she watched the babies nursing, she said in a reflective voice, "All I ever wanted when I was growing up was to be a wife and mother and have six children. Having Marc would give me two, so I'd only have to go through this four more times." She looked at Jack and added, "Unless you can give me twins. But next time you will not get me pregnant by depositing sperm in a cup." Subtlety had never been her strong suit.

But from the look on Jack's face, it was obvious he had misgivings about that too, and she knew exactly why. So when the time would finally come that they'd consummate their marriage, she'd make it absolutely clear to Jack that he was not lacking in any way. But looking at him now, so handsome, so virile, and imagining that big husky body wrapped around her in the most intimate way, brought her to a level of sexual anticipation that pretty much guaranteed complete and total satisfaction.

***

The following morning, after the doctor checked Grace and signed her release from the hospital, and the pediatrician checked both babies, Grace and Jack stopped in to see how Ricky was doing before leaving the hospital. Sam had stopped by the day before to thank Grace for taking care of Marc, and to ask if she and Jack could look after him for another couple of days until Ricky would be released from the hospital. He'd had another transfusion and was being held for observation. They were also waiting for word from the laboratory, but held little hope that little Marc's cord blood would be a match.

When Grace and Jack entered Ricky's room, and Grace saw the toddler lying in a child-size bed with railings, he looked small, and very ill. His eyes were closed, and there were dark circles under them, and his face and lips looked deathly pale. Sam sat on one side of the bed, forearms resting on his knees, fingers laced together, and Susan sat on the other side, her arm stretched between the rails, her hand rubbing Ricky's chest.

Grace, with Marc in her arms, walked over to Susan, and said, "How is he doing?"

Susan shrugged. "He'll be better after the transfusion kicks in. I'm anxious to get him home where everything's familiar, his own doctors, his own room, my folks."

For the first time, Grace saw Susan as a caring mother sitting by her critically ill son's bedside, stroking his chest, worry on her face. But she was devoted to only one son. It was still inconceivable that she felt nothing for the baby she'd carried for nine months, and which Grace held in her arms, just inches from his mother.

As if sensing Grace's misgiving, Susan turned and looked at Marc, then reached out and touched his cheek, a little brush of her finger, and said, "It's good you have enough milk for him. I was so upset about Ricky, my milk never came in. He'll have to go on formula when we get home, which is good, because Sam can feed him then."

And Susan wouldn't have to, Grace interpreted the underlying message.

Odd that Sam and Jack had married women who were alike in so many ways. Both self-possessed, both beautiful, neither feeling a bond with their infants. She could also imagine Susan smothering Marc in a blind rage if he were colicky and crying and Susan was exasperated because he wouldn't stop. Still, she had to bite her lip to keep from asking Susan why she couldn't be the one to give Marc his formula, just to hear what Susan would say.

Jack, who until now had been standing behind Grace while holding Adam in his arms, said to Susan, "I called Mom this morning and she said she'd reschedule her trip to visit her cousin and will be at the ranch to help with the baby and Ricky for a couple of months."

Grace glared at Jack. She was perfectly capable of looking after both babies, but Jack wanted to make sure she only looked after the one he was holding. "That's not necessary," she told him. "We can move the nursery furniture Susan and Sam have into Adam's room. It's a big bedroom, and since the babies are on the same schedule, it won't be any problem."

"There's no need," Jack said. "Mom plans to be there."

"She didn't need to cancel her trip," Grace insisted.

The muscles in Jack's jaws bunched. "Yeah, but she did, and that's that."

No. That was not that, Grace decided. Turning to Sam, she said, "When do you expect to hear from the lab?"

"Any time now," Sam replied in a glum voice. "I imagine they'll call."
To let them know the baby wasn't a match
, were the words Sam didn't say, but everyone was thinking.

Grace looked at Adam, nestled in the crook of Jack's arm, and at Marc, who was cuddled in hers while looking up at her, and wondered what she'd do if she learned that one of these precious babies had to be placed on a waiting list in hopes of finding a cure for a blood disorder. A sobering thought that brought a little more understanding of what Sam and Susan were going through. Not an excuse for Susan not wanting her second son, but just a little more clarity.