Summer Kisses (4 page)

“Who told you about Thomas? I’m going to kill Chelsey when she returns—”

“It was you,” he said. “You mentioned Thomas. You thought you were kissing Thomas when I set you in the back of my car.”

She frowned. “I said his name?”

He nodded.

“I’ve heard of people talking in their sleep…but kissing in their sleep?” She sighed.

“No worries. I would be lying if I pretended I didn’t thoroughly enjoy it—you know—the kiss.”

The fluorescent lights reflected off her eyes and made them sparkle.

They watched each other for a moment, sizing one another up before an irritating
beep
brought them back to the moment at hand.

Jill squeezed her eyes shut and dug her fingers into the mattress.

Moving to the side of the bed where Chelsey had been, Derrick reached over the side rail and took her hand in his. “It’s okay,” he said, although he wasn’t feeling okay, and she certainly didn’t look okay. It hadn’t been much over five minutes since her friends left.
What the hell was going on
?

With her eyes clamped shut and her teeth gritted, the veins in her neck and forehead looked ready to burst.

His heart rate accelerated as he tried to think of something to say to comfort her and take her mind off of the pain. “Maybe we should do that breathing thing,” he said.

She didn’t answer him, but her fingers squeezed tight about his hand, and damn, she had one powerful grip.

The beeper on the monitor wouldn’t stop beeping. That worried him.

Jill brought her knees to her chest, blankets and all.

He leaned closer and rubbed her shoulder. “Is that helping?”

Her eyes shot open, startling him. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she suddenly turned her head full circle and spit out pea soup. Instead, she reached out and grabbed a fistful of his shirt along with a little skin and said, “Get your baby out of me!”

He might have laughed if he wasn’t bleeding and in pain and if she wasn’t pinning him with the scariest look he’d ever seen in his life, which was saying a lot considering his mom had been the queen of scary faces back in her day.

In the blink of an eye, Jill Garrison had transformed from a sweet young lady into a woman possessed by the devil.

“If you don’t do something,” she said, “I’m going to scream.”

“I think we should breathe instead.”

“I think you should—” Her face turned scarlet, and she scrunched her nose as if she was chewing on sourballs. And then she did exactly what she said she was going to do. She screamed, an ear-piercing sound that set his teeth on edge and made his brain hurt.

Where the hell was everybody
?

Before he could reach for the red emergency button, the door shot open and two nurses surrounded the bed.

“Who are you?” one of the nurses asked him as she checked the monitor and IV hookup.

“The father of the baby,” he said.

Jill looked pitiful. Her head was bent back, her neck extended, and she had a white-knuckle hold of his arm, her fingernails clawing into flesh.

The nurses exchanged glances before the one at the end of the bed shrugged, pulled up the sheets and did a quick examination. “Ring for the doctor,” she said. “This baby is coming, ready or not.”

Derrick would have made a quick exit if Jill didn’t have a death grip on his arm. He was pretty sure his chest was already bleeding, and if she kept it up, his arm wouldn’t fare much better.

The door swung open again and Sandy and Chelsey rushed in behind the doctor.

“I told you he’d still be here,” Sandy told Chelsey.

“Is it a crime for a father to want to see his baby come into the world?” Chelsey asked.

Derrick decided he liked Chelsey.

“Donating sperm to a clinic for money,” Sandy added, “does not make him a father.”

Satan…not so much.

Chelsey stood close to Derrick’s side and leaned over the railing. “You’re doing great,” she told Jill. “Keep breathing. That’s right. You can do this.” Chelsey started doing her breathing exercise again and Jill followed along. The doctor and two nurses were taking care of business. Sandy grabbed a video camera and aimed it their way.

He could hear Sandy talking into the camera, muttering words like “ass” and “idiot” every once in a while.

Chelsey was perfectly calm, and she handed Derrick a cool rag and told him to wipe Jill’s brow. Glad to have something to do, he used his free hand to try and soothe her. Having no desire to see blood, he decided to focus on Jill’s face, which he noticed was heart-shaped. Disregarding the dark circles under her eyes, her skin was creamy and flawless. Although her lips were dry and cracked at the moment, they were also full and had a nice shape to them. She had beautiful eyes when they weren’t rolling to the back of her head, and she had high cheekbones and slender brows. There was an understated beauty about her he hadn’t noticed earlier.

Jill’s cheeks puffed up as she and Chelsey readied for another push and Derrick found himself pushing along with them. The three of them puffed three times, inhaled, three more puffs, inhaled, pushed, and then they all repeated the process for another thirty minutes before the baby finally decided to enter the world.

The baby’s cry wasn’t anything like the cries of all the other babies he’d heard before. This baby’s cry was mild in comparison, bordering on soothing, like music to his ears.

Derrick looked over his shoulder and smiled into the camera before turning back to Jill.

“It’s a boy,” the doctor said.

“We did it,” Jill said, her voice weak.

He thought she was talking to Chelsey until he realized Chelsey had joined the nurses down south.

“
You
did it,” he said. He reached for the cup of ice chips and after he’d fed her a few, he gently applied lip balm to her cracked lips. Then he stood back and watched the nurse hand Jill her baby…their baby.

The next day, Derrick ignored the cell phone vibrating in his pocket. He climbed out of his car, grabbed the bouquet of flowers from the backseat, and made his way across the parking lot to the entrance of Sutter Medical. He’d already talked to his mother, his father, Maggie, and four of his siblings. They all wanted to drive to the hospital to see the baby.

Well, everybody except Maggie. Maggie wanted to wring his neck first for not listening to her. Then she wanted to see the baby. Instead, she told him she would see him at the Los Angeles County courtroom at three o’clock tomorrow afternoon if he wanted any chance at all of gaining partial custody of his baby boy.

Now all he had to do was talk to Jill. It was seven o’clock in the evening. He’d planned on visiting Jill much earlier, but after getting little sleep and taking a dozen phone calls, time had gotten away from him. His son had yet to be named since Jill agreed to wait until today to make a decision. He liked the name Joe and Matt, nice healthy strong sounding names, but Jill hadn’t seemed thrilled by either of his choices. His sisters, on the other hand, were rooting for names like Colton and Deandre because, according to Mom, they really liked the show American Idol.

He called the hospital this morning and was transferred to Jill’s room but nobody picked up. Although he’d only known Jill for a little more than a day, he felt pretty good about her being the mother of his baby. For one thing—she wasn’t Sandy; for that alone, he was grateful.

A reporter greeted him about halfway across the parking lot and shoved a microphone in his face. She was tall with dark shiny hair slicked back out of her face. “Hello, Hollywood. Is it true Jill Garrison is having your baby without the benefit of sleeping in your bed?”

The nickname “Hollywood” had been given to him fifteen minutes after he signed his first contract with the Los Angeles Condors, something about his “magnetism.”

He remained silent. Reporters were like ants. If they got in his way, he stepped on them. If they kept to the side, he ignored them.

She followed on his heels. “Is it also true that you didn’t know Jill Garrison until yesterday when police stopped you for voyeurism?”

Derrick wondered if the reporter had talked to Jill’s friend. He kept his eyes focused on the entrance ahead.

She held the microphone higher, closer to his mouth. “Why are you here?”

Derrick merely smiled, mostly because the question was annoyingly amusing.

“Perhaps,” the reporter went on, “you’re not aware that Jill Garrison left with Ryan Michael Garrison only minutes ago.”

He pushed his way through the revolving door, leaving the reporter in the dust.

Ryan Michael Garrison
.

No, he hadn’t heard, but he wasn’t going to take the reporter’s word for it. Jill wasn’t due to leave the hospital until tomorrow. She told him she’d wait for him to visit today before she filled out any important hospital documents.

Five minutes later, Derrick arrived at Jill’s room and found it disturbingly empty. The smell of antiseptics and Pine-sol drifted up his nose. An eighty-year-old candy striper came in after him. Her salt and pepper hair was tied back with a red ribbon that matched the color of her lips.

He laid the bouquet of flowers on the empty bed. “She’s gone,” he said.

The nice old lady smiled at him. “She said you would understand since she needed to get started on preparations for your wedding.”

“Wedding?”

The woman nudged him with her elbow. “Sorry. I forgot. Her friend said it was a secret.” She put her fingers to her mouth and pretended to zip her lips together.

He forced a smile. “Sandy?”

“Yes, Sandy. Nice girl.”

“You have no idea.” Derrick picked up the flowers and gave them to the candy striper. “These are for you,” he said. Then he headed out of the room and toward the elevator. To think Jill Garrison had the gall to call him a liar when all the while she was making plans to run off. Talk about calling the kettle black.

~~~

“I can’t believe it has come to this,” Jill said. “I feel like a fugitive.”

Sandy snorted. “Fugitives go on the run. You’re just going home. You’ve done nothing wrong. That man has no right to collect money for his semen and then ask for it back as if he merely loaned out a sweater or something.”

“Mom,” Sandy’s four-year-old daughter asked from the backseat, “what’s a seeman?”

Sandy glanced at Jill and then looked back at the road. “A
sea
man,” she explained to Lexi, “is a man who spends his days out at sea collecting shrimp.”

“Wike a sea horse?”

“Exactly.”

“How’s Ryan?” Jill asked Lexi, even though she could see her son perfectly well from her position in the passenger seat. “Does he look like he’s still sleeping?”

Lexi looked over at the bundle in the carrier. “Rine moved his weg. I think he wants out.”

“We’re almost there, honey,” Sandy told her daughter. “Just a few more minutes.”

“What am I going to do?” Jill asked Sandy as she turned back around. “I can’t believe it has come to this.”

“You have to stay strong. Derrick Baylor wants his son. I didn’t trust him the moment I spotted him at the park sitting in that flashy car of his. Seeing his lawyer on the news confirmed my suspicions. He wants Ryan and he’ll do anything, absolutely anything, to take him away from you.”

“I don’t know,” Jill said. “He didn’t seem like the type of man who would take a baby from its mother. I should have talked to him before I left the hospital. Grabbing my things and running off a day early seems a little hasty.”

“Before you say another word to Derrick Baylor we need to find you a good lawyer. Second, we need to contact CryoCorp and see what the deal is. They’re going to want to know if somebody is leaking client information. I, for one, do not want you-know-who—”and they both knew she meant Lexi’s biological father“—knocking on my door when I least expect it.”

Jill wondered what that had to do with CryoCorp, since Lexi’s father was the real deal. Sandy had fallen in love with the man. She’d thought she had found her Prince Charming. But he’d left her soon after Lexi was born. Jill sighed. “You’re right. I don’t have time to deal with Derrick Baylor anyhow. Chelsey called earlier to tell me that Dave Cornerstone is having major problems with graphics, and I have two contributing authors telling me they haven’t received their paycheck. My monthly column is due in three days.”

“I know your little guy came sooner than expected,” Sandy said, “and having that man pop out of the woodwork like that didn’t help matters, but more than anything else right now, you need to stay upbeat. I’m going to help you get through this. Besides, as your editorial assistant, it’s my job to keep you happy.” She paused and then added, “If things get too crazy, you could always call your mother for help.”

“Are you kidding?”

Sandy slowed the car before making a right on West Lake Boulevard. “Maybe now is a good time to bury the hatchet,” Sandy advised. “Your parents have more money than The Donald. They can afford to get you the best lawyer.”

“I can’t do it.”

“You mean, you won’t.”

“I can’t and I won’t. Since the day I was born, my parents have used money to get me to do things their way. The moment I touch my trust fund, they will have won. Mom and Dad will hop on their private jet and fly over here so fast it’ll make your head spin. Then they’ll start ordering me around again,” she added wistfully. “Before you can count to ten they’ll have a man all lined up for me to marry. A clone of every other man they’ve set me up with: tall; thin, straight nose; impeccably dressed with one of those ultra-short haircuts with too much pomade. I’ll never let anybody buy my love again.”

“Not even Thomas?”

Something deep inside of Jill twisted. “Not even Thomas.”

Sandy pulled the Jeep to a stop in front of the apartment building. “Do you miss him?”

“Not anymore,” Jill said. She shifted in her seat so she could look Sandy straight in the eyes. “The man left me at the altar. I thought that was something that only happened in the movies. He didn’t even have the courtesy to give me a call. Instead, he left me standing at the church all alone to stare into the face of humiliation.”