My Big Fat Beach Wedding (PARADISE BAY #8)

Prologue—Five Years Earlier

THINGS THAT WERE NOT ON MY BINGO CARD…

Benjamín James - San Felipe, Santa Valentina Island

I stumble down the hall of my small beachfront bungalow in my underwear, fresh from a dead sleep and already thoroughly annoyed at the racket my brother is making.

Why the hell is he watching TV at six in the morning on a Saturday at such a high volume?

And what is he watching? Some show where they torture people with the piercing sound of an animal in distress?

It’s hot as hell and the air conditioning is broken so every window in the house is open, which means he very well might be waking up our neighbors, who also sleep with their windows open.

“Would you turn it down?” I whisper-yell.

“Maisie and I were up super late last night.”

Maisie is my girlfriend. We’ve been together for three months now, and I’m kind of thinking she might be ‘the one.’ She’s fun, but not chaotically fun like my last girlfriend, Cressida, who loved nothing more than to party until dawn, then shower, nap, get up and do it all over again.

Maisie is a legal assistant, and like me, she needs to rise early for work during the week, but we both like to let off a little steam come Friday.

Last night, we hit the pub for some drinks and dancing, and I have to admit, my head is pounding at the moment.

I should have had more water. Or less beer.

When I round the corner to the living room, my brother is nowhere to be seen and the TV isn’t on, but that awful sound is still going strong.

It's like a siren that cuts through me all the way to my bones.

Dominic's bedroom door swings open and he stomps down the hall toward me, his feet slapping against the wide plank wood floors. “Shut that off, for the love of God!”

He glances at the television, and then at me. “What is that sound and why is it happening?”

“How should I know?”

“Is that … a baby?”

We both pause and stick our necks out as if that’ll help locate the source of the screaming. “That definitely sounds like a baby.”

“But neither of us has a baby,” Dominic says. “Well, obviously I can’t have a baby, but you might.”

“I don’t.”

“Then it can’t belong to anyone in this house.” Dominic scrunches his face in confusion. “Unless… Does Maisie have a child we don't know about?”

I give him an early morning ‘are you serious right now?’ glare. “It would be a little bit tricky for her to hide the pregnancy, don’t you think?”

I hurry through the living room to the patio doors and glance around at the deck that overlooks the Caribbean Sea. It’s pink with dawn, not that I can appreciate it at the moment. Behind me, I hear the sound of the front door opening and the crying grows infinitely louder.

Dominic points outside toward the step. “Oh dear… Ben? I believe this belongs to you.”

My legs are like lead as I make my way to the front of the house. My sleep-deprived brain starts firing in all sorts of directions at once. “What do you mean, it belongs to me? I don't have a baby.”

Without looking up at me, Dom says, “I'm basing it on the envelope pinned to the blanket of that tiny red noise machine. It’s got your name on it.”

I stare down at the tiny red-faced baby strapped into a car seat, arms and legs flailing as he continues to scream.

Well, fuck me. It does have my name on it. In fact, the envelope says:

Ben, meet your son, Henry.

It’s written in Cressida’s loopy handwriting. But it can’t be my child. We broke up over a year ago. Oh wait… There was that one night she showed up crying because it was her birthday and no one remembered and could we just have a drink and maybe cuddle a bit until she felt better?

My entire body goes numb with shock. How can this be happening? “Shhhitttttt,” I whisper. This is real.

“Oh my God, what is that sound?” Maisie asks, peering around me in one of my t-shirts.

At the same moment, Dominic and I say, “A baby.”

“Well, I can see that,” Maisie snaps. (Maisie is not a morning person.) “But whose baby is that? And how do we stop it from making that awful noise?”

Across the street, I see the door to Mr. and Mrs. Williams’ house open and Mr. Williams steps out onto his front porch scowling. “For God's sake, it's six a.m.!”

“Sorry, Mr. Williams,” Dominic calls. “We're just trying to figure out who left this baby here.”

“Well, pick it up, for crying out loud. You'll wake the entire neighborhood!”

“He makes a good point,” Maisie says. “Someone should definitely pick up that child.”

Dom and I both look at her, only to have her shake her head at us. “Just because I have a vagina doesn’t mean I know what to do.”

She’s right. Very unfair of us, especially since my name is on the envelope.

I grab the handle of the car seat and hoist it off the front step, then start swinging it gently back and forth while I walk into the living room.

“Shhh, shhh, you’re all right,” I say, even though I kind of feel like crying too.

The swaying and the shushing work just long enough for the three adults in the room to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

But the sighing must throw him off because he starts crying again.

I quickly put the car seat on the coffee table, then fumble to open the buckle with hands that have now gone shaky and clammy.

“I’ll get you out of there. Please give me a second to figure this out, okay? I’ve never done this before.”

Finally, I manage to free the baby from the confines of the seat.

I pick him up. His neck is terrifyingly floppy and his little head lulls to the side for a second before I get a better grip on him.

He keeps right on screaming as if the whole world is about to end.

And in a way, maybe it is. For both of us.

I’m guessing Cressida isn’t planning to come back in a couple of hours, and I sure as hell am not ready to be a father.

“It's okay, buddy.” I gently bounce him in the air. “It's okay, you’ll be okay,” I say to him as much as to myself. “We’ll find your mum and everything will be fine before you know it.” It’s a lie.

I know it is, but I have to believe it because the alternative is too shocking, too terrifying for me at this hour.

Especially when I’ve only had four hours of sleep and I’m totally hungover.

The baby stops crying and is now staring at me with an expression that suggests he can see all the way into my soul. It’s rather off-putting, to be honest. It’s like he’s saying, “Hi, Dad. I’m your little guy. Are you going to be any good at this at all?”

Only he can’t be my son because I’m only twenty-five. I can’t have a child.

I feel the entire weight of his tiny body on my forearm and his little head cradled in my palm. How can an entire human fit on my arm like this? How? Nope. This isn’t happening. It can’t be happening because there’s no way I could keep something so tiny and vulnerable alive.

“This is a mix up,” I say, then I start to babble.

“A giant mix-up. Something we’ll laugh about someday.

Remember that time that baby was dropped off at the wrong Ben’s house?

That was crazy. I wonder how he’s doing now?

Probably great. That other Ben was super excited to meet him. And he seemed very prepared.”

Dominic and Maisie both stare at me with their faces scrunched up with a skepticism that quite frankly I don’t appreciate at the moment. Would it kill them to go into denial too?

When neither of them says anything, I add, “It’s a mistake. This can’t be my child because if I were to have a child, I’d learn everything there is to know about caring for a baby first. And I’d have all the stuff you need, like a crib and little soft wash cloths, and a … high chair.”

“He looks exactly like your baby pictures,” Dominic says. “He’s got your dark brown hair and that enormous mouth it took you sixteen years to grow into.”

I grunt in response, not wanting to admit that my brother is right. The baby lets out an adorable hiccup and, for a second, I’m terrified he’s going to start crying again, but he doesn’t. He continues staring at me.

Please stop staring into my soul, baby. You’re scaring me.

“Good God, it’s like he’s totally judging you,” Dominic mutters.

“Right?”

“What’s his name again?” I ask, horrified that I can’t remember. But to be fair, I am in shock.

“Henry,” Maisie says. “Which is an oddly grown-up name for something so tiny.”

“Cressida was from old-money England,” Dominic tells her. “Except they lost all the old money in the nineties.”

“Wait, so his name is Henry James. Like the guy who wrote Portrait of a Lady?” she asks.

“I guess so.”

“That’s a little weird, don’t you think?” she says.

“Well, I didn’t name him,” I answer, feeling both irritated and oddly defensive at the same time.

Henry’s bottom lip starts to quiver and both Dominic and I panic and start speaking in low, soothing tones. “Oh, no, no, no, no, no. It’s okay. Please don’t cry,” I say.

“Henry is a wonderful name. Not weird at all,” Dominic tells him. “Please go back to silently judging your father. That’s so much better than crying.”

“I might not be his father,” I say in a soothing voice, allowing one last flicker of hope that this really is all a mix-up and my entire life isn’t about to be turned upside-down.

Next to me, Maisie has opened the envelope and is furiously flipping through the pages while I bounce him a little higher in the air.

Maisie lets out a loud sigh. “Well, this is just great. According to this paternity test, he’s definitely your child.”