Chapter 7 #2
Maeve patted his hand to shut him up. “How’s the baby?” she asked.
“She’s well and healthy, though a little underweight. Nothing we’re concerned about, though. She seems happy enough, though she cries for her mom.”
It was too much for Maeve. She turned to Callum, buried her face in his chest, and broke down.
My brother’s arms automatically went around her, and I moved in to rub her back soothingly.
“Can we see her?” Callum asked.
She shot us a sympathetic smile. “Not right now. We need to establish paternity first. I have a doctor here who can take a blood sample if that’s okay with you.” Her eyes strayed to me and narrowed slightly.
“What?” I asked.
“You’re brothers, and it’s a family bar, right?” Tia asked.
“Yeah,” I confirmed.
“It’s just...” Her voice trailed off, and she cleared her throat. “Maybe we should test you, too.”
My hands suddenly went clammy. “What do you mean, test me?”
“Did you work at the same bar about eighteen, nineteen months ago?” she asked.
Blood began to rush in my ears, and my brain began to misfire. I furiously tried to remember where I was around then and what I was doing, but God help me, I couldn’t think straight.
“You were on leave around that time,” Callum reminded me. “You were home most of December for Christmas and the New Year. Dad was getting sicker, so you took some compassionate leave. We knew it would be his last Christmas.”
A sick feeling hit my gut.
“She looks like you,” Tia murmured. “She has your eyes. I noticed it immediately.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but all that came out was a weird, strangled sound. The room began to spin, so I sat forward, elbows to knees, resting my head in my hands. I wanted to say it was impossible because I always, without fail, used protection, but the words wouldn’t come.
“Jesus, Donovan,” Callum exclaimed.
Maeve pulled back from Callum and turned to look at me, her eyes wide with shock, and asked, “Did you sleep with anyone around that time?”
I grimaced because, well... probably. It wasn’t like I kept count or anything, but the odds weren’t in my favor.
“Has there been that many that you can’t remember?” Maeve deadpanned.
My ability to speak suddenly returned because I croaked out, “No. The last time was about a year ago, and before then...” My voice trailed off as a dark, heavy feeling sliced through me.
It was back when I was wasted one Saturday night at the Shamrock, around the time Callum said I was on leave. I got talking to a girl who was passing through, and later, we went back to her hotel in Mapletree for an exclusive after-party consisting of me, her, and a bottle of tequila.
My back jerked up straight, and I felt all the color drain from my face.
Jesus, no.
“This is just great!” Cal drawled, his tone pissy as all hell.
“Callum!” Maeve scolded.
“We should be on our honeymoon,” he bit out. “We’ve postponed it for this bullshit.”
“Donovan dropped everything for us when we thought it was your baby,” she pointed out. “The least we can do is be here for him. Ireland will still be there in a few days. Now stop being a grouch; your brother needs you.”
“My brother needs a goddamned miracle ‘cause if he’s the dad, his life’s about to change drastically,” he muttered.
“Thanks for your positive input,” I told him sarcastically, turning back to Tia, who was watching our bickering with a small smile on her face.
“When can I meet Imogen?” I asked.
“The paternity results take about five days, unless you want to pay to expedite them?” she explained.
I nodded slowly, “We’ll do that, but is there any way of getting more information, even about Charlene?”
Tia stared at me briefly, then she said, “I need to organize the blood tests. I’ll be back in five minutes. In the meantime, I’ll just leave this file here.” She gave me a long, meaningful look and placed the file down, open. Then she stood and left the room without a word.
“Quick,” Callum hissed, nodding toward the desk. “Before she comes back.”
I dived for it and immediately saw a large photograph lying on top of the papers of a pretty, smiling blonde woman. I picked it up and studied it, my heart pounding. Yeah, it definitely struck a chord. My recollections were fuzzy, but I remembered her.
“She called herself Charlie,” I murmured. “She was sweet and a bit ditzy. I swear, I was over all the fucking around—I had been for a while—but we’d both had too much to drink, and I got to talking about Dad, who was really sick at the time. She comforted me, and one thing led to another.”
Maeve stood up and walked over to me. “It’s understandable.”
“I didn’t even get her number. I gave her a hug goodbye and left.” I scraped a hand through my hair. “Why didn’t she call me? She knew how to get in touch. Why didn’t she tell me?”
Maeve picked up the picture to look more closely, and I froze, because underneath was another large photograph, but that one was of a baby.
My eyes settled on it, and a lump hit my throat. “Jesus,” I croaked. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
Maeve’s forehead pulled together at my reaction, and her gaze fell to the image. “Mary, mother of Jesus,” she whispered. “That’s the prettiest child I’ve ever seen.”
Heart in mouth, I picked up the photograph and stared at it, lost for words.
Maeve was right; the baby was beautiful.
She stared at the camera with a small smile on her pink rosebud lips.
Her skin was smooth and pale like porcelain, and her blonde curly hair was encased in a pink headband, but what struck me to the core of my being were her eyes.
They were bright blue and edged in long, dark lashes.
Identical to mine.
“She really has got your eyes,” Maeve whispered, awestruck as she gazed down at the image. Her eyes suddenly lifted and filled with tears. “Your nose, too.”
I slowly traced the lines of my daughter's face with my finger, completely mesmerized by her little face. My heart melted inside my chest at the thought of having such beauty in my life. I’d never had anyone or anything that was just mine because I never thought I was good enough to love.
I mean, was I even cut out to be a dad?
Probably not, especially when the only role model I had was an asshole.
Was I equipped for what lay ahead?
Not in the fucking slightest. Parenthood had never factored into my life plan, which had a ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ vibe at the best of times.
Did I have a clue what I was doing?
Not one to speak of. I slept on a pull-out bed in my office for fuck’s sake.
But right there and then, standing in a government office in bumfuck Nebraska, I felt something click into place.
However she came to be, that little girl was mine.
She’d lost everything, and it was time for me to step up for her, whether I was ready or not.
She needed me, and maybe in a weird, fucked-up way, I needed her, too.
I pressed my fingertips to the picture, following the line of my daughter’s cheek and down her cute, strangely graceful little neck, like I was trying to send a message through the photograph, letting her know everything was gonna be okay, even though I had no idea if it would, or if I was about to make her life decidedly worse.
I mean, how would a fuckup like me raise a little girl single-handedly? And how the hell would I do it while running a business and at the same time, also teach her how to be a well-adjusted member of society, especially when I was probably the least well-adjusted person on the planet?
What if I did something wrong? I knew nothing about parenthood or looking after babies.
If it was a boy, at least I could teach him guy stuff, but what the fuck did I know about girlie shit?
Jesus, I’d not long left a sixteen-year Army career where I was surrounded by hairy-assed, gun-toting, testosterone-filled soldiers who blew shit up for fun.
God help the poor little bairn.
It was safe to say that the proverbial shit was about to hit the fan.
—————
Callum and I both had our blood taken as a precaution, but I already knew what the outcome would be. I didn’t need a paternity test to know Imogen was mine. The knowledge had hit me somewhere deep inside the instant I saw her photograph, like I already knew she was a part of me.
Once I let the knowledge settle deep, I started to come to terms with everything.
I still felt sick, but my nausea wasn’t about Imogen being mine anymore; it was all about the prospect of how I was going to be a good father.
My da may have been a critical bastard, but Ma was another story, and I knew that once she got over the shock, my mother would love my little girl to distraction.
Unfortunately, that didn’t make the prospect of telling her any easier.
In the end, I decided to drop the bombshell when Callum and Maeve were with me (safety in numbers and all that).
So after dinner (which I didn’t eat a morsel of), we holed up in their hotel room to make the call from Callum’s phone.
Mine had died because I hadn’t charged it since the morning of the wedding, and when I rushed out of the gym to head to Nebraska, picking up my charger was the last thing on my mind.
“She’s gonna flip,” I muttered, eyeing my brother’s phone as if it had grown fangs and was about to rip my throat out.
“Yeah,” Maeve agreed. “She’ll give you a clip around the earhole, but when she’s done that, she’s going to be your biggest supporter. Your mam has an edge to her, but she loves you boys and Aislynn more than life, and she’ll love Imogen the same way, too.”
“You’re gonna need her,” Callum declared.
I eyed the way he lay casually back on the hotel bed with one arm behind his head and his gaze on the flickering TV. “You think I don’t know that?”
“Always a silver lining,” he muttered.
“What do you mean by that?” I questioned.
He turned his head toward me and grinned. “At least now she may think twice about flying over to Ireland and gatecrashing our honeymoon.”