Chapter 19
Brett couldn’t have slept if he’d tried. He lay on his stomach in the dimly lit room, staring at Theo and Toby in their baby carriers, talking to Joni in his head.
I wish you were here to help me figure this out.
Emotions swirled through his consciousness like a storm, grief and doubt mixing with elation and pride, a thundering of dread rumbling in the background.
How could these be his children? He’d long ago been told fatherhood was a scientific impossibility, yet here slept two sweet angels who were supposedly his own.
His mind needed confirmation, but his heart was not as smart. These boys had already attached themselves permanently to his soul, and he needed a paternity test at the first opportunity.
He frowned. He’d been hoping to get Grace on a plane, train, or bus back home today, but without the boys’ grandmother in the picture, he needed her here to take care of the children while he and HERO Force went after Fleming.
There would be no reprieve from wanting her, no much needed space between them.
He rolled on his side to watch her sleep, legs twisted in the covers and one calf hanging over the edge. He was sorry that he’d taken advantage of her, more sorry that he wanted her still.
When they got back home, he and the boys would find a new place to live. It was the least he could do after all she’d done for him. Leave her in peace and let her build a life without him standing awkwardly in the wings.
God, he’d need a house. A bigger apartment, at least. Babies came with tons of stuff, and he would need a place for it all.
The thought caught him off guard. Was he keeping these children, then? Joni and Luke had named him their guardian, but that didn’t mean he was up to the task. So many people out there wanted babies, were prepared to care for them. Surely Toby and Theo would be better off in a home like that.
A cavernous sadness hovered at the edge of his mind. Theo started fussing, and Brett got to him before the boy let out a cry. The twins didn’t sleep any more during the night than they did during the day, alternating between periods of wakefulness, sleep, bottles, and diaper changes.
It was obvious Grace needed the sleep more than he did, so he took care of the babies as much as he could during the night. She still had to get up twice, because he wasn’t an octopus, and one screaming child tended to wake up the other.
There was an intimacy in those midnight awakenings, the two of them moving quietly in the darkness, caring for the children and passing wipes back and forth despite the elephant in the room between them.
He was no stranger to having a woman in his bedroom at night, though admittedly, he was usually awake for a far more enjoyable reason.
That was about sex, not intimacy, and certainly not sharing poopy diapers and warming bottles of their special baby formula.
It was moments like these that were sure to stick in his mind, and he reminded himself he couldn’t do any of this without her.
The boys needed a parent far better than him.
He eventually drifted off to sleep an hour or two before dawn, waking to find Grace smiling as she gave Toby a bottle, the wide V-neck of her oversized shirt exposing the swell of her breast.
What a sight they made.
She turned her head toward him and he quickly closed his eyes, feigning sleep. Several minutes later, Theo cried out and he moved to pick up the other boy. He sat on his bed and opened a bottle, the boy hungrily sucking on it as he stared at Brett.
My son.
The enormity of it sunk in anew in the light of day.
Brett looked at Grace. She’d fixed her shirt and lost the smile she’d worn so easily when she was looking at Toby.
He braced himself for the conversation that needed to happen now.
“You’re a nurse. How quickly can I get a DNA test to check paternity? ”
She cocked her head to the side. “Paternity?”
“Yeah.”
Her gaze dropped to the baby in his arms, a subtle shift coming over her features. She was quiet for several beats. “They’re yours, aren’t they?”
“They might be.”
For a moment she said nothing, then she clucked her tongue and stood, tucking Toby into his baby carrier and turning back to Brett.
She crossed her arms. “So, tell me, was she already dating your cousin when you slept with her?” She looked at the ceiling.
“She must’ve been, time-wise. But that didn’t stop you, did it?
” She shook her head, anger coming off her in waves. “You are unbelievable.”
That wasn’t how the boys were conceived, but her obvious lack of faith in his character dug deep like the twist of a knife. “You don’t have the slightest idea what’s going on here.”
“Then why don’t you tell me? Explain to me how it is you impregnated your cousin’s wife and are now the father of two beautiful little boys you want nothing to do with?”
“I told you, I haven’t seen Joni in five years, and for the record, I never slept with her.”
“Immaculate conception?”
“How about you stop with the smart comments and listen for a second? I told you, Joni was a scientist. A month before I went to BUD/s training for the SEALs, we went out for lunch. She told me some scary shit about high levels of infertility among returning soldiers from a certain area of Afghanistan. She and Luke were having trouble getting pregnant, and with her fertility research, she suggested I bank my sperm just in case. I figured why not. Better safe than sorry, right?” He shrugged.
“She jokingly asked if she could use my sperm if Luke’s didn’t pan out.
” He remembered the conversation like it was yesterday, Joni’s image clear enough to touch, and a fresh wave of grief came over him.
“We laughed it off at the time, but when I went to the clinic, there was a space to write in designated people who can use your sperm, giving them legal permission. I put their names down, took a picture of the form, and texted it to Joni with a note that said, ‘Just in case.’ We never talked about it again.”
He looked at the baby in his arms, the perfect eyes.
The turned-up nose. The sweet curve of his tiny lips.
He put his index finger on Theo’s palm, the boy’s hand closing around his finger.
He never could have known what signing that form would mean, never could have appreciated the grandeur that could come from so small a gesture.
Grace sat down on the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry. I just assumed. I shouldn’t have been so quick to judge.”
“It’s all right. But there’s one piece of the puzzle that doesn’t make sense. A mystery. Months after that, I got a letter from the clinic saying my sperm would never impregnate anybody because of a genetic problem. There’s no fix for it, so as far as I know, I can’t even have kids.”
“Then they couldn’t possibly be yours.”
He stared at Theo, his gut telling him the boy was his flesh and blood. “Unless Joni found a way to fix the problem."
Grace’s eyes went wide. “She was studying how to genetically modify human sperm. She’d even authored an op-ed in the New York Times defending the ethics of her work. It’s all online.”
“We need to know for sure if I am the father of these children.”
“And if you are?”
“Then the boys are proof positive of her work. Maybe that had implications for Fleming he didn’t like.”
“The purple diapers.”
Brett furrowed his brow. “What about them?”
“In Joni’s research, she talked about the possibility of unintended genetic consequences. Aberrations. Disease.”
“Like Damon’s Disorder.”
“Exactly.”
“Jesus Christ, the boys’ existence isn’t just proof the genetic modifications can be done. It’s proof they can create dangerous health problems in the resulting children. That’s it. That’s got to be it.” He dialed Mac and filled him in. Grace was staring at him when he hung up.
“What will you do if the boys are yours?” she asked. “Will you keep them?”
His throat constricted against a sudden surge of emotion. “I don’t know if I’m the man for the job.”
“You’re doing fine, as far as I can tell.”
“I have you. Without you, I’d be lost.” She looked away, busying herself with empty baby bottles and a stack of diapers. The tension between them was back, any hint of a connection enough to raise the walls around her in an instant. He needed to set the record straight. “Grace, about last night...”
She held up her hand but didn’t make eye contact. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“It wasn’t that I didn’t want t—”
Now she looked at him, snapping, “What part of I don’t want to talk about it do you not understand?”
She was hurt, that much was clear, and he had the uneasy feeling she’d bolt if the twins didn’t need her here. The thought made him more unhappy than he would have thought possible.
There was a knock at the door. “It’s Trace,” called a voice.
Brett sighed heavily. “We’ll talk later.”
She raised one eyebrow. “No, we will not.”
Even angry, she was beautiful. He ran a hand through his hair and crossed to the door, the thick dread of foreboding settling in his stomach. The longer this charade continued, the less likely he was to stick to his convictions and stay away from her in the night.
But HERO Force was here, and he had the manpower to find the answers they needed. And the sooner they did that, the sooner he and Grace could go back to normal.
Normal?
A vision of her standing on his doorstep in the rain flashed into his mind unbidden. Could he really leave her standing there and go back to some woman he barely knew, a woman he didn’t want to know, a woman he barely even wanted to fuck?
There would be no going back to normal when this was over. He thought of the boys, his likely paternity, the question mark hovering over his future and theirs.
Normal had evaporated in the dead of a rainy night, leaving chaos in its wake. There would be no more normal ever again.