Chapter 1 #2
And the stroller parked in the middle of the lobby did not match the vibe.
Dino looked up as we approached and he frowned at me.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“That woman just left.” He shook his head, frustrated. “I’ve got some guys trying to follow her and track her down.”
“That woman has been coming here with this,” Lorne explained. “Looking for you.”
I frowned at him and followed the direction of where he pointed. One finger indicated the stroller. It wasn’t a simple one, but doubled up to hold two.
“Huh?” I volleyed my gaze between them, frowning at him then studying the stroller. “I’m lost.”
“This woman’s been coming here daily for two weeks, looking for you,” Dino said, cringing like he was reluctant to explain. “Today, when I said that you were in the building in case you’d like to talk to her while she was here, she just took off. Leaving… them.”
“Them?” I peered at the stroller. Dark-blue canvas domes were snapped down, blocking the world from seeing who—or what—was in the stroller.
Using a plural form of reference for an infant felt funny on my tongue.
“Are you telling me some woman came in here and dumped children and left?” Fuck, we’d need to call the cops and let the authorities handle this.
Abandonment. Or whatever they wanted to call it.
Since this was a legit business, more civilian rules applied than our system of law and order.
Dino shook his head. “No. She said she was delivering them.” He swallowed hard. “For you.”
At the sound of a baby fussing, something my ears were familiar with from Rose and Owen, I stepped toward the double stroller. One flick of my finger had the canvas fabric popping up.
A baby girl scrunched her face at me.
“What the…”
Same light blonde hair. Same fair skin. Same blue eyes… She resembled Anya’s features.
No.
I flicked the lid of the cover up to reveal her twin. A boy, if the pink and blue blankets were accurate. He slept peacefully, his hands fisted and held up next to his little head.
“What…” I shook my head as shock sliced through me. “What?”
Lorne reached in and extracted a few papers jammed into the blankets near the girl’s feet. “Emily and Henry York,” he read. He held up two birth certificates.
“York?” I asked, feeling like I’d dropped into another universe as I stared at the babies again.
Emily.
And Henry.
“Mother listed as Rebecca York.”
“Who the fuck is that?” I had no clue.
My heart raced as I acknowledged how much these twins looked like me. Blond-haired, blue-eyed. It wasn’t enough to make the dots connect correctly, but something innate, something deep inside of my chest clicked.
They were mine.
Merely looking at them and feeling this foreign twist of a bond proved it before I could even process the thought.
“No father listed on here,” Lorne said. “But there’s a note.” He cleared his throat to read it. “Their mother just passed away, and she left me a message to please bring them to their father. Good luck.”
Emily fussed, and I cringed as I reached to get her out of the carrier.
“What the fuck?” I asked, holding her against me and rocking her a little.
“What the—” Shaking my head, I tried to calm her.
“For fuck’s sake. Look for a bottle or something down there,” I told Lorne.
She was hungry. Or maybe not. Claire said that babies had different cries, but I bet that was specific to each baby.
Facing Dino, I ordered, “Roll the security tapes. Find this woman and get her back here now to explain this shit.”
“I don’t think there’s much you need explained,” Lorne said, finding a bottle in a bag and handing it over. “You’re a daddy now.”
“The hell I am.” I glared at him as I took the bottle. It was cold and I shot him a look as I handed it back.
He took it, rubbing his hands on the bottle.
“I’m not a father. I’m not. I can’t be. I am too careful. I never, ever take a chance and—” Shaking my head again as Emily cried, I paced and bounced in my step. “This can’t be right.”
“Then maybe it’s a trick. A diversion.” Lorne handed the bottle back to me and got his phone out.
“I’m calling the big boss, Kid.” As another staff member approached, Lorne pointed at the stroller.
“Someone search that thing. Make sure it’s not bugged or anything.
” Glancing back at me, he smirked. “I don’t know what’s going on either, but those babies look like yours. ”
“I know that!” I snapped as Emily stopped fussing and took the bottle. “But I also know it’s not possible.”
He laughed once while he waited for my uncle to pick up. “Roman, with the way you fucked your way through all of New York, I’m surprised this hasn’t happened sooner.”
I glared at him, unamused. I had no regrets about how I’d lived my life.
But I wasn’t exaggerating. Because I hadn’t wanted any commitments, because I enjoyed my freedom, I had always been extremely careful when I fucked around.
I’d considered a vasectomy. That was how preemptive I was about not knocking up any woman.
But somehow…
This is insane.
Denial filled me with a tidal force each time I tried to accept that Emily and Henry were my children. That today was the day when the most bizarre and unexpected news could land in my lap with the force of a nuclear bomb going off.
Me. A father.
Hours blurred by with a hectic chaos. My uncle showed up with Claire. He shook his head, deadpan as he repeated his claim. “There is something in the fucking air…”
Claire was more clinical, showing how she’d never not be a doctor despite leaving her career at the ER.
She fussed over the twins, both of them napping, and did a thorough check.
Uncle Mikhail and I began to look into who the hell dropped them off.
Andre showed up too, assisting the best he could with the mystery.
I’m a father?
Still, hours later, when I brought the twins home for the time being while the paternity test Claire performed on us processed at an expedited, one-day turnaround, I couldn’t grasp this new label.
A father.
Emily and Henry fussed and cried, and no matter how much Anya, Natalie, and Claire helped, I was overwhelmed with this shocking discovery.
Tomorrow, I’d have the proof that these two babies were mine. By morning, the test would confirm that I was a parent. Not just the fun uncle, but a father.
Hopefully, tomorrow, I’d have more answers about how these fussy babies had come to be.
I’d tasked Lorne with leading the investigation of this woman, the mother of these babies, or whoever the hell was involved.
A couple of men were on it, working from the hotel’s surveillance to figure out where that woman had gone.
But tonight, as I sat in the chair with Lorne across from me, exhaustion written on his face from helping me console the twins I already felt so protective of, I had to admit that I would still be as clueless as I was right now about how to be a father.
I’m a father. Emily. Henry. I’m their father.
It didn’t matter how many times that concept flitted through my mind. It didn’t sink in fully. It was just so out there. Unexpected. Unplanned for. And so hard to believe with how careful I’d always been.
“Don’t worry, Kid,” Lorne said gruffly, looking like he was ready to drop too after trying to keep both babies from crying all evening with me.
“Are you still going to call me that when I now have my own kids?” I shot back. His teasing name for me never bothered me. But it seemed weirder now.
He frowned. “If they’re yours—”
“They are.” I felt it in my heart, in my soul. Some unspeakable phenomenon clued me in, and the severity of how strongly I wanted to protect them startled me. I struggled more with my identity, my identity crisis of being a father now. But I wasn’t challenged to identify them as my offspring.
“Then you won’t have to do it alone.” He shifted to sit upright, but he moved so gingerly that the chair cushions wouldn’t squeak or crinkle and wake Henry, who slept near him in a bassinet that Claire had delivered.
“You know? It takes a village and all that. And you got a lot of help here. Even a doctor and nurses, with Claire having that little clinic next door.”
I huffed a quiet laugh. I did have a village. But I couldn’t rely on the others all the time. All three women in my close circle were pregnant and/or with young ones right now.
“I’ll need to find a nanny,” I admitted, glad to have one step of a plan so far.
Because the alternative—finding a wife to be a mother to these twins—was out of the question.
I watched them sleep, Emily pouting and Henry smiling. And once more, I tried to believe it.
How can I call myself a father?