Page 18 of Unlikely Guardian

And that’s exactly what she did.

Lilly glanced down at the photo again. The butterflies returned with a vengeance. And the doubts. So many doubts. Including the tsunami of all doubts: Whether or not she’d be a good mother.

Before the accident and the coma, she’d spent months trying to clean up the investment business that she had inherited from her father, and she’d put the notion of children and marriage on the back burner. Of course, her experience with Greg had contributed to that back-burner decision. Talk about taking an emotional toll. Yet, if she hadn’t had that brief tumultuous relationship with Greg, there would have been no Megan.

Strange that the night she’d regretted most had produced a child that she could never regret.

With that, the memories came. Good mixed with the bad. It was always that way with Greg. The night that she’d had sex with him, he’d just had a huge business setback that would almost certainly lead to bankruptcy. After drinking, he’d shown up at her house. She’d tried to console him and they’d landed in bed. Lilly had immediately realized it as a mistake since she hadn’t loved him and because he’d wanted more than friendship from her.

A lot more.

Greg wanted a wedding ring and the white-picket-fence fairy tale. Unfortunately she’d told him that she wasn’t ready for those things. And might never be. Angry with her rejection, he’d stormed out and minutes later was involved in a fatal car accident.

It had only been the beginning of the nightmare.

Jason had blamed her for his brother’s death, and there was indeed blame to place in her lap. She’d gotten so caught up in her argument with Greg that she hadn’t noticed that he was too drunk to drive.

A fatal mistake.

One she’d have to live with.

Megan didn’t soften that mistake. Far from it. Because even though at the time Lilly hadn’t known that they’d created a child, she’d essentially let her baby’s father walk out the door and die.

“Nervous?” she heard Jason ask.

That one word pulled her out of that mixed bag of memories, and she glanced around to see what had prompted his question. With one hand, she had a death grip on Megan’s picture, and with her other hand, she was choking the strap of her seat belt.

She slipped Megan’s picture into her pocket. “The truth? I’m terrified.”

That terror went up a notch when he took the turn into the Redland Oaks neighborhood. She’d learned from one of the cops who’d guarded her for the past two days that Jason had bought a house in the northeast area shortly after Megan was born.

“Don’t expect too much for your first visit,” Jason warned. He stopped at the security gate, entered his code, and the long metal arm lifted so he could drive inside. He waved at the officers in the car behind them, and the driver circled around to leave. “Megan’s going through this stage where she’s a little wary of people that she doesn’t know. I’ve told her about you, but she’s too young to understand.”

Well, she certainly qualified as people her daughter didn’t know. Lilly prayed there wouldn’t be tears—from either Megan or her.

To calm her quickly unraveling nerves, Lilly forced herself to concentrate on gathering information. After all, she hadn’t had much of a chance to talk with Jason about Megan. For the past two days, he’d been tied up with the investigation and security arrangements. They’d only spoken briefly on the phone, and that was only so that Jason could tell her when he’d be arriving to pick her up from the hospital. The call had lasted less than a minute.

“Can Megan walk yet?” she asked.

“More or less. She still takes a few spills, but she gets better at it every day.”

Lilly had no idea if that was in the normal range of development, and she made a mental note to read some parenting books. “How about talking? Does she say anything?”

Dead silence.

Not good, considering it was a relatively easy question.

“She babbles a lot and says bye-bye and…da-da,” Jason finally answered. He gave her a hard glance. “Let’s just get down to the bottom line here. I love Megan. She loves me. And she calls me da-da because I’m the only father she’s ever known.”

Lilly couldn’t dispute that, but she could take issue with what he wasn’t saying. Suddenly this was no longer a conversation about child development. It was a conversation about all that air they hadn’t managed to clear yet. “I’m her mother.”

“That doesn’t void the last eleven and a half months.” He cursed under his breath. “Look, what happened to you wasn’t your fault. I know that. But I also know I’m not just going to give Megan up now that you’re out of the coma.”

There it was. The real bottom line. The one they’d been tiptoeing around since the moment he’d walked into her hospital room and told her about her daughter.

Lilly shook her head. “I’m not going to give her up, either, Jason.”

That hard look he was giving her got a lot harder. “Then I guess we’re at a stalemate.”

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