Page 106 of Nobodys Baby But Mine (Chicago Stars 3)

Jane had to get out of here before she completely shattered. “I have a plane to catch. It would be best if you’d talk to Cal. He can explain better.”

She began moving toward the side of the house, but she’d barely taken two steps before Lynn’s astonished exclamation brought her to a halt.

“My God, you’re pregnant!”

She whipped around and saw Lynn staring at her midsection. Automatically, her gaze dropped, and only then did she notice the protective hand she’d unconsciously placed there. The gesture had pressed her dress against her body and outlined her gently rounded abdomen. She snatched it away, but she was too late.

Lynn looked bewildered. “Is it Cal’s?”

“Amber Lynn Glide!” Annie snapped. “Where are your manners?”

Lynn seemed more shaken than accusatory. “But how am I supposed to know if it’s his or not when I don’t understand anything about this marriage? I don’t know what they see in each other or how they got together. I don’t even know why she was crying.” Her voice caught. “Something’s very wrong here.”

The final threads of Jane’s badly frayed emotions unraveled, and as she saw the lines of suffering etched into Lynn’s face, she knew she had to tell her the truth. Cal’s desire to protect his parents had been well-meaning, but now it had grown destructive. If she’d learned anything in these past four months, she’d learned that deception only led to hurt.

“It’s Cal’s baby,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry you had to find out like this.”

Lynn’s hurt was obvious. “But, he never— He didn’t say anything. Why didn’t he tell me?”

“Because he was trying to protect me.”

“From what?”

“From you and Dr. Bonner. Cal didn’t want either of you to find out what I’d done to him.”

“Tell me!” Her expression grew as fierce as a mother lion whose cub had been threatened, never mind that her cub was now king of the jungle. “Tell me everything!”

Annie picked up the pottery bowl. “I’m goin’ inside and fix my beans the way I like. Janie Bonner, you stay right here till you get this settled with Amber Lynn, you hear me?” She shuffled toward the back porch.

Jane’s legs wouldn’t hold her any longer, and she sank down into the lawn chair. Lynn took the other chair and sat facing Jane. Her jaw was set, her manner confrontational. Jane found herself remembering the scrappy young girl who’d baked cookies at two in the morning so she could support her husband and her baby. The expensive yellow linen dress and chunky amber jewelry didn’t hide the fact that this woman knew how to fight for her own.

Jane clasped her hands in her lap. “Cal wanted to spare you and his father pain. You’ve been through so much this past year. He thought—” She dropped her gaze. “The bald truth is that I desperately wanted a child, and I tricked him into getting me pregnant.”

“You did what?”

Jane forced her head back up. “It was wrong. Unconscionable. I didn’t intend for him ever to find out.”

“But he did.”

She nodded.

Lynn’s lips had grown thin and taut. “Whose decision was it to get married?”

“His. He threatened to take me to court and sue for custody if I didn’t do what he wanted. Now that I know him better, I doubt that he’d have carried out his threat, but I believed him at the time.”

Taking a deep breath, she described the morning she’d opened the door to Jodie Pulanski, then told Lynn about the men’s plan for his birthday. She explained her own yearning for a child as well as her concern about finding someone to father it. She spoke without embellishment, refusing to justify her behavior in any way.

When she described her reaction to seeing Cal on television and her subsequent decision to use him, Lynn pressed her fingers to her lips, and a gasp of horror mingled with a strangled laugh that held an edge of hysteria. “Are you saying you chose Cal because you thought he was stupid?”

She thought about trying to explain to Lynn how he’d used ain’t and looked so dumb and gorgeous but gave it up. There were some things a doting mother would never understand. “Obviously I misjudged him, although I didn’t figure that out until several weeks after we were married.”

“Everybody knows Cal is smart as a whip. How could you have believed anything else?”

“I guess some of us aren’t as smart as we think we are.” She continued with her story, ending with the exposure of their marriage in the media and her decision to come with him to Salvation.

Lynn’s face showed a flash of anger, but to Jane’s surprise, it wasn’t directed at her. “Cal should have told me the truth from the beginning.”

“He didn’t want anyone in the family to know. He said none of you were good liars, and the story would come out if he told you.”

---