Baby Bonanza / For Blackmail...or Pleasure: Baby Bonanza

Of course, that little fantasy had been exploded pretty quickly.

He dropped into silence again as the cab took off. He didn’t want to talk to her. Didn’t want to think about anything but what he was about to do. With a simple check of his DNA, his life could be altered irrevocably forever. His chest was tight and his mind was racing. Cabo was no more than a colorful blur outside his window as they headed for the lab and a date with destiny.

In a few seconds the cab was swallowed by the bustling port city. At the dock and on the main drive that ran along the ocean, Cabo San Lucas was beautiful. The hotels, the restaurants and bars, everything was new and shone to perfection, the better to tempt the tourists who streamed into the city every year.

But just a few short blocks from the port and Cabo was a big city like any other. The streets were crowded with cars, and pedestrians leaped off the sidewalks and ran across the street with complete abandon, trusting that the drivers would somehow keep from running them down. Narrower, cobblestoned side streets spilled off the bigger avenues and from there came the tantalizing scents of frying onions, spices and grilling meat.

Restaurants and bars crowded together, their chipped stucco facades looking a little tattered as tourists milled up and down the sidewalks, cameras clutched in sunburned fists. As the cab driver steered his car through the maze of traffic, Nick idly glanced out the window and noted the open-air markets gathered together under dark green awnings. Under that umbrella were at least thirty booths where you could buy everything from turquoise jewelry to painted ceramic burros.

Cabo was a tourist town and the locals did everything they could to keep those vacation dollars in the city.

“Strange, isn’t it?” she mused, and Nick turned his head to look at her. She was staring out her window at the city and he half wondered if she was speaking to him or to herself. “All of the opulence on the beach and just a few blocks away…”

“It’s a city, like any other,” he said.

She turned her head to meet his gaze. “It’s just a little disappointing to see the real world beneath the glitz.”

“There’s always a hidden side. To everything. And everyone,” he said, staring into her eyes, wondering what she was feeling. Wondering why he even cared.

“What’s hidden beneath your facade, then?” she asked.

Nick forced a smile. “I’m the exception to the rule,” he told her. “What you see is what you get with me. There are no hidden depths. No mysteries to be solved. No secrets. No lies.”

Her features tightened slightly. “I don’t believe that,” she said. “You’re not as shallow as you pretend to be, Nick. I remember too much to buy into that.”

“Then your memory is wrong. Don’t look for something that isn’t there, Jenna,” he said softly, just in case their driver spoke English. “I’m not a lonely rich boy looking for love.” He leaned in toward her, keeping his gaze locked with hers, and added, “I’m doing this DNA test for my own sake. If those babies are mine, then I need to know. But I’m not the white-picket-fence kind of guy. So don’t go building castles in the air. You’ll get trapped in the rubble when they collapse.”

Jenna felt a chill as she looked into those icy blue eyes of his. All night she’d lain in her bed, thinking about him, wondering if she’d done the right thing by coming to Nick. By telling him about their sons. Now she was faced with the very real possibility that she’d made a huge mistake.

Once he was convinced that the boys were his, then what? Would he really be satisfied with writing out a child support check every month? Or would he demand time with his children? And if he did, how would she fit him into their lives?

Picturing Nick spending time in her tiny house in Seal Beach was almost impossible. His lifestyle was so far removed from hers they might as well be from different planets.

“Nick,” she said, “I know there’s a part of you that thinks I’m lying about all of this. But I’m not.” She paused, watched his reaction and didn’t see a thing that made her feel any better, so she continued. “So, before you take this DNA test, I want you to promise me something.”

He laughed shortly, but there wasn’t a single spark of humor lighting his eyes. “Why would I do that?”

“No reason I can think of, but I’m still asking.”

“What?” he asked, sitting back, dropping one hand to rest on his knee. “What’s this promise?”

She tried again to read his expression, but his features were shuttered, closing her out so completely it was as if she were alone in the cab. But he was listening and that was something, she supposed.

“I want you to promise me that whatever happens, you won’t take out what you feel for me on our sons.”

He tipped his head to one side, studied her for a long moment or two, then as she held her breath, waiting for his response, he finally nodded. “All right. I give you my word. What’s between you and me won’t affect how I treat your sons.”

Jenna gave him a small smile. “Thank you.”

“But if they are my sons,” he added quietly, “you and I have a lot of talking to do.”

The DNA test was done quickly, and before she knew it, Jenna and Nick were back in the cab, heading for the docks again. Her stomach was churning as her mind raced, and being locked inside a car hurtling down a crowded street wasn’t helping. She needed to walk. Needed to breathe. Needed to escape the trapped feeling that held her in a tight grip.

Turning to Nick, she blurted suddenly, “Can we get out? Walk the rest of the way to the dock?”

He glanced at her, and whatever he saw in her face must have convinced him because he nodded, then spoke to the driver in Spanish. A moment later the cab pulled to the curb. Jenna jumped out of the car as if she were on springs and took a deep breath of cool, ocean air while Nick paid their fare.

Tourists and locals alike crowded the sidewalk and streamed past her as if she were a statue. She tucked her purse under her left arm and turned her face into the breeze sliding down the street from the sea.

“It’s still several blocks to the ship,” Nick said as he joined her on the sidewalk. “You going to be able to make it in those shoes?”

Jenna glanced down at the heeled sandals she wore then lifted her gaze back to his. “I’ll make it. I just—needed to get out of that cab and move around a little.”

“I don’t remember you being so anxious,” he said.

She laughed a little and sounded nervous even to herself. “Not anxious, really. It’s just that since the boys were born, I’m not used to being still. They keep me running all day long, and sitting in the back of that cab, I felt like I was in a cage or something and it didn’t help that neither one of us was talking and we’d just come from the lab, so my brain was in overdrive and—”

He interrupted the frantic flow of words by holding up one hand. “I get it. And I could use some air, too. So why don’t we start walking?”

“Good. That’d be good.” God, she hadn’t meant to go on a stream of consciousness there. If he hadn’t stopped her, heaven only knew what would have come out of her mouth. As it was, he was looking at her like she was a stick of dynamite with a burning fuse.

He took her arm to turn her around, and the sizzle of heat that sprang up from his touch was enough to boil her blood and make her gasp for air. So not a good sign.

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