The Baby Switch!

He turned his attention to the stuffed shop, every table, every bit of space, taken up by things, from lamps to flower pots and vases to cases of jewelry to paintings and knickknacks of every kind imaginable. There was a bookcase of old, leather-bound classics and an entire table full of various teapots with little cups and saucers.

He glanced up at the wall near the shop’s entrance. “Look, Alexander, it’s a cuckoo clock. The little bird is about to come out because it’s almost the half hour.” He walked a bit closer and as the clock chimed that it was 1:30 p.m., a gold bird with a red beak popped out.

Alexander giggled and pointed.

“Cuckoo,” Liam said. “Cuckoo!” Yup, this whole thing was cuckoo, all right.

Alexander giggled, and Liam smiled, snuggling his little boy close.

She smiled. “Fatherhood agrees with you.”

He looked at Alexander, the little boy he loved more than anything on earth. “Alexander changed my life. For the good.”

“Must have been hard, though, going from Wedlock Creek’s most prized eligible bachelor to the father of an infant. On your own.”

“It was. I guess I was too shocked to pay attention to how hard it was and just went day by day. But every night, when I’d be up with Alexander at two and four a.m., the house dead quiet except for his tiny burp after having his bottle, I was just overtaken by devotion. By a sense of responsibility to this little life I helped create.”

She bit her lip and looked at him, then set Shane down in a bouncy seat behind the counter and handed him a teething ring in the shape of a rabbit. “With this...new information, I hate to put him down, for him to be out of arm’s reach for even a moment, but honestly, he’s getting big. He’s eighteen pounds now.”

Liam smiled. “So’s Alexander.” He glanced at Shane, watching the little stuffed animals twirl around on the mobile attached to the bouncer. “This is some mess, huh? Everything we thought we know about our lives is suddenly turned upside down.”

She was staring at Shane, and he could see tears glistening in her eyes. He wanted to hold her, to tell her they’d get through this, somehow, that they’d get through it together. But what comfort would that be? They were practically strangers.

The light shining through the windows caught on her blond hair and the side of her delicate face, and she looked so alone and lost that he reached out and took her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. I’m not the enemy, the squeeze was supposed to say. But yeah, this sucks.

She looked up at him, surprise crossing her pretty face, and she squeezed back.

“I have another bouncer if you want a breather yourself,” she said.

“Sure.”

She disappeared into a back room and returned with a yellow bouncer with a stars and moon mobile. Alexander pointed at it.

“You like it?” Liam asked the baby. “Let’s get you settled in it next to your buddy, Shane.”

He put Alexander in the bouncer, buckling the little harness, and turned the reclining seat so that the boys could see each other. He stood and came back around the counter when Shelby’s phone rang.

She glanced at the cuckoo clock. “It’s only one forty-five. Could that be the hospital lab?” Her phone rang again, but she seemed frozen in place. On the third ring she grabbed it from her tote bag. “Shelby Ingalls speaking.”

“It’s them,” she mouthed to him, the phone against her ear. He watched her listen, her eyes full of hope. Tell me what I want to hear, those eyes beseeched. But then the light went out of the green depths, and she clearly couldn’t contain the sob that rose from inside her.

She croaked out a “Thank you for calling,” then put the phone down on a table next to a teapot, her eyes welling, anguish dropping her to her knees on the circular rug.

“Oh, no,” he said, closing his eyes for a moment. Oh, no. No.

She burst into tears. “It’s official. Shane is not my son.”

Chapter Three

Liam rushed over and knelt down beside her. He put his arm around her. “I’m so sorry, Shelby.”

“It has to be true, then,” she said. “The hospital switched the babies. How else could this have happened?”

Intellectually, he was beginning to believe it. In his heart, though, Alexander West Mercer was his son. Plain and simple.

Except it was no longer so plain or simple.

“The baby right there,” she said, staring at Alexander in his bouncy seat, smiling up at the colorful mobile dangling above. “He’s my son? That’s what the DNA tests will reveal. I took home the wrong baby. How could I not know my own child? How?”

He felt his cells, his blood, the air in the lungs, come to a dead stop. My son. My son. My son. He wanted her to stop saying those words. Alexander was his son.

But he was going to have to accept the truth. Two baby boys had been born early in the morning of November 5. One couldn’t be Shelby’s child. Which meant the other was.

“They do look alike,” he said. “And given the chaos in those moments after they were born, you probably barely got to hold him, let alone study his face in the dark.”

She bit her lip, squeezing her eyes shut.

“We both took home the wrong baby,” he added, his gaze on Shane in his own bouncy seat, biting the little teething ring. When he looked at Shane Ingalls, he saw a beautiful baby boy, someone else’s beautiful baby boy. He felt no connection. What did that mean?

“I want to talk to the nurse who switched them,” Liam said. “I need to hear what happened. Of course I know she can’t be certain, that it’s only what makes sense, given the blood type issue and the delay in putting identification bracelets on the babies, but I need to hear her tell me herself.”

Shelby wiped under her eyes and tilted her head. “Can we talk to her?”

“We can do whatever the hell we want. She’s no longer employed by the clinic. The director said she retired three months ago.”

Shelby nodded. “I’d like to hear it from her about what happened, too.”

“I’ll call Anne Parcells and ask for the contact information. She may be cagey about it. Anne has to be worried about a lawsuit. The nurse, as well.”

“Are you thinking about a lawsuit?” she asked.

“Well, first we need back the DNA tests that conclusively prove we took home the wrong babies. But if the nurse made an honest mistake in the chaos of a blizzard that knocked out power...”

Shelby nodded. “An honest mistake is an honest mistake even if it’s turned our lives around. And who knows what this will mean for Shane and Alexander.”

“Meaning?”

She shrugged. “Well, what’s going to happen now? What’s going to happen when the DNA test says I have your son and you have mine?”

He sucked in a breath.

“I want to hold Alexander but I’m afraid to,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself as if protectively.

He stiffened, everything inside him going numb. “I know. Because if you hold him, knowing what you know, you’re afraid you won’t be able to hand him back over. It’s why I haven’t asked to hold Shane.” He’d have to face the truth, then, that Shane was his, that he’d left him behind, and he wasn’t sure he could handle that.

She stared at Alexander, who was smiling at the mobile and then looking at his little buddy, biting on his teething toy. “He has my eyes and the Ingalls straight and pointy nose. We all have that nose.”

“It’s a good one,” he said. Liam’s nose was more Roman. And Liza’s had been long.

“My head is going to explode,” she said. “I can’t think. I can barely stand up anymore.”

“I know. Same here.”

“I think I need to just go upstairs to my apartment, with Shane, and just let this all sink in.”

He nodded. “I think that’s a good idea. I could use some time alone to try to process this, too.” He headed over to where Alexander sat in the bouncer.

“Liam, I’m very close to my family, particularly my sister. I don’t think I can keep this from them until the DNA tests are in. Especially because I have no doubt anymore that the babies were switched. And to be honest, I don’t want to keep it from them. I need their support.”

He nodded again, letting his head drop back a little. “I can understand that. I’m not all that close to my parents or my brother, but I wish I were. I’m close to my cousin Clara, the one who likes your shop.”

An idea started forming and he dismissed it. Then came back to it. It involved inviting Shelby to the family dinner tonight. Shelby and Shane. He could drop the bombshell and they’d all have a chance to meet the Ingallses. It would be a way to get the conversation over with.

“Maybe getting our families’ takes on the situation is a good idea,” he said. “The Mercers get together every Friday night for dinner, a tradition going back generations. Why don’t you join us? You and Shane. We can tell them together.”

“I thought you said your weren’t close with your family. Weekly family dinners—on a weekend night, no less. That sounds close.”

“I think we all keep doing it because we want something to change but it never does, and the weekly dinners make us feel like we’re doing something to change it. But the evening always ends in arguments or stony silences, mostly because my brother won’t go into the family business, which is nothing new. He’s a cowboy on a cattle ranch.”

“Well, he’ll sure be glad to see me and Shane, then,” she said. “Talk about taking the focus off him.”

Liam laughed, and for a moment he was surprised he had any laughter in him. “I think he’ll be thrilled. He may actually hug me.”

“How do you think your parents will take the news?” she asked.

“Like we did. Who the hell can process this?”

She smiled, lighting up her pretty face. “Right?”

He smiled back. Then felt it fade. “But no matter what, Shelby, we decide what will happen. You and me. No matter how forceful or strong our families come on about this. I decide nothing without you, and you decide nothing without me. Deal?”

She stared at him hard for a moment. “Deal.”

He picked up Alexander from the bouncer seat, darting a glance at Shane. At the baby he had to accept was his flesh and blood. But it didn’t feel real or even possible. His head and heart were not computing, as was often the case.

“Pick you up at six-thirty?” he asked. “Cocktails at six forty-five, dinner at seven.”

“I’d prefer to meet you there,” she said. “I think. Yes, I’ll meet you.”

He nodded. “I’ll drive you over to the clinic so you can get your car,” he said, hoisting up Alexander and heading toward the door.

He felt numb as she scooped up Shane and followed him. They were both quiet on the ride to the clinic. He watched her open up the back door of her car and buckle in Shane. As she went around to the driver’s side, she held up a hand as if saying goodbye. For now, anyway.

He held up a hand too, then started his car. Part of him was relieved to be on his own with his son, his beloved Alexander. We’re safe, he thought the moment he pulled out of the lot.

But left behind, again, was his biological child.

* * *

Someone was ringing both doorbells—to the shop and the upstairs apartment—like a lunatic, pressing it so many times and holding it that Shelby’s poor cat, Luna, darted under her favorite velvet chair.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” she called, turning around on the back stairs. She’d been on the way up to her apartment, Shane in one arm and her overstuffed tote in the other. Liam had just left five minutes ago. Could he be back? She hurried down the stairs and peered through the filmy curtain at the window.

Twenty-six-year-old Norah Ingalls, in her uniform of black pants, a white T-shirt and yellow apron with Pie Diner in sparkly blue letters across, looked frantic, her strawberry-blond hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. Shelby let her in.

“You haven’t returned my texts!” Norah said, hands on hips. “Or my calls. The shop is closed at three in the afternoon. Four people at the diner mentioned it’s been closed all day. What the hell, Shelby? What is going on? David wouldn’t tell me a thing. Which freaked me out even more.”

Shelby closed the door behind her sister. “Let’s go upstairs. I need to be home for this, to actually say the words to another person for the first time.”

Norah’s hazel eyes widened. “Jesus, you’re scaring me, Shel.”

“It’s a doozy,” Shelby said, leading the way up the stairs to the apartment.

The moment Shelby unlocked the door at the top of the stairs she felt better. Home. She’d lived here for the past five years, ever since she’d opened Treasures with a little help from an unexpected small inheritance the Ingalls sisters received from their late grandmother. The apartment was like the store—old but with some beautiful architectural details, arched doorways and big windows that let in great light. She’d decorated the place with finds from estate sales, where she bought most of her goods for the shop. Whenever she was up here she felt at peace. And she needed that feeling to tell her sister what was going on.

“Let me put Shane down for his nap and I’ll be right back, Norah.”

The hands were back on Norah’s hips. “I can’t take another second, Shelby Rae Ingalls. Tell me now!”

“Two seconds, I promise. Shane is zonked. He’ll go right out.”

She slipped into the nursery, painted soothing shades of pale yellow and blue, cradling Shane against her before putting him in the crib. He let out a cry, then a sigh, his blue eyes drooping. He fussed for a few moments, but Shelby sang his favorite song, about the itsy bitsy spider, and his eyes drooped even more.

She watched him for a moment, closing her own eyes, bracing herself against the truth and for having to actually talk about what had happened today. Norah would be the first person she’d tell.

She closed the nursery door and headed back into the living room, where Norah was holding two bottles of whiskey that a handyman had given Shelby a couple weeks ago for taking so long to fix the washing machine.

“I’m gonna need this, right?” Norah asked. “Both bottles, from the expression on your face.”

“Yes,” Shelby said, and this time her sister’s eyes went even wider. She attempted something of a smile, took the whiskey bottles back into the kitchen and poured two glasses of white wine instead. Norah followed her in, standing in the doorway. “Okay. Here goes,” she said, handing her sister a glass.

Norah gulped half the glass of wine. “I’m ready. Whatever it is, whatever you need, I’m here for you.”

Tears streamed down Shelby’s face. She stood there in her kitchen and bawled.

Norah burst into tears, too. “Oh, God. Oh, God. You’re sick.”

Shelby froze. She wasn’t sick. No one was dying. Get ahold of yourself, Shelby. Perspective. With that, she launched into the whole story, starting with the meeting at the clinic, explaining about having her blood retested at the hospital and ending with being invited to Liam Mercer’s family ranch for dinner tonight.

Norah’s open mouth and chin kept dropping lower. She stared at Shelby with what the? shock on her face, then raced over and enveloped Shelby in a long hug, both of them sobbing. Her sister wiped under her eyes and gave Shelby’s hand a squeeze before dropping down on a chair at the round table in front of the window. “I seriously think my legs are going to give out. I just can’t believe this.” She opened her mouth as if to ask a question, then clamped it shut. Then again. Then again. “It’s not sinking in, Shelby.”

Shelby sat down across from Norah. “I know. I don’t even think I’ve processed it. It’s just buzzing around at the forefront of my mind like a bee that won’t go away.”

“What’s Liam Mercer like? I’ve seen him around. He’s hard to miss.”

Shelby took a sip of wine. “I know. Gorgeous. Amazing body. And surprisingly nice.”

A strawberry-blond eyebrow shot up. “Really? He didn’t threaten you?”

“About taking Shane? No. I don’t think it’s sunk in for him at all that Shane is his child. Or he’s not ready to believe it. I think he’ll need the results of the DNA test for that. His blood type is compatible with Alexander’s, as is the baby’s mother’s. As is mine. So I guess he’s still holding out hope that his life can go back to exactly what it was seven hours ago.”

Norah shook her head. “If he does threaten you, we’ll sic David on him.”

Shelby reached across the table and squeezed her sister’s hand, glad she’d rung the bell like a lunatic, after all. “It’s good to be dating a lawyer. I’ll tell everyone else tomorrow morning. I need to just lie down and breathe before getting ready for dinner at the Mercers’.”

“God, have you seen that place?” Norah asked. “I didn’t know ranches could have mansions on them.”

She thought back to what Liam had said, that all the money and power in Wyoming couldn’t make the truth any less true.

She wasn’t sure if that helped or not.

* * *

As Liam watched his brother hoist Alexander high in the air in the family room, as close to baby talk with an “up you go!” as Drake Mercer got, he found himself studying Drake’s face and hair and the dimple that deepened when he laughed every time Alexander giggled. Liam had been studying his family since he’d arrived ten minutes ago for the weekly Mercer family dinner. Last Friday night his mother had remarked over the Italian wedding soup course how Alexander was looking more and more like his handsome grandfather every day, especially around the eyes and “something in the expression.” He wondered now if coloring was enough to make people see similarities where otherwise there was none—when people knew they were related.

He’d always figured Alexander must look more like Liza’s side of the family, though he’d never really seen Liza in Alexander’s face. And since Liza had been raised by a few different foster families, she’d never known her family.

“I knew you were going to be a rancher like me,” Drake said, tapping the tiny Stetson Harrington Mercer had bought for Alexander.

“A weekend cowboy, like me,” Harrington corrected. “That’s how it’s done. You devote your weekdays to the family business and the weekends to appreciating the land. Every Mercer has done it that way for generations.”

“A real cowboy, weekend or otherwise, walks his own way, blazes his own path,” Drake said, hoisting up Alexander again and earning a giggle.

“A real man puts family first, Drake,” Harrington said, his tone its usual imperious don’t-bother-arguing.

Drake didn’t bother. He’d long stopped. He’d say his piece to a point, but he knew he was talking to a brick wall.

Liam admired his brother. He’d been blazing that own path since he was knee-high, doing things his way, taking the punishment and lecture rather than follow rules that didn’t make sense to him or came from someone else’s rigid vision for how he should act and think. Now, at twenty-seven, Drake was the foreman’s right-hand man on a very prosperous cattle ranch and would likely take over the retiring-age man’s job in the next year or two.

Liam had never thought he and his brother looked that much alike, but as he studied Drake, he could see how similar their features were. They had their mom’s blue eyes and thick, dark hair, though Drake wore his a bit longer and messier than Liam did. Liam had his mother’s strong, straight nose, while Drake more resembled Harrington Mercer.

How could someone who looks so much like me be so different from me in every way? their father would mutter at many a family dinner.

He glanced at his son, whom Uncle Drake was now setting down in the giant playpen by the sliding glass doors to the deck. Now that he knew that Alexander was very likely Shelby’s son, he saw Shelby in his sweet little face.

“Must we have the same conversation every Friday?” Larissa Mercer asked, dusting her hands on her apron as she emerged from the kitchen, the smell of something delicious wafting out. His mother loved to cook and was working her way through one of the Barefoot Contessa’s Italian cookbooks. “We’re here together. That’s what matters. Let’s just enjoy ourselves.”

Harrington Mercer gave Drake a half frown and poured himself a drink. Before he could respond, the doorbell rang.

Shelby. And Shane.

“I should have mentioned this earlier—I invited a friend to dinner,” Liam announced. “She also has a six-month-old.” He’d had a few hours to let his mother know. He also could have mentioned it when he’d arrived. But he’d found himself unable to get the words out.

Plus, he’d be hit with a barrage of questions about who Shelby was to him—with the assumption that they were a couple. Liam hadn’t brought a woman to a family dinner in a couple of years, since he’d gotten his heart stomped on as a love-struck twenty-three-year-old bursting with a marriage proposal. Then two years ago he’d finally gotten serious again with another woman, a VP at Mercer Industries whom he’d discovered had been more interested in him as a stepping stone and left MI high and dry in the middle of a merger when she’d gotten a better offer from a rival company. Then a year ago there was Liza, whom he might have fallen for if he hadn’t been so guarded against betrayal. But Liza had always said she had no interest in meeting his snooty, highfalutin family, which had made him laugh. All she’d wanted from Liam was his time and attention, and he hadn’t even been willing to give that. She’d been right to dump him when he told her he wasn’t interested in marriage or children—probably ever.

His mother’s eyes lit up. “Ah, a new love interest!” She turned toward the family room, where her husband and younger son were ignoring each other in opposite corners. “Ooh, Harrington, did you hear? Liam’s bringing home a girlfriend to meet us!” She turned back to Liam. “I had a feeling you’d fall for a single mother of a baby. Gives you quite a bit in common from the start.”

Liam headed toward the door. “Actually, Shelby is just a friend.”

His mother smiled slyly. “Sure she is. You’ve never invited a friend to Friday dinner before.”

Liam pulled open the door, and the sight of Shelby stopped him cold. It wasn’t just that she was beautiful; she was. But she suddenly seemed so...necessary, as if he couldn’t get through the day without being with her and had just realized it when he saw her face.

That was nuts.

They were in the middle of one hell of a thing. That was it. She was like a lifeline. She was the other half in this. Not his other half, of course, but the other half in this insanity. It made sense that he needed her to feel some sense of grounding.

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