With a silent chuckle of his own, Trevor’s trepidation began to fade and he bent his arms, bringing Bradley back against his chest.
He was kind of a cute kid. Didn’t mean he was a Jarrod, but he still had that whole irresistible baby thing going on that Trevor had heard so much about, especially where women and their biological clocks were concerned.
A minute or two later, when Haylie climbed out of the car with the safety seat, Trevor was making faces at Bradley and bouncing up and down the way he’d seen her do back in his office.
“I can take him now,” she said.
Trevor shook his head. “That’s okay, I’ve got him.”
After all, this wasn’t as tough as he’d thought, and if the baby turned out not to be his, it might be the only chance he got to do the new-dad thing for quite some time. And if Bradley did turn out to be his son…well, he could use all the practice he could get.
Sliding his glance to Haylie, he nodded at the car seat. “Can you get that, or do you want me to carry it?”
“I can get it, but…” She frowned a bit and sounded slightly worried. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather trade?”
“Nope, we’re fine,” he said, giving Bradley another little jiggle that had him giggling. “Make sure your car is locked and that you have everything you need before we take off.”
Half an hour after that, Trevor pulled the Hummer into a spot in front of the doctor’s office and cut the engine. Haylie was already out of the car and working to collect Bradley when he got around to her side to help.
Unlike while Trevor had been holding him, the little boy’s nose was now wrinkled, his mouth pursed and his eyes squinted in displeasure. He was wiggling and whimpering, and the pink in his cheeks definitely didn’t have anything to do with the cold.
“What’s wrong with him?” Trevor asked, trying not to let his concern slip into his tone.
“He’s just fussy,” Haylie replied, lifting the child from the car seat and shouldering him at the same time she hefted the bulging diaper bag with its yellow giraffe and purple hippopotamus.
Trevor took the bag for her and closed the door before they started up the sidewalk in front of the tall redbrick building.
“Can you get a bottle out of there?” she asked, pointing to one of the bag’s side pockets. “He’s probably hungry, and after that he’ll need a new diaper and then a nap. I hope this doesn’t take too long, or we’re going to have one very loud, unhappy baby on our hands. Unless he sleeps through the whole thing. That would be nice.”
A loud, unhappy baby didn’t sound like something Trevor cared to experience. Unfortunately, DNA tests tended to involve needles and poking, which he didn’t think would do much to improve Bradley’s current disposition.
Entering the office, he left Haylie to find a seat and give Bradley his bottle while he let the receptionist know in a whispered voice who he was and why they were here.
It didn’t take long for the nurse to call them back and lead them to a private exam room, where the baby continued to empty his bottle, his lashes fluttering as his eyes grew heavier and heavier. Moments later, the doctor arrived, greeting Trevor and introducing himself to Haylie. After a brief examination of Bradley, who had finished his bottle and was now sound asleep in Haylie’s arms, the doctor pushed his stool back and regarded both adults.
“It’s my understanding that you’d like a paternity test to determine that the child is…”
Dr. Lazlo let the sentence trail off, and Haylie quickly supplied, “His,” with a tilt of her head in Trevor’s direction.
“Bradley is my sister’s son,” she continued to explain. “Heather passed away two months ago in an auto accident, without informing Mr. Jarrod that he was a father. Mr. Jarrod wants to be sure I’m telling him the truth about Bradley’s parentage and didn’t come to Jarrod Ridge to pan for gold with a baby and a well-constructed story.”
Trevor shot her an annoyed glance, leaning back against the high countertop to cross his arms over his chest. “That’s probably more than the good doctor needs to know,” he pointed out.
The doctor gave a friendly chuckle. “Not to worry. I’ve conducted thousands of these tests, and I assure you, I’m very discreet. I’ll handle your samples and the results personally, and send them to the lab under fictitious names.”
Trevor inclined his head in approval, but he still wasn’t happy. Bad enough they were here at all—he really didn’t need the entire situation spelled out for him again, or for relative strangers.
“Now,” the physician said, resting his hands on his knees. “There are two types of paternity tests. Both have long, hard-to-pronounce medical names that I’m sure you don’t care about, but suffice to say that one, PCR, involves swabbing the inside of the cheek, the other, RFLP, drawing blood.”
“Which is more accurate?” Trevor wanted to know.
“RFLP, the blood sample. We can do both, if you like. Each test is fairly accurate, but with both there would be very little doubt as to the child’s paternity.”
Cocking his head, Trevor turned to look at Haylie. She stared up at him, her eyes and face telling him nothing of her inner thoughts.
“Would you mind if we did both?” he asked. “To be certain.”
She was silent for several seconds, then lifted one slim shoulder in a shrug. “It’s all right with me, but the blood test is definitely going to wake Bradley, and he is definitely going to shatter some eardrums.”
“We’ll start with the buccal swab,” the doctor told her, “and I’ll be as gentle as possible.”
Twenty minutes later, Bradley was once again sound asleep, this time in the backseat of Trevor’s Hummer as they headed back to Jarrod Ridge. The needle prick had woken him, just as Haylie warned it would, and he’d shrieked at the top of his lungs for a good three minutes. But after that, he’d wound down to a few ragged whimpers before drifting off again against Haylie’s shoulder.
Breaking the silence inside the car, Trevor murmured, “The doctor said the test results could take a couple of weeks, depending on how backed up the lab is.”
She nodded, twisting in her seat to look at him rather than out the window. “I think he’s right about not putting a rush on it. You want to keep this quiet until you know for sure whether Bradley is your son, and that would only rouse suspicions.”
“I believe Dr. Lazlo will be as discreet as possible,” he agreed, “but things have a way of getting out, anyway, especially if employees get curious and start poking around.”
“I don’t mind waiting, if you don’t. And I promise to be just as circumspect as the doctor. No one back home knows anything about you. I don’t think they’re even particularly curious about who Bradley’s father might be.” Her mouth turned down at the corners, eyes narrowing. “Heather had that kind of reputation. No one was surprised when she turned up pregnant without a man hanging around to claim the baby.”
To Trevor, she sounded slightly embarrassed by that fact, as well as disapproving, but also…defensive. As though she hadn’t agreed with her sister’s behavior, wouldn’t have chosen that sort of lifestyle for either of them, but would stick up for Heather no matter what. Even now that she was gone.
He couldn’t fault her for that. As it turned out, he had one sister more than he’d known about while growing up, but that didn’t keep him from feeling protective of both his full sister, Melissa, and his recently discovered half sister, Erica.
For that matter, he felt protective of his entire family. The Jarrods were sort of like the Three Musketeers—all for one and one for all.
None of them were perfect, but despite their mistakes and the occasional flaw in their personalities, he would still defend any one of them to the death. That Haylie felt the same way about her sister—and her sister’s child—didn’t surprise him.
“That’s something else we need to talk about, actually.”
“What?” she asked, her brows drawing down in confusion.
“Where you’ll be staying until the test results are in.”
“Oh. That’s no problem. As soon as we get back to your office, I’ll give you my address and phone number, all the ways to reach me. You’re welcome to visit Bradley anytime, if you like. Although, if you’d rather not until you know for sure…I’ll understand,” she finished quietly.
Understand, but not necessarily approve, he thought with some amusement.
Not that it mattered.
“That’s not what I meant,” he told her.
“I’m sorry. What did you mean then?”
“I’ve been giving it some thought, and until we know for sure whether or not Bradley is my son, I’d like the two of you to move in with me.”
Four
For long minutes, Haylie was too stunned to respond. She sat there in the passenger seat of Trevor’s SUV with her mouth hanging open. Catching flies, as her mother used to say. But she couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d announced he wanted to give up his family’s millions and go to work as a fry cook at a fast-food restaurant.
Shifting around to face him more fully, she wiggled inside of her overstuffed parka, loosening the zipper in an effort to cool down and breathe a bit more easily. The heating vents were blowing, but she didn’t think they were the reason she was suddenly feeling flushed.
No, that would be confusion mixed with a fair dose of alarm.
After swallowing a couple of times and barely resisting the urge to squiggle her ears to make sure she hadn’t misheard him, she managed to utter two rather strangled words. “Excuse me?”
Without taking his eyes off the road, he said, “I think it’s best for everyone involved.”
She really wanted to slap her ears and make sure she was hearing him correctly, because nothing he was saying seemed to make sense. Swallowing again, she cleared her throat and asked, “How so?”
He shrugged one broad shoulder, made even broader by the thickness of his coat. “If Bradley is mine, then I’ve got some lost time to make up for. I’d prefer to keep him close by, start getting to know him…and get used to being a father.”
His voice tightened with his last few words, as though the thought that he might truly be the father of a little boy he’d known nothing about until a couple of hours ago was something he’d prefer not to think about.
Too bad said little boy was sleeping in the backseat at that very moment. And while Haylie certainly didn’t have the kind of money to gamble with that Trevor Jarrod had, she’d have been willing to bet the DNA tests would come out with a glaring “Congratulations, Daddy!” message stamped all over them.
“I can understand that,” she agreed, “but it won’t take that long for the paternity results to come in. And Bradley is already four months old—surely another couple of weeks won’t make that much difference. Besides, I have a life back in Denver. A business to run. I can’t just pick up and disappear.”