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“If that’s the case, hat’s off to your mom for making sure he wasn’t in your life.”
Hm. He’d never thought of it that way.
“I don’t know about this missing twenty-five percent, but I know a little bit about the fifty percent that you bring to the table. You’re strong. Smart. Caring. Very…muscular. Okay, I’ll just say it. Sexy. Funny, in a very dry sort of way that might take a baby a while to understand, but still, funny. You’re loyal. You came here to help out a friend. You’re brave. You got stabbed trying to protect me. That makes you sort of an idiot, but also protective and courageous. I know they don’t let just anyone into the FBI, so you must have passed all kinds of tests to get accepted. You have a sense of duty. Why else would you be here right now? A baby’s coming and you’re going to do right by him or her. You’re responsible.”
She was making it sound like a chore, when it was anything but that.
“That’s not why I’m here,” he growled. “I’m here because I want to be. Not necessarily here,” he corrected, gesturing back at the house. “I’m starting to rethink the whole high-tech house thing. But here. With you.”
“Yes, but you want to be here because you think it’s the right thing to do. You couldn’t live with yourself if you walked away. And now that I know this about your father, I can see why.”
He didn’t try to explain any further.
If she knew that he was never happier than when he was with her, that one of her smiles was worth more to him than a thousand winning lottery tickets, would she panic and tell him to get a grip? Remind him that this was co-parenting, not some damn romance?
“Wait a minute,” she was saying. She tilted her head, then had to clamp her hand over her sun hat to keep it from flying off. “There’s more, isn’t there? I can tell.” She wagged a finger at him. “Maybe I know you better than you think.”
“There’s more. At the hospital in New York, I took a DNA test. It won’t tell me who my father is, but it’ll show something. Pretty soon you’ll know all the gory details about your baby-daddy.” He couldn’t keep the gloom out of his voice.
“You assume it’s going to be bad! Well, that’s the difference between us. I think it’s going to be good news. Not that it will mean anything, because you are you, not your DNA.”
“That’s literally what DNA is.”
“Okay, well, it’s part of you, sure. But you’re more than your DNA. What about character? Personality? Beliefs? Principles?Soul?”
“Oh crap. Are you going to get spiritual on me now?”
She rolled her eyes. “Let me guess. You only believe in things you can see and touch, and you call that logic.”
“I call it sensible.”
“It’s not at all sensible. Do you really believe this vast amazing universe only contains things that you personally can see and touch?”
Okay, she had him there. But also, the argument had brought new color to her cheeks and a passionate shine to her eyes. She took his breath away, made the blood pulse in his ears. Was there anyone else in this vast amazing universe who had ever had this effect on him?
What was it? What was it called? Where did it come from? He needed to understand it. He might not be able to see and touch it, but he certainly felt it.
He threw up his hands. “You’re right, I wasn’t actually being logical. I don’t want to give logic a bad name, because I rely on it. Logic tells me that there’s plenty of shit I don’t know.”
“Good.” Looking satisfied, she leaned back and fanned her face again. “Wow, that was fun. Did I just win an argument?”
“Were we arguing? I think we were discussing.”
“Call it what you like, I’m pretty sure I won.”
“Competitive, are you?” He took out the little FBI notebook he still carried because he was so used to it. “I’m writing that down.”
“Why?”
“We want to know each other, right?” He grinned at her. Having shared his big secret, he felt light as air. She wasn’t ditching him, and that was a glorious relief. “I want to make sure I don’t forget anything. Comp-et-itive. How many I’s does that have?”
Making a face at him, she pulled out her phone and opened her Notes app. “Trouble with spelling. Also, overly reliant on logic,” she dictated.
“Smarter than she wants people to think,” he said out loud as he wrote down the words.
“Uses worry about his DNA to avoid commitment,” she dictated into her phone.
He did a double-take. “Wait…what?”
