The Paternity Test Read online

  Revisit this heartfelt story of surprise parenthood from New York Times bestselling author Sherryl Woods.

  The stick turned blue on Jane Dawson’s pregnancy test just in time to stop her biological clock from running wild. But there was just one small problem—she’d unwittingly thrown her former flame into daddyhood!

  Originally published in the 2010 A Mother’s Touch anthology.

  Sherryl Woods Booklist

  The Sweet Magnolias

  Stealing Home

  A Slice of Heaven

  Feels Like Family

  Welcome to Serenity

  Home in Carolina

  Sweet Tea at Sunrise

  Honeysuckle Summer

  Midnight Promises

  Catching Fireflies

  Where Azaleas Bloom

  Swan Point

  Chesapeake Shores

  The Inn at Eagle Point

  Flowers on Main

  Harbor Lights

  A Chesapeake Shores Christmas

  Driftwood Cottage

  Moonlight Cove

  Beach Lane

  An O’Brien Family Christmas

  The Summer Garden

  A Seaside Christmas

  The Christmas Bouquet

  Dogwood Hill

  Willow Brook Road

  The Devaney Brothers

  The Devaney Brothers: Ryan & Sean

  The Devaney Brothers: Michael & Patrick

  The Devaney Brothers: Daniel

  The Calamity Janes

  The Calamity Janes: Cassie & Karen

  The Calamity Janes: Gina & Emma

  The Calamity Janes: Lauren

  The Adams Dynasty

  A Christmas Blessing

  Natural Born Daddy

  The Cowboy and His Baby

  The Rancher and His Unexpected Daughter

  The Littlest Angel

  Natural Born Trouble

  Unexpected Mommy

  The Cowgirl and the Unexpected Wedding

  Natural Born Lawman

  The Unclaimed Baby

  The Cowboy and His Wayward Bride

  Suddenly, Annie’s Father

  The Cowboy and the New Year’s Baby

  Dylan and the Baby Doctor

  The Pint-Sized Secret

  Marrying a Delacourt

  The Delacourt Scandal

  Rose Cottage Sisters

  Three Down the Aisle

  What’s Cooking?

  The Laws of Attraction

  For the Love of Pete

  The Paternity Test

  Sherryl Woods

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  PROLOGUE

  Next Saturday’s baby shower would be the fifth Jane Dawson had been invited to in the past three months. Every time she turned around, it seemed, another friend or another co-worker was having a baby. She was being overwhelmed by the sight of rounded tummies, radiant faces and silver rattles.

  She’d become such a regular at Annie’s Baby Boutique that Annie routinely called when something special came in. They’d become fast friends, and the boutique had become Jane’s favorite after-school haunt for a cup of tea and some girl-talk.

  As a result, Jane’s biological clock was ticking so loudly, she was sure it could be heard throughout her hometown. She would be thirty in July, not so old for having babies these days, but definitely getting up there, especially with no prospective father in sight.

  Once again back at Annie’s, this time specifically to buy a present for Daisy Markham’s shower on Saturday, Jane rubbed her fingers over the cheerful yellow gingham liner in an antique carved oak crib that was Annie’s latest treasure and sighed heavily. She’d been sighing a lot lately. Wishing, too, and dreaming.

  It was getting more and more difficult to hide her envy, as well. Oohing and ahhing over one more hand-knitted pair of booties, one more tiny outfit, might send her over the edge. Today, she thought looking at the crib, could very well be the day.

  “What do you think?” Annie asked, glowing with pride over the refinished piece. She still had streaks of wood stain and polish on her hands. Her no-nonsense short hair was mussed and she hadn’t gotten around to so much as a dusting of powder across her face, much less any lipstick.

  “Is that not the most beautiful crib you’ve ever seen?” she demanded.

  Jane tried to hide her own yearning to possess that crib—to have a reason to possess that crib—and nodded. “It’s lovely.”

  “Can you imagine?” Annie asked indignantly, buffing the already gleaming surface. “I found it stuck way back in a dim corner of an antique place out on Route 3. You should have seen it. It had been painted half a dozen times at least. Stripping it, I went through layers of white, blue, pink and several more of white paint. It was caked on so thick, it wasn’t until I got almost down to the wood that I saw the carving.”

  The shop’s owner rubbed her fingers lovingly over the intricate design. “A little angel. Have you ever seen anything so precious?”

  “Never,” Jane said, her yearning to claim it deepening.

  Annie grinned. “Well, I know it’s too extravagant for a shower present, but I just knew of everyone who comes in here, you’d appreciate it the most. I had to call the minute I put it in the store. Sometimes the urge to share my finds overwhelms me. I hope you don’t mind that I left a message at the school. It’s not like I’m trying to make a sale. I know perfectly well you don’t need a crib.”

  Something inside Jane snapped at Annie’s offhand remark. “I’ll take it,” she said as if to prove her wrong. “Just the way it is with the yellow gingham liner and all. Put it on my account and send me the bill.”

  Almost immediately she regretted the impulsive words as Annie gaped.

  “But—”

  Jane cut off the shocked protest. “You can have it delivered to my place, right? John will bring it by Saturday morning, won’t he?” she said, referring to Annie’s husband, who frequently helped out with deliveries on weekends.

  “Of course, but—”

  “Thanks,” she said, cutting off her friend’s questions, logical questions for which she obviously had no rational answers. “I’ve got to run. I have a PTA meeting tonight. All the teachers have to be there early to greet the parents. We’re trying to butter them up so they’ll help us raise the money to upgrade the cafeteria. Don’t forget to wrap up that little pink sweater and bonnet for Daisy’s shower. It’s Saturday afternoon. You can send the package along with the crib.”

  “Of course.”

  Jane felt Annie’s puzzled, worried gaze follow her as she left the store and walked up the hill toward the old brick school.

  Not until much later, after the PTA meeting, after she was back home and sipping a cup of tea, did she concede that Annie might have cause to wonder what an unmarried, uninvolved woman was going to do with a baby crib. Hopefully she could come up with a plausible explanation before everyone in town concluded that she’d turned into an eccentric old spinster whose hormones required serious adjustment.

  * * *

  Annie’s devoted husband, still handsome and fit at fifty, delivered the crib at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday. He set it up in Jane’s spare bedroom and never once asked why in the world she’d bought it. Jane swore her undying gratitude to the man for that.

  After he was gone, she made herself a cup of raspberry tea and sat down in the tiny bedroom to admire the crib. She dreamed of the day when she’d have a baby of her own sleeping on the pretty yellow sheets, when she could decorate the walls of the r
oom with bright paper and a border of ducks and rabbits and put a rocker in the corner. The image was so clear, she felt an incredible pang of longing to make it real.

  “But it’s not real,” she told herself sternly, forcing herself to leave the room and close the door firmly behind her. The purchase of that crib suddenly seemed foolish. She was months, if not years, ahead of herself.

  This time it was her friend Daisy who was having the baby, her third. She already had two boys and had discovered that this one would be a girl. She and her husband were over the moon about it, even though the boys were teenagers already and this baby had been a huge surprise.

  Jane told herself that the sharp stab of envy she felt was normal, the alarm going off on her biological clock, so to speak. Buying a crib, however, was a bit of an overreaction. Maybe she should call Annie, admit she’d made a ridiculous mistake and have John pick up the crib and take it back to the store. She even reached for the phone, but she couldn’t seem to make herself dial.

  If only…

  She brought herself up short. There was no sense looking back. Mike Marshall, the love of her life, was in her past. They had made a rational, mature decision together to end the relationship nearly a year ago when he’d been offered an incredible job in San Francisco. A clean break, they had decided. No looking back.

  Mike had always dreamed of the kind of opportunities this new company would give him. He’d craved the recognition it could bring him as an engineer, the financial stability of the salary a big firm could offer.

  Jane’s dreams were different, simpler—a home, a family, roots in a community where neighbors knew each other and cared about each other. It was almost the way she’d grown up, the way she wanted her own children to be raised, quietly and with a greater sense of stability in their lives than she had had with a father who’d always been running off.

  Since Mike had gone, she’d told herself a thousand times that they’d made the right decision, the sensible decision. Love sometimes meant letting go. If they’d been meant to be together, they would have walked down the aisle years sooner, but Mike had always held back, needing the proof that he could support a family in a style his own background had never provided.

  But Jane still cried herself to sleep thinking about him. Being sensible, she’d concluded, sucked.

  Since he’d gone, she’d hidden her favorite snapshot of him deep in the bottom of her drawer, but every now and then she stumbled across it and each and every time it brought tears to her eyes. The sale of his old house, right next door, had made his move final and the permanency of it had left her shaken for months. Lately she’d told herself she was over him, that she had to be over him. But she wasn’t, not by a long shot.

  Once they had talked about a future, about having babies and growing old together, but that golden opportunity in California had been too powerful for Mike to resist. She wouldn’t have let him turn it down, even if he’d wanted to.

  And she hadn’t been ready or willing to leave the town and the job that suited her so perfectly. Both of them had dug in their heels, unable to see any way to compromise. And so a relationship that had once meant the world to both of them had ended.

  By now he’d probably found someone new, someone more suited to a big-city lifestyle, someone whose social life revolved around more than baby showers and picnics and an occasional movie. She hoped he had. She didn’t want him to be as lonely and miserable as she was.

  What if he was, though? What if he missed her as desperately as she missed him? If that were the case, though, wouldn’t he have called?

  No, of course not, she told herself, not if he took their agreement as seriously as she did. Not if that famous Irish pride of his had kicked in as viciously as hers had. When it came to pure stubbornness, they were a perfect match.

  She opened the door to the spare room and stared at the crib again, imagining her baby there, hers and Mike’s. A chubby, strong little boy with round cheeks and thick black hair just like Mike’s. Or maybe a rosy-cheeked little girl with glints of red in her hair just like Jane’s.

  Had she closed the door on that dream too soon? Had she accepted Mike’s departure too readily, conceding defeat when she should have been fighting tooth and nail to find a way to make it work?

  Finding that crib at Annie’s had forced her to face emotions she had convinced herself were dead and buried. If she still loved Mike as deeply as ever, didn’t she owe it to both of them to see him again, to see if there was anything left now that he’d had a chance to test his wings in the kind of job and city he’d always dreamed of?

  Spring break was just around the corner. So was Mike’s birthday, though she’d always been more sentimental about such occasions than he had been. After she paid for the crib, her savings account was going to be low, but there was enough left for a trip to San Francisco without dipping into the rainy day money her mother’s small insurance policy had left her. Could there be a better investment of her savings? She couldn’t think of one.

  Maybe they would fall in love all over again. Or maybe they would sleep together one last time for old times’ sake.

  Maybe by some glorious fluke they would make a baby, she thought wistfully. Okay, it was highly unlikely, but what a joyous blessing it would be! Whether their relationship resumed or faltered, she would treasure a child of theirs, raise it on her own, if need be.

  The decision to go to San Francisco was made as impulsively as the purchase of that crib. It took an hour on the phone with the travel agent to nail down all the arrangements. By the time she was finished she was late for Daisy’s shower.

  The party was in full swing when she arrived, the laughter and teasing audible from outside. When she walked in, the group fell silent and stared.

  “Where on earth have you been?” Daisy demanded, hefting her bulky figure from a chair and rushing over to hug Jane. “You’re never late.”

  “We tried calling the house a half-dozen times but the line was busy,” Ginger added. “Donna was about ready to drive over there.”

  “So? What happened?” Daisy prodded. “Don’t tell me Mike showed up on your doorstep after all these months.”

  “Nothing like that,” Jane said. “I just lost track of the time.”

  “You never lose track of the time,” Daisy protested.

  “Well, this time I did,” she said, a defensive note in her voice that clearly startled them.

  Donna, who’d known her since first grade, studied her intently. “Okay, maybe he didn’t show up, but it has something to do with Mike, doesn’t it? Did he call?”

  “No, he didn’t call.”

  “But it does have something to do with him?” Donna persisted with the unerring accuracy of such a longtime friend.

  Jane wasn’t ready to discuss her plans with anyone, not even her closest friends. She forced a brilliant smile. “Hey, forget about me, okay? I’m here now and I want to see the presents.” She handed her own to Daisy to add to the pile beside her. “Get busy. You look as if that baby could pop out any second now. I want you to finish opening all these before it does.”

  With some reluctance, everyone finally turned their attention back to the gifts. Jane oohed and ahhed with the rest of them, but her mind was already somewhere else, in a city she’d never seen, with a man who was part of her soul.

  CHAPTER 1

  Engineer Mike Marshall had had more adventures than most men twice his age. Most of the riskiest had come in the past twelve months, since his move to San Francisco. Until today—his thirty-second birthday—it hadn’t occurred to him to wonder why he was suddenly so willing to put his life on the line.

  The truth was, he’d always been eager to take risks. As a kid, he took every dare ever offered. Now, though, he didn’t even wait for the dare. If an overseas assignment for his company didn’t satisfy his hunger for adventure, then he scheduled a trek up Mount Everest or a rafting trip on the Snake River. It had been months since he’d had a spare minute, much less a mom
ent’s boredom.

  And yet, something was missing. He knew it, just the way he knew when a design for a bridge or a dam wasn’t quite right. He stared out his office window at the Golden Gate Bridge emerging from a thick fog and tried to put a name to what was missing from his life.

  Not excitement, that was for sure. Every day was packed with it.

  Not companionship. He’d met a dozen women, beautiful, successful women, who shared his passion for adventure.

  Not money. His salary was more than adequate for his needs, more than he’d ever dreamed of making back in Virginia. For the first time in his life, he felt financially secure, able to support a wife and family if the right woman ever came along.

  Not challenges. The partners in his engineering firm only took on the most challenging jobs.

  What, then? What was the elusive something that made him feel as if the rest hardly mattered? What was behind this vague sense of dissatisfaction? It irked him that he couldn’t pin it down.

  To his relief, the buzzing of his intercom interrupted the rare and troubling introspection.

  “Yes, Kim. What is it?”

  “You have a visitor, sir. She doesn’t have an appointment,” she added with a little huff of disapproval.

  Mike grinned. Kim Jensen was a retired army drill sergeant with close-cropped gray hair and the protective instincts of a pit bull. She maintained his schedule with the precision of a space shuttle flight plan. Flexibility was not part of her nature.

  “Does this visitor have a name?” he asked.

  “Jane Dawson, sir.”

  The clipped announcement rattled him as nothing else could have. His heart slammed to a stop, then took off as if he’d just been advised that it was his turn to bungee-jump from the penthouse floor of a Union Square office building. The reaction startled him almost as badly as the mere thought of Jane in San Francisco. Jane, who’d never flown in her life, had come clear across the country, out of the blue, with no warning? He had to see it with his own eyes.

  “Send her in, by all means.”

  “Are you sure, sir? You have an appointment at fourteen hundred hours. Sorry, sir. I mean in ten minutes.”