Baby for the Tycoon: The Tycoon's Temporary Baby / The Texas Billionaire's Baby / Navy Officer to Family Man

Eight

Some things are embarrassing no matter what your age. Having your father stare down your boyfriend is one of them.

At seventeen, she and her boyfriend had been caught necking in the back of his truck. The make-out session had been bad enough. Worse still was the fact that her date had been high. Her father wasn’t very forgiving of that sort of thing. Never mind that she hadn’t known it at the time. She’d gotten reamed. He’d had the poor boy arrested. And had her hauled in and tested for drug use just to make a point. Was it any wonder the next year when she went to college she’d picked one thousands of miles away?

She’d always assumed that would be the low point of her boyfriend/father debacles. But this—oddly enough—felt worse.

Maybe it was because Devin—or had it been Drake?—had been carefully chosen for his many red-flag qualities. He’d been guy number twenty-six in her ongoing teenage quest to piss off her parents.

As she followed Jonathon into the hall, she held her breath, half afraid of the argument to come and half relieved to be escaping Jonathon’s one-on-one scrutiny.

Her parents were waiting for them in the hall. Her mother sent a wan smile, a hint of apology in her eyes. Her father, on the other hand, looked as if he could happily strangle Jonathon with his bare hands. Which was saying something, because Wendy had always figured it her father was going to murder someone, as a lifelong hunter and a member of the NRA, he would opt for a gun rather than sheer brute force.

Even with Devin—or was it Derek?—her father hadn’t seemed this mad. Normally, she knew how to handle her parents. Twenty-three solid years of pushing their buttons made her an expert at undoing the damage. But just now, she was drawing a blank. Every brain cell she had was still stuttering with the memory of that soul-searing kiss.

He could have taken her right there, with her parents on the other side of the door, and she would have been okay with that. More than okay. She would have been begging for more.

Not a good thought, that one.

Since she could barely put a single coherent thought together, she was infinitely thankful that Jonathon seemed to be recovering more quickly than she was.

He draped an arm over her shoulder in a possessive, but nonsexual way. Giving her parents a distant nod, he said, “Mr. and Mrs. Morgan, I’m sorry you saw that.”

“Oh, no need to apologize—” her mother began.

“You’re sorry we saw that.” Her father talked over her mother. “Or you’re sorry you did it?” His tone was as ice-cold as his reproof. “Because to my way of thinking, a man who loves his wife doesn’t fool around with her in the middle of the morning when her family is in the house and the child they hope to rear is in the next room.”

“Dad!”

“Now, Tim—”

Jonathon held up a hand, stopping both her protest and her mother’s. He drew out the moment just long enough for everyone to know he wasn’t about to just kowtow to her father’s bullying. “And to my way of thinking, a family that respects their daughter doesn’t show up on her doorstep unannounced.”

Her mother opened her mouth, looked ready to say something, then pressed her lips into a tight line and stomped off down the stairs.

Wendy’s father continued to glare at Jonathon. Jonathon did a damn fine job of glaring back.

“If you think making my wife cry will endear you to me,” her father said through gritted teeth, “then you’re sorely mistaken.”

Wendy wanted to protest. Those hadn’t been tears in her mother’s eyes. Just anger. But Jonathon didn’t give her a chance to point it out.

“The same goes for you. Sir,” Jonathon bit out. But apparently he couldn’t leave well enough alone. Because a second later he stepped closer to her father and said, “And I’ll have you know, that before she agreed to marry me, I never once so much as touched your daughter at work. I have the greatest respect for her intelligence. And her decisions. I’m not sure you can say the same.”

Both men seemed to expand to fill their anger. Any second now, they would either start bumping their chests together like roosters or one of them would throw the first punch.

She figured they were equally matched. Her father was a solid six-five, and a barrel-chested two hundred and fifty pounds. Plus, he’d worked on rigs alongside roughnecks in his youth. Jonathon, on the other hand, had grown up poor, spent a few weeks in juvie, and had two older brothers, both of whom had criminal records. She figured he could probably handle himself.

She looked from one man to the other. Neither of them seemed to be willing to budge. Finally, she just shook her head. “I’m going to go talk to Mom. You two, sort this out.”

She gave Jonathon’s arm a little squeeze, willing him to see her apology in her eyes. Then, as she walked passed her dad, she laid a hand on his arm. “Dad, I’m not seventeen anymore. And if Jonathon was planning on besmirching my honor or whatever it is you’re worried about, then he probably wouldn’t have married me. Give him a chance. You have no idea how good a guy he is.”

She went down the stairs, half expecting her father and Jonathon to come tumbling down after her in a jumble of brawling arms and legs. And she tried to tell herself that if they did, it wasn’t any of her business.

Peyton was apparently asleep again, because a stream of lullabies could be heard through the baby monitor sitting on the kitchen counter. Her mother was doing what most Texas women do when they’re upset. Cooking.

Wendy gave a bark of disbelieving laughter.

Her mother’s head jerked up, her eyes still sharp with annoyance. She had a hand towel slung over her shoulder, paring knife in her hand and a chicken defrosting in the prep sink.

She gave a sniff of disapproval before returning to the task at hand, dicing celery.

Wendy bumped her hip against the edge of the island that stretched the length of the kitchen. That honed black granite was like the river of difference that always divided them. Her mother on one side: cooking to suppress the emotions she couldn’t voice. Wendy on the other: baffled at her mother’s ability to soldier on in silence for so many years.

“You might as well just say it,” her mother snapped without looking up from the celery.

“I didn’t say anything,” Wendy protested.

“But you were thinking it. You always did think louder than most people shout.”

Wendy blew out a breath. “Fine. It’s just…” Anything she said, her mother would take as a criticism. There was probably no way around that. “You’re alone in the kitchen for less than five minutes and you start cooking?”

Her mother arched a disdainful brow. “Someone has to feed everyone. You know Mema isn’t going to want to go out to eat. God only knows what the food is like up here.”

Wendy laughed in disbelief. “Trust me. There are plenty of restaurants in Palo Alto that are just fine. Even by your standards. And we’re a thirty-minute drive to San Francisco, where they have some of the best restaurants in the world. I think on the food front, we’re okay. And if Mema doesn’t want to go out, there are probably two dozen restaurants that would deliver.”

Naturally, having food delivered wasn’t something that would have occurred to her mother. Back in Texas, all of the Morgans lived within a few miles of each other, in various houses spread over the old Morgan homestead, deep in the big piney woods of East Texas. Sure you could have food catered out there, but not delivered. As a kid, Wendy used to bribe the pizza delivery guys with hundred-dollar tips, but that only worked on slow nights.

Her mom sighed. “I’ve already—”

“Right. You’ve already started defrosting the chicken.” Here her mother was, making chicken and dumplings. Wendy could barely identify the fridge, given that it was paneled to match the cabinetry. She walked down the island, so she stood just opposite her mother. “Give me a knife and I’ll get started on the carrots.”

Her mother crossed to a drawer, pulled out a vegetable peeler and knife, then pulled a cutting board from a lower cabinet. A few seconds of silence later and Wendy was at work across from her mom.

Her mother had always been a curious mix of homespun Texas farmwife and old oil money. Wendy’s maternal grandparents had been hardscrabble farmers before striking oil on their land in the sixties. Having lived through the dustbowl of the fifties, and despite marrying into a family of old money and big oil, her mother had never quite shaken off the farm dirt. It was one of the things Wendy loved best about her mom.

“You used to love to help me in the kitchen,” her mother said suddenly.

Wendy couldn’t tell if there was more than nostalgia in her voice. “You used to let me,” she reminded her mother. She paused for a second, considering the carrot under her knife. “But you never really needed me there. I stopped wanting to help when I realized that whatever I did wasn’t going to be good enough.”

Her mother’s hand stilled and she looked up. “Is that what you think?”

Wendy continued slicing the carrots for a few minutes in silence, enjoying the way the knife slid through the fibrous vegetable. As she chopped, she felt some of her anger dissipating. Maybe there was something to this cooking-when-you’re-upset thing.

“Momma, nothing I’ve ever done has been good enough for this family.” She gave a satisfying slice to a carrot. “Not my lack of interest in social climbing. Not my unfocused college education.” She chopped another carrot to bits. “And certainly not my job at FMJ.”

“Well,” her mother said, wiping her hands on the towel. “Now that you’ve landed Jonathon—”

“No, Momma.” Wendy slammed the knife down. “My job at FMJ had nothing to do with landing a husband. If all I wanted was a rich husband, you could have arranged that for me as soon as I was of age.” Picking the knife back up, she sliced through a carrot with a smooth, even motion. Keep it smooth. Keep it calm. “I work at FMJ because it’s a company I believe in. And because I enjoy my work. That’s enough for me. And for once in my life, I’d like for it to be enough for you and Daddy.”

“Honey, if it seems like I’ve been trying to fix you your entire life, it’s because I know how hard it is to not quite fit in with this family. I know how hard this world of wealth and privilege can be to people who are different. I didn’t want that for you.”

“Momma, I’m never going to fit into this world. I’m just not. Your constant browbeating has never done anything except make me feel worse about it.”

Her mother blanched and turned away to dab delicately at her eyes, all the while making unmistakable sniffling noises. “I had no idea.”

Wendy had seen her mother bury emotions often enough to recognize this for the show it so obviously was.

“Oh, Momma.” Wendy rolled her eyes. “Of course you did. You just figured you were stronger than I was and that eventually you’d win. You never counted on me being just as strong willed as you are.”

After a few minutes of silence, she said softly, “I’m sorry,

Mom.”

Her mother didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Apology accepted.”

“I really do wish you’d been here for the wedding. I guess I should have made sure you knew that.”

Her mom slapped the knife down onto the counter. “You guess?”

“Yes,” she said slowly, putting a little more force into the chopping. “I guess I should have.”

“I am your mother. Is it so wrong for me to wish you’d wanted me here enough to—”

“Oh, this is so typical,” she said. “Why should I have to beg you to come to my wedding? I’ve lived in California for over five years. When I first moved here, I invited y’all out to visit all the time. You never came. No one in the family has shown any interest in my life or my work until now. But now that baby Peyton is here, you’ve descended like a plague of locusts and—”

“My land,” her mother said, cutting her off, her hands going to her hips. “And you wonder why we didn’t want to come before now, when you talk about us like that.”

Wendy just shook her head. Once again, she’d managed to offend and horrify her mother. Somehow, her mother always ended up as the bridge between Wendy and the rest of the Morgans. The mediator pulled in both directions, satisfying no one.

“Look, I didn’t mean it like that. Obviously I don’t think you’re a locust. Or a plague.”

“Well, then, how did you mean it?”

“It’s just—” Bracing her hands on either side of the cutting board, she let her head drop while she collected her thoughts. She stared at the neat little carrot circles. They were nearly all uniform. Only a few slices stood out. The bits too bumpy or misshapen. The pieces that didn’t fit.

All her life, she’d felt like that. The imperfect bit that no one wanted and no one knew what to do with. Until she’d gone to work for FMJ. And there, finally, she’d fit in.

Her mother just shook her head, sweeping up the pile of diced celery and dumping it in the pot. “You’re always so eager to believe the worst of us.”

“That’s not true.”

“It most certainly is. All your life, you’ve been rebellious just for the sake of rebellion. Every choice you’ve made since the day you turned fifteen has been designed to irritate your father and grandmother. And now this.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Remember when you were fifteen and you and Bitsy bought those home-perm kits and gave yourselves home perms four days before picture day at the school?”

She did remember. Of course she did. Bitsy had ended up with nice, bouncy curls. But she’d been bald for months while her hair grew back out. Her father had been so mad his face had turned beet-red and her mother had run off to the bathroom for a dose of his blood-pressure medicine.

That had not been her finest moment.

“Or the time you wanted to go to Mexico with that boyfriend of yours. When we told you no, you went anyway.”

“You didn’t have to have the guy arrested,” she said weakly. She couldn’t muster any real indignation.

“And you should have told him you were only sixteen.”

Also, not her proudest moment.

“And don’t try to say we were being overprotective. No sane parent lets their sixteen-year-old daughter leave the country with a boy they barely know.”

“Look, Mom, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I was such a difficult teenager. I’m sorry I never lived up to your expectations. But that has nothing to do with who I am now.”

“Doesn’t it?” Her mom swept up the carrots Wendy had been chopping and dumped them into the pot, lumpy, misshapen bits and all. She added a drizzle of oil in the pan and cranked up the heat. “You’ve rushed into this marriage with this man we’ve never even met—”

There was a note of censure in her voice that Wendy just couldn’t let pass. “This man that I’ve worked with for years. If you’ve never met him, it’s because you never came out to visit.”

Her mother planted both her hands on the counter between them and leaned forward. “Jonathon seems like a very nice man. But if you married him solely to annoy us then—”

“Oh, Marian, don’t be so suspicious.”

Wendy spun around toward the kitchen door to see her father and Jonathon standing just inside. She and her mother had been so intent on their own conversation that neither of them had heard them enter.

The two men had obviously come to an understanding about the argument upstairs. Her father had his arm slung over Jonathon’s shoulders as if they were old buddies. The smile on his face was downright smug.

Jonathon looked less comfortable. In fact, he rather looked like he’d swallowed something nasty. Slowly his gaze shifted from her mother to her. Obviously, he heard everything her mother said to her. And he didn’t like it.

Nine

“I’m sure,” Wendy’s father was saying, “that our little Gwen here has grown out of her rebellions.”

Jonathon swallowed the tight knot of dread in his throat. “Mrs. Morgan, I assure you—”

But Wendy’s mother sent both of them withering glares and he was smart enough to shut up when a woman wielding a butcher knife sent him a look like that.

Wendy pointed the tip of her own knife in her father’s direction. “You stay out of this.” For the first time in years she felt as though she and her mother were actually talking. She wasn’t about to let her father muck it up.

Turning her gaze back to her mother, she continued as if the men hadn’t entered at all. “I’m not a rebellious teenager anymore. I’m a grown woman. With a job I love. I may not have married the next political golden boy and I may not be VP of Twiddling My Thumbs at Morgan Oil, but I’m successful in my own right. And a lot of people would be proud to have me as their daughter.”

“It’s not that we’re not proud,” her mother began. “But—” “Of course there’s a but. There’s always a but.” Her mother ignored her interruption, slicing to the point of the matter as easily as she sliced through the joints in the chicken. “But you’ve always delighted in rebelling against your father at every turn. If I thought for a minute that marrying Jonathon and raising Peyton was truly what you wanted—”

“It is.”

“—and not just another one of your rebellions then I would support you wholeheartedly.”

Wendy threw up her hands. “Then support me!”

“But I know how you are. If Mema or Big Hank, let alone your daddy, announced that the sky is blue, the very next morning you’d run out and join a research committee to scientifically prove that it’s not.”

“You make me sound completely illogical.” Wendy shook her head as if she didn’t even know how to defend herself against her mother’s accusations. “It’s like you haven’t heard anything I just said.”

“Well, you tell me whether or not this is just rebellion.” Her mom propped her fists on her hips. “Everyone in this family thinks Hank Jr. and Helen should raise Peyton, except you. Do you have any logical reason why you’re so darned determined to raise this baby?”

Jonathon had had enough. He stepped away from her father. Pulling Wendy back against his chest, he said calmly, “I believe that’s the point, isn’t it? Everyone in the family except for Wendy. And Bitsy. Since Bitsy didn’t want her brother raising her daughter, shouldn’t that be enough for everyone?”

Marian snapped her mouth closed, narrowing her gaze and setting her jaw at a determined angle. He’d seen that look often enough on Wendy.

“You didn’t know Bitsy,” she said to him, obviously making an effort to moderate her tone. “Bitsy was never happy if she wasn’t stirring up trouble. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but has it occurred to either of you that naming Wendy guardian might just have been her way of creating conflict from beyond the grave?”

He felt Wendy pulling away from him, tensing to speak. He tugged her back soundly against him and said, “I may not have known Bitsy. But I know Wendy. I know she’s going to make a wonderful mother.”

Her mom studied him for a second, apparently searching for signs of his conviction. Finally, she nodded. “Hank Jr.'s wife, Helen, sees that baby as little more than a crawling, crying dollar sign. Peyton is a fast ticket to a bigger chunk of Mema’s estate. Helen will fight you for that baby.”

“Helen has three boys of her own that she’s done a crappy job raising,” Wendy pointed out. “If she hadn’t shipped those boys off to boarding school the second they were old enough to go, maybe I’d see things differently.”

“Just be prepared. Helen’s like a bulldog with a bone when money’s involved.”

“That may be true,” Jonathon said. “But Helen isn’t here now. And we have all weekend to convince Mema that we’ll be the best parents for Peyton.”

Her mother harrumphed. “Don’t think Helen hasn’t figured that out as well. Mark my words, girly, you might be glad we came to visit you here instead of waiting for you to come to us. This might be your only chance alone with Mema to convince her that you and Jonathon are the happy, loving couple you want us all to believe.”

There were few things that terrified Jonathon. He thought of himself as a reasonable and logical man. Irrational fears were for small children. Not adults.

At nineteen, he’d spent a solid hour in the dorm room of a buddy, holding the guy’s pet tarantula in his hand to get himself over his fear of spiders. At twenty-three, about the time he’d made his first million, he’d spent three weeks in Australia learning how to scuba dive. That trip had served the joint purpose of getting him over his irrational fear of sharks and his equally irrational fear that FMJ would go under if he wasn’t available 24/7.