“What’s our first step?” Layla asked, her voice sounding small and completely so not the Layla that I knew. She kept rubbing her hand over her stomach as if she were in pain and I wasn’t sure if it was because of all the stress she was under or if the twins were causing her problems. If those monsters inside of her were anything like the girl bouncing around in my stomach right now I knew that they weren’t happy.

“First we need to do the paternity test,” Brad said, taking off his thin wire-rimmed glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose. “As soon as we get that cleared up we can move forward. I’ll have the private investigator agency I use look into Mr. Grady’s background. He obviously has a messy past, and if we can prove just how messy a judge won’t even blink before giving you custody. However, the judicial system tends to favor the biological parent. If he can provide for her—put a roof over her head, keep her clothed, and make sure she has three meals—then that is technically all they want. The fact that Mr. Thornton and yourself can provide a private school and just about anything else a child could want doesn’t matter. Plus, with you pregnant at the moment, Mrs. Thornton, the court could conclude that as you have your own family to take care of Lucy would be better off with her real father.”

Jesse stood, knocking over the heavy chair he had been sitting in beside Layla. “I am Lucy’s real father!” he roared, causing everyone in the room to jump except for Emmie. “I was the one who taught her to ride a bike, to surf on that beach out there! It doesn’t matter that Layla is pregnant. Lucy is just as much my daughter as any child we will have together. We aren’t a family without her, damn it!”

“Jesse…” Layla reached out for his hand and he seemed to calm a little at her touch. “You’ll always be her dad, Jesse.”

“No one could do a better job than you, bro,” Shane assured him from his seat on the short couch near the window where he sat with Drake beside him and Harper on his lap. “No one could ever question that.”

Emmie pushed back from her desk and stood. Her face was pale and her eyes were unreadable. She had a lot on her plate lately and this was just adding more to an already full load, but she wasn’t going to complain. When it came to Emmie’s family she would walk through hell and back to help us.

She stopped in front of Mr. Horton and offered her hand. “Thanks for coming by on such short notice. Get your PI people on it as soon as you possibly can. I want a report of everything they give you as soon as it’s in your hands. Also, I need you to set up the paternity testing. Make sure that Grady isn’t present when Lucy is getting it done. His lawyer can witness the test being administered if he must, but we want to keep this private for as long as possible. As soon as the media gets wind of this it is going to be a field day for everyone.”

Horton stood, knowing that Emmie was dismissing him and that he had better get on the list of things she wanted done as soon as the door shut behind him. “Of course. I think we can have the test done this evening, if that is okay with Mr. and Mrs. Thorton?” Jesse didn’t spare the man a glance but Layla nodded her head in acceptance. “Good. I’ll text you the time and location.”

“How long will it take for the test results come back?” Nik asked, leaning against the edge of Emmie’s desk.

“Depending on how soon we can get Mr. Grady’s DNA sample it shouldn’t be longer than three days.”

“That’s a lifetime,” I muttered, clenching my hands in my lap. It also meant that Drake and I would be in New York when the results came back. I wanted to be here, holding Layla’s hand when she found out if Vince Grady was Lucy’s biological father. It just wasn’t possible though. Drake had to go back for work and I couldn’t handle being away from him for more than a few hours since I had found out we were pregnant. “Does it really take that long? Or can we pay extra and get them to rush the test results?”

“This isn’t something you really want to rush, Angel.” Drake tried to reason with me. “We want them to be completely certain that this guy didn’t donate his sperm, right?”

I sighed. “Yes…”

“I’ll be expecting your call later today, Horton,” Emmie told the lawyer and Nik stepped forward to show the man out. When the door was closed behind them Emmie turned to Jesse and wrapped her arms around his waist. “I think we can settle this without the lawyer. Just give me a few days, okay?”

After a small hesitation Jesse finally nodded but the tears rolling down his face gave another answer entirely. A few days really was going to be a lifetime for everyone, but especially for Jesse.

Chapter 11

Jesse

Layla wasn’t feeling well. After the morning—and the weekend leading up to this morning—that we’d had, I wasn’t feeling so great myself. As soon as we got home I carried her upstairs and put her in bed. She said her back was killing her and she just wanted to sleep.

Maybe I should have lain down with her and held her, but I couldn’t stand still let alone go to bed. There were three hours left before Lucy came home from school. Three hours of wondering, worrying. We had to tell her. She was too smart not to wonder why she had to have the DNA test done and I didn’t want to lie to her.

I found myself downstairs cleaning, something I had been doing more and more of lately since Layla was getting so big and unable to move around so much. We could have easily hired an entire housekeeping staff to keep the house in order, but she didn’t want strangers in our home. Layla loved making our house a home on a daily basis. So I rinsed Lucy’s breakfast dishes and put them in the dishwasher then wiped down all the counters before climbing the stairs to see if Lucy had any clothes that needed washing.

Opening the door to Lucy’s room, a feeling of defeat washed over me and I dropped down on the edge of her bed. My eyes went around the room that she had decorated herself, grimly avoiding the snake in his habitat. Ziggy and I had come to an understanding. I wouldn’t chop his head off in his sleep if he didn’t escape from his home that Lucy painstakingly kept organized. The walls were two shades of purple, her favorite color. A zebra print separated the two colors and matched the fuzzy pillows on her bed. Against one wall was her desk with her computer and her notebook that she kept all of her rough drafts in. Lucy loved to write, to create worlds and characters that she would escape in for hours at a time.