The Mommy Miracle Read Online Free PDF Page B

league.
    Her eyes were huge in her face. She couldn’t speak. She was slightly built, which made a stark show of her current shock and vulnerability. He remembered thinking her funny and gawky and oddly impressive when she was sixteen and he was eighteen, and dating her friend. Impressive because she looked as if a breath of wind would blow her away, but, boy, did she get on your case if you treated her that way.
    She’d been just the same in the hospital and during rehab, once she could speak and move. She’d insisted on her own strength and her own will, and proved with every step that she was as strong and determined as she claimed. She fought her family on it all the time, because she was seven years younger than her next sister and she’d had a serious brush with meningitis as a child, and the whole clan had babied her ever since.
    Well, for once she wasn’t fighting or insisting. She was too shocked. He’d half expected a protest or a denial. You’re messing with my head. It can’t be true. But she didn’t say anything like that. She believed him at once, which made him wonder if there was a tiny, elusive part of her brain, or a lacing of chemicals—hormones—in her body that had known the truth.
    Her conscious mind, though, and her sense of self, had been completely in the dark.
    â€œI have a thousand questions,” she blurted out.
    â€œOf course. Ask them. I’ll tell you everything as straight as I can.”
    â€œI can’t.”
    â€œAsk them?”
    â€œDo this.” She tried to stand up, but her legs wouldn’t carry her.
    â€œSit,” he insisted. “You don’t have to say anything. Or do anything. Let me talk, if you want.”
    â€œOkay.”
    So he talked, keeping it a little impersonal because that felt safe, and leaving out a few things, because he couldn’t hit her with all of it at once.
    He told her about the signs of labor, the quick delivery they’d all been praying for, to ease the stress on her body. Told her DJ’s length and birth weight and head circumference. Told her proudly that the baby had Jodie’s own strength. Despite her premature birth, DJ had been stepped down from the NICU into the lower-level special-care unit within a couple of days, and had come home from the hospital in less than two weeks.
    â€œHome?” Jodie croaked.
    â€œHere. And your parents’ place. She spends a lot of time there.” More than he was happy with, to be honest, but he hadn’t wanted to fight them on that at a point when Jodie’s full recovery had still been very much in doubt, and when his own future wasn’t fully resolved. Would she ever be able to take care of a child? If she could, did that mean he’d go back to New York?
    â€œWhy are you here? In Leighville?”
    She was asking the wrong questions, wasn’t she? He took in a breath to suggest this to her, but then changed his mind.
    Ah, hell, there was no script for this! She should ask whatever she wanted to, in whatever order it came. And if she didn’t have an instant, overpowering need to hold DJ in her arms, he should be glad of the reprieve. He couldn’t stand the idea of losing his daughter, not even with generous custody and access, when the bond between them had grown so strong.
    â€œI’m still working at Dad’s law practice,” he explained, trying to stay practical and calm. “He’s in no hurry to get back into harness. I expect he’ll decide toretire. I’ll head back to New York… Well, that’s open-ended at the moment. All decisions on hold, I guess. My apartment is rented out. I have a conference coming up in Sweden in early October, followed by a couple of months consulting in London.”
    â€œYou were supposed to be back in New York by last Christmas. Was it your dad’s health that changed your plans?”
    Shoot, didn’t she understand?
    â€œThey