Bargaining for Baby by Robyn Grady Page A

thanDahlia’s legacy, he was the Prescott future. Beau would grow up, find a nice woman, settle here at Leadeebrook, have a family of his own.
    Jack pushed open the door, a smile curving his lips. He felt a great deal of comfort knowing that.
    Kicking his heels, Beau was wide awake in his crib. After changing his diaper, Jack decided it was high time he took the boy on a tour. He bundled Beau up and headed for what had been known at Leadeebrook as the portrait hall.
    “This is your great-great-grandfather,” Jack said, stopping before the first portrait, which looked particularly regal in its gold-leaf gilded frame. “He was a determined and clever man. He and great-great-grandmother Prescott were responsible for making this homestead into the stately residence it is today.”
    Sitting quietly, gathered in his uncle’s arm, Beau stared at the stern-looking gentleman in the frame before Jack moved further down the hall.
    “And this,” he said, pulling up in front of the next portrait, “is your great-grandfather. He taught me how to shear.” Jack studied the baby then smiled and tickled his chin. “I’ll have to teach you.”
    On the opposite side of the wide hall resided portraits of the Prescott women. He stopped at his late wife’s and clenched his free hand to divert the familiar ache of loss that rose in his chest. The finest artist on the eastern coast had been commissioned for this piece, and the man had captured the loving shine in Sue’s soft brown eyes perfectly.
    At the same time Jack’s throat thickened, Beau wriggled and he bypassed the other distinguished portraits until he reached the part of the house he visited often but always alone. After turning the handle, he entered the library—what had become Sue’s library when she’d been alive. Anextendable stepladder resided at the far end of the massive room. Numerous shelves, laden with all kinds of reading matter, towered toward the lofty ceiling. Designer crimson-and-yellow-gold swags decorated the tall windows. The cream chairs and couches bore the subtle sheen of finest quality upholstery.
    This room upheld the Prescott promise of old money and impeccable taste, yet Sue had managed to make the library look cozy, too, with fresh flowers from the garden and bundles of home décor magazines and crossword puzzles camped out on occasional tables. The flowers were long gone, but the magazines he’d told Cait to leave.
    Jack studied the baby studying the room. Beau was a smart kid. Even at this age, Jack could see it in his eyes.
    “Will you be a reader or more a hands-on type like your uncle?” he asked his nephew, crossing to the nearest bookshelf. “Maybe both. Your mother was good at everything.” He grinned, remembered when they’d been children. “Not that I ever let her know that.”
    He strolled half the length of the room to the children’s section and eyed the spines that Sue might’ve read to Beau when he was a little older, as well as to their own son, had he lived.
    Wincing, Jack inhaled deeply to dispel the twist of pain high in his gut. Every waking minute of every day, he missed her, missed what they’d had. And then Maddy had appeared in his life. When she was around, he didn’t feel quite so empty, and he wasn’t certain how to process that. Should he feel relieved or guilty?
    The polished French-provincial desk in the corner drew his attention. He carried Beau across the room and slid open a drawer on the right hand side. The book was there…Sue’s memory book.
    Jack laid it out on the leather blotter and flipped throughthe pages, pointing out Sue’s relatives to a fist-sucking Beau. She had spent hours making the pages pretty. On the last page, a blue-and-yellow heart hugged a black-and-white image…a scan of their unborn child.
    His eyes growing hot, Jack gently pressed his palm next to the eighteen-week-old shape that was his son.
    “Sue wanted to name him after her father,” he told Beau, in a deep, thick