Piper looked back to see if she could find it on the path. There it was, about sixty feet from them. Jaeger spotted it and immediately jogged away to pick it up. When he returned, she tucked it into her tote bag. “I can’t tell you how many shoes I’ve lost in this park.”
She walked around to the front of the stroller and pulled Ty’s sock back onto his foot, tucking his blanket around his feet to keep him warm. Ty held up his arms and sent her his patented, hard-to-resist, please-pick-me-up smile. Without asking her, Jaeger reached down, popped the button to release his five-strap safety belt and lifted the baby to his chest. Ty sent her a See how irresistible I am? look, happy to perch on Jaeger’s forearm. Jaeger pulled Ty’s blanket from the stroller, draped it over Ty’s shoulders and tucked it under the baby’s butt. Ty just patted Jaeger’s face with tiny, excited hands.
Jaeger smiled at him. “Happy now?”
Ty blew him a raspberry and shouted at a pigeon flying past. His hand narrowly missed hitting Jaeger’s nose.
“He’s happy,” Piper said, her tone dry. “And you’re a sucker.”
“He’s a very cute kid,” Jaeger said as they resumed their walk.
“I think so,” Piper softly replied.
Jaeger ran his free hand down her hair, over her back. “I think you are pretty awesome, you know. You’re raising a kid on your own, and you seem to have it all under control.”
“I don’t have a choice,” Piper stated. “Life gives you what it gives you, and you have to handle it as best you can.”
“And his father? Does he have any contact with Ty?”
She’d dodged this question last night, and here it was again. After Jaeger fell asleep last night, she’d rehearsed answers for when he asked again. All those carefully constructed responses were forgotten as she stared at the pathway in front of her.
She didn’t know how to tell him the truth.
“I never told him,” she admitted.
Jaeger jerked to a stop. She knew that behind his aviator sunglasses, he was frowning. “Why not?”
Piper rocked on her heels, unable to look into his face. “It’s complicated.”
Jaeger transferred Ty to his other arm and turned him around so Ty faced the road, Jaeger’s strong arm across the baby’s chest. Ty yelled his approval at his new view, and Jaeger rubbed his chin across the baby’s head.
How would he react if she blurted out the news that he was holding his son, that he’d provided half Ty’s genes? It still amazed her that nobody could see they shared the same eyes, the same face.
But if she did blurt it out, everything between them would change immediately. She had a week, maybe two left with him before the sapphires sold. Was it so wrong to want to delay the inevitable so she could enjoy being with him, just for a little while?
The memories she made now would have to last a lifetime. He’d never see her the same way once he knew.
She’d tell him. She would. Soon. Just...not today.
“When my girlfriend told me she was pregnant, I was furious. But under the anger, I was soul-deep scared.”
It was Piper’s turn to stop, and the stroller jerked when she slammed on the brakes. “You have a child?” She shook her head to clear it, not sure whether her ears were playing tricks on her.
Jaeger ran his free hand through his hair before shoving his sunglasses on top of his head. His eyes were a shade of blue she’d never seen before—colder, harder, full of pain. “I was twenty-one. She was twenty. I wasn’t as careful about protection as I am now—”
Piper told herself to keep her mouth shut.
“I was in college. So was she. Luckily I’d come into some money a few months before—money from a trust my parents set up for us—so I could house and feed us and still attend college.”
“What did you study?”
“Geology, gemology, business,” Jaeger replied. “Andrea dropped out and moved in with me, and we got engaged. It was...difficult.”
Piper watched as his mouth tightened and the tension in his jaw increased. Ty felt it, too, and he immediately twisted his head to look at Jaeger. Jaeger turned Ty around to face him, and Ty immediately dropped his forehead into Jaeger’s neck and closed his eyes.