Harper turned to look at him again. ‘Really? Isn’t that a bit excessive?’
‘A little, but apparently there were a lot of people to please when I was born,’ Jack said.
‘So what is your full name?’
‘Jackson Sebastien Miles Rochester Livingstone.’
Her eyebrows lifted. ‘Rochester? Seriously?’
Jack grinned. ‘As inJane Eyre? Yep, it was my paternal grandmother’s maiden name.’
Harper looked back at the baby. ‘What about Marli with an I? It’s not too out there and it’s not old-fashioned.’
Jack nodded. ‘I like it too.’ He looked down at the baby, who was now clutching one of his fingers in her tiny hand. A warm feeling spread through his chest and he smiled. ‘Hello, Marli Elizabeth Susannah Livingstone.’
‘Swan.’ Harper’s tone was adamant, her gaze as hard as stone.
‘You do realise what the acronym of her name will be if you don’t marry me? MESS.’ It was a heck of a tactic to convince Harper to marry him, but he was prepared to use whatever was at his disposal.
Harper held her arms out for Marli, her expression faltering as if she could see the sense in his point but was too proud to admit it right there and then. ‘I want to hold her now.’
Jack passed the baby back to her, his arms feeling strangely empty without the tiny bundle cradled there. He straightened and stood next to the bed. ‘She belongs to both of us, Harper, so she should have both our names. We can hyphenate them after we get married.’
Her chin came up at a defiant height. ‘I am not marrying you.’
‘I probably need to work on my proposal but I want Marli to live with me. I don’t want to be a part-time parent.’
‘But you travel all over the world for your work.’
‘You do too.’
‘Not as much as you.’ She looked back down at Marli and frowned. ‘Although I have to go to Paris in six weeks.’
‘For a wedding?’
‘No, for a photo shoot for a book I’ve been asked to contribute to.’ She stroked a gentle finger across the baby’s forehead again, the action one of wonder, as if she couldn’t quite believe she was holding a live baby. Her baby. His baby.Theirbaby. ‘I have no idea how I’m going to be able to juggle work and the Paris trip now I’ve got a baby...’ Her teeth began to savage her lip again and her small, neat chin began to tremble.
Jack placed his hand on the top of her right shoulder. ‘We’ll figure out how to do it together. She’s both our responsibility and I am not going to let you do this alone, okay?’
She flicked him an upwards glance. ‘I can only imagine what the press is going to make of this. We’re practically strangers and now we’ve got a baby.’
‘It doesn’t mean we can’t be great parents or a well-functioning couple,’ Jack said, and, reaching into his trouser pocket, took out Harper’s earring. ‘By the way, I have something of yours you left behind last time we met.’
Harper looked at the earring for a brief moment, then took it from his open palm and put it next to her phone and purse on the table next to the hospital bed. ‘Yes, well, I have something of yours too.’ She passed the baby back to him with a wry twist of her mouth. ‘Your baby.’
CHAPTER THREE
JACKSATONthe chair beside the bed holding Marli while Harper had a shower. The nurse had brought in a portable crib for the baby but he hadn’t yet transferred her to it. He didn’t want to risk waking her—especially while her mother was out of the room. But neither did he want to miss out on these precious early moments of her life. He balanced Marli in one arm and took out his phone and called his mother. ‘Are you sitting down?’ he said when she answered.
‘Oh, darling, don’t tell me you’re finally madly in love?’ The excitement in his mother’s tone was unmistakable. And annoying because he had no intention of ever falling in love.
‘No, but I am going to get married.’
‘You can’t possibly marry someone you don’t love.’
‘I can because she’s the mother of my baby,’ Jack said.
The silence was short but intense, like the ticking of a time bomb.Tick. Tick. Tick...