Читать книгу Committed to the Baby онлайн | страница 33

Something inside him shifted. If he and Maggie had been able to have children, this is just what he would have expected their child to look like. Maybe that’s why she thought her ploy would work on him. The kid looked enough like Justice that she probably thought she could convince him he was the father and then talk him out of a paternity test.

Sure. Why would she think he’d insist on that anyway? They had been married. The timing for the child was about right. She’d have no reason to think that he wouldn’t believe her claims. But that meant that whoever had fathered the boy had turned his back on them. Which, weirdly, pissed him off on Maggie’s behalf. What the hell kind of man would do that to her? Or to the baby? Who wouldn’t claim his own child?

He watched the boy bouncing up and down on Maggie’s hip, laughing and drooling, and told himself that if there were even the slightest chance the boy was actually his, Justice would do everything in his power to take care of him. But he knew the truth, even if Maggie didn’t.

“He’s a good-looking boy.”

Maggie melted. “Thank you.”

“But he’s not mine.”

She wanted to argue. He could see it in her face. Hell, he knew her well enough to know that there was nothing Maggie liked more than a good argument. But this one she’d lose before she even started.

He couldn’t be Jonas’s father. Ten years before, Justice had been in a vicious car accident. His injuries were severe enough to keep him in a hospital for weeks. And during his stay and the interminable testing that was done, a doctor had told him that the accident had left him unlikely to ever father children.

The doctor had used all sorts of complicated medical terms to describe his condition, but the upshot was that Jonas couldn’t be his. Maggie had no way of knowing that, of course, since Justice had never told anyone about the doctor’s prognosis. Not even his brothers.

Before he and Maggie got married, when she started talking about having a family, he’d told her that he didn’t want kids. Better to let her believe he chose to remain childless rather than have her think he was less than a man.