Chapter 12
Eight months later
“Here babe, let me hold him while you do that.” Steve and Angela sat in the pediatrician’s office. She was juggling a clipboard with paperwork she needed to fill out in one hand and baby Blake in the other. She kissed her precious baby on the forehead and handed him to his “Daddy.” That was what Steve had insisted on being called from the second she told him that she was pregnant. They’d gotten married in Las Vegas. Ana and Joanne had been their witnesses and then Angela had taken him to Miami to meet her parents. He spent the weekend golfing with her dad and before it was over, he had bonded with them both.
When they got back to Long Beach he started to work on a nursery in the mansion. He wouldn’t hire anyone to do it; he told Angela he wanted to create something for “his” baby with his own hands. When he finished and finally let her see it, she was eight months pregnant and they already knew it was a boy. The room had a race car theme and Steve had built the baby a crib that looked like a racecar with his own two hands.
Throughout the pregnancy, Angela tried more than once to talk to him about the paternity. Steve told her he didn’t want to talk about it. This was his baby…he didn’t care whose DNA it had besides hers. Angela loved him all the more for it, but she still couldn’t get rid of the worry in the back of her mind that DNA might be their problem later on in life.
By the time the baby was born, she and Steve both were already in love with him. The first time she held him in her arms she knew, like Steve, that his DNA didn’t matter. She was going to love him more than anything in the world, no matter what. Steve was the one who suggested they name him Blake. He understood that her love for Blake would always be a part of her and everything she’d gone through with him and because of him had shaped who she was today. He told her that if the baby turned out to be half the man he knew Blake must have been for her to love him so much, he would achieve greatness someday.
The first week after the baby was born, neither of them mentioned paternity. People were in and out of the house to visit and Angela was exhausted…happily so. The second week of Blake’s life, his Aunt Ana, Aunt Joanne and Aunt Marg kidnapped his mother while he spent the day with his dad. They took her to a building in downtown L.A. that she’d never been to before and put her on an elevator. When they got to the tenth floor, they made her close her eyes. When she opened them she was staring at a brass nameplate that said, “Angela McAllister, CEO.”
“CEO of what?” she’d asked. With Joanne’s fake drumroll, Ana opened the door to the most beautiful corner office Angela had ever seen. The nameplate on the desk was also engraved with her name. She walked over and picked up one of the business cards. It said, “McAllister Adventures in Advertising.” She looked at Ana and realized Steve and Blake were standing in the doorway. “This is my company?” she asked with tears in her eyes. Her handsome husband and his sister nodded. Joanne giggled and Marg said,
“I have my own office.” Marg had no qualms about leaving Kim to come and work for Angela. She’d become like a daughter to the older woman and she and Steve often joined Marg and her husband for Sunday dinners. Ana and Steve decided not to put everyone through the ugly publicity that would surround Kim getting arrested for what she’d done. They were satisfied by knowing two things: One was that taking away their business would ruin her and Two: They would always have the evidence that would send her to prison if she ever tried to bother any of them again. She was quietly closing up shop and getting ready to leave town last they’d heard…they were all thrilled.
Angela was overwhelmed with the generosity and love she felt from her friends and her new family. She laughed and she cried until she felt like a bipolar off of her meds. She’d never been so happy and her life had never felt so complete. The only thing that bothered her these days…even just a little bit…was her worries about her baby. She knew that Steve already worshipped the ground he would someday walk on and her love for him consumed her…but she still had to know, if only because she would take more precautions about his mental health in the future. She had to know. When she told Steve, he was supportive and once again assured her that he didn’t care and nothing would change the way he felt about “his” son, ever.
“Mr. and Mrs. McAllister?” The nurse appeared in the doorway. “Doctor will see you now.”
Steve cradled Blake in one arm and took Angela’s hand with the other. They walked into the doctor’s office as a family…and ten minutes later they walked out. The paper that said the chances of Steve being Blake’s biological father were 99.99999999% was tucked away in Angela’s purse…a family heirloom that she would always treasure.