Chapter Eight

But Wait a Bit

The "talk" was disastrous. Woody realized the words came out all wrong as soon as he opened his mouth. Cold. Clipped. Nearly angry. Later he realized that Jordan didn't know at the time of the insemination that it was his sperm and not Bug's. If she had of, she probably wouldn't have agreed so quite readily to the procedure.

But that night, when he woke her up in that tone of voice, she immediately shut down and shut him out. "There's nothing to talk about," she had told him, sitting up and then making an effort to stand. Anything to put space between them.

"That's my baby. Your baby. Our baby," he had thrown back at her.

"This is Bug's baby. I signed on to be a surrogate."

"Bug's not coming back from England anytime soon. He just told me. We just got off the phone…:"

"Then I'll take the baby to him."

"Jordan. Like it or not, this is our baby. No matter how it happened, this child," he motioned between them, "is ours."

"No…You signed papers. I signed papers. Bug might come back after the baby is born, but he'll be back…"

"Maybe in a year or two. Or five or six. When he's had enough time to grieve Lily. Meanwhile, what's going to happen to our child?"

That question didn't get answered that night. Her radio had gone off, alerting Jordan to the fact that there had been a multiple car fatality on the turnpike and to except as many as eight bodies in the next hour or two. Without another word to Woody, she had turned and left her office, nearly running down the hall to prep trace and autopsy.

And to get away from him. From what her future and present reality might be.

Woody sighed and shut her office door, then leaned against it in the hallway. He needed some answers. Soon. What was she? Five months along? They needed to make a plan…some kind of plan.

But Jordan wasn't giving Woody answers or plans anytime soon. For days after their encounter in her office, she avoided him like the proverbial plague, seeing him only at work, discussing primarily cases, answering his questions about her health in monosyllabic words. She never returned his personal phone calls.

And Woody, being Woody and the type of person he still fundamentally was, worried. Worried about her. Worried about the baby.

Worried about what they should do. What he should do. The days that followed their "talk" left him with a concern about Jordan he hadn't been able to shake. She had looked tired and worn then. The times that he saw her after that did nothing to alleviate the feeling.

Their current situation was one Woody had never assumed in his wildest dreams he'd ever find himself in – a woman, pregnant with his child, that he hadn't slept with. Or at least recently slept with. Modern medical science was clashing with his Catholic mid-west values. Add in his burning desire just to have some vague idea what was going on in Jordan's head and you had the makings of one fine migraine headache.

One he had to get some relief from because Advil and Tylenol and Maalox weren't touching the tension that was knotting his stomach and his neck muscles.

As the days bled into weeks, he did get a chance to corner her in trace one day after she had finally caught one of his calls. For days he had rolled over in his mind what he was going to say to her, knowing that finesse and timing were critical to the situation.

But those flew out the window when he caught sight of her burgeoning belly once more.

"Marry me." It came out in a rush of sincerity.

"Do what?" Her voice hit a new high of incredulousness.

"Marry me."

"Why in the hell…" Her head spun with the sudden request. Not to mention the ridiculousness of the moment.

"Because we're going to have a baby."

Jordan chuckled. A low, dry, sarcastic sound. "I'm going to have a baby. Bug's baby."

Woody shook his head. "Bug's not coming back, Jo. I know that and you know that. He's told us both that we need to make a plan for this child. That's what I'm trying to do.

And that's what you're trying to avoid."

The room went silent for a full minute and Woody was afraid he had pushed her too far, scared her off one more time, when her voice came back low and tense. "Don't you think I know that?"

He turned to face her then. "What?"

"Don't you think I know that?" she repeated, her brown eyes accusing him of believing the worst about her one more time. "Don't you think that I don't know that Bug isn't coming back and that we… I…need to decide what to do?"

He nervously cleared his throat. "So you have thought about it…this?"

Jordan nodded and turned away from him, her fingers tying themselves in knots. "Yeah…"

"Then marry me. So the baby will have a mother and a father…"

Another low, sarcastic chuckle. "No."

"No? No, the baby won't have a mother and a father or no, you won't marry me?"

"No. I won't marry you."

"Why?"

"I think that's fairly obvious."

"You mean the 'we're-not-really-seeing-each-other' thing?"

"No. It's more like the 'you're-seeing-Lu' thing."

Woody sucked in a breath. Obviously, no one had clued Jordan in. "Lu and I…we haven't seen each other in…I mean, right after you said you weren't coming back…she and I stopped seeing each other." There was no reason to go into all the nasty details of the break up right now.

Jordan blinked. "Oh." That was all she managed to get out. She had assumed, wrongly of course, but she had assumed that Woody and Lu were still an item.

"So will you?"

"Will I what?"

"Marry me? Lu's not in the picture and hasn't been for a while…and you…" He motioned to her belly bump.

"No."

"Jordan…"

She shook her head and turned back to him. "Just because the baby is ours doesn't mean I'm going to marry you. We don't know each other anymore, Woody. We're different people."

"But…"

Jordan held up her hand to stop the interruption. "We're different people now. I'm a different person. I never expected to be a mother. Ever. I just assumed that the chance of motherhood evaded me when you started sleeping with Lu. Yet here I am. Pregnant. With your child that is legally Bug's and Lily's. It's an X-files plot and I have no idea how it's going to end. I don't know what I'm going to do." She squared her shoulders and looked him in the eyes. "But I am asking for time. To decide. To make a plan."

Woody w as silent for a minute. "I can take the baby, Jordan. I mean if you're undecided, or don't think you want the baby full-time, I can get a nanny and…"

Jordan shook her head vehemently. "No. This may be my last chance…my only chance…to be a mom."

"I understand, but…"

She shook her head again, just as firmly. "No. You're too uptight now, Woody. Everything you do now is by the book. I may not know a lot about babies, but I do know that they don't always fit the schedule in your Daytimer."

"But…"

"No 'but's'. The baby will have a mother and a father. They just won't be married.