• 1-Chapter One
• 2-Chapter Two
• 3-Chapter Three
• 4-Chapter Four
• 5-Chapter Five
• 6-Chapter Six

“Look, Jason, I know you brought Elizabeth in and I really want to thank you for that. It seems like you are always around just when she needs rescuing. But I think she needs her family around her now. Maybe you should go,” Lucky said, trying not to sound bitter.

“I want to wait until she wakes up. Lucky, you…you aren’t married anymore,” Jason reminded the police detective.

“Why do you constantly insinuate yourself into our lives? You’re always there, just in the background. It’s like you wait around for her to need you so you can just swoop in and be her hero,” Lucky said in a low voice.

He didn’t want to cause a scene, but this was something he had always wanted to say to Jason and now the opportunity was simply there in front of him and he couldn’t let it go.

“Look, if you think that I’m going to stand here and apologize for saving Elizabeth now or in the past, then you’re a bigger fool than I thought you were. Why don’t you focus on her, making sure that she and the baby are okay instead of trying to mark territory that isn’t yours anymore,” Jason said, as patiently as he could manage.

“Why don’t both of you go somewhere else to argue?” said a weak voice.

Both men looked over at the now conscious Elizabeth and then back at each other, letting their hostility wane for the moment.

Jason reached out and pressed the call switch that would summon the medical personnel.

Lucky walked over to the other side of her bed and looked at her with a tight smile.

“How are you feeling? Do you remember what happened?” he asked her.

“I feel tired and yes I remember exactly where I was when I passed out. I was at the loft with…you,” she said, looking from Lucky to Jason with her last words.

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Lucky muttered under his breath.

Before Elizabeth or Jason could say anything in response, Patrick Drake and a battalion of doctors and nurses came barging into the room, issuing orders that the two men leave post-haste so they could evaluate mother and unborn child.

Lucky started for the door, watching with envy as Elizabeth and Jason held hands as long as they could before the contact was broken by his retreat.

*************

“What in the hell do you think you are doing? You know that Sonny will kill you the moment he finds out you had anything to do with this,” Carly told her captor. She was still stunned to discover just who was holding her.

Flipping open his phone, her “host” dialed Ric Lansing’s cell phone number.

*************

Elizabeth made it through all the poking and prodding and looking into her eyes with minimal complaint. Most medical professionals made lousy patients. She was exhausted and she knew that it was more important now than ever that she tell Jason the truth about the child she was carrying.

She did not want a scene with Lucky but she could not take any chances with her baby’s future. If something were to happen to her, she wanted to know with absolute certainty that her daughter would be raised by her real father. Elizabeth could not allow her child to grow up in the center of a deception that could crumble at any moment, not if there was even the slightest chance that she might not be there to help with the explanations and comforting that would need to happen.

One of the nurses had returned to mark all the monitor readings down on Elizabeth’s chart.

“Excuse me, can you please tell Jason Morgan that I need to speak with him?” Elizabeth asked sweetly.

The nurse nodded and finished what she was doing, hung the chart back on the foot of the bed and left Elizabeth alone in the room.

Closing her eyes, Elizabeth drifted into a soft sleep.

*************

“Where is your Daddy, Jadyn?” Elizabeth asked her tiny daughter, who looked up and answered with a cranky cry. “Oh I know, sweetheart. I miss him too. He’ll be home soon. Don’t worry.”

There was no sight more beautiful to her than that of Jason and their children. He really was a wonderful father. She had never felt safer or more loved in her life…