Delta's Baby Surprise (Special Forces Elite 1)

Sure enough it was. It looked like a school photo, and I guessed from a few years earlier. Aria looked to be five or six in it. One of her front teeth was missing and she was giving a big happy grin. What was unmistakable was the two pitch black ponytails with bows.

“This your daughter,” I said staring down at the picture.

“Yeah,” Lilly said taking it from my hand quickly and looking at it herself fondly. “It was a couple years back. I should really put the new one in. All kids look so alike when they are little and still have that baby fat.”

I looked at the picture in her hand. Was she trying to convince me that that similarities I saw were just happenstance? Maybe it was because the idea had already been planted in my head, but I was sure now, looking on the face of that little girl that she had to be mine.

“Is the father still around?” I asked as I took a seat in one of the two leather chairs that faced her desk. Instead of going behind her desk, Lilly took the other one next to me. She set the picture frame back in place facing away from us before tucking her feet under her.

“Um, no.”

“That’s too bad. Did he move away or something?”

I hated that I was prying but now more then ever I wanted to hear her tell me the words.

“He was in the Navy. A SEAL actually. He died while he was depl

oyed though. Before Aria was born so…”

I could see the nervousness in her words. It was hard to tell if it was hurt or because she was making it up.

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” I responded. “That must have been so hard for you to lose him.”

"We didn’t really know each other. He was deployed before I even knew I was pregnant.”

“Did you tell him though?”

“No,” she shifted awkwardly in her seat. “It all happened really quickly. But I was fine with taking care of Aria on my own. I mean, I know it’s not the perfect situation but we do alright.”

“Yeah, I see that.” I said waving around to the office. “You must be a bigger deal then you made yourself out to be,” I teased.

“No, not at all,” she laughed and brushed her hair back. “But we get by.”

I thought on that as I made my way back to the office. I had no plans to return, but knew I probably should. If I was lucky, the rest of the staff would have taken off leaving me alone to work and think in some peace and quiet.

I was troubled by what Lilly had said. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe her or worry about them financially. Lilly had clearly been a trooper putting the need of her daughter before everything else.

What plagued my mind was the fact that she shouldn’t have done it all on her own. Of course I repeated over again to myself there was no way I could have know she was pregnant and she had no way to tell me.

It wasn’t how I had wanted to end things eight years ago. After a meeting like that I had hoped that we could have actually started something. Lilly had blown out of that VIP room as fast as she had blown into my life.

I wonder if some part of me had known out in the universe there was my child, that she was the mother. Why else would I have attached myself so much to the memory of Lilly over all these years.

If I was truly being honest with myself, that memory of our night together had been an excuse for me never to start another relationship. Every time I even tried, all I did was compare the woman before me to the one I had known so briefly. The one that was gone in the blink of an eye.

I wasn’t the kind to believe in fate or coincidences. That never sat right with me when I went to these country where children starved to death on the street and people died from treatable diseases.

I had to believe now, though, that something had connected me to Lilly, and something had called her back to me all these years later. I wasn’t willing to give this chance up again. She could simply skate out of my life in an instant and I would regret it for a lifetime.

“Oh you came back,” a voice called into my office waking me from my thoughts.

I looked up to see Helen poking her brunette head in.

“Yeah, I just had some things I needed to finish up.”

“What about the emergency?”

“The what? Oh that. Yeah, I got it all squared away.”