Intimate Seduction - Brenda Jackson [58]
The miracle of life always amazed him, Donovan thought, gazing into the very happy and smiling face of his brother as he held his newborn baby daughter in his arms. They had named the baby Susan after Jocelyn’s favorite aunt. Jocelyn’s sister Leah, who’d given birth to a daughter earlier that year, had named her daughter after their mother who’d passed away when Jocelyn and Leah had been young girls.
Donovan glanced over at Natalie who was sitting in a chair next to Kylie, Vanessa and a very pregnant Lena. All four women, who’d had tears in their eyes earlier were talking to Jocelyn, who looked rather relaxed after giving birth. He looked at Chance and Morgan to find both of them staring at him instead of their newborn niece, and he knew why. They were still in shock. This was the first time he’d ever brought a woman to a family gathering of any kind, and they were curious as to why. Hell, he was trying to figure out the answer to that question himself. All he knew was that at the time he’d gotten the call from Chance to tell him that Bas was on his way to the hospital with Jocelyn, he hadn’t been ready to let Natalie out of his sight.
And then he’d talked her ears off while en route to the hospital. She’d asked about his family, and that had opened him up. Instead of sticking to the basic facts, he had ended up telling her practically everything, including information about the Steele brothers’ weekly Saturday morning on the basketball court. He also told her about how Chance had met Kylie, how Bas had met Jocelyn; how relentlessly Morgan had pursued Lena; how far Cameron had gone in his pursuit of Vanessa and about Cheyenne and the triplets. Never had he shared so much information about his family to any woman.
And then there were the women in his family who’d latched onto Natalie the moment he had walked into the waiting room with her by his side. He hadn’t had to introduce them since they had proceeded to introduce themselves. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see they were just as shocked as his brothers.
“So what do you think about my baby girl, Donovan?”
He glanced over at Bas, who was still wearing a proud smile even after the nurse had come to take baby Susan and place her back Jocelyn’s arms. “She looks tiny, not as tiny as Athena, Venus and Troy looked when they were born, of course,” he said of Cheyenne’s triplets who’d been born premature. “But she’s still a tiny thing.”
He chuckled. “It will be fun watching her grow up, and I hope when she gets older that you don’t play the big bad wolf of a daddy to her dates.”
Bas grinned. “I won’t unless she brings home a man like her uncle Donovan.”
It was a joke but Bas’s words were still on Donovan’s mind when he and Natalie walked out of the hospital to the parking lot. Was he really that bad that his own brother found his ways with women despicable? Bas hadn’t been an angel before he’d married Jocelyn. In fact his engagement to Cassandra Tisdale gave Donovan the shudders every time he thought about it. No one knew how glad the family had been when Bas had come to his senses and broken off the engagement.
But still, Donovan knew that he would be the first to admit that none of his brothers had ever been diehard bachelors, at least not with the concentration that he had. He was a proud playa card member. Did he have any regrets about keeping one close to his hip? Not really. But he knew that although he’d claimed otherwise, eventually one day he would settle down. He had just refused to think about doing so.
Deciding to switch gears, he thought back on his family, namely his parents. They had arrived, and thanks to his mother, there was no chance of anyone else holding the baby any time soon. And after introducing Natalie to his parents, he wanted to get her out of here before his mother could start the inquisition, which he figured would happen had they lingered.
After pulling out of the parking lot and merging with traffic, he glanced over at Natalie. She was quiet, and he couldn’t help wondering what she was thinking. Like everyone else, she’d taken