He hadn’t thought of all that. Dammit. Whoever the woman was, when he did finally find her, she was going to get a piece of his mind. This was their child. Didn’t she realize he might need to know a few things? That if she wanted James to take care of him, he’d need at least a few details? He looked at Harper. At least his taste in women had improved. Harper would have never just dropped the kid off like that.
“Maybe she wasn’t the one who dropped him off,” James suggested. It bugged him that a woman he’d been involved with would do that. But he hadn’t really known any of these women. He’d probably spent the most time talking with Megan. Kylie-Kaylie would have been second on that list. They’d gone to dinner after the photoshoot and talked for an hour before she’d suggested going back to her apartment. Of course, once they hit that doorway there hadn’t been much talking, and he’d headed back out of that door about two hours later.
“I think the mom dropped him off,” Harper said, interrupting James’s thoughts of what a man-whore he’d been. “Whoever did it, dropped him off right at your door, so she knew where you lived. She did it right before you got home. And she did it right before you had two days off. It’s someone who knows those details. And it’s not easy to explain to people why you’re pregnant and then suddenly have no baby. I’m guessing she kept it all as secret as possible. You don’t just ask someone to take your baby from Wisconsin or Wyoming to New Orleans to an apartment in the Quarter and leave it.”
He frowned. “I guess.”
“She could have left him at any safe haven in this city or in any city between here and wherever she’s from,” Harper went on. “She also could have given him up for adoption. She specifically chose to give him to you. With a note. That means that she knew you well enough to know that you’re a good guy and she cared enough to at least give him to his father.”
That made James pause. Had he really known any of these women well enough to convince them that he was a good guy who’d be willing and able to be a dad?
It only took about a minute of really thinking about that question for him to groan. If the woman hadn’t just panicked about not wanting to be a mom and had specifically decided that he’d be good at this, then it wasn’t Megan or Kylie-Kaylie. They didn’t know him well enough. It also wasn’t the girl from the W state. He was sure she’d been willing to spend the night with him because Marcus knew him and could vouch that he wouldn’t kill her and put her in his freezer. But she hadn’t known him. Marcus didn’t really know much about James except that he could play the hell out of a piano. That meant that if Harper was right—and Harper was always right—then Isaac’s mom had to be Emily.
He hadn’t really thought about it being Emily.
Because it being Emily made this all a lot more complicated.
Emily was Ethan’s little sister. Ethan was one of James’s firefighter brothers. One he didn’t get along with all that well. Emily had been in town for Ethan’s wedding. The wedding James had been invited to only because Ethan had invited the entire firehouse. That’s just what you did. They were a brotherhood even if they weren’t best friends in their off time. When they were on the clock, they had each other’s backs and would risk their lives for one another. That gave them a bond. Even if, after hours, they thought the other guy was a prick.
So James had met Emily at Ethan’s wedding, and they’d spent the evening talking and dancing and drinking champagne, and he’d made the mistake of not going up to her hotel room that first night. Because of Ethan.
But he’d known that Emily trusted him because he was her brother’s coworker in a career that required men who were brave and self-sacrificing and who would put their differences aside when it came to getting the job done. Ethan and James were a lot alike actually, which was probably why they rubbed each other the wrong way sometimes. It had been clear Emily admired her brother. Then, in the course of conversation, he’d learned that Ethan had actually talked highly of James. Not highly enough that he’d want him banging his little sister, maybe, but highly enough that Emily clearly respected James and even went as far as to say that her brother had called him funny and upstanding.
That had all been enough for her to show up at his apartment the next morning with muffins and coffee and enthusiastically toss her panties onto his bedroom floor.
It was Emily.
James felt like someone had just slapped him on the forehead.
It had to be Emily.
They’d been together during the right window of time. She lived far away from all her family, so it wasn’t impossible to think she’d avoided them during the months when her pregnancy would have been most obvious. She knew where James lived and what he did for a living. She knew how fire stations ran and how theirs in particular worked. She would have known she could call and find out when James was on and off shift. And she would have known enough about him to think that he was a decent, upstanding, take-care-of-others kind of guy.
Holy shit. He now knew who Isaac’s mom was. He wasn’t sure exactly how to find her or get ahold of her, but there had to be a way since he knew her brother.
“She wouldn’t risk someone taking him to the wrong apartment or at the wrong time and leaving him out alone. She’d bring him herself.”
Harper was still talking about how the person leaving the baby with James had to have been the mother.
James glanced at her. Harper was attached to Isaac. It was more and more obvious the more time she spent with the baby and the more James observed them together. Harper couldn’t imagine just leaving the baby there, taking a chance it was the wrong apartment. That didn’t mean the mom would feel that way, though.
He was guessing that after Harper had the baby to herself for the next twenty-four hours—minus the hours she’d be in class and Bea would be watching him—they would be even more bonded.
“And besides,” Harper went on. “If it wasn’t the mom dropping him off, wouldn’t that person just come to you and hand him over? They wouldn’t have had to leave him in a basket with a note. You wouldn’t have known them. They could have played dumb about details. They could have just waited until you were home and given him to you.”
That was a decent point.
“Yeah, I think it was her, too,” James admitted. It made sense. Now that he knew who she was, it made even more sense. Emily would know that fire stations were all safe havens. He was sure Ethan had told her about the baby that had been left at theirs about three years ago.
Harper nodded. “Gut instinct.”
Paternal instinct, maybe. “I think I know who it is.”
She looked up at him. “Really?”
“Yeah. What you just said makes a lot of sense. I think it’s Emily. She’s the sister of one of the other firefighters. Met her at his wedding.”
“Oh.” Harper seemed to be thinking about that. “How sure are you?”
How sure could he be? He shrugged. “Seventy percent?”
She seemed surprised. Probably that it was that high. “Okay. So…”
“Should we go home? I need to figure out how to get ahold of her. That might take a little time.”
Harper blew out a breath. “We’re already almost to the studio. We might as well cover all the bases, yes? If you’re not one hundred percent.”