Having The Soldier's Baby (The Parent Portal Book 1) Read online

  Back from the dead...

  And back in her heart?

  Emily and Winston Hannigan had a fairy-tale romance...until he perished for his country. So when Winston arrives on her doorstep very much alive, Emily’s overjoyed. Winston’s a changed man, though. He may have survived the unthinkable. But he believes he doesn’t deserve Emily—or their unborn child. And Winston’s secret shakes Emily to the core. But at that core is still love...

  “Winston? Oh, my God, Winston! I knew you’d come. I was waiting. I knew!” The outburst went on, slightly garbled with tears, as weight slammed against his body.

  He grabbed for it, lest it fall. Or he did. Arms clung to him, around his neck, as breasts fit into him in a familiar, completely natural way. His arms lowered enough to find their place at the curve of waist just below his as his foot scooted, allowing room for the smaller foot sliding in between his.

  The drill was embedded in him. As much of his naval training had been. Came to him with ease. Until Emily lifted her head, gazed into his eyes and planted her mouth against his.

  Lips pursed tightly closed, he stood there, eyes open.

  And waited for her to figure out that the man she’d known and loved no longer existed.

  * * *

  THE PARENT PORTAL:

  A place where miracles are made

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome to The Parent Portal—a place where miracles are made for those struggling to have children. A place where the professionals trying to make the magic happen might find a miracle or two of their own. So come with me inside the doors of The Parent Portal, a privately owned fertility clinic where biology matters. People here understand that donors are more than science—and they arrange legally binding agreements that provide both parties with “the right to know.” The right to know if a child is born. To know the child is loved and safe. The right to find your biological child if you have a burning need to do so.

  Or the right to have a child with your soldier husband’s sperm when he dies in battle.

  So much in the world is uncertain, but at The Parent Portal, you can be sure that people come first, love matters and miracles can happen.

  Having the Soldier’s Baby is my eighty-ninth novel with Harlequin and I can promise you an intense, emotional ride!

  I love to hear from readers! You can find all of my social media at tarataylorquinn.com!

  Happy reading!

  TTQ

  Having the Soldier’s Baby

  Tara Taylor Quinn

  Having written over eighty-five novels, Tara Taylor Quinn is a USA TODAY bestselling author with more than seven million copies sold. She is known for delivering intense, emotional fiction. Tara is a past president of Romance Writers of America and is a seven-time RWA RITA® Award finalist. She has also appeared on TV across the country, including CBS Sunday Morning. She supports the National Domestic Violence Hotline. If you need help, please contact 1-800-799-7233.

  Books by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Harlequin Special Edition

  The Daycare Chronicles

  Her Lost and Found Baby

  An Unexpected Christmas Baby

  The Baby Arrangement

  The Fortunes of Texas

  Fortune’s Christmas Baby

  Harlequin Superromance

  Where Secrets are Safe

  A Family for Christmas

  Falling for the Brother

  Harlequin Heartwarming

  Family Secrets

  For Love or Money

  Her Soldier’s Baby

  The Cowboy’s Twins

  Visit the Author Profile page at www.Harlequin.com for more titles.

  Join Harlequin My Rewards today and earn a FREE ebook!

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  To all of those who’ve struggled to have a family...may your hearts be filled with love.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Excerpt from For Their Child’s Sake by Jules Bennett

  Chapter One

  Dear Emily,

  Forgive my familiarity. We’ve never met and yet I feel as though I know you. You will be receiving formal notification, but I couldn’t leave it at that. The decision has been made to officially pronounce Winston’s death. This will award you the death benefits and pension you deserve, and yet somehow, I sense that isn’t what matters to you.

  As Winston’s immediate superior I could go on about the standout soldier he was. But during this last tour... I walked into the trap with him. Ahead of him. I unknowingly led him to his eventual death. He saved my life. And we spent days in hiding together. Perhaps I am being selfish, but I need you to know that you are all that kept us alive. His talk of you. His love for you. His belief that that kind of love was real.

  In any event, it’s been two years since he left to find water for us and never came back. Two years since I was discovered by friendly forces. Two years of trying to understand why I am here and he is not. He had everything to live for.

  Please know that for the rest of my life, I am here for you, a willing servant, pledging to have your back or do whatever I can for you, no matter what...

  A signature followed. Contact information. Emily couldn’t see any of it through her tears. She wadded up the letter and threw it across the room, half watching as it hit the wood blinds open to the California sunshine outside her living room window. Their living room window.

  Dressed in black pants that hugged her ankles, a loose cream-colored sheath, and a short black-and-cream three-quarter-sleeve open sweater, with three-inch black stilettos, she tried to pretend that this day was like any other, that she hadn’t been up all night, that she was prepared for the meeting she would be leading that morning in the largest conference room of the LA marketing firm she’d been with since college.

  The forty-five-minute drive north might have been preparation enough if she hadn’t spent the past twelve hours vacillating between grief that cut the air out of her lungs and an anger that was equally debilitating.

  In the ten years she’d been with the firm, she’d never called in sick. She’d been at work when officials had come to her two years before to inform her that Winston was missing in action in Afghanistan. She’d remained in her office, mostly comatose, but there, until the end of the day, but had put in for a couple of vacation days before she’d left.

  She usually scheduled vacation for birthdays and anniversaries.

  And this?

  What was it really, but a formality? Something everyone around her assumed?

  Good news, even, as it released benefits to her that she didn’t already have.

  She didn’t need them.

/>   She needed Winston.

  Staring out the blinds, at the grass that she kept carefully manicured just as Winston had, she let the sun’s bright glint partially blind her for a moment or two as she tried to look past it to find some kind of direction.

  For two years she’d refused to believe the love of her life was dead. Winston wouldn’t leave her on earth alone. They’d promised when they were fourteen that they’d be there for each other for the rest of their lives. And at fifteen, when they’d proclaimed their romantic love. And again at twenty-two, when they’d stood in front of an entire town’s worth of family and friends and made the vow publicly.

  For two years, she’d refused to believe.

  For two years she’d been alone, living in an emotional freezer, waiting.

  No answers appeared in the brightness outside her window. Stars and yellow-lined pink smears dotted her vision as she moved toward her purse and keys. She had to get to the office.

  She wasn’t dead, and work was the life she had.

  Almost at the front door, Emily glanced toward the living room. Tearing up again, she went back, picked up the wadded paper, carefully smoothed it. Carried it out to the car with her. Drove all the way to LA with it on her lap.

  She parked in her designated spot five minutes ahead of schedule. Dropped her keys in their pocket in her purse. And very carefully, she picked up the letter, folded it and slid it in her wallet.

  * * *

  Emily wasn’t 100 percent on board with her plan a month later when she presented herself at the fertility clinic in town. Her heart was all there, 150 percent. Her body, the same.

  But her mind...wasn’t totally convinced she hadn’t lost it.

  “Let’s head back to my office,” Christine Elliott, the clinic’s founder and manager, said as she collected Emily from the large and oddly calming waiting room. Instead of sitting in seats placed close together, forcing patients to face each other, the comfortable armchairs were arranged in separate areas, only two to four per grouping, with large floral arrangements separating them. Healing tones of new age music played, and the wall art, with predominant shades of purple, was somehow comforting.

  The air was infused with a hint of lavender. She recognized the scent immediately only because, in her attempts to survive over the past couple of years, she’d gone through a phase of relying heavily on aromatherapy.

  And, okay, still dabbed her wrists with pure lavender oil on occasion.

  She’d taken up carrying peppermints with her at all times, too—just in case they really did promote calm and mental clarity.

  As they reached the door bearing Christine’s placard at the end of the inner hallway, Emily pulled an individually wrapped little white circle out of her pocket and slipped it into her mouth. Fresh breath was always good.

  In a short flowered summer dress, Christine could have been heading out for a day of shopping and lunch with friends. Emily liked that. Just...it felt better entering her office for “that” conversation with a woman who looked like shopping and lunch, rather than austerity.

  Not one who’d ever really spent tons of time contemplating her wardrobe once she’d purchased clothes—figuring she did the work in the store so whatever was in her closet had already passed inspection—Emily had troubled herself for most of her shower time that morning, trying to determine what to wear. Would she do better if she appeared casual, like she was fully sane and prepared to calmly bring a child into the world all alone?

  Or would businesslike and competent serve her better?

  Her white capris and short black top with jeweled thongs didn’t seem to matter a whit as she took a seat on the couch Christine indicated for their meeting.

  The first time she’d been in that room—the only other time she’d been there—she and Winston had been shown to the two leather-bottomed seats in front of Christine’s massive light wood desk. She’d liked sitting there. The woman’s desk looked like something out of an upscale trinket shop, with everything carefully placed to show it off in its best light. To tempt you to want to own it. Angels in various forms. A china horse. Florals and a small colorful metal heart sculpture.

  The couch, also light-colored and leather, faced the chair Christine had landed on. Emily had nowhere to look but in the other woman’s eyes.

  “You asked to speak with me specifically,” Christine opened the conversation. No “How have you been?” Or “Nice to see you.”

  Emily nodded, her light blond hair loose and straight around her shoulders. She used to curl it. Pull it back in clips. It all seemed like too much trouble these days.

  “You were behind me in school...what, a couple of years?” she asked inanely, panicked for a second as she grappled with the reality of what she was doing. Christine had never attended parties or been a part of any crowd that Emily knew of, but she’d recognized her when she and Winston had visited the clinic.

  He hadn’t remembered her.

  “Three years. I was a freshman your senior year.”

  “You used to leave during lunch. The McDermott Street door was down the hall from my locker and I’d see you...”

  Only seniors had been allowed to leave for lunch.

  “You always left alone...”

  She’d wondered about it, in the way you’re curious about something in the moment and then forget about it. It hadn’t been any of her business.

  And still wasn’t.

  “My grandmother was diabetic and needed an insulin shot,” Christine said, not seemingly at all put out by Emily’s rudeness. Or the unprofessional and inappropriate topic of conversation.

  “You were, what, fourteen?”

  Christine’s short dark hair barely touched her shoulders as she shrugged. “I wanted to help, thought it was cool and seriously didn’t mind doing it. Gram said Gramps hurt when he did it. Besides, she always had a great lunch ready for me when I got there.”

  Still...she’d been fourteen. A kid. Missing out on all of the gossip and drama in the lunchroom. And the friendships that formed or solidified because of them.

  Not to say that Christine hadn’t had a slew of friends. Emily had no idea who Christine had known.

  “I was sorry to hear about Winston.” The compassion in Christine’s brown eyes came close to undoing her. And focused her, too. Finally.

  “That’s why I’m here,” she said, sitting upright on the couch, nothing at her back. Because that’s how it was going to be. “Labwerks contacted me... I actually forgot to pay my yearly storage fee...”

  Christine could have jumped in as Emily faltered. Instead, she sat silently, that warm look still in her gaze.

  “They asked if I wanted them to discard Winston’s sperm...”

  The vial had been taken as part of an initial testing process when he and Emily first visited Elliott Fertility Clinic. They’d been trying to have a child for over a year with no success. Low motility had been ruled out. As had any other obvious reasons for an inability to procreate. They’d been given the option to keep trying naturally, with some hormonal help, or consider artificial insemination. Because they’d both just turned thirty and figured they had time, they’d opted to go the natural route for a while longer, but had paid to have Winston’s sperm stored just in case.

  “So what can I do for you?” Christine’s question came quietly. More of a boost than a push. Like she was helping Emily do what she’d come to do, not forcing her to get on with it.

  “I’ve become obsessed by an idea I had and I want your opinion before I allow myself to seriously consider it.”

  “Why me? I’m not a counselor—Though, as you know, we have a couple of top-rate ones on staff, and I’d be happy to refer you...”

  Emily shook her head. Maybe a counselor was what she needed but it wasn’t what she wanted. Not at that point, anyway.

  “I want your opinion.”
>
  “My degree is in health management. I founded the clinic, I run it, but the work that we do...that’s the fabulous doctors and their teams, not me.”

  “When we met with you before...it was clear to me...you aren’t in this as a business. You’re here because you care about people.”

  With a silent nod, Christine acknowledged the truth of the remark.

  “And...you understand that sometimes, for some people, the need to have a family, by whatever means, overrides most everything else...”

  “Whatever legal means...” Christine said slowly, her look more assessing. “What are you considering?”

  “Nothing illegal.” Emily tried to smile and chuckle. She choked instead. And when Christine brought her a bottle of water, she took down half of it. “I’m sorry.”

  Taking the seat next to her on the couch, Christine turned to her. “I’m happy to listen.”

  Chapter Two

  Emily rambled for what seemed like an hour. She just talked. Unburdening herself of myriad thoughts. Relaying arguments that played out in her head. Releasing a little bit of the panic that had become an almost-constant companion over the past month. She wasn’t looking for healing. For therapy. Truth was, she wasn’t sure what she was looking for. Permission maybe.

  She wanted some kind of professional response from the health care manager, as though such a response would validate the seemingly unstoppable urge to have herself inseminated.

  The clock on the wall said only about ten minutes had passed when she finally fell silent.

  “You have the legal right to use your husband’s sperm.” Christine’s response sounded professional. And maybe more, too.

  She didn’t need the other woman’s pity. She had so much of that coming at her she was almost buried in it.

  “Everyone I know is feeling sorry for me,” she blurted. “I’m attempting to prevent myself from sinking into the pool they’re creating and letting it drown the life out of me. And yet is it fair to bring a child into the world because I’m drowning in grief?”