The Child Who Changed Them Read online

  “Look, if you’re feeling bad about breaking things off, I’m fine with it. I told you that at the time. I hope my reaching out to you today didn’t make you feel like I was expecting anything.”

  “Of course not!” Elaina’s gaze darted back to him. “The thought never even crossed my mind! I’m glad you reached out. And I was happy to work the scans in first thing...”

  He nodded, and she glanced away.

  “So—” he moved closer as his voice softened “—what is this, then? You want to get dinner or something?”

  He was not hitting on her. He couldn’t be. But her lower body flooded with reaction, anyway. For a second there she went with it. Dinner would be so much easier than the item on her agenda.

  “Really?” she asked him. If she’d wanted food, she’d have asked for it. Or offered it. He knew her well enough to know that.

  But she couldn’t blame Greg for scrambling. In all the months she’d known him, she’d never invited him to her place. And then out of the blue, a month after she broke up with him, she suddenly had.

  “I’m pregnant, Greg.”

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome back to The Parent Portal, where some very special people spend their days creating families. This book came to me while I was writing another. I just couldn’t get the heroine out of my mind. She had a story to tell. A lesson to teach me that I very much needed to learn.

  There are only some things we can control in life. We do our best. Make our smartest choices. Play by the rules...and life happens. Sometimes our hearts are broken.

  The way to find real, lasting joy is to keep your heart open even after it breaks. It’s tough to do. Elaina doesn’t do it. But I hope you find enough of yourself, or someone you know, in her, so that you stick with her. She’ll get you there. This one is all her. I didn’t do it. I didn’t know how she was going to do it. But I trusted and she showed me the way.

  I love to hear from my readers! You can find me at www.tarataylorquinn.com or on social media!

  Tara Taylor Quinn

  The Child Who Changed Them

  Tara Taylor Quinn

  Having written over ninety 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 a seven-time 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 Parent Portal

  Having the Soldier’s Baby

  A Baby Affair

  Her Motherhood Wish

  A Mother’s Secrets

  The Daycare Chronicles

  Her Lost and Found Baby

  An Unexpected Christmas Baby

  The Baby Arrangement

  The Fortunes of Texas

  Fortune’s Christmas Baby

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

  For Chum. I hope you don’t blame me.

  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

  Excerpt from The Marine Makes Amends by Victoria Pade

  Chapter One

  This is only a preliminary exam. It’s not like you’re fully committing to anything yet.

  The words replayed themselves in Elaina Alexander’s head as she sat, dressed again in the dark blue scrubs she’d worn to work. The physical exam she’d just had was the last piece of the preparatory testing, counseling and paperwork she’d been through on her way to starting a family of her own that afternoon. Now she was waiting for a consultation with Dr. Cheryl Miller, the ob-gyn at The Parent Portal fertility clinic.

  This is only a preliminary exam. It’s not like you’re fully committing to anything yet.

  She was nervous. Apprehensive on some levels. But she was most definitely fully committed. Cassie, her sister-in-law of almost a year, had only been trying to assuage Elaina’s qualms; she’d made the statement to comfort Elaina in an early morning phone call. Cassie’s words hadn’t quieted her inner turmoil any, but they’d proved to her how very much she needed to know that she’d passed all the initial steps and could be scheduled for her insemination, should she choose to fully commit to something.

  She and the team at The Parent Portal had talked about in vitro—about combining her egg and Peter’s sperm outside her womb, creating an embryo and then implanting it—but she’d opted to have Peter’s sperm injected. To have their baby created inside her body.

  After months of thought, talking with Peter’s brother, Wood, and Cassie, and after counseling, research and more thought, the doctor part of her, the analytical part had only one question left.

  How soon could she start monitoring her system for ovulation so that she could get her deceased husband’s sperm inside her? At thirty-four, she was far too conscious of time passing.

  As a woman who ached with the need to have her own family, and to honor the husband who’d died when she’d lived, she couldn’t get pregnant fast enough.

  The sun had been shining when she’d come into the clinic half an hour before, with a forecast of blue skies and sixty-five degrees in Marie Cove that March Thursday. The sterile, mostly white room in which she sat had a bit of a chill. Or she did.

  Refixing her long dark hair into a ponytail, she glanced for a time at her blunt-cut but perfectly healthy-looking fingernails.

  Ten minutes had passed since Dr. Miller’s PA had completed her exam and Elaina had been told the doctor would be with her shortly. A quick glance at her smartwatch told her what she already knew—though she had nothing specifically scheduled, her shift at the hospital started in an hour. Having recently finished her last year of residency, she’d taken on a full-time nuclear radiologist position at Marie Cove’s prestigious Oceanfront Hospital—something she’d been working toward for more than a decade. Being late wasn’t an option.

  Another five minutes passed. Elaina got up to pace the small room. Checked her watch. Her phone. Saw a work email indicating that Dr. Greg Adams, in the ER, needed her to do some imaging as soon as possible. He had an eight-year-old repeat patient who’d come in again that morning with symptoms that didn’t make sense with the medication she was on, and he wasn’t going to release her until he knew more. He was specifically requesting Elaina’s opinion.

  Quickly thumbing off a reply, scheduling the appointment as soon as her shift started, she thought about the child—a young girl with whom she was familiar from a chain of somewhat perplexing previous visits. But she didn’t spend any mental power on the doctor who’d sent the request. She and Greg, though they’d been friends with benefits for a time, had a good working relationship and that was all that mattered right now.

  The door opened and Elaina spun from her nonperusal of an impregnated uterine diagram to face Cheryl. And she knew th e pronounced lines at the corners of the doctor’s eyes didn’t foreshadow the go-ahead Elaina wanted to hear.

  “What?” she pretty much blurted. And quickly followed it with “What did you find?”

  She’d deal with it. Yes, thirty-five was the first cutoff date for healthy delivery, and risk grew exponentially in women over thirty-five carrying children. But she had time, at least statistically, to fix whatever had to be fixed...

  “Have a seat,” Dr. Miller said, sitting at a black pad-topped stool in front of the monitor mounted on a wall by the door. Elaina didn’t want to sit.

  She wanted to read the screen, which she couldn’t see without standing over the doctor’s shoulder. But she trained her eyes on the doctor instead as she reclaimed the chair she’d vacated minutes before. They were both medical doctors. Professionals trained to maintain boundaries, no matter the news being delivered.

  Cheryl didn’t look at the monitor. Elaina’s personal information probably wasn’t even up there. The PA had clicked out of it when she’d left the room.

  And did it really matter, other than to distract Elaina’s immediate emotions from flooding all over her and onto the floor?

  “What we found, and what I’ve just confirmed—” Dr. Miller’s tone was measured “—is that you aren’t a candidate for fertilization.”

  Moving back a few inches, as though she could distance herself from the news, Elaina studied the woman who’d been a doctor twenty years longer than she had. Needing to know that she was wrong in her assessment.

  “Not a candidate?” she asked. What did that mean? They wanted her to just go away? Be done with the rest of her life’s plan?

  Dr. Miller shook her head. “There’s no...”

  “Wait,” Elaina interrupted, not ready to hear the medical proof that backed up the doctor’s claim. She had to be fully braced and ready to believe that Cheryl could be wrong first. That medical science did get things wrong sometimes, if for no other reason than because of the human error involved in procuring that information.

  Dr. Miller watched her, as though she had all day to sit and wait.

  “I’m sorry,” she said as she snapped back to herself, appalled that she was wasting the busy woman’s time. “I...can you tell me, first, is it permanent? Are you telling me I can’t ever get pregnant?”

  When Cheryl Miller’s brows drew together, Elaina’s heart sank. Her stomach sank. “I know how badly you wanted to have Peter’s child,” the doctor said. “And only Peter’s child.” Dr. Miller had been at The Parent Portal back when Peter, and everyone he could talk into it, had donated sperm for the then fledging supply in the portal’s “bank.”

  At the mention of her dead husband in that moment—her first husband—tears sprang to Elaina’s eyes. He hadn’t been perfect, but Peter had been a good man. Dedicated to giving his all to the medical community.

  Dr. Miller had been present at one of Elaina’s initial visits, when they hadn’t been certain that Peter’s sperm was even still viable; her use of another donation had been discussed—and summarily dismissed. If Peter’s sperm wasn’t usable, she’d rethink the plan.

  “That’s why it’s a bit difficult for me to tell you that the reason you aren’t a candidate for fertilization is because you’re already pregnant.”

  Elaina knew she was not. “The lab mixed up samples,” she blurted out, too flummoxed to keep the thought to herself.

  “Your internal exam showed changes in the cervix and uterus that we see within the first few weeks, so we ran the urine test right away to be certain, which is why I’m a bit late getting in to see you. It’ll be another couple of hours before the blood test is back, but...”

  “So there’s a chance... Urine tests aren’t the most accurate. Blood tests are. Urine tests are known to be wrong sometimes...” Elaina could hardly believe she was the one babbling. She had never been prone to do anything that didn’t have her exhibiting at least a modicum of control.

  “Your cervix is soft and has changed color. Your uterus is already enlarging. You’re pregnant, Elaina.”

  She couldn’t be.

  That wasn’t the plan.

  And it wasn’t fair.

  Not to the baby.

  Not to the baby’s father...

  Oh, God.

  Oh, God. Oh, God.

  “Are you in a relationship with the father?”

  A quaint way of handling the hugely awkward situation, she supposed. Peter, as a resident, had worked with Cheryl. Not that anyone would blame her for getting on with her life. Peter had been gone a long time.

  “I’m not in a relationship with anyone,” Elaina quickly blurted.

  What?

  Oh, God. It wasn’t happening.

  Wasn’t supposed to happen that way.

  The whole plan...the self-realizations...the move from being reliant to self-reliant...from using a man for her own emotional security—even at the risk of that man’s happiness—to standing on her own and giving back to those who’d given to her.

  To Wood.

  Cassie’s husband.

  Elaina’s own ex-husband.

  Dr. Miller was studying her with a look of concern. Not that Elaina blamed her. She’d be doing the same if she were on the doctor’s stool rather than the chair she occupied. Hell, she was doing it even in the chair she occupied. Watching herself fall apart.

  “I had relations...a friends-with-benefits thing...but I broke that off...”

  “Does he know about your plans to be inseminated with Peter’s sperm?”

  She shook her head. “He doesn’t even know I want to have a baby. We weren’t...that kind of close...”

  Greg had made her laugh out loud. Something Elaina wasn’t prone to doing. He’d given her moments of freedom from everything she expected of herself. Freedom from grief.

  She’d used him. Just like she’d used Wood for emotional companionship after Peter’s death.

  Unintentionally. Unknowingly. Until he’d met Cassie and she’d slowly begun to see the truth about herself.

  But that didn’t change the facts.

  “He... I didn’t really talk about Peter...we weren’t...” That kind of close. “He knew about him,” she hastened to add to the tail end of her unfinished previous sentence. “Knew that Peter had just gotten his license to practice, and that he was killed by a drunk driver. He knew that I was in the car...and seriously hurt...but about his sperm being frozen...” She shook her head.

  They weren’t that kind of close.

  The words just kept repeating themselves in Elaina’s head, as though their truth could put a stop to the madness.

  To turn events back to the way they were supposed to go.

  She couldn’t be pregnant. Most certainly not with Greg Adams’s baby. He wasn’t even a permanent hire—would probably be leaving town as soon as he found a job at a bigger hospital.

  “Forgive me for asking, but is he married?”

  “No!” Horrified at the picture that made of her, of her friendship with Greg, she clamped down on her tongue.

  “Do you know his feelings on having a family?”

  As Elaina stared at the doctor, humiliated to admit that she did not know, it occurred to her that Cheryl was spending far more time with her than her job stipulated. It was up to the doctor to just deliver the news, then let Elaina find a counselor who could help her sort out the horrid mess she’d made of things.

  “I broke up with him after I’d made the final decision to proceed here,” she said, heat inflaming her face as she told another god-awful truth. She’d been sleeping with a man, intermittently, no strings attached, while meeting with a counselor and going through preliminary paperwork to have her husband’s child.

  It was all so...mixed up.

  “Peter’s been gone for so many years...”

  C heryl shook her head. “It’s not wrong for you to have a man, or even men, in your life, Elaina. You have your whole life ahead of you.”

  A life she’d promised herself wouldn’t include a man propping her up anymore.

  “I didn’t intend to live celibately,” she said then, honesty pouring out of her as though she could somehow redeem herself. As though she needed redeeming.

  “I just... I mean I was intending to be celibate for a while—until the baby was old enough that I’d feel comfortable going out on a date now and then. Maybe longer.” She’d figured that she could cross that bridge when she came to it.

  Everyone at the clinic had seemed to take a personal interest in her quest to have Peter’s baby. Most of them had known him. Known how much she’d loved him. Known how much he’d loved her, too. Almost as much as he’d loved medicine.

  She’d let them all down.

  Let his memory down.

  Shaking her head, she stopped her thoughts before they took such a melodramatic turn that she made more of a fool of herself. She hadn’t been having Peter’s baby for him—she didn’t owe it to him. Or if she did, it was only in small part.

  If she hadn’t raised her voice to his raised voice...maybe he’d have seen the car driving in the wrong lane sooner...could have reacted in a timelier fashion...

  Still, a baby didn’t change any of that.

  No, it just changed her life. Gave her a family to love. To raise. To watch grow into a contributing member of society. To be happy and find joy with...as a single parent.

  Peter’s baby wouldn’t have come with the added complication of a living father.

  And yet, he or she would have had Wood as a father figure...a very willing biological uncle who came with an equally willing aunt. Cassie and Wood had been thrilled when she’d told them she wanted to have a family. Had offered to help her in any way they could.

  Said they’d babysit, that the cousins—their new baby and Elaina’s soon-to-be—would be pals for life. Go through school together. Celebrate holidays together.

  Even before they’d found out that she intended to do it alone. With Peter’s sperm.