The Baby Arrangement Read online

  His frown brought back a wave of tension. “I don’t understand, then.”

  “I’m going to be artificially inseminated,” she told him. And then, before he could voice an opinion of any kind, she barged full force ahead with the spiel she’d practiced in bed the night before and in the car on the way over, too.

  “With the advance in research and technology, and with changing lifestyles, more women than ever are using sperm banks to have children. There’s even an acronym for us, SMC, Single Moms by Choice,” she said—not at all what she’d practiced. “I’ve already had all of the exams and testing done. I’m using a facility in Marie Cove, forty-five minutes south of LA. They’re fertility specialists, not a sperm bank. I met with the owner when I was looking at places and I just really like her. I got a good feeling when I was there.

  “It could take up to six tries, and I’m prepared for that, financially and emotionally,” she continued, speaking to the man she knew him to be—one who dealt with facts, with reality, and shied away from the emotional aspects of being alive.

  She didn’t blame him. She’d met his mother and his sister many times. She had sat next to him through countless phone calls where they’d tried to get him to side with them against whoever they felt had slighted them, from something as menial as someone using a hurtful tone of voice against one or the other of them, or their claim that someone had been deliberately manipulative or demeaning. As the only male influence in their home growing up, he’d spent his youth learning how to bypass the drama to get to the truth of whatever might need attention.

  “Way back in the ’80s, more than 30,000 children were born as a result of donors,” she told him. “There hasn’t been any numerical research collated since then as there’s no one body of collation, no database. But judging by the sheer volume of clinics today and the number of clients they have, you can logically guesstimate that the number of births has risen well into the hundreds of thousands.”

  She’d gotten out of bed the night before, in the middle of preparing her spiel, to do that particular research. For him. She really wanted him to be okay with her choice.

  He was still sipping beer. Watching her.

  “I’m going to do this, whether you approve or not,” she told him. “I’d love your support. It means a lot to me.” She paused, sipped her wine and hoped dinner didn’t come for a while because her stomach was in knots. “It means a whole lot to me,” she added. “But my decision is made.”

  Because she’d had to be certain that she was doing the right thing for her life. She hadn’t even told Tamara yet. But she was fairly certain her friend from grief counseling would approve. Though Braden hardly knew the woman who’d lost four babies—three to early term miscarriages and one a viable birth but too premature to sustain life—Mallory felt as though she and the other woman were soul mates in a lot of ways.

  His expression gave away very little. He was studying her.

  Was he trying to figure out how to diffuse this emotionally wracked tangent she was on?

  She watched him back, knowing her last thought wasn’t fair. Not to either of them. Braden had always shown her the utmost respect when it came to her life choices. And he had often times sought her advice when it came to his own matters. Still did.

  Their waitress stopped to say their dinners were almost ready and asked if he’d like another beer. He nodded. Her wine glass was still more than half full.

  “Say something,” she told him when the waitress walked away.

  “There’s a light in your eyes I haven’t seen in...well, too long.”

  She smiled. “I’ve found my future,” she told him softly.

  Then he shook his head. And she braced herself. She wanted his support, so she had to listen to his concerns. It wasn’t like there weren’t any. She had them, too. She readied her answers as their waitress delivered his beer.

  “Being a single parent, Mal, having to work and take care of a child all on your own... We were exhausted when there were two of us.”

  Meeting his gaze, she took him on.

  “I grew up with a single mom who not only worked and tended to me but regularly opened our home to other children, as well. Troubled children.”

  He knew her history, starting with the high-end prostitute mother who’d tried to keep her but who’d eventually realized what her life was going to do to her daughter and had given her up. Mallory had been almost three then. She didn’t remember the woman who’d later died of AIDS, contracted after Mallory’s birth. She remembered having to be tested, though, just to make certain she wasn’t carrying the HIV virus.

  By the time Mallory went in the system she’d been too old to be immediately grabbed up like a newborn. There’d been a couple who’d wanted her, though. And after almost a year in the courts while living in their home as their foster child, they’d gotten pregnant on their own and changed their mind about the adoption.

  She remembered them.

  And then Sally had come into her life. A social worker in another county, who had her own professional caseload of children, Sally was also a licensed foster parent in the county where Mallory had been living. She’d taken Mallory in and kept her until she’d gone off to college. There’d been children in and out of their home during the entire time she’d been growing up, but she’d been the only permanent foster Sally had had. The other kids had been like a shared project between them, with the two of them doing what they could to love the foster children during the time they were in their home.

  Mallory had always loved caring for kids. Nurturing came naturally to her. She was meant to be a mother.

  “Have you talked to Sally about this?” Braden asked. He’d met the woman a couple of times, but she’d retired, moved to Florida, met a man and married—her first marriage, late in life. He had a big family that she’d taken on as readily as she’d taken in all those children over the years.

  “Not yet,” she said. “But I’ll let her know at some point. You know she’s going to tell me to adopt, rather than birth, and while you’d think, in my position, having grown up as I did, that I’d be looking in that direction, I just want a biological family of my own.”

  “So find a man to share it with you.”

  Her heart lurched. And quieted. She shook her head.

  “You’ve hardly dated, Mal. I’d hoped that guy at Thanksgiving—that dad—was someone you were getting interested in.”

  “I have dated,” she told him. And she listed four men in three years. He nodded as each name rolled off her tongue. She’d told him about every one of them. “There’s been no spark.” She could have left it there, but for some reason, didn’t.

  “You know as well as I do, Bray. The magic is so great in the beginning, but there’s no guarantee it will last. Look at us. Tragedy happened. You changed, I changed, or we found different parts of ourselves that hadn’t had reason to present before.” She shook her head. “I just don’t trust the whole magic, in love thing. Besides, you said yourself many times that I changed even before tragedy hit. I loved motherhood more than I loved being a wife.”

  His words, not hers, but she wasn’t sure they were wrong. She’d loved being his wife more than she could ever put into words. And yet, being a mother...it was like an empty cavern inside of her had suddenly been filled to the brim.

  “The Bouncing Ball takes up twelve hours a day of your time.”

  She was proud of her daycare. It had a waiting list now, since she’d made the news the previous summer when a couple come to her for help in finding their kidnapped child. She was even, at Braden’s suggestion, raising her rates for new clients. She’d put her foot down when it came to charging her current clients more.

  “I spend my days taking care of children, Bray,” she said now. “And I have a fully trained and certified staff who also specialize in child development.”

  Yes, she sp
ent twelve hours a day at the center, doing what a mother does. Now, instead of just doing it for other people’s children, she’d be doing it for her own, as well. And then getting to spend the remaining twelve hours a day doing the same.

  “There’ll be no more empty hours,” she said aloud.

  Braden seemed to be searching for words, and for the first time in a while she hated what they’d become. Hated the friendship that kept so much inside, erecting an invisible and completely safe barrier between them.

  “Tell me what you’re really thinking.” She blurted the words.

  And, of course, their waitress chose right then to deliver their dinner.

  * * *

  She could hardly eat. But because he was devouring his steak, she forced herself to go through the motions.

  Was she being way too insensitive here? Telling her ex-husband that she was having a baby when the loss of their own child was what had driven them apart?

  Telling him she was having a baby when she knew he blamed himself for their loss?

  “You wanted me to move on,” she said, putting down her fork when she couldn’t pretend to eat anymore. “More and more I can feel your tension, Bray. You need me to get a life.”

  “I never said that.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  He didn’t deny her accusation.

  “I’m right, aren’t I? You feel responsible for my unhappiness, which means you can’t move forward until I do.”

  Putting a forkful of meat in his mouth he chewed. His lack of response infuriated her. And yet, not as much as it might have done six months ago. Just because Braden didn’t respond didn’t mean he had no response.

  “SIDS is not something you can predict,” she said. “And if we’d been home, Tucker still would have died.”

  That’s what the doctors told her. And the counselors. She still didn’t totally believe it. If she’d been home, if Braden hadn’t pressured her to leave their son with a nanny so that he could have some one-on-one time with her and spend most of the night making love with her, she might have heard a change in his breathing on the baby monitor. Might have been able to get to him in time.

  To do what, she didn’t know. At least she could have had a chance to breathe her own air into him.

  To hold him.

  Feeling herself sliding backward, she took a sip of wine. Four years of counseling, of recovery, and then she could so quickly be right back there.

  “If you’d really believed we did nothing wrong by being gone that night,” he said, “you’d have been able to have sex with me in the months that followed.”

  His softly spoken words hit her with a ferociousness she knew he hadn’t intended. She sat back, hands shaking, trying to get control of emotions that just didn’t die.

  Her inability to want sex with him, even after the immediate blow of grief had worn off, had been a final nail in their marriage’s coffin.

  Their lovemaking the night Tucker died had been incredible. She’d even admitted, sometime during it all, that Braden had been right to insist that they have that time alone together. She’d missed him so much. Had half forgotten how incredible he made her feel, how right it was to be locked body to body with him, riding the crazy crest together.

  And afterward...

  “I felt so guilty for being so into you that I’d actually forgotten about him, on and off, for those hours when we were together. I was having the orgasm of my life while he was dying.”

  She could feel the tears pooling in her eyes and knew she’d gone too far.

  She expected him to motion for the bill and almost reached for her purse.

  “You aren’t supposed to think about your children in the middle of sex, Mal. Or be turned on when you’re thinking about them. It’s a God thing, I’m sure. A shut-off valve that’s embedded in us to keep the parent-child relationship sacred and on track.”

  She stared at him. Had he just said that? Were they really having this conversation?

  Now? After all this time?

  “My current concerns don’t stem from anything to do with me,” he told her then, getting them back on topic.

  She sat back, the threat of tears gone. “I’d like to hear them,” she told him honestly.

  He cut a piece of steak, ate it. She broke off a piece of bread, played with it, making a pile of crumbs on her plate.

  “I’m worried about you being alone and facing all of the things that could possibly go wrong.”

  “You don’t think I’m strong enough to deal with life on my own?” That was a new one to her. She’d grown up in foster care, caring for foster children. She knew a hell of a lot about what could go wrong.

  “I do. It’s just that when it comes to mothering, Mal, you’re so all in, and losing Tucker just about killed you. The idea of you having another baby... I figure it needs to happen for you, but are you sure you’re ready? And doing it alone. What if—”

  She shook her head. “No what-ifs, Braden. Not unless you want me stuck with no life forever. There are always what-ifs. I’ve chosen to tackle them one by one as they come, if they come. As a part of living.”

  He put down his fork, not quite through his steak. He’d barely touched the potato.

  “You’ve really thought this through,” he said, meeting her gaze head on.

  “For months,” she told him. “Remember last November I told you about Tamara referring that man to my daycare whose mother had died in prison giving birth, and he suddenly found himself with custody of a newborn without even knowing that his mother had been pregnant?” This was how she’d practiced telling him how she’d arrived at her decision.

  This was what Braden would understand.

  He nodded. “I kind of thought you and he would hook up.”

  “Tamara tried her best to get me to think that way, for a minute or two. I knew all along she had a thing for the guy.”

  Her friend had been unable to so much as hold a baby, however, which had definitely been a major roadblock for the couple. Still was, sometimes. But they were working on it. And there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Tamara loved that baby girl. Mallory could see it when Tamara came in to The Bouncing Ball, sometimes with Flint, sometimes not, to pick up little Diamond Rose after work.

  “The thing is I’ve learned from seeing her courage, seeing how she forced herself to fight her way out of hell to give herself a chance to be happy, to make others happy. I have to do this, Braden. I can’t let the past prevent my future.”

  Which was why she’d agreed to spend the previous Christmas on a yacht with some old friends from college instead of with Braden, as they’d done in the past. He’d gone home to North Carolina to be with his mom and sister, but up to the last minute had tried to get her to go with him. He’d been worried about her spending the holiday alone.

  It hadn’t been her best Christmas, but she’d done just fine.

  “Okay.” Hands on the table, he looked at her. Then loosened his tie and motioned for the check.

  “Okay, what?”

  “Okay, you’re going to do this.”

  Her smile broke through with more of a rush than the tears. “And I have your support?”

  “Of course. I told you the day we divorced that you’d always have that. It wasn’t conditional, Mal.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “Thank you.” She nodded and left him sitting there, credit card in hand.

  Because she knew that was the way he’d want it.

  Chapter Three

  Holy hell, Mallory’s going to have a baby.

  Up at one in the morning, walking naked to the kitchen of the upscale high-rise condo he’d purchased on the beach not far from the harbor, Braden couldn’t get the thought out of his brain.

  He’d gone straight to his office after dinner to look over figures that had been coming
in for a couple of days regarding his real estate interest north of L.A. He’d put out a contractor bid request and was going over every submission line by line. He’d put a call in to his architect, too, the same man who’d designed the complex where Braden Property Management had first begun and still resided. Some changes would be needed to suit the L.A. property, but the basic plan would be the same.

  And it would bear the same name: Braden Property Management. Once upon a time he’d envisioned his second big venture to be titled a bit differently: Braden and Son Property Management. Once upon a time.

  He hadn’t told Mallory about his move. Hadn’t even realized that he hadn’t told her until after the check had been paid and he was heading out to the parking lot.

  Holy hell. Mallory’s going to have a baby. Alone.

  He’d been prepared for her dating. Getting serious. Eventually marrying. All of which would have led to a very different future for her. Then he’d have prepared for her having another family. One that worked for her this time.

  At thirty-three she was getting closer to her biological safety zone. She hadn’t brought up that point at dinner but he was certain it had been on her mind. She was a child-development guru and firmly believed that her best chances for conceiving a healthy and robust child were before she turned thirty-five. Back in their other lives, she’d hoped to have at least two and maybe four by then.

  Always in evenly numbered increments. She didn’t want a family with an odd man out.

  In his know-it-all, youthful arrogance, each time she’d mentioned her “clock goals” he’d pointed out that women were having babies successfully in their forties now. His way of deflecting the tension she’d begun to bring to their marriage after three years of still using birth control. They’d been establishing their businesses, and both had wanted to wait for children until they were secure.

  It might have been more manly to deal with the tension. To acknowledge the validity of her feelings and sit with her as she felt them.