The Baby Arrangement Read online

  Sit with her. She wasn’t the only one who’d had some counseling after Tucker’s death. Sit with her. It had been what his counselor had told him he should have done when Mallory’s grief had flooded their home to the point that he’d had to escape.

  He hadn’t been able to fix things. Hadn’t known how to help. What to do.

  What she’d apparently needed was for him to sit with her. Just be there while she grieved. Be willing to be in her grief with her. Whatever that meant. He got the words but he’d never completely figured out the concept.

  Nor the next one. Let her into your grief.

  The whole counseling thing hadn’t lasted very long.

  Wandering to his desk instead of heading back to bed, he sipped from his milk and stood in front of his computer—an identical setup to the one he had at his office and linked to it.

  But work wasn’t calling him.

  Insemination was.

  For a few minutes, earlier that night, he’d been with the old Mal. The one who didn’t carry grief with her everywhere she went. From the way her eyes had lit up, even the way she’d held herself, it had seemed at first that he’d been sitting with the woman who’d blown his life away with her beauty, her contagious good feeling. He’d been in love all over again, there, for just a second.

  For just a second he’d forgotten that he’d robbed her of the chance to kiss her baby good-night for the last time. To change him for the last time. Bathe him. Feed him. Hold him. Rock him to sleep. That had all been done by the nanny.

  The next morning, the coroner had already been to the house by the time they’d arrived home. And Mallory’s breasts had been leaking Tucker’s food all over the place.

  No matter how many times you relived it, the picture was always the same. He sipped his drink.

  For just a second, earlier that night, Mal had seemed to be soaring again, instead of sagging.

  He couldn’t take that from her. No matter what misgivings he might have. No matter how valid they might be.

  He was still staring at his computer, his milk almost gone.

  If he was going to support Mallory in this venture, he needed to know everything there was to know.

  Heading off for some boxers he came back and set to work.

  An hour later, he had her on the phone.

  “Braden? It’s two in the morning! What’s wrong?”

  “You never said when you were going for your first procedure.” Or what kind it was going to be. “For all I know, it’s first thing in the morning. I wanted to chat a second before it happens.”

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday,” she reminded him. “My appointment’s on Monday, after work, unless I don’t ovulate as expected.”

  Not that far off, then.

  “I called tonight’s meeting. When were you planning to tell me about this?”

  Whoa, buddy. You don’t sound like a friendly and supportive ex-husband.

  “Before tonight...or last night, now,” she said. “But when you called Wednesday, asking to meet, I figured Friday night was fine.”

  He moved on, letting himself slide on the over zealousness of his questioning due to the lateness of the hour and shock of her news.

  “I assume, given the circumstances, your ability to conceive, your age and your excellent health that you’re considering either ICI or IUI,” he said, looking at the screen of statistics in front of him. Intracervical insemination. Intrauterine insemination. And there was intravaginal, too.

  “Really, Braden? At two in the morning?”

  “IVI is cheaper, by far, less invasive and less painful, but chances of conceiving the first time are considerably lower. ICI is still cheaper and less uncomfortable. But IUI has a slightly higher success rate. I think you should go with that. The less raised hopes and disappointment here the better.”

  “I’m fully prepared for this to take several months.”

  She yawned. And sounded slightly amused, too.

  It was two in the morning.

  His nearly naked body yearned during the second it took him to remind himself that it was Mallory he was talking to. The woman who had no interest in being a wife once motherhood was in the picture.

  Mallory, who’d been unable to feel any desire for him at all since their son died.

  Because she felt guilty for how great it had been for her that night.

  That was new knowledge that he’d process at some point.

  That night had been the best sex of his life, too. He didn’t feel bad about that.

  “How about a meet-up sometime this weekend?” he asked.

  “Fine.” Another yawn.

  “I’m taking the boat out on Sunday,” he told her. “You want to go fishing?”

  “I’d rather lie on the deck and soak up some spring sunshine.”

  Right. He knew that. She’d gone out with him plenty of times. She’d never caught a fish and had only tried once or twice after he’d bugged her to the point where she’d given in.

  If she had a boy, who was going to teach the kid to fish?

  Knowing Mallory, she had some kid’s fishing development group already lined up.

  “Seven too early for you?” They’d have plenty of time on the boat for talking.

  “Nope.”

  He could tell her about his L.A. plans, too. “Meet me at the dock?”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay. We can—”

  “I’m going back to sleep now, Braden. Good night.”

  He caught her chuckle just before the call went dead.

  * * *

  In leggings, a short-sleeved, oversize black shirt and tennis shoes, her dark hair tied back in a ribbon, Mallory boarded the fishing boat Braden had already owned when she’d met him eight years before. She carried a plastic bowl of cut fruit in her hands.

  He was on board with a plate of doughnuts.

  Looking at each other’s goods, they laughed. “Some things don’t change,” she said, not as worried as she might have been about spending leisurely time with her ex-husband.

  Surely, after three years of successful friendship, she and Braden could handle a few hours alone on the ocean. He probably wouldn’t even leave the harbor.

  He’d set a lounger for her on the deck, maybe the same lounger she’d used in the past.

  She’d brought her own towel and dropped it on the lounger while he did what he did with his bait.

  She opened the food, set it out on one of the benches with the little disposable plates, napkins and plastic forks she’d brought. He started the engine, fixed himself a plate and backed away from the dock. The boat had a little cabin and, noticing the travel mug he had next to him at the helm, she went below, found the coffee he’d made and poured herself an insulated cup full. With doughnuts and fruit on a plate, she pulled on the hoodie she’d brought aboard and settled in her lounger. When the sun was fully above them, she’d be hot, and she’d take off the hoodie and get some color on her skin.

  And at some point, Braden was going to want to talk. Apparently to make certain that she knew she was doing the right thing and to tell her he was seeing someone again, she supposed.

  Which was fine.

  She’d listen, as she always did, and support him in his endeavors, as she always did.

  Until then, she was going to relax into the bliss.

  * * *

  “Can you come up here?”

  Drifting off to sleep, the rising sun’s warmth cozy in the cool San Diego spring air, Mallory heard Braden. Not in the mood to hear about his new girlfriend, she took a second to decide whether or not to acknowledge that she’d heard.

  The engine had stopped. She’d heard him moving around, getting his rod and casting his line. He’d be sitting up on the bow, watching the boats on the horizon as much as anything. She’d always said he did more
relaxing than fishing when he went out, but hadn’t seen that as a bad thing.

  Thinking he had to carry the whole world on his shoulders as he did, Braden didn’t relax enough.

  And then she quit picturing it. Braden on the bow of the boat, wind in his air, was just...hot. A part of them that had to be dead to her now.

  “Mal?”

  “Yeah, I’m coming,” she said, repositioning her sunglasses as she opened her eyes. They’d only been out half an hour. So much for her bliss.

  But, hey, by the following night she might be pregnant. Braden could get remarried and it wouldn’t be enough to snap her out of her good mood.

  Joining him on the bow and sitting with her back propped on the small rail, she faced him, her feet in front of her with knees bent. His jeans and tennis shoes were new since they’d been divorced. The forest green T-shirt she’d washed before. A breeze blew his hair and he didn’t seem to notice.

  It made him look free. And just a touch wild.

  The impressive breadth of his shoulders...that was the same as it had always been.

  “You said you wanted my support in this venture of yours.”

  She wouldn’t call having a baby a “venture” but understood that he would. And that what he called it didn’t have to matter to her anymore. She nodded.

  “Then I have some concerns I’d like to address.”

  He wasn’t going to spoil her good mood. Not that he’d ever want to. Or intend to. He was trying to help. She got that.

  “What are they?”

  Throwing up one hand, he glanced at the line hanging placidly over the front of the boat.

  “Most of them—” He stopped and shook his head. “There’s one major one, but I have a plan that can tend to it.”

  Did Braden just have a hitch in his voice? Heart beating faster, she studied her ex-husband. This mattered to him.

  A lot.

  Which warmed her. A lot.

  “What’s your plan?”

  He frowned. “I’d like to present the concern before I move forward to the solution.”

  Had they been married, she’d have felt rebuked. She smiled, instead, finding his predictability, his need to keep things in order and under wraps, kind of endearing. “Of course.”

  “I’m concerned about the Y component,” he told her, catching her completely off guard. She’d been expecting something more along the lines of her being a single parent. Taking on a two-person job all alone. Concerned that if she had a son, the boy would have no father figure.

  Or anyone to take him fishing.

  “You won’t know family history,” he continued, when she decided silence was the best answer until she could figure out where he was going with the conversation. “According to the National Human Genome Research Institute there are forty-eight known and listed genetic disorders that could be passed on to your child. That doesn’t include the ones that occur when certain genes meet with inhospitable partner genes. If that were to happen, your likelihood of miscarriage would increase greatly, but I’m not even there yet.”

  It sounded like he was right there. Some more of her bliss faded. She wouldn’t let go, though.

  She was going to do this.

  “Women have been having healthy donor babies for decades.”

  “And they’ve been having children with disabilities, too.”

  “So have married couples.” So could they have had.

  “But at least when you know the Y component, you have more of a chance to prevent something or to catch it in its earliest stages.”

  She didn’t have an immediate answer to that. Except what she’d already said.

  “You’ve been through so much, Mal. I applaud what you’re doing here. I’m elated to see you taking up the reins of your life again. Moving on. Creating a future where you’ll be happy.”

  Elated and Braden weren’t words she’d put together. At least, not since Tucker died. Before that she’d seen some elation. More than he’d probably realized. But not as much as after she’d found out she was pregnant.

  Was the pregnancy what had changed him? At least somewhat? Was there more to their divorce than just their dichotomous ways of dealing with life’s tragedies, which ultimately blew their emotional trust in each other?

  “I’m concerned, Mal,” he said after a lengthy silence had fallen. “Really concerned. All weekend, the more I think about it, the more concerned I get. To the point that I’m not sure I can give you my support. Not with such a huge unknown.”

  So she’d do it alone. She’d already made that decision. And she’d known from the beginning that she might not win his buy-in.

  Still, she could feel the weight of sadness come back, trickling into the outer recesses of her heart.

  “I’m worried about what you’d do if you lost a second child.” The depth of compassion in his tone was something she hadn’t heard in a long, long time.

  “There are never guarantees, Braden. He or she could be hit by a car or a bolt of lightning. The point is, I’m not going to let the past rob me of my future.”

  Which was exactly what she’d told Tamara she shouldn’t do.

  Exactly when the words had become her mantra, she didn’t know. She just knew that she felt the truth on a soul level.

  “But why play with fate when you have a choice?”

  Again, she had no ready answer so she thought about what he was saying, instead. She’d asked for his input. Having his support meant more than him just agreeing with everything she said and did.

  She valued his opinion and she wanted him to care enough to speak up.

  “You need a full family medical history,” he said. “Or as complete of one as you can get. Way more than the general things the sperm bank provides. You need to know if his grandfather was prone to anxiety attacks or his entire family were unmotivated sloths.”

  “Right, so what do you suggest I do, Bray? Put an ad in the paper for sperm that comes with that kind of extensive history?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then what?”

  It was only when she asked the question that she remembered he’d said he had a solution to her problem. A plan that would tend to his concern.

  “You let me be your donor.”

  A wake from an incoming cruise ship in the distance hit the boat and she grabbed the rail, holding on so tight her knuckles turned white.

  Chapter Four

  She was staring at him, clutching the rail, mouth open, looking at him like he’d lost his mind.

  He hadn’t. Exactly the opposite, in fact.

  He had to do this. He might not want to do it. Didn’t like the messiness.

  But he had to do it.

  He owed it to Mallory.

  “You’re already going to be fighting the fear of another loss,” he said, keeping things practical because he knew that was the only way to get through this. Through any tough situation. “You’ll need all of the reassurances you can get. During your first pregnancy, you worried about the fact that you don’t know your own family history. Knowing mine helped calm those fears.”

  She’d closed her mouth but was still staring.

  “It’s not conclusive that genetics have any link to SIDS, but we know that there is no evidence of it whatsoever in my family.”

  Shoulders drooping, she’d lost all appearance of happiness. Though that was not his goal, it was often the outcome whenever they had a real conversation. Still, he couldn’t drop this.

  “There are no guarantees, Mal, we both know that, but I’m as close to a guarantee as possible when it comes to healthy genes.”

  After Tucker’s death, he’d had complete genetic testing done on himself, including familial screening, which he’d paid for. The results had shown that he and his family had absolutely no predispositions for any of th
e maladies such tests could indicate. He’d shared the news with Mallory.

  And it had been the absolute wrong thing to do at the time. She’d taken his information to mean that she was to blame for their son’s death.

  “We also know that our reproductive environments are compatible.” They’d conceived Tucker the first month they’d tried. “The sooner you conceive, once you start trying, the less stressful that portion of the process will be.”

  He saw her blink and took that to mean she was hearing him.

  “Further down the road, if the child were to develop an illness or sustain a severe injury, something that needed a blood transfusion or donor of any kind, you’d have both parents to pull from.”

  She let go of the rail, wrapped her arms around her knees and looked out to sea. Was she going to turn him down?

  “We can get everything drawn up legally,” he continued, figuring that he’d covered all of the bases in his mind since Friday night, and if he just kept talking, he’d allay any concerns she might have. “You’d be the sole parent, just like you want. I’d have no say in anything, no legal rights, no more than any anonymous donor.”

  He drew from the thoughts that had consumed his weekend. “It would save you money, as well,” he said. “You wouldn’t have to pay for the sperm.”

  Her glance, when it swung back his way, had his heart palpitating for a second. He wasn’t sure why.

  “You’re actually suggesting that we have sex?” The sentence ended almost on a squeak. He wasn’t sure if she was offended or simply appalled and shocked.

  At least she’d spoken.

  “Of course not,” he quickly reassured both of them. Yeah, he’d been cursed with an apparently lifetime attraction to his ex-wife, but she cringed at the idea of sex with him, and there that possibility ended. “I’d leave my specimen at the clinic, but I’d do so as a non-paid donation specifically for you.”

  She’d have to pay for the procedure, just not the sperm.

  “If you go with IUI your chances of conceiving the first time would be better than with sex.”

  Mallory was shaking her head.

  “What?”

  “Do you realize the mess we’d be making if we did this?”