Their Second-Chance Baby Page 3

  “Yes, that!” he said, pointing his finger at her as he stood up again. Paced to the outside door and back. “You knowingly kept them. You paid the facility’s storage fee.”

  She didn’t get him. Panic rose up inside her. And still, it was good to be in the same room with the man.

  Something about him had always had a way of reaching inside her and leaving warmth.

  “They sent me a bill, Seth. I sent you a copy. If you’d wanted to pay it, you were more than welcome.”

  “I didn’t want either of us to pay it,” he said, turning on his way back to his desk to face her. Looking up at him hurt her neck. Having him stand over her hurt her psyche. She stood, too.

  “The bill was in my name. There would have been repercussions to my credit if I hadn’t paid it.” Even as she said the words, she recognized the inanity of the conversation. Tried to figure out what was really upsetting him, because she knew darn well that no matter how much life might have changed this man, he didn’t care that much about a storage bill.

  “Not if you’d had them destroyed there wouldn’t have been,” he said now, face-to-face with her over the two feet that separated them.

  “I couldn’t destroy them without your permission,” she told him. He was a lawyer. He’d know that.

  “You couldn’t use them without my permission,” he told her. “But either one of us had the right to have them destroyed.”

  And he’d just talked himself into a corner. She knew he knew it. Saw the second that a bit of the wind left his sails.

  “You didn’t have them destroyed, Seth.”

  “You always handled all of the appointments and the insurance information...”

  Yeah, she’d done everything but put his specimen in a cup for him. Because having their family had meant that much to her. She’d thought he’d needed and wanted her children as badly as she’d wanted his. He’d been in law school when those embryos had been created. She’d upped for another tour doing office work on base until he finished the grueling study and classroom hours required to graduate at the top of his class. She’d been handling most of the household stuff as a result and paying the bills, too. She’d thought that taking care of these insemination details was just more of her carrying the weight for both of them until he was out of school. Then, it would be her turn for college.

  At twenty-six, planning to leave the navy, having the baby before she started school had been her idea, so that she didn’t have to take maternity leave from her studies. And he’d seemed so on board. Excited, even...

  “It never occurred to me that you wouldn’t have disposed of them. It was a no-brainer. The marriage was over. Our lives together were over...”

  He wasn’t just pissed that she was asking to use their embryos. He was angry that they still existed at all. Not something she’d figured into her own reasoning.

  “Why didn’t you have them destroyed?” His tone softened as he sank back onto the edge of the desk, leaving her standing all alone.

  Something she’d learned how to do well in the ten years since the demise of their marriage.

  “I don’t know,” she told him, giving him the total honesty the situation required. “For one thing, I thought I had to contact you to get permission to do it and I didn’t want to go there. I figured that if you didn’t want to tackle the subject, I’d just leave it alone.”

  “So...what? You were just going to pay to store them for the rest of your life?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know, Seth. I didn’t have any far-reaching plans. I just had the bill automatically paid from my account every month and never thought about it. I didn’t even think about using them when I made the choice to have a family on my own. Didn’t even dawn on me. I was going to use an anonymous sperm donor from The Parent Portal. And then tests came back showing a high risk of possible birth defects. That apparently happens with age. And while I was still reeling from that news, I saw the money pull from the storage facility, for storing healthy embryos made from my eggs, and...here I am.”

  At his mercy.

  And she’d learned a long time ago just how little she could count on Seth Morgan for his support of her endeavors.

  Thinking he’d do this for her...seeing him again at all...had been a big mistake.

  “I want no part of any of this.”

  “I’m not asking you to be a part of it. I just want you to sign a form and I’m out of your life forever.”

  “You might be, but I’d still have a child walking around out there...”

  Her chest tight, she just stood there, with nothing. She’d known, deep in her heart, that it was a longshot. The man she’d known...he wouldn’t just blithely sign away a life. She’d convinced herself that man she’d thought she’d known had been a figment of her imagination. Convinced herself her ex-husband lawyer wouldn’t care that he had a fatherless child.

  “I’m sorry, Annie, but I’m not signing the embryos over to you. I can’t.” She had her answer.

  Wasn’t ready to accept it. Might never be ready. But there was no point in remaining with Seth for another second. Because she wouldn’t ask any man to sign away a life if it wasn’t right for him.

  And it wasn’t Seth’s fault she’d waited so long to start her own family.

  Without another word, she walked across the room and let herself out.

  He did nothing to stop her.

  Didn’t even say goodbye.

  For the second time in her life, Seth Morgan had quashed her hope.

  Chapter Three

  He owed her.

  He’d been an ass, and he owed her.

  She was asking the impossible. She wanted him—a man who’d lost his mother, a law enforcement officer, on the job when he’d been just seventeen—to put his biological child at risk of experiencing that same crushing blow.

  He’d still been an ass.

  So, what was he saying?

  He couldn’t help not wanting to go that route himself—being married to someone who put her life on the line every day. He wasn’t a guy who just sat back and waited while a loved one was in danger. But did he have the right to make this decision for a child? For Annie?

  Because he knew firsthand what it felt like to have a lieutenant come to his door with that grim look on his face. They hadn’t told him that his mother had been killed. He’d only been in high school and it wasn’t their place. But as soon as he’d seen their faces, he’d known it must be bad. And when they’d said they were taking him to his father, who was waiting for him at the hospital, he’d known it was his mother who’d fallen.

  Still, he’d lived with his father being a cop. Yeah, he wanted the old man to retire, but at sixty-one his dad still wasn’t ready yet. Seth didn’t like it, but he wasn’t losing sleep over it, either. His dad had always been a cop. It was just something he accepted—but he hadn’t lost his father in the line of fire.

  And then there was Annie...she’d thought she wanted to be some kind of social worker when they’d met, had joined the navy just for the college opportunity. Had never planned to live out her life in harm’s way. And for the first few years after they’d married, she hadn’t ever wavered from that plan. He’d never have started a relationship with her if he’d known that she might be deployed to an assignment that involved police action, that she’d be offered military police training, or that she’d find her passion within law enforcement.

  He’d done his best to accept her calling. To live with it.

  He’d failed. Their marriage had suffered.

  Deteriorated.

  Ended.

  And now, a decade later, after he’d created an entirely different, and wholly satisfying, life for himself, she’d come back to disrupt it all again?

  As Seth drove back across town to the naval base, getting closer, with every mile, to the ocean he loved, he
got angry all over again. He’d long ago made peace with the fact that he wouldn’t have the children he’d thought he needed in his life. Had come to see that change as for the best. His job completed him. And took all of him.

  His purpose wasn’t to put more people in the world, but to help those who were already there and heading down a wrong path.

  And then he’d found out that the potential people he and Annie had created all those years ago still existed? And that she wanted to bring at least one of them to life?

  No!

  Stopping at a light, he caught a glimpse of the ocean in the distance...and clicked into rational mode. Clamped down on emotions that served no good purpose.

  It wasn’t unreasonable for him to be shocked, upset and opposed to the idea of children he’d wanted to create a decade ago suddenly being born. A possibility he’d thought forever destroyed.

  It wasn’t fair for him to have just assumed that Annie would have taken care of seeing that those embryos were destroyed. Nor was it right for him to be angry that she hadn’t done it. Not when he hadn’t done anything to take care of it himself. He hadn’t even bothered to check on them.

  Shaking his head, he tapped his thumb on the steering wheel. Over and over. Harder and harder. It had just never occurred to him that there’d be a need to follow up on the destruction of their dream after the marriage had imploded.

  And the rest of it... Annie’s driving down to see him...her reason...

  She’d always wanted to grow a baby inside her like no other woman he’d ever known. She used to talk about the desire to feel a little body moving inside her, about the magnitude and responsibility of her ability to take active part in such a miracle. All those months they’d tried to get pregnant naturally, so many times he’d wake up in the middle of the night to find her wide-awake, worrying. He could remember holding her tight as she talked to him about her feelings.

  The light changed and he inched forward behind the traffic in front of him.

  He wanted her to have her baby. For however long she managed to stay alive and in her child’s life, she’d be a great mother. There’d never been a doubt about that.

  But his child?

  He shook his head again as he joined the queue to enter the base.

  No way she was having his child.

  Not that she wanted him involved in her baby’s life. Him happening to be the sperm donor was really a superfluous detail to her.

  She wasn’t asking him to be a father. She just wanted full ownership of a biological component that contained his contribution.

  His temper settled a bit when he thought of it that way. Seth parked his sporty BMW in the covered spot reserved for him and exited out into the warm August air bearing the unique tinge of salt that spoke of home to him. Comfortable in its familiarity.

  He said hello to a few people he knew as he entered the building and walked the hallways en route to his office. He felt his phone vibrate with a text. Pulled it from his front pocket.

  I’ve given permission to have the embryos destroyed. The facility is just waiting on you to confirm.

  There followed contact information, both online and phone. Name included.

  And nothing else.

  It didn’t surprise him at all that she’d acted so quickly. That was Annie. Take care of business immediately. Don’t let it hang out there, taunting you with hope. As soon as she’d realized that he wasn’t okay with her being a cop, she’d been done with the marriage, too. Which was one of the reasons he’d been so shocked to find that she hadn’t destroyed those embryos.

  In his office, he shut the door behind him. Dropped the phone on his desk. Clicked on the computer screen. Called up the web address she’d typed.

  She hadn’t asked him to let her know when it was done.

  Perhaps she’d already made arrangements to have the facility let her know.

  Perhaps she’d already moved on. She was good at that. Moving on. Had certainly moved on from their marriage quickly enough, when he’d indicated that he needed to be through. There’d been no tearful recriminations. No begging him to hang on, to try harder.

  No suggestions that she might try to find another career that fulfilled her equally.

  No, she’d finished her tour of duty, left the navy as planned, and enrolled in a criminal justice program.

  And there she was again, taking care of business before she could possibly have even made it back to Marie Cove.

  A vision of those big blue eyes, staring him down less than half an hour before, filled his mind’s eye. Filled him until he could almost feel her presence right there in a room she’d never occupied. But the gaze wasn’t defiant as it had been in that stark little room in the community center. Those eyes were slowly welling with tears, tears that she’d fight for all she was worth.

  As memory flooded, he knew that sometimes she won that always hard-fought battle. Her will against her tears.

  And sometimes she lost.

  He’d bet she was crying. Alone somewhere.

  When they’d been together, her crying had nearly brought him to tears a time or two. Especially that time when she’d been late and they’d been certain she was pregnant, only to have her start her period in the middle of the night...

  He hated it when she cried.

  He’d just killed any hope of her realizing her lifelong dream.

  Any hope of her giving birth to her own child.

  Just as, a decade before, his inability to accept her in a dangerous career had destroyed her dream of being his wife for the rest of their lives.

  He had every right to his feelings. Every right to want those embryos destroyed.

  Looking at the screen, he typed. Printed. Went out to a paralegal he trusted, to have his signature notarized, and followed it with a quick and deliberate trip to the fax machine.

  And then picking up his phone, he typed some more. Hit Send.

  And felt sick to his stomach.

  * * *

  Annie felt a text vibrate from the phone in her pants pocket. Ignored it. In her serviceable black work shoes, she was walking along a stretch of beach just north of San Diego. One known to and generally used by locals. The beach she and Seth had used to live by.

  Having shed her cardigan and left it in the department sedan she’d been assigned upon making lieutenant, she preferred to focus on the sun flooding her shoulders, rather than any message anyone had sent her.

  Sunshine and shoulders. There’d been a song about that. About how sunshine made you happy. It had been written before she was born, but her mom had loved it and played it often. Annie hummed some of the tune, determined to make true the song’s message. Wishing her mother was still alive. Chelsea Whitaker Bolin, daughter of the uber-wealthy Claude Charles Whitaker, had died in a boating accident five years before, and Annie still missed her every single day. She’d only been three when her dad, Danny Bolin, had been killed during a robbery at the bank where he worked as a security guard. She’d heard a lot about the man from her mother, but her own memories were vague at best.

  Her close relationship with her mother had been part of the reason she’d been so adamant about having a family of her own—even once it became apparent that she’d be doing it solo.

  Wiping tears from her face, she skirted clear of a man and little boy up a little farther in the sand, feeling out of place dressed as she was, but unable to leave the beach. There was nowhere else she could think of to go, to get through the devastating pain coursing through her in waves. Over and over. She had friends she could call, of course. And Christine, the owner and manager of The Parent Portal, knew where she was and what she’d hoped to accomplish that day. She had a tentative appointment for implantation scheduled later in the week. Saturday. Three days away. She needed to cancel it.

  There was no point in keeping it. It wasn’t like she coul
d simply choose a sperm donor and continue on her path. Her eggs were no longer viable, and she couldn’t have a biological child without Seth’s consent, which she lacked.She’d made the call to the storage lab to give her permission to destroy the eggs, making it contingent upon Seth’s signing only because she was being petty and wanted him to take some responsibility. He’d so clearly blamed her for not having destroyed them when their marriage ended.

  The thought brought a fresh wave of tears.

  She caught the eye of another woman, several feet away, who’d turned around while sunning herself. Annie caught the woman’s instant recognition of someone in pain, saw the compassion on her face, and forced herself to head back up the sand toward her car. Though she wasn’t openly crying, she felt like she was making a spectacle of herself. Walking around in a pool of grief.

  To get her mind focused, to find some sense of reality in a world that had become nothing more than a blurred box lined with grief, she pulled out her phone. Remembering she had a text. Work. Something to distract her.

  She couldn’t give in to the pain. Couldn’t let it take her down.

  An only child, with both of her parents gone, she was it—the end of a remarkable love story. The last living element of her parents’ unique and incredible bond. Unless she carried on the love that had created her.

  What a shock it would be to everyone in her sphere were it to be known that the highly respected Lieutenant Annie Morgan had such a romantic side lurking inside her.

  Back at her car, she faced the dark sedan, not ready to get in. And so she walked along the sidewalk edging the parking lot.

  Forcing herself to move forward by touching the phone screen.

  Opening her messages. Moving toward a big tree offering shade so she could read the screen. Expecting an update on a case to pull her back to her real life. Needing it to do so.

  I just sent a notarized statement preventing the destruction of the embryos until such a time as you make a second request to have it done. And then, upon your next contact with the facility, I release all ownership of the embryos. They are now yours to do with as you wish. –Seth