A Baby Affair

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “Oh, I had my chance,” she told him, taking a long sip of juice. She wasn’t really showing yet, but felt bloated and thirsty all the time.

  Not something a man would find attractive in a woman he was just meeting.

  And that was just fine with her. His gorgeousness and all...that wasn’t anything she wanted or needed in her life.

  “And I was just like her.”

  She was an adult now. In control of her life. Making the educated choices that were best for her. And for those she loved.

  “I gave up everything that mattered most to me, ditched my loved ones, to please the man I was with and I didn’t even see it as a bad thing, at first. You asked about regretting something so much you couldn’t let it go?” she asked him. “That’s it. Those months of choices I made when I was with Mike, they aren’t ever going to happen again. And the only way I can guarantee that is to make certain that I don’t ever get that attached to a man again. I’ve made my choice, Dr. Harmon. No partner. But a happy, healthy family with tons of support.”

  “Support from whom? What if something happens to you, for instance?”

  She had that all taken care of. And told him so. Detailed the arrangements she’d made with Angie. And reiterated the support from other family members and friends.

  She had her life back on track.

  Craig might be a stop-you-in-your-tracks kind of guy, but he wasn’t going to change her mind about doing this alone.

  Chapter Seven

  He’d donated his sperm so that those who couldn’t have a family by traditional means would still be able to have children of their own.

  Had he really thought his donation would only be used by married couples who were infertile?

  Asking himself the tough questions, in light of Amelia’s intimate honesty, Craig was relieved to find that he really wasn’t standing in judgment or facing her with preconceived notions. He didn’t need his child in a family made up of particular parts, or from a particular financial status. He needed it to be well loved. Secure. Clean and cared for.

  Just from his brief looks at Amelia’s home, he knew she had the clean part down. The guard who’d kept him from getting upstairs without credentials kind of tended to the secure part. At least in one sense. There was emotional safety to contend with, as well.

  With a glance at the folder on the desk, he had as much reassurance as it was possible to get at this point that the woman carrying his child would care for it. The baby was still little more than a fetus and she already had a guy coming to baby-proof her home. Medically she was doing more than necessary. She’d already paid for cord blood storage.

  Banking cord blood was a relatively new concept to the general public, but it gave doctors the ability to treat a patient with their own cord blood stem cells—a way to cure some diseases that would otherwise be terminal.

  He hadn’t even gotten as far as cord blood banking in his thoughts yet, and he was a doctor who’d seen the banked blood save a life.

  And as to the child being loved... How did he quantify that?

  He’d come to check on the welfare of his unborn seed. He didn’t feel...satisfied.

  Made more complicated by the fact that he hadn’t counted on being intrigued by the woman carrying that seed.

  “Have you dated anyone since your partner died?” Amelia’s question gave him a few more minutes just when he’d been struggling with a reason to stay. She’d just finished telling him she wasn’t in the market for a relationship—period. So she most definitely wasn’t coming on to him.

  He could only conclude that she was feeling sorry for him.

  Which didn’t sit well, either. Yet, there he sat. Not getting up. Getting out. Getting on with his day. His life.

  “I have,” he told her. “I’m not hard up for a woman, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Hardly!” Her burst of incredulity was quickly tempered, but she followed it with, “You’re gorgeous. You’re a doctor. And you appear to be a genuinely nice guy.”

  So she’d noticed him. As a man. He felt gratified as he took another sip of juice. Held the glass with one hand, resting it on the palm of the other, which rested on his thigh.

  “I was asking whether or not you’d reached the point where you were opening yourself up to another relationship, and possibly a family of your own,” she added.

  He could pretend to himself that her question was of a personal nature, that she was asking because she was interested in the answer for herself. As if she might consider starting a relationship with him, a bond that could go someplace great. Someplace permanent.

  He didn’t make that mistake.

  “I haven’t met anyone who’s lasted longer than a few months.” A couple had been open to more, but as soon as he’d felt their growing affection, he’d felt compelled to break things off with them. “I’m not out to hurt anyone,” he told Amelia. Hoping that she understood that she was included in that statement.

  Odd, but it was kind of nice talking to her. A woman who had no interest in him, and yet one with whom he held a deep connection.

  “I’ve had some trouble sleeping since my last contact with Gavin,” he told her. “I’ve had a nightmare or two...nebulous, dark impressions of children screaming and I can’t get to them to help them.”

  He sounded like he needed a shrink. And maybe talking to someone wouldn’t hurt.

  “I finally concluded that I needed to get this...situation—all of it, not just your part in it—taken care of before I think about having a family of my own,” he told her. “The rest is done. You’re the last piece.”

  Probably not his best verbiage, but the way she was watching him, with an open expression, like she was listening and interested, made him think she wasn’t taking offense.

  “I’m a traditional kind of guy,” he told her. “I still believe in marriage and family...sticking together even when the newness wears off. I believe in a love that brings you together, and then, later, keeps you together, in spite of temptations or momentary yearnings for excitement,” he admitted, something that he hadn’t ever expressed out loud.

  She wasn’t going to be a part of his life. It made talking about his feelings seem...safer somehow.

  “My parents are in their seventies,” he told her. “They’re still healthy and active, but little things are starting to crop up—one just recently went on a low dose of blood pressure medication, for example—and yet they take things on together. The old saying, two heads are better than one—it’s like two lives, joined together, are better than one.”

  “If you’re somehow trying to convince me that my choice to raise this child as a single parent isn’t good enough...”

  “I’m not.” He looked her straight in the eye. “And I apologize. Of course you have no need to know anything about me and I overspoke...” He put his glass on the empty coaster on the table. Time to go. To find a way to get beyond the past and on with his life.

  “Oh, no, I’m the one who’s sorry.” Her words stopped him as he’d been about to stand. “Seriously.” She shook her head. “I have a tendency to get defensive,” she continued. “Probably comes from knowing that you have to watch your own back. And...funny that you should mention my need to know something about you...”

  Her words ended midstream and she was looking at him as though sizing him up for some kind of project.

  His curiosity was piqued.

  And he wasn’t sure that was a good thing.

  * * *

  Craig Harmon was a genuinely nice man. The impression came home to her again. More and more she was getting the impression that he really was no threat to her at all—as he kept asserting.

  But all of his talk about family, about tradition—she believed he was being sincere. She believed him.

  He was doing everything he could to reassure her that she had nothi
ng to fear from him. Her life, her choices, were anything but traditional. He didn’t want her. Or her child.

  Just as she had her life plans, he had his. The complete antithesis of hers.

  And he had no need to take what she had, even if he could. He wanted to fall in love. Get married. And have children traditionally with his wife.

  She wanted to do what she could to give him peace of mind. One person to another. She’d be a jerk not to want that. They weren’t just biological components. Even Angie would agree, would want her to do the right thing. To show some of the compassion she was sometimes too quick to feel where others were concerned.

  Her sister was even more of a bleeding heart than she was.

  “I never knew my father,” she said clearly, turning in her chair, one foot pulled up with her, as she faced him more directly. It was scary, opening up to him. And yet, felt good, too. With their pre-established boundaries—he was a safe place. “It was hard sometimes, growing up, not knowing who I came from. Not knowing if some of my traits were his. So...since you’re here, it seems kind of a nice idea for me to know a bit about you, whatever you want to share...so that I can fill in the blanks for my son or daughter someday, when the questions come. I’m fully aware they inevitably will.”

  He lifted his ankle across the opposite knee, his forearms relaxing against the sides of the chair, seeming to take a silent assessment of her.

  And she had a second to understand how she must have been making him feel—wondering whether or not to trust. Looking for ulterior motives?

  Or was that just her?

  And why did she care?

  “Does your father know you exist?”

  “I lived with him for the first year of my life. I don’t remember him. And my mother...my sister and I never mentioned him to her. Not ever. It upset her too much.”

  “Did he die?”

  “No.” She didn’t need to get into that.

  “You said your sister, Angeline, is a year younger than you.”

  He’d learned that when she’d told him about her sister’s involvement with the baby, that Angeline was the child’s legal guardian and held medical and legal power of attorney were anything to happen to Amelia.

  “Right.”

  “So...do you share a biological father?”

  “Yes.”

  He watched her, making her think of an examining room and allowing the doctor to diagnose what ailed her.

  She didn’t need his diagnosis.

  But didn’t seem to mind the questions. Maybe she should, but she didn’t. Should she be worried about that?

  “Your father left when your sister was born?”

  “So, technically, I misspoke,” she said, simply because his gaze required the truth. “I didn’t actually live with him the first year of my life. He was in the picture. He moved out shortly after my mom found out she was pregnant with Angie.” Might just as well get it over with. Personal questions weren’t her fave, but she understood his need to know more. He wasn’t going to be in his child’s life, this man who’d already lost a son to a system that didn’t seem just. Knowing the details of the life of the woman who’d be raising the child would be a comfort to him. She hoped.

  Although her job wasn’t to comfort him...

  “I was a little over three months old. He and Mom had been high school sweethearts. They’d married shortly after graduation and then I came along that first year. He thought it was cool at first, when it was all new and they were making great plans. But when reality set in, he wasn’t ready for the responsibility.” All according to her mother—the only source she had to go on.

  Like Angie coming along so soon after Amelia. Her mother would have known better than to have unprotected sex when her baby was still so little. But “the father,” as they’d called him between the two of them, had probably been looking for what he needed and she wouldn’t have denied him. Or stopped him long enough to protect herself.

  Margaret had been breastfeeding Amelia and back then there hadn’t been a birth control pill you could take and still safely nurse.

  “He moved in with a buddy of his for a time, but still apparently came by and took care of things at the house, mowed the grass, paid his share of the bills.”

  And those six months of contribution had given Margaret hope, undying, constricting hope that he’d be back. She’d watched that hope eat her mother alive. Had somehow known, even as a young girl listening to her mother talk about her dad, that her mother wasn’t seeing everything straight.

  “After Angie was born he left the state. Took a job on a pipeline and never looked back. Never sent a dime. Never contacted her again.”

  “What about child support?”

  “Mom never went after him for it. She wanted him to be free to do what he needed to do. She didn’t want to fight with him. She married Duane when I was ten, and once he was in the picture, my father’s name was never to be mentioned. It’s like he never existed. Mom fully supported Duane’s stance and wouldn’t answer us if we ever asked anything. She’d rebuke us instead, reminding us that Duane was supporting us and that we needed to respect him and abide by his wishes.”

  She heard the small bite of bitterness in her voice. And took it as a warning to not let the past rob her future. She was her mother’s daughter, but she wasn’t going to make her same choices. Her same mistakes.

  Mike’s infidelity had been a blessing, so she left before they were married and had had kids who would suffer. After all of those years of Christmases spent with a mother who always kidded herself that “this year” was the one that their dad would be back, having to stay close to home so they didn’t miss him, she hadn’t been willing to forgive Mike and take him back. To “love” him enough. To be “understanding” enough.

  “Now that you’re an adult, have you ever tried to find your father?”

  She shook her head slowly. So oddly comfortable sharing things with him that she normally never talked about. And again she wondered if she should be concerned. Was this just for him? “Angie did, though.” She continued to answer questions that belonged inside a family.

  “Was she successful?”

  “Depends on your definition of success.” She shrugged. Hugged her shin. “She found him. In Alaska. He’s captain of a fishing boat that spends months out at sea at a time. He asked why she was contacting him. What she wanted from him. Made it very clear he had no interest in her, and had nothing for her to get from him. They had the one phone conversation and that was it.”

  “Did he ask about you or your mom?”

  Funny how this man was sensitive enough to come up with that question. And maybe that was why she was talking to him. Because he really listened—beyond words.

  “No.”

  She didn’t blame “the father.” Not really. She just learned from him. From both of her parents. Angie had started her search for their father after the incident with Duane. During the time when Amelia had been all in with Mike and virtually ignoring the rest of her loved ones. Letting them all down. Angie had been devastated by their father’s response to her call.

  “This is why I’m not going to risk putting a child of mine through that,” she told him. “Just like I’m not going to be trapped by love into having to live with a man who makes me unhappy. Angie and I have felt abandoned our entire lives, but it was kind of a nebulous sort of thing there, not tragic, you know? A part of us, but not completely defining us. But after that phone call...”

  Angie hadn’t called her, but after finding out that Mike had slept with some woman he’d met in a bar a short time later, Amelia had gone home for the weekend.

  And after those two days with her sister, she’d gone back to college, ended things with Mike and put herself in counseling.

  “So...in a way, this is really good,” she told Craig, nodding. Smiling. “My baby will not
only know that I wanted him or her so badly that I purposely, knowingly and consciously, chose every aspect of her birth, but that her biological component cared enough to make certain that she was being born into a loving, secure home.”

  Yes, it was all wrapping up rather neatly. Or so she hoped.

  Chapter Eight

  “Oh!”

  Craig glanced over at Amelia, as she half gasped, and put her hand to her lower stomach. Immediately on alert, he assessed her skin color, her pupils. “What?” he asked, reaching a hand automatically to where hers was touching her abdomen.

  “Excuse me!” she said, pushing his hand away. “I had a...cramp...” She looked away, off the balcony, and he followed suit.

  What in the hell was he doing, touching her?

  And how could it possibly have felt like the sun had come out inside him?

  “If you’re cramping...” He leaned toward her again, and asked, “Do you mind if I just...feel your pulse?”

  Flinging her arm out, she looked away again, and didn’t flinch when his hand wrapped around the warm skin at her wrist. He concentrated on even rhythm. Counting. Gave himself the chance to remember who he was and what he was there for. And noting, at the same time, that her pulse was a tad fast.

  “It was just...you know...indigestion type,” she said when Craig dropped her wrist. He tried to forget he’d put his hand on her stomach. Tried to forget how much he’d liked it there.

  “Is everything okay, doctor?” She was smiling. And putting him at ease. Telling him she understood he hadn’t been hitting on her. That it was okay.

  “Steady pulse, perfect rhythm,” he told her, leaving out the fast pace part. It had already slowed by the time he was letting go. Which told him the increased rate had most likely been due to his touch.

  “So, do you have any more questions?”

  She wasn’t kicking him out. Something had just happened between them and he was still there. If questions were what was keeping them together, what was allowing them to be comfortable spending time together, he could come up with a whole lot more.