The Baby Jackpot

by Jacqueline Diamond

  “Nothing, except that my landlady snooped in my apartment and posted photos of it on her blog.”

  “She did what?” Anger flared on his behalf. “That’s terrible.”

  “Tony Franco set her straight,” Cole replied. “While I doubt she’d pull the same stunt again, I don’t feel comfortable staying there.”

  “No kidding!”

  He set the next plate by the sink and folded the towel. “Have you picked a roommate?”

  “Not yet.” She nearly added that she had several strong candidates, but why bother? If she’d found someone ideal, she’d have chosen already, and he knew it.

  “I’m not a big believer in fate,” Cole commented as he continued to unpack her dishes. “But when circumstances nudge you in a logical direction, why ignore it? While you’re carrying our child, Stacy, you deserve to have someone here who’ll take care of you. There’s an empty bedroom and I need to rent a new place.”

  “People will find out.” Although it wasn’t the main issue, it was the first objection that sprang to mind.

  “Who cares?” He folded another towel.

  “You should.”

  “But I don’t. Besides, most of the staff know already.”

  She felt herself weakening. Cole had been supportive and kind. If only she didn’t run the risk—in her hormone-fueled state—of falling in love with him. And then there was the question of the baby’s future.

  “You aren’t changing my mind,” she said.

  Hurt shadowed his face. “Why not try it for a few months? See how it goes.”

  He’d misunderstood. “I meant the baby. Giving it up. There’s a couple meant to have this child, and it will be a privilege to fulfill their dreams.”

  Face averted, he retrieved a cup and saucer. “Okay.” The sadness in his voice knifed through her.

  Stacy wished he’d argue with her, because that would make it easier to resist. Determinedly, she rallied her defenses. “And even though we had sex, you aren’t my boyfriend.” The word sounded childish, applied to this distinguished man, so she amended, “Or whatever.”

  “You already declined to marry me,” Cole reminded her. Onto the counter went a salad plate. “I get the message.”

  She’d never met anyone so opaque. Usually, she picked up people’s emotional states easily.

  But then, Cole’s reticent personality was the problem. He cared, but not madly and deeply. Still, his good qualities—his honesty and dependability—suited her needs during the difficult months ahead.

  “Ground rules,” Stacy ventured.

  Cole studied her, revealing nothing of his emotions. “Yes?”

  “We’d be friends, nothing more,” she said. “Like Harper and me.”

  “Check.”

  Although she’d have appreciated more discussion, he had conceded the point. “This doesn’t change our relationship at work.”

  “Agreed.”

  “No trying to influence my choices.” She was gaining momentum.

  “Got that.”

  “We lead separate lives,” Stacy went on. “If I choose to go out with people, or...” She had no interest in dating while she was pregnant. “...or whatever, that’s my business.”

  Cole nodded. Watching her. Waiting for more terms?

  Tell me you can’t live that close to me and not treasure and love and hold me....

  “And after the baby’s born, once I’m on my feet again, you’ll find another place.”

  “Or we renegotiate,” he said. “If the arrangement suits us both, why rock the boat?”

  The arrangement. Sometimes Stacy thought he chose his words specifically to frustrate her. Speaking of rocking boats, she had an impulse to tip this one and dump Cole into cold water.

  If only he’d get angry. Not that she really wanted that, but she longed for an emotional reaction. For him to have fallen in love with her. But that wasn’t Cole.

  “We’ll see,” she conceded.

  “I’ll move in tomorrow,” he said.

  Wait. She hadn’t exactly decided to give him permission. Yet he’d agreed to all her terms, which made it too late to back out.

  Thank goodness, Stacy thought, and refused to examine her sudden rush of happiness.

  Chapter Twelve

  Cole didn’t believe he had any expectations—hopes, perhaps, but not expectations—about what might happen between him and Stacy after they became roommates. So why, he wondered on Monday a little over a week later, did he feel so let down?

  The physical process of moving in had gone smoothly. He’d hired a cleaning service, which Stacy had appreciated, as well as a moving company to bring his few possessions and her furniture from storage. Since he had only his electronics and one lamp, there’d been no problem fitting everything into their common space. For his room, Cole had ordered a bed and bureau, which arrived in timely fashion.

  This past weekend, he’d purchased bedding and paid the apartment manager a small extra sum for a key to the complex’s utility room, which had space for his bike. Overall, Cole should have felt completely satisfied.

  And yet...

  He barely saw Stacy in the mornings. She refused to let him bring her tea and toast in bed, preferring to keep crackers in her room to stave off morning sickness. Then, while she claimed she didn’t mind his habit of watching cartoons during breakfast, she downed her cereal quickly and disappeared into her bathroom.

  They drove to and from work separately. Her schedule ended earlier than his, and she either ate dinner at the hospital cafeteria or consumed a salad at home, finishing up by the time he arrived. In the evenings, she avoided him, or so it seemed to Cole. After he finished working on his laptop and emerged into the living room, she vanished into her bedroom, claiming she wanted to read and go to sleep early.

  Under other circumstances, he’d have considered her an ideal roommate. Instead, he missed her. They were leading disconnected lives, and even though he’d agreed to her terms, surely there had to be a middle ground.

  Now he restlessly finished entering notes into his office computer about the evening’s next-to-last patient. The publicity surrounding him might have faded, but the residual effect was an increase in physicians’ referrals and direct patient requests to see him. Trying to accommodate as many people as possible meant staying later and seeing even less of Stacy.

  It was nearly seven o’clock. Although the cafeteria had delivered sandwiches several hours ago, he was getting hungry again. Still, scanning his next patient’s report pushed everything else out of Cole’s mind, and he hurried into the examining room.

  Peter Gladstone rose to shake hands. The teacher had come for a report on his antibody test, and while the results did provide an explanation for his infertility, they offered no easy solution.

  “It’s positive,” Cole told him.

  “What does that mean, exactly?” Arms folded, the man leaned against the wall.

  Cole remained standing, too. “As I explained before, men can develop an allergy to their own sperm. This may interfere with fertility in several ways.” He went into detail about how sperm, under attack by the immune system, failed to fulfill their function.

  Judging by Peter’s expression, he had no difficulty following the medical terminology. Once Cole finished, his patient zeroed in on the central issue. “Can you fix this?”

  Here came the bad news. “The treatment is to administer corticosteroids, which have dangerous, sometimes fatal, side effects,” Cole said. “Among other things, they may cause a condition called aseptic necrosis, which can destroy the patient’s hip, requiring replacement. I don’t recommend this. You’re a healthy young man. It goes against the grain to put you at serious risk for a condition that poses no threat.”

  The teacher sank into a chair with an air of misery. “That’s it, then? I can’t ever be a dad, biologically?”

  “I didn’t say that.” Modern technology provided options. “It is possible to achieve a pregnancy through in vitro fertil
ization. If you are contemplating marriage, perhaps we should include your significant other in this discussion.”

  Peter shook his head. “Frankly, the more I think about it, the less interested I am in remarrying. Angela was the love of my life. What we shared I can never hope to find again. To bring another woman into this situation would be wrong, especially in light of my condition. So I was wondering about hiring a surrogate.”

  “In that case, you’d be using IVF anyway,” Cole pointed out. “As you might imagine, these are expensive procedures. Safe Harbor has a grant program called the Building Families Fund, if you’d like to put in an application. I should warn you that it’s highly competitive.”

  Peter waved away the concern. “Angela had life insurance. I can’t think of a better use for it than to have children. I only wish I were having them with her.”

  Cole gave him a pair of brochures from the hospital’s fertility program. “These will tell you more about surrogacy and IVF.”

  “It isn’t just a medical issue, though, is it?” Peter held on to the material without glancing at it. “What if the surrogate changes her mind and wants to keep the baby? I couldn’t bear to go through all this and then lose my child, or have to share custody with a stranger.”

  “Usually, courts uphold surrogacy contracts.” Cole was glad Tony kept the staff advised about legal ramifications. “To be on the safe side, however, some parents use eggs donated by a second woman. That way, the surrogate isn’t carrying her own child, which means she has no legal rights.”

  For the first time since receiving his bad news, Peter smiled. “How high tech is that? Wow. I like it.”

  “The hospital’s financial counselor can help you project costs.” Cole gave him the woman’s card. “There’s no rush. After consideration, you may prefer to pursue adopting an older child.”

  “I doubt it,” Peter said, but tucked the card into his wallet anyway. “Thanks for pinpointing my diagnosis. Now I know where I stand.”

  They shook hands. Watching the teacher leave, Cole wished he could do more.

  On top of everything else, how devastating for Peter to have lost the love of his life. Making notes on his computer, Cole wondered if he dared apply that term to Stacy. He’d never cared about a woman this way before. But she didn’t return his feelings, and he had to accept that.

  Or did he?

  Friends and roommates didn’t have to avoid each other. Since he’d brought his car today so he could buy groceries on the way home, Cole decided to rent a few DVDs and stock up on microwave popcorn.

  Stacy might be able to resist him, but in his opinion, the smell of popcorn was irresistible.

  * * *

  “I NEVER FIGURED YOU for the manipulative type,” Stacy said. She’d followed her nose into the living room and found Cole relaxing on her couch with a big bowl of tantalizing popcorn. He’d also rented two romantic comedies she’d mentioned wanting to see.

  “I’m not manipulative,” he responded cheerfully. “Mildly subversive, perhaps. But friends share things, right?”

  “I guess so.” How could this be the same man who, that very morning, had coolly allowed her to assist him in gowning for surgery? Who’d maintained a professional distance throughout two operations, and had, so far, kept their living arrangements private from the increasingly inquisitive staff?

  Now, legs stretched out and feet propped on the coffee table, he grinned at her audaciously. “You’ll note that I spread a sheet on the couch so we don’t drop any kernels between the cushions. I also took off my shoes so they won’t scuff the coffee table.”

  She’d be willing to bet he’d put on clean socks, too. Oh, for heaven’s sake, what was wrong with trying to please her? “Good, thanks. So which one should we watch first?”

  He let her choose.

  By ten o’clock, she was too sleepy for a second movie. But with the popcorn long gone, she wasn’t too sleepy to share some of the ice cream with which Cole had filled the freezer. Despite his having taken over most of that compartment, she couldn’t complain about his habits, since he kept his food neatly packed into his agreed-upon half of the fridge. The cartoons he watched during breakfast grated on her nerves, but when she bothered to watch, she had to admit they were kind of funny.

  They ate on the sofa. “My dad used to have a fit if I took food into the living room,” she said. “He’s way fussier than my mom.”

  “What does your father do?” Cole asked.

  “He’s a pharmacist.” They’d never discussed his father, she realized. “What about yours?”

  “He’s an art curator.”

  “Present tense?” That surprised her. “He’s still alive?”

  “Last I heard.” He wiggled his toes on the coffee table. “In Paris.”

  “You aren’t close?”

  Cole released a long breath. “No. That was part of the deal.”

  “You mean like a custody agreement?” Stacy asked.

  “Not in the usual sense. He only fathered me because my mother talked him into it.” He explained that his powerhouse mother had met his dad through friends. She’d chosen an art curator, on loan to a museum in Minneapolis, as an ideal father, due to his distinguished intellect and the fact that he’d soon be leaving the country. With the aid of a few bottles of wine, she’d persuaded him to sire her child.

  Despite Cole’s casual tone, Stacy thought she detected a note of sadness. As she listened to his account of growing up without a father, and of his failed attempt to forge a bond with the man, her heart constricted.

  She understood why he’d offered to marry her and raise their child together, even though the pregnancy had been an accident. He didn’t want to repeat his father’s remiss behavior. Cole might even hope to redeem his lonely childhood by being a good parent.

  It was admirable, though unrealistic. Stacy also recognized how little experience he had with a loving, stable marriage. Never having seen one in action, he assumed that goodwill and companionship were enough.

  What a polar opposite from the Layne family. Her father remained a romantic in his sixties, bringing home flowers, buying her mother jewelry and whisking her away on a surprise Hawaiian vacation not long ago. Once, when her mom had been inexplicably grumpy, Stacy had heard her father tell her he couldn’t live without her, that she was the center of his life.

  “It must have been tough not having a dad.” After setting her dish on the coffee table, Stacy rested her head on Cole’s shoulder.

  “It was the only kind of upbringing I knew,” he said. “Yours was more normal, I gather.”

  “My family’s really close,” she murmured sleepily. “I thought I had that kind of marriage, but Andrew fell in love with someone else.”

  “Your husband must have been crazy,” Cole said.

  She would have hugged him for that, if she’d been sitting at a different angle. “I thought we were soul mates.” Her voice caught. Wouldn’t the pain ever go away? “I still don’t understand what he found in Zora that he didn’t have with me.”

  “He should have tried harder to stay in love with you.”

  “It doesn’t work that way.” Stacy sighed. “Love is the most powerful force in the world.”

  “And we’re poor, helpless saps?” Cole clicked his tongue. “He must be a wimp.”

  “Andrew? He was a football player!”

  “I’m not impressed with his staying power,” Cole said. “By the way, what do your parents think about you being pregnant?”

  The sudden shift in subject caught Stacy off guard. Lifting her head, which in her sleepy state seemed to weigh a hundred pounds, she admitted, “I haven’t told them.”

  “Why not?”

  She sat up wearily. “I’m too embarrassed.”

  “I thought you were close.”

  Good point. Now that Cole put it to her, Stacy saw how foolish she’d been. Her parents loved her. If she had a daughter who was dealing with a situation like this, she’d want to know.
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br />   “I should tell them,” she said. “But not tonight.” Not only was she worn out, but also, Stacy recalled guiltily, she’d promised to help Adrienne organize a housewarming party for Harper next Saturday. She still needed to respond to Adrienne’s last email on the subject. “Thanks for the movie and popcorn.”

  “My pleasure.”

  She retreated to her bedroom. After emailing Adrienne about their plans, she barely mustered the energy to brush her teeth and fall into bed.

  Between combating her queasiness and getting ready for the party, Stacy didn’t get around to calling her mother until Thursday. Her ultrasound was scheduled for the next day, and she’d rather get the phone call over with before she had any more complicated news to report.

  It shouldn’t be hard, she reflected as she prepared to call her mother’s cell. But Stacy had always been the one to whom other family members turned for support. She hated unloading problems on them.

  Now, she listened to the phone ring. Four-thirty here meant five-thirty in Utah. Realizing she might be interrupting dinner preparations, she was about to cancel the call when her mother’s voice said, “Stacy? Hi.”

  “Hi, Mom.” In the background, Stacy heard a woman ask about shipping a purchase. “You’re at the boutique?”

  “We’ve been incredibly busy.” Her mother sounded frazzled. “Lots of tourists this month. How are you?”

  “Maybe this isn’t a good time to talk.” She hated to drop bombshell news on her mom while a customer waited for attention. “You’re busy.”

  “Your sister can handle the counter. Hold on.” Judging by the sounds, Ellen was moving. Then a door clicked shut, cutting off the hum of voices.

  “Seriously, Mom, we can talk tomorrow. No, Saturday,” Stacy corrected, remembering the ultrasound.

  “This must be important, or you wouldn’t be so nervous,” her mother said. “Talk to me.”

  No getting around it. “Okay,” Stacy said. “I’m pregnant.”

  There was a moment of silence and then her mother asked, “Are you getting married?”

  “No.” Out tumbled the explanation. A man she knew from work. Watching a movie and falling asleep on his couch. Poor judgment.