by Nikki Logan
Chapter Two
THERE were no other ways.
The reality of that had sunk in well and truly overnight, after she and Molly had returned home to Yurraji. The poor kid was crashed out in bed, exhausted from the excitement of an all day road-trip, her exertions climbing Reilly’s stairs and then running around after his cat. That was all it took these days. It was now morning and Molly had slept through from sunset the night before. It was the kind of sleep Lea could only dream of.
The sleep of the dead.
Lea’s eyes filled with tears. It seemed impossible that she had any left at all after a night of silent sobbing. Reilly had been her best and her last hope.
And he’d said no.
The sheer injustice burned like battery acid in her gut. That a stranger could decide whether her daughter lived or died, and that he’d done so in a matter of moments. She twisted her entwined fingers until they ached.
She’d already called Dr Koek and broken the bad news, and her specialist had immediately gone into super-supportive, damage-control mode, citing statistics to show that cord blood from an unrelated, unmatched baby could work.
Statistically.
Maybe.
Lea let her head drop to the railing surrounding her house paddock. She would try unrelated cord blood—of course she would, as many times as the specialists would allow—but something deep down inside her told her it wasn’t going to work. This was the price she would pay—Molly would pay—for her past mistake.
Her sisters would pray to God and the universe, respectively, but Lea begged karma: please, please do not make my baby pay for something I did. Punish me.
Punish me.
A small mob of grazing kangaroos in the next paddock stood tall and looked east to the highway.
In the same moment, Lea realised there was no greater punishment for a mother than to watch her daughter die. And then live a long, miserable life with that knowledge. Her stomach heaved.
The roos lurched into flight, springing away and covering the large paddock in a few easy bounds. Lea frowned and turned in the direction they’d been looking. She saw the advancing plume of red dust drifting up over the kurrajongs long before she heard the engine.
Moments later, a battered Land Rover picked its way down her rocky drive. She recognised it instantly and her gut lurched. The last thing she’d done before roaring out of Minamurra’s beautiful heart, right past this very vehicle, was to hurl a scrap of paper with her phone number and address at Reilly. She’d had no expectation that he would use it, and certainly not within fourteen hours. Not given the disgusted, pained expression on his face when she’d finally bundled up Molly and left.
Why was he here? She refused to let herself hope. He’d been brutally clear yesterday afternoon. She hardened her heart in anticipation of his next attack.
He parked his vehicle then loped towards her, looking as fresh as if he’d just stepped out of a shower, not driving since before dawn. Her mind whizzed back five years to the memory of him stepping out of the motel bathroom, unashamed and glorious. She forced herself to remember the man he really was.
‘Lea.’
‘Something you forgot to say?’ Some organ you forgot to rip out and pulverise under your boot?
His eyes flicked over her shoulder, looking at the horses grazing in the paddock behind her. Then they slid back to hers. ‘I came to see if you were all right.’ He must have realised how utterly ridiculous that sounded, and he hurried on. ‘And to explain. In case I wasn’t clear.’
She straightened against the cool of the morning; it wouldn’t stay that way for long. It would be forty Celsius by mid-morning. ‘You were perfectly clear. You won’t help Molly. I get it.’
He sighed. ‘Not won’t, Lea. Can’t.’
A sleepless night and complete emotional collapse had left her preciously short of patience. ‘Philosophical objections, I presume?’ she snapped. She’d been prepared for that; stem cells were a touchy subject all round. The only people she’d got absolute acceptance from were her specialist and her sisters.
His jaw flexed. ‘Physiological objections.’
Lea frowned.
‘Saying you took me by surprise yesterday is an understatement,’ he went on. ‘I was completely pole-axed. I wasn’t thinking straight. I should have stopped you when you took off—explained.’
He looked uncomfortable. Critically so. His eyes darkened a shade. ‘I was diagnosed two years ago. It has a long medical name, but the short version is that I sustained a string of groin injuries riding the broncos over the years, and my immune system kicked in to protect itself from the damage. But the antibodies didn’t only battle the infection.’
A cold chill crept through her. Lea knew all about the immune system from studying Molly’s condition.
‘The antibodies attack my sperm as though they’re foreign objects.’ He took an enormous breath. ‘I’m sterile, Lea.’
The dramatic way he paled as the word crossed his lips told Lea it was the first time he’d said it out aloud. Her mind spun. ‘But Molly?’
‘The specialists weren’t able to estimate how long ago it started.’
Not five years ago, evidently.
Sterile. Her first thought should have been for her daughter. Saying no because you couldn’t, or because you wouldn’t, was still a ‘no’. The ‘why’ made little difference to Molly.
But all the difference in the world to Reilly.
She thought about the man with the sexy swagger she’d met in the pub and tried to imagine him sterile. She remembered his potent, muscular body arching, taut, over hers and tried to imagine it barren. She looked at him now, really looked, at the extra lines in his skin, the caution in his manner, the shadow behind his eyes.
Double horror hit her. For Molly and for Reilly. That such a vibrant, virile man should be robbed of the chance to make children, the most fundamental biological right. He’d had tragedy in his life too.
‘I’m sorry, Reilly.’
He pushed past to walk towards the horses. ‘I’m not interested in your pity; I simply wanted you to understand my position.’
As if she could have missed it. Lea closed her eyes. She’d exposed Molly, brought this man back into her life, for nothing. He was powerless to help.
Her voice was as quiet as the morning. ‘I understand.’
‘What will you do?’
She shook her head. ‘We’ll try regular cord blood. Hope. Pray.’ Her voice cracked on that word.
‘That won’t work?’
Lea sighed, tight and small. It hurt her chest. ‘I don’t think so, no. But it’s something.’
Reilly stared hard at her. ‘She’s a great kid.’
It almost killed her to deliver a flat smile. ‘She is. The best.’
She stepped up to the paddock fence as one of her horses walked over. As always, she drew comfort from Goff’s softness and courage from his warmth. She could feel Reilly’s eyes on her through the silence. He stepped closer behind her.
‘Lea, if there was…’ He seemed uncertain; it didn’t suit him. He cleared his throat. ‘If there was a way despite my…’
Lea’s radar began to bleep. But, no, she’d felt like this walking up his stairs, and look how that had worked out. She forced down the little spike of hope, turned to him with a purposefully bland expression.
His eyes raked over her, wondering, worrying. ‘I told myself I wanted nothing to do with you. Even for Molly,’ he said. ‘But I lay there last night thinking about this little pixie of a kid and how she looks just like me at her age. And I realised I couldn’t do nothing. She’s my daughter. My blood. I spent most of the night online researching her condition.’
His tanbark eyes burned with intensity and he shook his head with disbelief. ‘I didn’t tell you about my situation so you could feel sorry for me. That’s the last thing I want. But you need to understand this is not a small thing you’re asking. Quite apart from the philosophical considerations, as you s
o aptly put it, I just don’t have millions of cells to work with. You’re not asking for something minor.’
That made it sound like…Her heart started to thud.
He broke a long silence. ‘When investigations first began, one of my many medicos recommended freezing a sample for later comparison, assuming we’d have something later to compare with. They used most of it up running a fortune’s worth of tests.’
Lea’s breath evaporated. Most.
He turned and looked at her. ‘But there is a freezer in a lab in Perth and it contains one single remaining sample, about the size of one of Molly’s fingernails.’
Lea’s heart lurched to a halt.
‘If it’s like the others, it won’t have a lot in it, but it may just have enough. Enough to help Molly.’ He stared at her in silence while her mouth opened and shut like a baby barramundi.
Words simply would not come, trapped behind a lump the size of a football in her throat. She had a sudden flash of a teenaged Molly—healthy and happy, her whole life ahead of her—cantering a greying Goff around the paddock. And Reilly, the man with only one shot at fatherhood, who was willing to spend it on a daughter he’d only just discovered. A daughter whose parentage he’d not even asked for hard proof of, so strong was his instinctive recognition that she was his.
Lea pushed up onto her toes and threw her arms around Reilly’s surprised neck. For a moment, the very barest of moments, his arms crept around her and a fluttering sense of rightness ghosted through her. But then his hands slid upwards, gripped her shoulders and pushed her firmly away, his eyes locking onto hers. She felt instantly cold.
‘I’m doing this for Molly. Not for you. I have no interest in helping you beyond what it does for my daughter.’
She ignored the hurt snapping at her heels like a cattle dog, accustomed to forcing down personal pain. Her vision blurred with tears. ‘I understand.’
‘And it’s not without a price. There’s something I want in return.’
‘Anything.’
His dark eyes glittered. ‘Careful, you don’t know what I’m asking yet.’
There wasn’t a single possibility she hadn’t thought about before driving to Minamurra, a compromise she wasn’t willing to make. She’d already given him her body, albeit in a moment of grief-stricken insanity. There was nothing he could ask that she wasn’t ready to grant. For Molly.
She tossed her head back and met his gaze head-on. ‘What do you want?’
‘First, I want to be able to see Molly regularly. I want to be part of her life.’
Lea took a deep breath. Since he was the one saving Molly’s life, that wasn’t unexpected. She would watch him like a hawk until she could determine whether he was a man like her father…or something else.
She nodded slowly. ‘Agreed.’
Reilly looked at her, his dark gaze unfathomable, probing, intense. The hairs on Lea’s neck stood to attention and her skin tingled.
‘And second…’
Here it comes. He was going to ask her for a physical commitment. A tiny part of her wasn’t dreading it. She remembered every moment from five years ago and the primal haven that was his embrace.
‘…I want custody of the child we make together.’
Gravity suddenly altered its fundamental principles. Lea would have gone down if not for Reilly’s iron grip on her upper arm.
‘Given the sacrifice I’m making, it seems a reasonable trade,’ he said. ‘You get Molly’s cordblood, I get an heir.’
Chapter Three
LEA’S skin prickled despite the morning heat. To find hope only to have it ripped violently away again…Her hands shook. Her voice was strained.
‘No.’
‘Lea, think about—’
‘No!’ She marched off toward her house, heart thumping painfully. She needed to be close to Molly right now. Badly. How could he think, even for a moment, that she would…could…? Her chest tightened like a slingshot. She spun round, wounded beyond measure that he thought that of her. ‘You cannot ask that. It’s not fair.’
‘How fair was it to rob me of a child? To bring her to me only when you needed something?’
‘I had no choice!’
‘Neither do I, Lea. You’re handing me a miracle. How can I just shrug that off?’ He pursued her across the house-paddock, snagged her arm and spun her back round to him. ‘I remember something you said when we were together, about how disconnected you felt from the world.’
‘I said way too much that weekend.’ Her determination to keep her distance had lasted all of an hour. After that first sweet time together, she’d opened up to him like he was her confessor, believing she’d never see him again.
‘I don’t have to tell you about loneliness, Lea. Surely you can understand why your request might be like a beacon in the darkness? The chance I believed I’d never have?’
Lea’s chest lifted and fell with her tumbling thoughts. Of course she could understand it. Molly had been her own beacon, even the very idea of Molly. It was why it had been so easy for her subconscious to subvert her morals five years ago and keep the pregnancy a secret. Her father had done such a prize job on her trust in men—in anyone—she’d given up any hope of meeting someone to have a child with. To have one simply gifted to her…It had felt very fated. Divine.
Was that how he was feeling? Damn him. ‘Reilly, you’re asking me to give you my child.’
‘And you’re asking me to give you mine.’
Lea blinked furiously, realising for the first time just how much she was asking. Her mind worked frantically to find escape. ‘Do you have any idea how to be a father? How will you possibly raise a child alone?’
‘You managed.’ He rushed on as Lea opened her mouth. ‘And, before you play the “I’m a woman” card, ask yourself whether you’d accept that if you were in my position.’
Lea’s mouth snapped shut with a click of teeth.
He stepped closer. ‘I’m granting you the last of my sperm. What you need to save Molly. I understand the price is high but so are the stakes for me.’
She stared at him through watery eyes. ‘It’s more than high. I can’t do it.’
Reilly stiffened his back. ‘Then I’ll fight you for Molly.’
‘No!’ The fierce yell practically tore its way out of her constricted throat.
Reilly stood his ground and pointed at her heaving chest. ‘There, Lea. Take those feelings you’re only barely managing to suppress and multiply them by one hundred. That’s how you’re going to feel if you walk away from this chance—Molly’s last chance—and she dies.’
It was all too easy to imagine how that day would feel. She thought about it every day. Lea’s whole body shook. Months of suppressed agony, of having to be strong for Molly while fearing the worst, hit her full in the chest. She nearly crumpled.
Nearly. At the last second she swayed back into a surer position. Her voice was thick and strained. ‘There must be some other way.’
His hoarse laugh grated on already tattered nerves. ‘Sure—you could marry me and raise the baby together.’
She smiled tightly at him. ‘I’ll pass, thank you. When I said you were my last choice, I meant it.’
His lips thinned. ‘What happened to you doing whatever it takes to save Molly?’
‘You can’t tell me that’s your preference?’ she gaped.
‘Tie myself to a woman who lied and cheated me out of a child? Who only surfaces when she wants something, and who asks me to be a stud-bull?’ His contempt was palpable. ‘You even need to ask?’
Silence. Goff snorted in his paddock.
Finally Reilly spoke. ‘I’ve told you what I want, the terms under which I’m prepared to help Molly.’
Lea’s snarl was heartfelt. ‘What sort of a man sets terms on saving his daughter’s life?’
Brown eyes blazed. ‘A desperate one.’
Lea clung to the doorframe and watched Molly sleep. Tired as she still was, she slumbered deep and long, h
er breathing shallow, her skin almost translucent. Surrounded by her toys, she looked for all the world like she was laid out in state.
Macabre but at peace.
Few days were peaceful for Molly, and they were getting fewer. She’d gone far beyond benefiting from treatment; it was now essentially for survival. Without the stem cells, Molly wouldn’t live to go to school.
What Reilly was asking was effectively blackmail. To put such a condition on the life of a child. It was why she’d thrown him and his selfish needs off her property, sent him packing back to Minamurra.
What sort of a man wouldn’t give up even the last of his sperm to save a dying child?
A desperate one, he’d said.
Not so desperate he hadn’t thought the finer details through and laid it all out for Lea as she’d stared, horrified, at him. She would carry the baby to term and doctors could harvest the umbilical stem cells. Then she and Molly would head back to Yurraji, and the baby would be packed off with a nice big tin of formula to the home of a man with no wife who knew nothing about rearing children. He didn’t even have brothers and sisters to have learned from.
It meant nothing that she’d seen a softer side to him five years ago, a side that had potential to grow into the sort of patience and compassion required in a parent. She’d seen not a hint of that today. Or yesterday. The new Reilly Martin was one-hundred percent diamond-ore; cold, hard and unmoveable.
She shook her head. This was the man she’d let into Molly’s life. Molly she could at least buffer, but she couldn’t protect a new child, living alone three hours away with a monster.
Reilly’s minimal interactions with Molly flashed through her mind like a reluctant slideshow—how instinctively gentle he’d been with her. Okay, so he wasn’t likely to be a total monster, but still—what kind of man would make such a request?
What kind of woman would? It was true she was asking him to give up a child.
But in all her planning and visualisation it had never occurred to her he would care about the baby that would result, let alone want it. The paradigm she was working from was five years out of date: Reilly Martin, king of the circuit; lover of women; drinker of beer.