The Accidental Daddy

by Meredith Webber

  She ate another couple of grapes, hoping their sugar content might help.

  ‘I wanted to have my sperm destroyed,’ he said finally. ‘The frozen stuff. It’s been stored there now for seven years and they’d sent a bill recently or I’d have forgotten about it altogether. The quality of the frozen sperm probably deteriorates with time, but it wasn’t all that. I guess it was an acceptance that I wasn’t cut out to be a family man. It’s probably genetic. My father thought he could be, but my sisters tell me he was never happy when he was at home. But when he finally cut and ran, well, to me it was so hurtful that I realised I’d have been better off never having had a father.’

  Joey knew she was frowning again. No wonder, considering he was telling her his life story, rather than explaining what had happened at the clinic.

  ‘But if that’s how you felt,’ she said, ‘why freeze your sperm in the first place? It can’t have been a donation because that clinic doesn’t take donations and, anyway, in places where they do, they’re stored separately. Did you think you were ill?’

  She stopped, because it had suddenly struck her that she was having a conversation with a virtual stranger about his sperm.

  Beyond weird!

  ‘Well?’ she demanded when he still didn’t answer.

  ‘I’d been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. And I had a fiancée at the time. I was young and optimistic enough to think I could make a go of marriage and family.’

  He paused for a moment, then added, with more irony than bitterness, ‘I was still optimistic, or perhaps foolish, to think the same thing the second time I became engaged.’

  The second time?

  She had to ask!

  ‘I can perhaps understand losing one fiancée—particularly if she couldn’t handle your being ill—but two? Or were there more?’

  He didn’t answer for a moment. Why should he when his love life really wasn’t any of her business? But he didn’t look stricken by pain at the loss of these women, but more thoughtful than anything else.

  Until he frowned.

  ‘No, you’re wrong. My first fiancée did stick around—for quite a lot of my treatment. But I was treated very aggressively and being around someone who’s sick all the time isn’t much fun. Plus I was a terrible patient. We were both young. When she decided to move on, it was the right decision for both of us.’

  Good for him, defending her, Joey thought, although she was well aware this conversation was nothing more than a delaying tactic.

  A delay she needed right now...

  ‘And the second?’

  ‘She was a stunner,’ he said simply. ‘I was over illness, over everything and I fell hard. But maybe I’m not cut out for marriage. She was planning the wedding, planning babies, planning life and suddenly things started to close in. So I went to climb Everest,’ he said, startling Joey so much she had to straighten up from her comfy slump.

  ‘You went off to climb Everest? So Meryl’s right, you are a little mad!’

  She shook her head, trying to clear the vision of a huge snow-capped mountain so she could concentrate on what really mattered in the conversation.

  But mountains that big were hard to shift.

  ‘So did you?’

  ‘Yep. I managed to annoy my fiancée enough for her to call it off. I thought she’d understand because she knew climbing Everest had always been a dream, it was just that after—’

  ‘Forget the fiancée! Did you climb the mountain? Did you make it to the top?’

  Even the idea of such a feat sent a thrill down her spine and she looked at the attractive stranger with new eyes. Not that she hadn’t been looking at him fairly closely since he’d first appeared...

  Hormones—it had to be hormones...

  He smiled, but the faraway look in his eyes told her he was back there again—back in those mighty mountains.

  ‘No, but I knew all along I wouldn’t be going to the top. I was support crew, and for me it was enough to be there—to be on the mountain right up to the last camp, before the final assault. It was magic.’

  ‘And hard and tough and dangerous as well?’

  He smiled.

  ‘So’s beating cancer,’ he said. ‘But for me, right from the diagnosis, it was a goal to work towards. I had a friend planning a climb and that gave me the motivation not only to get through the treatment but after it to do the training and build myself up to peak physical fitness—the kind that was needed if I wanted to be included in the team.’

  ‘But the second fiancée?’

  ‘I’d thought I could settle down, build a general practice here. It almost happened.’

  Joey studied the man who’d catapulted into her life while she tried to make sense of all he was telling her. There were loose ends everywhere and she wasn’t even up to the mistake part.

  Although she wasn’t in that much of a hurry to get to the mistake part. She’d rather go on thinking the baby inside her was David’s—sweet, gentle David’s—for as long as possible.

  ‘But it didn’t happen?’ she asked, before she could get melancholy over David again.

  Green eyes studied her in turn and she knew he was tossing up whether to tell the truth or offer a vague evasion.

  ‘Hmm,’ he finally said, ‘well...’

  ‘Spit it out,’ she ordered. ‘It can’t be any worse than the “you’re having my baby” line you used earlier.’

  ‘It was definitely my fault,’ he began, and she knew he’d decided on the truth. ‘I was due to be back in Australia a month before the wedding but, coming down, before we’d reached base camp where we were to fly out from, we had news of an avalanche on another part of the mountain—’

  ‘Involving other climbers?’

  The man nodded.

  ‘We were closest, I’m a doctor, it was a fair climb to reach them. The snow and ice around them were so unstable we couldn’t risk a helicopter rescue so getting the survivors out was tricky. Once they were handed over to the professionals we went back.’

  The look on his face told her why. There’d been fatalities and he and his fellow climbers had brought out the bodies as well.

  ‘Some people find it’s easier to accept if they can bury their loved ones.’

  The quiet sentence confirmed her guess. But the wedding?

  ‘So just how long was it before you returned to your fiancée?’ Joey asked, as the meaning of this rambling excuse became clear.

  ‘I was in touch whenever I could be,’ he said defensively. ‘Emails, texts, phone calls, you know how easy it is these days.’

  ‘So what happened?’ she asked, deciding to get back on track, although she’d really have liked to ask more about the mountain—both climbing and mountain-rescue work.

  Rescue work.

  Meryl had mentioned that. It sounded...intriguing.

  ‘I was dumped by text,’ Max replied. ‘It was waiting when we brought the survivors down, only weeks after leaving the base of Everest, about the time I should have been home. She’d met someone who loved her more than mountains, someone who wasn’t the most selfish person ever put on earth.’

  ‘She put all that in a text?’

  Her visitor grinned.

  ‘Not quite. That’s just what I took “Gt stfd am kpg ring” to mean. She’d told me the most selfish man on earth part many times and I’ve since heard her version of the story. Anyway, I went on another rescue mission to heal my broken heart—or maybe in the hope of breaking my neck because of my broken heart—and I’ve been...wandering since. Involving myself more and more with the problems of remote communities. Seeing how infectious diseases can decimate them. Trying to do something about it.’

  ‘And your lymphoma?’

  His smile lit up the room.

  ‘All clear!�
��

  Yes, non-Hodgkin lymphoma was like that—not like aggressive brain tumours, Joey thought sadly, remembering back. Remembering David insisting on freezing sperm in case she ever wanted it—telling her the best option would be her finding someone else to love, to make a family with. He’d been so sure she would...

  Max watched the shadows chase across her face and knew she’d been thinking about her husband, who hadn’t left her for his own selfish reasons but had been snatched from her by death.

  Why hadn’t she found someone else? he wondered. She was a lovely-looking woman, obviously intelligent and interested in things outside her own world—hadn’t she shown interest in the mountains?

  But ‘Yes,’ was all he said, and let the silence settle between them.

  She picked up a cracker and used it to push a piece of cheese around the plate, then poked at a grape, before looking up at him.

  ‘We’re down to the nitty-gritty now, aren’t we?’ There was so much sadness in her voice; he wanted to go and sit beside her, to put his arms around her and hold her tight—to assure her everything would be all right, although he knew full well nothing would ever be the same for her again.

  Or him, if the strange stuff going on inside him was any indication...

  He sighed. Holding her wasn’t an option, so he’d best get on with it.

  ‘Do you remember anything of the day your husband went to the clinic?’

  She looked at him, a little frown forming between her eyebrows.

  ‘Not really. I would have been angry—I was always angry back then—although...’

  He waited, seeing the frown deepen as she dug back in her memory to a time she’d rather forget.

  ‘Something happened. I do remember. It was at the clinic. Some kind of fuss?’

  He waited and she shook her head.

  ‘I can’t remember details—I’ve blanked out as much as I can of that part of my life. But there was a fuss of some kind. I remember thinking—furiously—that I might have lost him five weeks earlier than I needed to have and all because of the stupid sperm.’

  She gave her belly another pat as if to excuse her words, while Max recalled the events of the morning only too clearly.

  ‘There was a fuss,’ he told her, although the word ‘fuss’ hardly covered the magnitude of it. ‘A man came in with a gun. Apparently he and his wife had frozen four embryos some time earlier—there was some hereditary disease in one or other of their families and these had been tested and found free of whatever gene could cause the problem.’

  ‘And his wife had left him?’ Joey put in. ‘Of course! I remember David telling me the story.’

  ‘Exactly! Left him for another man, so the deserted husband wanted the embryos destroyed but apparently she was listed as the owner so the clinic couldn’t destroy them without her say-so. He pulled out a gun, grabbed one of the laboratory staff and demanded action.’

  ‘Just as you and David had done your thing in your discreetly curtained cubicles and come out clutching your little jars?’

  She half smiled and all the attraction stuff started up in his body again. This was beyond bizarre. He had to concentrate on the story, then help this woman—who was the real victim of the clinic’s mistake—in any way he could.

  ‘Not quite, because we’d heard all the commotion and actually gone further into the lab to try to work out what we could do to help. We were in the janitor’s room, with the door open so we could hear what was going on.’

  He paused, then added, ‘So, I met your David and, knowing now why he was there, I can understand why he thought the best option was to rush the man. I pointed out that he might shoot his hostage before he shot David, and in the end we decided on shock tactics. Not very brave or heroic, we just filled a bucket with hot water and threw it at him, hoping for the best. In retrospect it was probably a stupid thing to do but it worked. The man was so surprised he dropped the gun to wipe the water from his face, the lab assistant he was holding fell to the floor and a lot of people pounced.’

  A proper smile this time.

  ‘I do remember now,’ she said. ‘I even remember David telling me about hiding in the cupboard with some bloke who wanted to live through his treatment so he could climb mountains.’

  ‘We were not hiding. We were planning,’ Max informed her, but he was glad to see that she was still smiling.

  ‘So?’ she asked, and he knew he’d got to the hard part.

  He shifted in the very comfortable chair then faced the woman sitting opposite him, looking directly at her.

  ‘I’m only assuming this is what happened. The clinic is still trying to work it out. But when I went there today, someone in the cryo room brought out the straws frozen in my name, but when they checked—and they do check and cross-check—the numbers on the straws were your David’s. I can only assume that with all the fuss the day we were in there, someone had switched the jars—a-million-to-one chance of a mistake happening, but there it was.’

  Joey could only stare at the stranger. The stranger whose baby she was, apparently, carrying.

  Slowly and carefully, she went through it all in her mind and she understood that it could have happened.

  But had it?

  Shouldn’t she check?

  Too late now to phone the clinic—

  ‘Shouldn’t they have got in touch with me as soon as they found out?’ she demanded, as the enormity of it flooded her body. ‘Didn’t I deserve to be told? To have some kind of apology, some support?’

  Max stood up and came across to where she sat, sitting down beside her and tentatively resting a hand on her shoulder, wanting to comfort her and not knowing how.

  Wanting to hold her and tell her everything would be all right—make promises he had no right to make and that she would probably reject anyway.

  He’d insisted on being the person who told her—and all because he’d wanted to check out whether she’d make a good mother. Guilt was niggling in his gut.

  That had been a really big mistake. But how was he to know he’d be instantly attracted to her? Love at first sight was nonsense. He knew that!

  ‘That’s my fault,’ he admitted, shoving the L word to the very darkest corner of his brain. ‘It was only this afternoon, and it seemed to me you deserved to be told in person. I offered to do it. In fact...’ he gave a rueful smile ‘...I insisted. The guy who runs the clinic went through med school with me. I didn’t give him much choice. Unethical, but there it is. Once I came down from the ceiling, I figured if you had to have some of the truth, you might as well have the lot. Including who your father’s baby really is.’

  It was a reasonable explanation, he decided. She knew it all now. He could walk away.

  But something was happening he didn’t understand. On top of the attraction thing, there was bit of him that had suddenly become illogically, irrationally possessive of the baby. Possessive and responsible...

  Remember, he told himself, he’d decided no kids.

  ‘You offered to do it?’ Joey prompted, and he battled to get his thoughts in order so he could get back to the conversation.

  ‘I told them I was sure you’d be in touch with them, but I believed—I mean, the shock alone—I thought—’

  ‘I’d have fainted, or gone into labour or—Heaven only knows how I might have reacted—am reacting...’

  Joey threw up her arms and leaned back into the soft cushions at the back of the lounge, edging just a little away from the man who was causing a great deal of uncertainty in her body as well as total confusion in her mind.

  ‘I’ve no idea what to think,’ she said, then she turned to Max. ‘Do you?’

  He shrugged his broad shoulders by way of reply and she told herself it was the shock that made him seem so attractive. She’d had a shock and he was here to suppo
rt her—of course he’d seem attractive.

  ‘Not really,’ he said, ‘although we obviously have to think about the baby. I mean, if you don’t want a baby that’s not David’s, his sperm is still there and you could try again. I could probably take the baby—my mother and sisters could possibly—’

  ‘Take the baby?’ Joey’s reaction was as instinctive as a bear protecting her cub. She was staring at him in horror. ‘You’d take the baby and I could just try again? This is my baby we’re talking about. Okay, so David—or presumably you, but I’m not accepting that until I’ve talked to the clinic—might have made a contribution, but this is my baby!’

  ‘The contribution is half and half,’ said her visitor, who’d shifted a little away from her in obvious discomfort.

  ‘And who’s been carrying it around for months, and not having a glass of wine, and eating good food, and walking up a million steps so it stays healthy? Not to mention morning sickness and indigestion and not being able to get comfortable enough to have a decent night’s sleep? Tell me that, then tell me it’s half and half.’

  ‘Well, not quite,’ Max admitted, ‘but it’s still my baby.’

  So he was one of those stubborn men, Joey thought. And then thought, irrationally, I hope our baby hasn’t inherited that trait—although the green eyes would be nice...

  Our baby. It was a weird thought.

  ‘Which leaves us where?’ she demanded, upset all over again now she had to worry about the baby being stubborn—and her reactions to this man.

  She was mulling this over when Max replied.

  ‘I’m not trying to take it away from you.’

  ‘Gee, thanks.’

  ‘But I do want to help.’

  ‘I don’t need...’

  And then he had another of those light-bulb moments. Crazy, irrational, but the thought was there. A solution that would let him wander but would still give him a say.

  He’d nearly done it twice. Maybe he could...

  ‘Joey, I’m not much of a catch because I’m not around much,’ he said slowly. ‘I’m called away at inconvenient times. I live independently. But if we both were to be parents... If there’s no one else for you... I suppose... Maybe we could get married. You know, a marriage of convenience—so the baby had a father... I could contribute—’