Merry Christmas, Babies

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “I do understand.”

  “But?”

  It was Elise’s turn to look away—at the busy street, the traffic whizzing by several yards in front of them. She wondered what Joe was doing for dinner—if he’d gone home and put a frozen pizza in the oven.

  How she wished she could be there with him, safely ensconced in her isolated little world.

  A world that, as of this morning, was no longer safe at all.

  “I don’t know,” she told the man in front of her, giving him the one thing she could give him. Her honesty. “What you’re asking could affect the rest of my life, and the lives of my children.”

  “Children?” He glanced down again. “There’s more than one?”

  She didn’t want to tell him there were four—as though that meant there were plenty to go around. These were siblings, family, not commodities.

  Elise nodded.

  And hated the light she saw in his eyes. Interest. Enthusiasm. Caring.

  A complete antithesis of the horror that had filled Joe’s expression when he’d heard her news.

  To Adam’s credit he didn’t say another word.

  “No matter what I decide, you’ll need to understand that I have no intention of splitting up my family,” she told him then.

  He nodded.

  “Give me a week.”

  His shoulders slumped as his gaze met hers directly, his eyes moist, though not brimming. “Thank you.”

  “I may decide to deny your request.”

  “You’re thinking about it. That’s enough for now,” he told her. His smile looked genuine. “I’m an inventor,” he said. “I needed the money for—”

  “Stop.” Elise held up one hand. “I won’t be subject to emotional manipulation.”

  At least no more than she could help.

  JOE MADE A COUPLE OF phone calls, looking for a dinner date. And when he realized he was phoning women he knew were either busy on Friday nights, moved away or newly attached, he quit kidding himself and drove through a fast-food joint for a bag of dinner, took it to his condominium, flipped on the television and settled in.

  Accepting that he wasn’t going to be around all summer, he’d turned off the air-conditioning two weeks before and his luxury condo had to be pushing eighty-five degrees. One hamburger out of the way and he had perspiration rolling down his temples. He sucked on his soda straw.

  But the television was good. He could watch news to his heart’s content.

  And sweat.

  The second hamburger was all he got through before stuffing the rest of the fries and dessert in the trash. He sucked on his soda straw again and came up empty.

  How fitting, he thought. He’d been thinking about Elise since she’d left the office an hour before. Imagining who she might be with—and why. Just as he’d called Melanie for lunch, had Elise called an old boyfriend? Was she going to kiss him just to wipe away the taste and feel of Joe from her lips?

  He had no answers.

  TV off, Joe was back out in the Lexus fifteen minutes after he’d pulled it into his garage. He might as well think in comfort. And be there when she got home.

  SHE DIDN’T LOOK like she’d had a great time. Bending over the kitchen faucet, in the process of changing the washer, Joe caught a glimpse of her from under his elbow. Her face was pale, drawn, her hair flat, as though she’d been driving with the window open.

  “I brought you a brownie.”

  From Fuddruckers, according to the bag she’d put on the counter. Much better than the fried-pie thing he’d thrown in the Dumpster back at his condo. “Thanks.”

  And if that’s where she’d been to dinner, her excursion hadn’t been anything like the hot date he’d been envisioning. Darin sat on the counter beside him, watching her.

  “I’m tired. I think I’ll turn in.”

  At eight o’clock? Without telling him where she’d been?

  She took her cat and Joe grabbed the wrench he’d borrowed from the tool bench in her garage. “Sleep well.”

  He supposed she did. Even though he lay awake for hours, he didn’t hear anything from her room the rest of the night.

  ELISE WAS SITTING at the kitchen table when Joe came out the next morning. Already showered and dressed in a denim jumper, she sat empty-handed, just staring. Her cats were nowhere in sight.

  “What’s up?”

  “Good morning.” She stood, grabbed some eggs from the refrigerator. “Would you like an omelet? It sounds good to me, but I can’t eat a whole one.”

  As though omelets came in one size only? As though omelets were what she’d been sitting there thinking about?

  “Sure. Can I have ten minutes to jump in the shower first?” And put on something besides his sleep shorts and T-shirt?

  Her affirmative reply followed him back through the dining room.

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Joe felt more up to facing his partner/friend/housemate. It was Saturday. His sacred free time. He’d already put on his running shoes with denim shorts and a T-shirt in preparation for that canoe trip down the river he’d been meaning to take.

  Today was definitely the day.

  Elise had the television on—a shopping channel Kelly had had a running monthly account with. As he watched her from the doorway and then jumped in to help with the toast and setting the table, Joe felt pretty confident that any danger of him making a huge mistake—like finding Elise sexually desirable—was long gone. All he had to do was look at her protruding stomach.

  Not that he didn’t find the mound appealing in itself. Sexy even. But it was caused by babies.

  And they made Joe run in the other direction every time. His loss of Kelly was all the proof he needed.

  “THAT WAS GOOD.” They were the first words they’d spoken since her “pass the jelly, please” when they’d first sat down. “Thank you,” Joe tacked on for good measure.

  “You’re welcome.”

  He wiped his mouth. Put his napkin on his plate. Time to put his stuff in the dishwasher and go. The river was waiting.

  “You going to tell me what’s troubling you?” He hadn’t quite stood yet. But he would. Just as soon as she answered him.

  It had to be the kiss. And he could quickly put that fear to rest for her. They were going to be fine. Back to normal already.

  “I had a call from the Bonder Fertility Clinic yesterday.”

  Joe frowned. “Is something wrong?”

  Her shrug wasn’t all that reassuring. Setting down her fork on a half-eaten omelet, she covered her stomach with her arms. He’d seen her do that a few times before, usually when she was upset.

  “One of the donors wants to know if he’s the father.”

  The statement was so out of the blue, Joe sat back. Shocked. “Well, he can’t. You have a contract. What’s done is done.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “Of course it is!” He’d right this immediately. “From everything you’ve told me, you very carefully planned this whole thing,” he reminded her. “The man has no legal rights whatsoever.”

  “I know.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” And why was his blood pressure rising over this?

  “He’s since become sterile. The specimen he sold to me is his only chance of ever fathering children.”

  “That’s garbage.”

  Elise’s sad smile alerted Joe to the way he was sounding. Like someone who had a stake in any of this. Leaning his elbows on the table, he determined to correct the impression.

  “I’m just thinking of you,” he told her. “You’ve lost so much, worked so hard. You’ve been very careful, did everything the right way…”

  “Yeah.”

  “So…”

  Fiddling with a corner of her napkin, Elise frowned, looking at him as though he had some elusive piece of wisdom she couldn’t find.

  He didn’t even have his wits about him, let alone any wisdom. He was too busy thinking about finding this guy and giving him a piece of his mind.r />
  “Sometimes fate steps in. Tragedy happens,” she said softly. “Adam lost his wife in a car accident last year.”

  So it was Adam now. Joe turned cold as a sinking suspicion set firmly in his gut. Was this Elise’s mysterious appointment? Had she actually met the guy?

  “What’s that got to do with you?” he asked, aware of the lack of compassion he was showing toward this unknown man. “And anyway, that would have been before he answered your ad.” So had no bearing on the situation—unless the son of a bitch was using the information to somehow manipulate Elise.

  “I’m going to call my father,” he said next. The man might have sired too many children in Joe’s humble opinion, but he’d been a top-rate family lawyer for more than thirty years.

  “I don’t need a lawyer, Joe. At least not yet.”

  He disagreed. “If this guy even thinks he’s going to blackmail you—”

  “Adam has been a model of decorum.” Instead of calming him, her words only infuriated Joe further.

  Crossing his arms, he decided to keep his own counsel until he heard the entire story. Until he could figure out what was the matter with him. And figure out how to help her.

  “So what’s he want, exactly?”

  “For me to unseal the records and find out if his sperm was the one of the five that was used.”

  “Why? So he can come after you for a share in the results?”

  Joe heard the words coming out of his mouth and managed to feel some shame. He should have stayed in bed.

  “Because if it wasn’t his, he wants to purchase it back from me.”

  “Oh.” He took a sip of cold coffee. “That’s not so bad, is it?” He met her gaze, struck again by the depths of mystery in her eyes. “It’s not like you need it anymore.”

  “If the babies aren’t his, that’s exactly right,” she said slowly. And then her face crumpled, her eyes filling with tears. “But what if he is, Joe? What if I agree to this and find out that he’s the father? How will I ever be able to tell this man he can’t have access to the only biological children he’ll ever have?”

  Joe started to hate the guy again.

  Clasping his hands so they wouldn’t betray him—he wanted to reach for her, pull her in his arms to offer the comfort that seemed to surface so naturally in him—Joe wished he knew what to say.

  “So don’t do it.” He fell far short of what he’d hoped to achieve there.

  She nodded, as though she’d already reached the decision herself, and Joe breathed a sigh of relief. She’d needed validation. He’d given it to her.

  He could go canoeing now.

  “But what if he isn’t the father?” she said softly. “What if his sperm is sitting in a vault in Grand Rapids, his future biological children that will never be, simply because I’m too selfish to let him find out if they’re there?”

  “How’d this guy become sterile all of a sudden?” Joe was going from bad to worse. “Some injury?”

  “He got the mumps.”

  Really. Joe had no idea adults really got that anymore. Or that it could actually cause sterility. Adjusting his butt in the chair, he considered his own virility from a different perspective than ever before.

  Yeah, he didn’t want kids in the worst way. But to think that his option to do so, his ability to do so could be compromised so easily…

  “Joyce Merritt, the director of the clinic, told me yesterday when she called that with the swelling, something gets blocked and…”

  A diet commercial was on—expostulating over all the food that could be eaten with continued weight loss if one only joined their system. Someone lost forty-two pounds in four months. Another woman lost her baby fat. Eating chocolate.

  “…sometimes even an infection can cause…”

  Joe shifted in his seat some more. Heard about a woman who felt sexy again now that she was thinner than she’d ever been in her life.

  He wasn’t sure the diet plan was such a great idea. It sounded too good to be true. But at least he was no longer fighting the urge to strangle some guy he’d never met. Or caring about his own fertility.

  The commercial was over. Elise was looking at him expectantly.

  “So what are you going to do?” he asked, hoping she wasn’t waiting for some response to a question he hadn’t heard.

  “I don’t know. I told him I’d get back to him in a week.”

  “So you spoke to him.”

  “He was my appointment after work.”

  He’d guessed right. But it was nothing to do with him.

  “He took you to Fuddruckers?”

  “I took me to Fuddruckers. I spent two minutes with him.”

  She went to dinner alone. Had one of the world’s best hamburgers. Thinking of the bag of grease he’d thrown away the night before, Joe thought it a shame she hadn’t asked him along.

  “You must be considering this since you met with him.”

  “I have to consider it, don’t I? Otherwise I’m arbitrarily making a decision that might go against my principles.”

  “You know it’ll be much harder to say no now that you’ve met him, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but…I don’t know, Joe. I know what it’s like to lose loved ones. Maybe I thought he’d be a jerk and my conscience would be clear when I denied his request.”

  “There are many ways of being a jerk,” Joe quickly pointed out. “Playing on your emotions, being charming only to get someone to do what you want—”

  “I’ve already thought of that,” she interrupted him. “But Adam wasn’t any of those things. Truly. Anyway, I think maybe what I’m going to do is meet with him one more time. Listen to what he has to say. Maybe there will be something there that will make my decision clear to me.”

  “I don’t like that one bit.” The words were said with far too much force. Probably because he was itchy to get out on the water.

  “Why not?”

  “What if the guy’s a lunatic?”

  “I’ll meet him in a public place before dark and not walk to my car alone afterward. Besides, I had a thorough background check done on him, remember?”

  Just like Elise to have all the answers.

  So maybe she could answer this. Why did Joe, who had no vested interest in these children at all, who actually would benefit greatly if someone took over his job here for him and let him get back to the business of running a business with Elise, feel so threatened at the idea of Elise trotting off to meet with a man who may or may not have fathered her children?

  Maybe she could provide an answer.

  If he asked her.

  Joe did not.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ELISE HAD PLANNED to have dinner made before Joe got back from the river—and to have already eaten hers. And then Samantha decided to explore the inside of the washing machine when Elise left the lid open—with the appliance filling—to go collect the shorts and nightshirt she’d shoved under her pillow that morning. Samantha hadn’t suffered any serious damage from the gushing water or suds, but she’d cut her head trying to spring out of there. Elise had spent most of the afternoon at the vet’s office with an extremely stressed-out and headachy feline.

  And that was why she’d ended up sitting across from her reluctant and far-too-sexy-for-her-good housemate at one of the round, umbrellaed tables on the back patio of the Flat River Grill, watching the ducks on the water and trying not to notice that the man had shoulders. Seriously broad shoulders.

  He’d always had them. She just hadn’t noticed before. Probably because she’d never had pregnancy hormones shooting through her body.

  Or doubts and uncertainties climbing so high inside her she was in danger of choking on them.

  She got through half of her cedar-smoked salmon and steamed red-skinned potatoes, managing to make only mildly derogatory comments about his pizza al forno Americana with pepperoni, sausage, red onion, mushrooms, green peppers, sauce and cheese. A fine seafood menu, and the man chose pizza.
r />   And by then she was also finished telling him about Samantha’s mild concussion, lack of stitches and good prognosis. The rest of the meal was spent discussing business.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know,” Elise told Joe as she was strapping herself back into the front seat of his Lexus. “Have dinner with me most nights and take me out for dinner at least once. I appreciate the sentiment and, for that matter, your incredible friendship, but you’re already going far beyond the call of duty by just staying at the house, Joe. I feel terrible taking up your social time, too.”

  She also felt terrible that she was ogling him as though he were any man on the street. Considering their fifteen-year partnership and the boundaries they’d successfully established, her unexpected sexual desire for him was entirely inappropriate. And dangerous.

  Her feelings threatened the trust they’d built. If they lost that trust, they lost everything.

  “If I don’t feel terrible about it, why should you?” His shrug was as easy as the perplexed look he sent her.

  But then, he didn’t know that that shrug had just sent a thrill up her spine, or that, at dinner, for one second there she’d actually imagined those shoulders above her…

  “Because I’m taking advantage of you,” she said, “and eventually you’ll start to resent me for it.”

  “You seem to have reframed reality, my dear,” he said, starting the ignition and adjusting the air vents. “As I recall, I forced myself on you and then insisted that we eat dinner together. Frankly I did it all for purely selfish reasons.”

  The cold air was blissful in the hot car. “You did?”

  “Of course I did. I can’t run B&R without you. You are an asset, a commodity, and I’m merely protecting my investment.”

  If she hadn’t known him for almost half her life, Elise might have taken offense at his repeated protestations that he was doing it all for B&R. But instead, his words pretty much calmed the panic that had been steadily growing in her since Friday morning and the kiss they would never, ever speak about.

  Pretty much, but not entirely. There was something she had to call him on.

  “You’ve got that intense note in your tone, Joe. The one you get when you’re trying to convince someone of something—most often when you’re trying to convince yourself that you mean what you’re saying.”