The Match - A Baby Daddy Donor Romance

by Winter Renshaw

  Grabbing fistfuls of air, I groan. “I’m not coming clean about something I didn’t do.”

  We lock eyes in a feverish stare down.

  “Why would I do anything like that?” I ask. “I don’t need money, and I made that clear from the first time we spoke. And my daughter’s privacy is my first priority. Another thing I’ve made abundantly clear.”

  “I don’t know, Rossi.” His lips press into a hard line and his fingers dig into his hips as he shifts. “All I know is last weekend, you became cold and distant when I told you I was going home for a few days. And when I told you the news about my ex, you congratulated me and told me I had no obligation to be with you and Lucia. Then magically these pictures are being shopped around, pictures from your phone that you took.”

  “So you think I’m jealous that your ex is pregnant and I did all of this out of spite? Is that what you think?” My vision narrows.

  I realize he hardly knows me, but for the love of God, he knows me better than that.

  “All right. I’m done with this conversation.” Turning, I grab Frankie’s info from my desk. “This is for you. Best of luck.”

  With squinted eyes, he scans the scribbled address and number. “What’s this?”

  “I may have found your sister,” I say.

  His gaze holds mine for a fraction of forever, but we don’t exchange another word.

  The room hangs heavy with the weight of everything we aren’t saying. Everything we could say, would say, and will never have a chance to say again.

  Once he calms down and comes to his senses, we can talk about moving forward, but I will not put up with him storming into my house accusing me of doing something so deplorable to my own daughter.

  Folding the paper, he jams it in his jeans pocket, gives me a parting glance I couldn’t read if I tried.

  And then he’s gone.

  Chapter 30

  Fabian

  * * *

  I stop at a four-way intersection a few blocks away from Rossi’s, retrieve the torn paper from my pocket, and scan the handwriting.

  Frankie Catalano

  746 County Line Road

  Unit 1

  Spearville, IA

  309-555-8829

  My headache whooshes and my skin is still flushed hot from that infuriating exchange with Rossi, but I type the number into my phone and press the green button.

  “The number you have reached is no longer in service …” greets me. I hang up. It’s not like I knew what I was going to say if she answered anyway.

  Typing the address into my GPS, the screen shows an arrival time of two hours. It’s still early enough in the day that if I showed up, it wouldn’t be too late.

  Assuming she even lives there.

  There’s a chance I could drive one hundred and twenty miles for nothing.

  Either way, it’s not like I have anything better to do.

  Until I figure out what happened with those photos, everything’s in limbo. A dark gray void where nothing makes sense and everything that was once sweet is now sour.

  I press the “go” button on the navigation system and follow the guided prompts until I hit an open stretch of highway outside of town.

  Knuckles tight around the steering wheel, I head toward Spearville with a head full of doubt and body full of white-hot adrenaline.

  Even if Frankie turns me away, it’s not like this day could get any worse.

  Chapter 31

  Rossi

  * * *

  “What the heck was that about?” Carina shuffles into my office as Fabian tears out of the driveway. “Just put Lucia down for a nap and then I heard the front door slam.”

  The wild look in his eyes, his fingers digging into his hips, the cutting tone, the harsh words, the slamming of the door—I’ve officially experienced Fabian’s famous hotheaded temper. Only something tells me that was the diet version …

  “I’m going to ask you something, and I don’t want you to get offended,” I say, softening my words.

  “You know you literally cannot offend me, right?” She laughs.

  “Just wait …”

  She pulls up a chair to the other side of my desk, crossing her legs and shrugging. “What’s up?”

  “So apparently some photos were leaked,” I say. “Of Fabian and Lucia.”

  I pause to read her expression. I’ve known my sister for three decades and half the time I know her better than she knows herself. Any time she’s ever told a lie, her nose twitches and she gets this weird curl to her upper lip, like she’s trying not to laugh.

  “These pictures were on my phone,” I continue. “And somehow, someone accessed them and now they’re shopping them around to tabloids for a lot of money …”

  Carina’s jaw falls and her brows knit. “Oh my god. You guys think I did it?”

  Lifting my palms, I say, “No one is saying you did it. We’re just trying to narrow down the possibilities.”

  “But I’m a suspect.” She frowns, sitting up. “Rossi, I would never, ever, in a hundred billion years do anything like that. Not to mention your phone is Fort Knox. You have fifty million passwords on everything, and you have to log in with your face. How could I access your pictures? And why would I sell them knowing I would get caught?”

  There’s no movement in her nose, no curl in her lip.

  No tell-tale salesman tenor in her voice, like she’s trying to sell a lie.

  “I believe you,” I say.

  The room turns silent. She chews on her lip and I pick at a hangnail, both of us lost in thought.

  “Okay, so this is really disturbing. We have to figure this out,” she says. “Who else would’ve had access to your phone?”

  The idea of my daughter’s face being plastered all over social media is nothing short of upsetting, but the upside is babies change so drastically from month to month. An image of her at nine months will hardly resemble an image of her six months from now. This is less than ideal, of course. An extreme invasion of privacy, to say the least. But it could be worse.

  “Did anyone stop by the last couple of days after work?” she asks. “Or did you go shopping and set your phone down somewhere?”

  “We went to the grocery store Sunday night …” my voice trails as I mentally rewind everything we’ve done since Fabian left town. “And we stopped at the hardware store for bird seed after that. I didn’t take my phone out either time though.”

  “Okay …”

  “Oh my god.” My hand flies to my chest. “Dan stopped over last night …”

  Carina rolls her eyes. “If I can’t access your phone, Dan sure as hell can’t either—unless you did something stupid and gave him your passcode.”

  “No.” I cover my mouth. “Monday night he came by around dinner to drop off some mail of mine that had gotten mixed in with his.” And also to apologize for that awkward kiss, but I don’t mention that part to my sister because it’s neither here nor there. “I invited him in since I was in the middle of cleaning up Lucia’s mess … most of which was in her hair. Anyway, I told him to hang on quick while I gave her a bath. I left my phone on the counter. I was maybe gone for less than ten minutes.”

  “How could he get into your phone though without the code?”

  “I’d been texting with Mom right before he showed up. It’s set to automatically lock after five minutes, but it’d only been a minute or two.” I suck in a sharp breath. “Oh my god, Carina. It had to have been him.”

  She shakes. “I just got the chills. I always had a weird feeling about that guy. Like he was borderline obsessed with you, and not in a cute way.”

  “Fabian noticed that too,” my voice lowers. “But why would he do this? We were friends?”

  “He never wanted your friendship, Rossi.” She tilts her head. “He wanted you. And if he couldn’t have you, maybe he wanted to make sure Fabian couldn’t either?”

  “That conniving …” I mutter under my breath, shoving my chair out from my desk a
nd flinging the door open.

  “Where are you going?” She chases after me.

  “Next door to confront that bastard.” I step into my sneakers, nearly stumbling into the wall in the process.

  “You’re not going anywhere.” Carina steadies me, her hand on my shoulder. “Anyone who does something like this? They’re mentally unstable. Do not go over there. I forbid you. I will literally handcuff you to this console table if you take another freaking step.”

  I jerk my shoulder out from under her.

  “Let the police deal with him,” she says.

  “Is this even something the police can deal with?” I ask, envisioning a police officer laughing in my face when I explain the situation. “This is the sort of thing that involves attorneys and court orders and the way Fabian made it sound, this is going public tomorrow.”

  “Then let Fabian deal with him.”

  Charging into my office, I fetch my phone and dial Fabian.

  He doesn’t answer.

  Chapter 32

  Fabian

  * * *

  “Your destination is on the right,” the GPS guide announces. I slow to a crawl outside a brown duplex.

  Parking by a broken concrete curb filled with weeds, I double check the address. A sun-faded red Grand Am is parked in the driveway, which is nothing more than two strips of gravel divided by patchy grass. No garage. No landscaping. No sign of life other than an empty terracotta planter by the front door of the left unit.

  Heading up the drive, I notice the front windows of the duplex are cracked a few inches, emitting the scent of stale cigarette smoke and the sound of canned laughter coming from a TV.

  There’s a chance the person living here isn’t Frankie.

  There’s also chance the person living here is Frankie—and that she’ll slam the door in my face.

  Before my parents’ respective deaths, they were adamant that if my sister wanted to be found, she’d come out of hiding. And that’s how they always described it. She was “hiding.” Though occasionally they’d say she was “on the run from her troubles.” They made her sound lost and unstable, hopeless, and they warned me to “leave her be.”

  Now that I have a daughter of my own, I can’t imagine turning my back on her in her worst time of need. I imagine my parents thought they were doing what was best for me, but at what cost?

  My father once said Frankie was beyond saving.

  My mother kept a scrapbook of pictures and newspaper clippings of my sister, all of which stopped around the age of fourteen. Before she became “precocious.” It’s as if they wrote her off after that, and for reasons they never quite explained in any detail.

  Standing at the front door, I knock three times.

  A large-sounding dog barks from the neighboring unit.

  “Hello?” I call out. “Anyone home?”

  The TV goes silent, replaced with the sound of footsteps as a dark-haired woman steps into view.

  “Are you Frankie?” I ask.

  She stops in her tracks, studying me, silent. “Fabian?”

  It’s her.

  On the drive here, I was certain this day couldn’t get any worse.

  But I wasn’t expecting that it could actually get better.

  The woman steps closer, and I catch a glimpse of the wiry grays streaking her dark hair and the deep lines embedded in her forehead, painting a picture of a hard fifty-two years.

  “My god. I can’t believe it’s you.” She gets the door, ushering me in. “Well, don’t just stand there. Come on in.”

  I step into a small living space with green shag carpet, wood paneled walls, and sagging furniture. To the right is a small kitchen table with three chairs, and on the back of one hangs a black waitress’ apron bearing the name FRANKIE C. in bold blue embroidery.

  “I have to go to work soon.” She points to her apron. “But I’ve got a few minutes. If I’d have known you were coming, maybe I could’ve found someone to cover for me.”

  “Sorry to show up unannounced. I tried calling a number I had for you, but it was disconnected.”

  She swats a hand and ambles to the living room, the slightest limp in her gait. Mom had the same thing in her older years, chalked it up to a bad knee, but she refused to get it looked at. The thought of having surgery and being unable to walk for any period of time terrified her, so she chose to live with the pain and suffering.

  “We can have a seat in there,” she nods toward the living room, which is a handful of steps away. I take a seat in a sunken-in La-Z-Boy, next to a coffee table littered with TV guides, overflowing ash trays, and empty cans of Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi. “Sorry the place is a mess. I’m … remodeling.”

  It’s a lie, I’m sure.

  But I’m not here to judge.

  She takes a seat on the couch. “You want something to drink?”

  I offer a polite smile. “I’m good, Frankie. Just wanted to come by and see if you were okay, if you needed anything.”

  She laughs, raspy and wheezy and tinged with a smoker’s cough, and when she smiles, I spot a missing canine on the left side. “Haven’t bothered you for money yet, have I?”

  No. No she hasn’t.

  In this day and age, it wouldn’t be hard for someone to contact me through my email, website, agent, publicist, or one of my various social media channels.

  But Frankie’s kept her distance.

  My father always said it was for the best, and he made me promise that if she ever came around asking for money, I wouldn’t indulge her because it would only feed her demons. My whole life, my parents painted Frankie as something just short of terrifying, but the woman in front of me has kind brown eyes that match mine fleck-by-fleck and a face that softens when she smiles, despite her imperfections.

  A basket of clothes rests unfolded on the edge of the couch and an old dinner plate lies abandoned on a side table. Reminds me of the way I used to keep my room as a teenager.

  I don’t see a lost cause here.

  I see a woman who maybe never quite grew up all the way.

  “Frankie, I’m not sure if you’re aware, but Mom and Dad passed last year. January and July,” I say.

  Reaching for a pack of Marlboros, she taps one out and slips it between her fingertips. “You mind?”

  “It’s your home.”

  With the flick of a Bic lighter, she inhales until the tip glows orange-red, and then she blows a cloudy ring of smoke between wrinkled lips.

  “I heard,” she says. “About Mom and Dad, I mean.”

  She stares ahead at the muted TV, taking another drag.

  “Was hoping I’d see you at their funerals,” I say. “Always looked for you at the burials. I was sure you were standing back, hiding behind a tree or something.”

  She takes another drag before tapping the ashes into a jade-green tray. “They didn’t want me around when they were alive, why would they want me there when they’re dead?”

  “I think they always hoped you’d come back around,” I say. “Mom kept a scrapbook of you. And every year, she’d bake brownies on your birthday. With rainbow sprinkles. It wasn’t until I got older that I figured out why. They missed you.”

  She blows a ring of smoke through the side of her mouth. “Bullshit.”

  “Mom prayed for you every night,” I say. “I always heard her from the next room. She’d get on her knees at the foot of her bed, ask God to watch over you—”

  “—and what about Dad? Did he pray for me too?”

  “You know how he was,” I say, head cocked. “But he worried, in his own way.”

  She taps her cigarette once more before reaching for a soda can, swirling it around and taking a sip.

  “You make them sound so sweet,” she says. “Almost makes up for the fact that they disowned me and left me out on the streets. Literally.”

  “What?” The word disowned was never a part of our household vocabulary.

  “I’m sure there’s a lot they didn’t tell you,” she says,
pointing her cigarette at me. “You were their second chance.”

  That much I’ve always known.

  “As soon as you came along, I was chopped liver,” she says with a bittersweet smile. “But damn, you were cute. Those big brown eyes, full head of hair. Really wanted to keep you.”

  I wrinkle my nose. “You wanted to keep me?”

  “I was fifteen. No way I could’ve done it on my own. Dad wanted me to give you up. Closed adoption style. But Mom wouldn’t have any of that. She wanted to raise you—”

  “—wait.” My head pounds as I process this information.

  “Oh my god. You didn’t know?” She stubs out her half-smoked Marlboro before angling toward me. “They didn’t tell you?”

  “Let me get this straight … you’re my biological mother?” I ask. “And the people who raised me … were my grandparents?”

  Her dark eyes dart from left to right, and then she nods. “Uh, yeah.”

  Hunched over, elbows on my knees, I steeple my fingers over my nose and breathe in a lungful of nicotine air.

  “Jesus, Fab. I had no idea you never knew.” Her mouth twitches to one side, the way Mom’s always did when she was holding something back. “No wonder they were so hell bent on keeping me away. I tried to come home once. You must have been three or four. And it was your birthday. I’d been working part-time as a hotel clerk and I saved enough to buy you one of those little foam baseball bats and a pack of whiffle balls. Your dad—your biological dad—was really into sports, so I assumed maybe you would be too. Anyway, I showed up that morning, and Dad told me I was no longer welcome under their roof. I peeked in the window and saw you eating pancakes at the table with Mom. She was singing some Etta James song and you were grinning, covered in syrup, and you looked so happy, Fabian. So content.”

  “Wait, they wouldn’t let you see me?”

  “In their defense, I was probably strung out at the time. Things are kind of foggy when I think that far back,” she scratches the back of her neck. “My mind isn’t what it used to be. But I’ll never forget that smile of yours as you looked at Mom like she hung the moon. And she was pretty great. As far as moms go, I mean. She tried with me. She did her best. I wasn’t easy. I gave them a run for their money.”