Her Christmas Future

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  In a taxi one morning he found himself pondering the fact that she wanted the baby—when she’d been so adamantly against even a mention of the possibility all the years since Lily’s death. He worried that circumstances, their recklessness, had forced her into something for which she wasn’t ready.

  She’d make a great mom. He’d always known that. The child would be blessed...

  His thoughts were diverted as he arrived at his destination. As they were every time he went off on mental tangents about Olivia or the baby that week. Which was pretty much anytime he wasn’t completely focused on something else. Every night as he went to bed, he ticked off another day of no bad news. If Beth lost the baby, he’d get a call. His newly signed paperwork assured him of that.

  Olivia had told him his role was completely up to him.

  And that she needed to know what that role was going to be. At least there’d be no money worries. That felt good. So he opened an investment account specifically for nonessential savings for the child. He’d already done so for college. And another one for health expenses.

  As the week progressed he found himself taking a private poll of every man he had a conversation with—a cabdriver, a doorman, his business associates, a bartender, friends... He couldn’t seem to stop himself from asking if they had kids. And then encouraging them to discuss the experience. He was good at drawing people out. Getting them to reveal things without realizing that he was doing more than serving up small talk. He’d never, ever used the talent to find out about fatherhood. Or lack thereof. And mostly all he got was a fistful of envy for the guys who were comfortable in their paternal shoes, and the other fist full of sympathy for the guys who weren’t—whether they had kids and weren’t involved, or didn’t have children. The one group he didn’t feel much for, other than a lack of respect, were the guys who had families and didn’t seem all that interested in them.

  By the time Sunday noon rolled around and he was sitting in his parked vehicle, waiting for Olivia at the beach parking lot, he’d run out of time.

  She wanted to know who he was going to be in their future.

  He had absolutely no idea what he wanted, what he felt. How could he have no idea?

  He always had ideas. Always knew what to do. Or where to get the information to figure it out.

  He’d been gathering information all week and he didn’t know what to do. Who he could be. Should be. Would be good at being. Didn’t have any idea how he ensured that Olivia and the baby were happy.

  He certainly hadn’t been able to do a damned thing to ease Lily’s suffering. Or Olivia’s. His presence hadn’t been able to bring happiness to either one of them. His power, his money...

  He’d worked so hard to achieve them, to have security and enough money to raise his kids with wonderful memories and happy times. And when the time had come, neither power nor money had mattered a whit.

  A red SUV pulled up next to him and a man in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt got out. He looked to be late twenties or so with sandy hair. He opened the door directly behind his and bent to a car seat, pulling out a boy big enough to start hopping around as soon as he was on the ground. Pretty soon a woman in leggings and a long sweatshirt, with her blond hair in a ponytail, joined him with a baby on her hip. The little boy said something. Martin couldn’t make out the words, but he heard the excitement in the child’s voice as his father pulled a cooler out of the back of the vehicle and handed a blanket to the woman.

  A family on a Sunday picnic. He should envy them.

  And didn’t. They were them, living their lives. He was living his. They were starting out, with a lifetime ahead of them for building who they’d become. He’d already become.

  With the cooler in one hand, the dad reached down a hand and the little boy slid his small fingers inside it. Martin looked away, having trouble swallowing.

  And his passenger door swung open.

  “Sorry I’m late. I had a call from the hospital about a patient I’ve been following closely...” Olivia said, setting her purse on the floor at her feet as she slid inside. In skinny dress pants and a tailored off-white button-up cotton top, with her hair down, she turned his world on end. Again.

  Every single time he saw her.

  And, as usual, he pretended she didn’t.

  How did a guy keep doing that for the rest of his life?

  “Everything okay?” he asked, knowing she couldn’t give him specifics about any patient.

  He used to resent that. Hated that her work with at-risk babies affected her so deeply and she couldn’t share any of it with him.

  Eventually he’d realized that the law only accounted for a small portion of the things Olivia didn’t share with him anymore. Or hadn’t shared, since they’d gotten divorced.

  “As good as can be expected,” she told him in answer to his question, and he examined her, trying to read between the lines. Was she losing a baby at work?

  “You look like you’re going to meet the president,” she said, glancing up and down his frame, giving him the beginning of a hard-on.

  “I could have come from church,” he said to defend the navy dress pants, white shirt and navy-and-white tie he’d chosen for the occasion.

  “Did you?”

  “No.”

  She grinned. He wanted to kiss her.

  And put the SUV in gear.

  * * *

  Olivia had arranged to meet Beth and Brian at their house, hoping to meet the rest of the family, but Beth’s aunt and sister had taken the kids to the park and out for ice cream. The fresh air was good for her aunt, Beth mentioned as she walked Martin and Olivia through the modest home and out to a patio that opened out to a small yard with freshly cut grass completely closed in by a block wall that attached to both sides of the house.

  As she and Martin sat on a wicker love seat, Brian came out carrying a tray with glasses and individual-size juice bottles of various flavors. The couple, both in jeans, T-shirts and flip-flops, sat on the love seat opposite them, with the tray on the little table between the two couches.

  Olivia made the introductions, leaving out the part about Martin being a techie guru millionaire entrepreneur. Everyone was smiling. Polite. On best behavior. And yet she wanted to run.

  Which made no sense. She truly liked Beth and Brian and would have even if they hadn’t been in the process of bringing her baby to life. What she didn’t like was knowing that they had to be sizing up Martin. Watching her. Wondering about the relationship between them.

  Wondering how the baby was going to fit into it.

  Beth, in particular. While the embryo she was carrying wasn’t hers, the pregnancy was. Her body—her hormones, her emotions and maternal instincts, her protective instincts—would be in full gear. She was going to love Olivia’s child. There was just no getting around that one.

  Martin made small talk. Asked about Brian’s job as an EMT. About Beth’s teaching. He asked about their own children. Complimented them on their house when Olivia knew the place was barely as fancy as his garage. And probably about the same size, too.

  He did what he was good at and she was thankful to have him there.

  Until he suddenly blurted, “I’d like to be present for the first ultrasound, and for the birth, as well. Is that going to present a problem?” He included both Brian and Beth in the question.

  They’d had fifteen minutes in the car on the way over and he hadn’t thought to mention that little tidbit to her?

  Granted, she’d told him he could be as involved as he chose, told him he was going to have to decide his level of involvement all on his own, but...

  She’d also asked him to inform her when he knew...

  And did it mean that he planned to be present after the baby’s birth? Was he going to be more than a provider to her child? Was he thinking he might actually want to be involved in their lives?


  She stared at him, her heart pumping hard, feeling as though she was back on the precipice she’d stood on so often with him in the past. Was it okay to want him around?

  Or was the wanting only going to hurt them both?

  If they were careful to keep their involvement only about the baby, could they make it work?

  Brian and Beth had been looking at each other, as though speaking in silent language, and when Brian nodded, Beth looked at Martin. “That’s fine,” she said. “The father should definitely have a right to be present to hear his child’s heartbeat for the first time. And for the birth.”

  “Thank you.” Martin smiled. “I’ll be circumspect, you have my word on that. I’ll respect your privacy. I’d just like to be in the room.”

  The younger couple nodded in unison.

  “You’re not showing yet,” Martin said next, and Olivia stared at him. Had the man lost his mind? And his tact?

  “Nope. It’s only been a few weeks. I’ll be a month along on Friday.” Five days away.

  “Are you feeling any morning sickness?”

  Olivia had with Lily from the second week. They’d almost had to hospitalize her because she couldn’t keep anything down. And then she’d suddenly had the appetite of a seven-foot athlete.

  “Nope.” Beth shook her head.

  Sliding his hand into hers, Brian said, “She didn’t get sick at all with our other two kids, so we’re hoping it’s that easy for her this time.”

  And so it went. The conversation was intimate and chatty at the same time. Strangers discussing personal details of pregnancy. As Olivia sat there, mostly listening, but speaking up occasionally, too, she had to do a mental shake or two to believe this was even happening.

  Her first meeting with Beth and Brian had taken place in a medical facility and she hadn’t even thought she was seriously considering surrogacy at that moment. Hadn’t been ready to admit to herself that she was going to do whatever it took to bring her baby to life.

  She’d still been reeling from what she’d done. Trying to come to terms with why.

  And there she was, less than four weeks later, with her whole world changed because of one night of incredible sex.

  * * *

  Martin liked the couple Olivia had chosen to have her baby. Brian, with his short blond hair and clean-shaven face, reminded him of himself when he was younger. Responsible. Dedicated to his wife and family.

  “As an EMT, Brian will know what to do in an event of an emergency with the baby,” he told Olivia as they drove back to her car, focusing on the good stuff in an effort to ward off the conversation he knew had to be coming. He’d insinuated himself into more than they’d talked about back there. Needed a second to figure out why before answering to her on it. “I thought we’d be there around fifteen minutes, not an hour.”

  Nor had he pictured them leaving with an invitation to come back in ten days to share Thanksgiving dinner with the family, to meet Beth’s aunt and sister. Olivia hadn’t declined right away, saying they’d have to check and get back with them, but he knew she’d get them out of it.

  “Beth is a nurturer,” Olivia said in response to his EMT comment. He’d thought he was reassuring her about the safety of the baby, to put her worries at ease in any small manner he could. She seemed to have missed the plus in their favor with that one.

  Turning off the Applegates’ street, he tried to find a way to broach the fact that he’d failed to come up with the perimeters of his boundaries where the baby was concerned. He didn’t want her to think it wasn’t a priority.

  Or to know that he was completely lost for the first time in his life.

  “It would have been nice to have a heads-up about the ultrasound and...stuff,” she said while his brain scrambled for appropriate verbiage to convey that which he didn’t have to convey. Or want to convey.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, hedging his bets that he was about to be in the thick of it, with no way out.

  Looking at him, and not smilingly, he could tell even from peripheral vision, she said, “You couldn’t let me know that you wanted to be there for the ultrasound and birth before you sprung it on them? When I hired them, I told them that you weren’t going to be involved at all.”

  “But...they knew that had changed.” His visit had made that more than apparent.

  “You told me you’d let me know.”

  He nodded. Pulled off into a vacant parking lot of some kind of professional building. Palm trees dotted squared-off portions of the lot, an attempt to beautify, he figured. Was pretty sure they were completely lost on his ex-wife.

  “Look,” he said, still belted in, facing forward. “I know I said I’d let you know—” he looked over at her, sitting there so straight and serious and beautiful “—and I will. I just... I don’t know yet, Liv. I’m sorry. I just...”

  Her expression didn’t soften with his honesty. “You knew you wanted to be in the ultrasound.”

  “No, I didn’t!” Forget the ultrasound already. His problem wasn’t a medical exam. It was...the whole picture. “I just... While we were sitting there, and I’m thinking about what she’s doing for us, remembering our pregnancy and what we are asking of the two of them...it occurred to me that there’d be an ultrasound and that I should be there.”

  Because if something went wrong, he couldn’t let Olivia face it alone. If there was no heartbeat. If something went wrong at the birth. If the baby didn’t breathe. Or was...in trouble as Lily had been.

  She frowned. “You hadn’t thought of that ahead of time? You just made the choice when you asked them the question?”

  “That’s right.”

  She examined him, and then the lines in her face softened. Her gaze softened.

  “Would you rather I not be there?” he asked. He’d have a hard time staying away, because of Olivia, and for the baby, too, but if that was what she wanted, he’d do so.

  “Of course not! If you want to be there, I definitely think you should be.”

  “But do you want me there?”

  “As long as you want to be there, yes.”

  How had they gotten to a point of having to clarify every little thing before they could commit to an honest feeling? How had he not noticed?

  He didn’t like it.

  Didn’t want that kind of relationship between them. Didn’t like the possibility that it was his own indecision causing a big part of it.

  “I want to be there,” he said. No clarifying.

  And he felt good for a second when she smiled.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Didn’t seem to matter that she was a successful trauma specialist. When she was around Martin she felt...less in charge. Of her life. Of her emotions. Because those led her places her brain knew it was better not to go and then she had to deal with the consequences.

  When he was around, she wanted to throw caution to the wind. As a young woman she’d ignored Sylvia’s warnings, and those of her friends, too, taking up with a man so much older than her. In the end, they’d all been proven right.

  She’d given in to emotion that fateful Friday night just over a month ago, and there she was, riding in her ex-husband’s car, less than three weeks after they’d agreed never to see each other again, talking about ultrasounds.

  “I’m assuming you’re going to get us out of Thanksgiving,” Martin said as he turned onto the major thoroughfare that would take them to the beach parking lot.

  She’d brought clothes to go for a run—something she hadn’t done in far too long. Something she’d done in high school and college and given up because Martin wasn’t into it.

  “I’ll get you out of it,” she said, immediately tamping down on the “us” in his sentence. “I’m sure you’ve got stuff happening, but I think I’m going to go.” She was certain of it actually. Made up her mind, right then and
there.

  “What about Sylvia?”

  “I’ll invite her along.” Her heart lifted a bit as she seriously thought about the upcoming holiday. The past few years she and Sylvia had had a quiet dinner at home and then gone for a drive along the coastal highway before doing some late-night Black Friday shopping at a favorite mall near Mission Viejo. Not all that far from the Applegates’.

  “Don’t you think you should check with them first?” He wasn’t smiling now. “They don’t know her.”

  “Of course I’ll call Beth, but I’m sure she’ll be fine with it.” He never had been all that fond of her mother. Partially because Sylvia hadn’t approved of him being with her daughter—for good reason, as it turned out—and partially, Olivia had always thought, because Sylvia being so close to his age made him feel too old for her. “And they already know her. She was with me the day I met them.”

  He frowned then. Glanced her way. “I should have been there.”

  “You were in Italy,” she reminded him. And hadn’t bothered to call when she’d texted asking him to do so. Not that they needed to go over all that again. They were on different wavelengths, in different places. It’s just the way it was. “And it’s fine this way, too,” she continued, trying to help him find his way. Needing to help him where she could.

  The thought of him even needing her help at all was so new she still wasn’t sure if it was something she was conjuring in her own brain to justify needing him. She added, “Sylvia’s going to be a major part of the baby’s life. She’s the only grandparent this baby’s going to have. So it’s right that she spends time with Beth, too. The baby needs to know her voice.”

  He’d pulled into the parking lot. Put the SUV in Park and turned to face her. “What?” he asked.

  “That’s one of the reasons I’m spending time with Beth, and in her home,” she said, giving him information only as he asked for it. Because she wasn’t going to pressure him or drag him back in. She really could do this without him. She had not one doubt about that.