He hadn’t denied her statement.
“I’m scheduling the ultrasound,” she said, standing.
He stood, too, and their hands brushed. Just briefly, they both froze. Looked into each other’s eyes.
And she was glad she was pregnant with his child.
* * *
Jamie wasn’t a reveler. His celebrations tended to be of the quieter kind. A sense of rightness inside him. Well-being.
But that next Friday, when he stood just behind a new technician, Molly, in a different ultrasound room located within Cheryl Miller’s private practice clinic, and heard the words, “It’s a boy!” he whooped right out loud.
He’d kind of been hoping for a girl who’d take after Emily. But there wasn’t even a hint of disappointment in him as Molly pointed out the evidence.
“I’m going to have a son!” He couldn’t believe the near squeal came from him, and instinctively, his gaze went to Christine. To share the miracle with her.
Her eyes were closed. There was no mistaking the couple of tear drops coming from their corners.
But she was smiling.
* * *
Christine had said he needed to celebrate, and he wanted to. But only with her.
The fact brought him up short as he drove away from the clinic that morning and headed straight to the public beach he’d shared with Emily all those years. To commune with his wife and sit with their baby news with her in the only way left to him.
Walking down as close to the shore as he could get without waves washing up on him, he plopped down in the dark brown dress pants and beige sweater he’d worn to class, and looked out to sea. To Emily.
The horizon met him with a blank stare. He looked for her face and saw Christine, eyes closed, with tears and a smile. Saw her on the private beach outside his cottage, looking at him like she needed to kiss him as badly as he needed to kiss her. And in her office the day he’d first made his request of her to carry his baby. Remembered her telling him that she was certain his request would be on her mind for years to come.
“We’re having a son, Em!” He said the words aloud, releasing emotion that had been clamoring inside him.
He listened for Emily’s response in his head, her excitement, and instead heard Christine’s voice thick with emotion as she told him that he was offering pork to a dog.
What kind of an ass was he that a woman he’d only known for months was able to drown out the memory of the wife, the woman, the girl he’d loved for more than half his life?
What kind of a fool?
* * *
As the baby grew inside her, Christine worked longer hours at The Parent Portal and volunteered more. She was doing the healthy thing—keeping herself occupied with pursuits that brought value to her life. She took care of herself. Rested on the couch in her office at least a few minutes every morning and afternoon. Was eating like a health nut, down to measuring and weighing when she was at home to ensure that she got recommended amounts of all the nutrients that would help the baby boy to grow, and none that could hinder his growth.
Her body was his temple for the next few months, and when he returned it to her, he’d be leaving it in better condition, healthwise, than he’d found it. She’d have a few pounds to lose, some baby fat, but her cholesterol levels would be stellar.
At four and a half months pregnant, she’d gained seven pounds. Was aiming for a pound a week for the rest of the pregnancy. The last ultrasound hadn’t been necessary but she’d been glad to have the confirmation that all was well. The baby’s growth was right in the middle of the normal chart. Her uterine lining was nice and thick and protecting him. Her blood pressure was great, his heartbeat strong and steady.
She was having another boy. Very similar to something she’d already been through. Jamie’s baby should have been the only thing different in her life. Her only focus. But how did you control your subconscious? She was waking up nights with Jamie Howe on her mind, as though he was in her bed with her, but when she opened her eyes, she lay there alone. Sometimes she remembered dreams. Sometimes she didn’t.
It was all very confusing.
As was sitting in the most luxurious SUV she’d ever been in. But that Wednesday evening, he’d invited her to a musical being put on at the university in Mission Viejo. A couple of his students were working sound, another was a dancer, and Jamie was friends with the choral director—a man almost as old as Tom Sanders.
They’d eaten in the car on the way in—the dinner she’d packed was all healthy finger foods—because she’d had a late-afternoon appointment already scheduled.
Jamie didn’t say a lot about the cucumber sandwiches and avocado deviled eggs, but he ate them until they were gone so she took that as a win. He talked almost the whole way—filling her in a little bit on each of his students who were involved because she might meet them. And talking about Daniel, the choral director’s, operatic singing career. As they were parking, he let her know that Daniel knew about the baby, as did the college president who employed him.
He’d failed to tell his students, apparently, or hadn’t found doing so appropriate, and she’d felt their eyes boring into her belly as they’d come in a group of three to say hi to Jamie in the vestibule after the show.
She’d just been getting used to the idea of accepting that strangers would naturally assume they were a couple and that the baby she was carrying belonged to both of them, not minding that they thought that, when he’d introduced her as his surrogate, and explained that she was carrying his and Emily’s baby.
Apparently they’d been in his life long enough to know about his deceased wife. As they were all three seniors, it made sense.
And after the play, her good mood slowly dissipated. For a bit there, she’d forgotten that she was only at the university so that the baby inside her could be exposed to the sounds. She’d forgotten she was working. She’d simply enjoyed the show, being with Jamie, hearing him laugh out loud.
She’d been in Mission Viejo so his baby could hear him laugh out loud.
Jamie kept up a string of conversation all the way home, too. Mostly about the play—an original, nonholiday tale about scientists and animals that was the culmination of a semester’s work. He’d told her about sound levels and how his students used mathematical skills in their artistic creations in Mission Viejo as well. And how the dancer, who had sprained an ankle a month before, had been afraid she wouldn’t be able to perform. There’d been more. She let it roll over her, hoping the baby inside her was paying attention to his voice.
And then she was waking up in her driveway, feeling as comfortable as if she’d been in her own bed.
“I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to drop off on you,” she said. “I’ve been doing that lately...falling asleep anytime I’m sitting doing nothing.”
“So, what, it’s happened once?” he teased her.
His smile was illuminated by the streetlight in front of her house. She was as focused on the warmth those lips sent through her as she was on the fact that he’d turned off his SUV.
“I have something to talk to you about,” he said, staying on his side of the vehicle, looking straight ahead, though the way he said the words sounded really personal.
Her heart started to pound as anticipation thrummed through her. Inappropriate anticipation.
“If this is more about the future... I meant what I said, Jamie. We can’t...”
He was shaking his head.
“It’s about now,” he said. “I’d like permission to touch your stomach,” he told her. “I was reading about the fact that mothers can feel their babies from the outside as well as inside, and that babies sometimes move to the touch.”
She should have offered. She knew this stuff.
“Of course you can feel it, Jamie!” Loosening her seat belt, she let it slide back into its holster. “I’m sorry I made you ask.” Push
ing up the console between them, she moved over slightly and offered him access to her protruding belly, covered by the dress yoga pants and black, red, yellow, blue and white floral, formfitting tunic she’d put on because she’d thought they were festive.
Offering a new daddy the chance to bond with his baby.
She was not—absolutely not—wanting the feel of Jamie’s warm hand spread across her stomach. And if she was, then she would make the wanting stop.
She had to make it stop.
Because when those fingers lightly brushed against her top and then settled with confidence on top of her belly, her entire lower body melted.
Chapter Eighteen
She wasn’t huge yet, but he’d been able to reach her baby bump easily.
From there, Jamie just froze. He’d read that if he moved his fingers, applied a very slight pressure, he might be able to distinguish parts of the baby. And might also be able to convince him to move. Chances of that were better as the pregnancy progressed.
He was struggling to separate Christine’s stomach from the baby inside her. He’d feared his reaction from the moment he’d known he needed to bond with his son in this way. He trusted his ability to be a great father.
What he didn’t trust was his libido. Not where this woman was concerned.
How did a guy feel his baby in a woman’s stomach and want to have sex?
How could he feel his baby in a woman’s stomach and not want to have sex?
As his body reacted to the feel of her beneath his palm in the quiet darkness of his car, he slowed his mind. Closed his eyes.
And knew that he’d never separate Christine from his son. She was helping to create him.
In the darkness behind his lids he couldn’t hide from another truth. He was falling in love with the woman. Had already fallen in love with her.
It wasn’t transference. It wasn’t gratitude.
It was her.
Igniting things in him he’d never felt before. Not ever.
Not even with Emily.
What he did with any of it, other than calculate and catalog, he had no idea.
Moving his hand slightly to the left, he tried to make out a shape and... He jumped, pulling his hand off of Christine and then immediately putting it back down.
“What was that?”
“He just moved...” Her words ended on a lilt—a sound from her that was unfamiliar to him. “How cliché is that?” He heard clearly forced levity in her tone, and then, “It’s like he knows you, Jamie. I’ve felt bubbles over the past week or two, but this is the first time I could really feel him move. And he did it for you...”
Her face was turned to his in the streetlight, her eyes glistening.
“He did it for both of us.” The words slipped out in a reverent moment.
“No.” Her tone had changed. Hardened, but not in a mean way. Just firm. She placed her hand over his, holding his hand in place when he might have lifted it. “He’s doing this for you, Jamie.”
She couldn’t possibly know that. And most likely wasn’t right, considering that the baby had no idea that the woman carrying him, protecting and caring for him, hadn’t contributed an egg. Maybe the warmth of his bigger hand was a contributing factor, but...
He felt the tear drop on the side of his hand, a bare portion not covered by her smaller hand. She didn’t pull away, or push him away, just sat there silently.
“We’re human beings,” he said softly, the words pouring up from a new source within him. “I can’t possibly sit here and experience the first touch of my baby all alone. You’re a part of it. Just as you can’t sit there and endure whatever it is that hurts you and have me unaware.”
Her hand slid off from his.
He continued to cradle her stomach.
“Let me share it with you, Chris.”
“Only my mom and dad and Gram and Gramps call me that.”
The news wasn’t surprising. Only family was allowed to occupy the inner circle of her heart. Using her full name was a shield by which she kept the world from getting too close.
He’d grown to know her over the past months, in all of their innocuous conversation.
Their refusal to allow anything physical between them had left open another avenue of intimacy.
An emotional, mental recognition that he couldn’t prevent.
“Let me share it with you, Chris,” he repeated, not able to allow himself to be deflected from that goal. If she told him to go, he would do so. But if she let him stay, he was doing so as a friend. A man who cared about her.
Not as the father of the child she was carrying.
* * *
“I wanted to keep my first son.”
What in the hell was she doing?
Reaching for the door handle, Christine held on to it. Ready to get out. The hand on her stomach compelled her to stay.
She was there to help Jamie bond with his baby, and he was doing so in the most incredible way. There was no mistake that the fetus had chosen right then to kick for the first time. To reach up from the womb that was giving it sustenance for the moment to the hand that would feed it for a lifetime.
She would not make the moment about her. Had to focus on him. On the goal at hand...
“Did you tell anyone?” His voice, soft in the darkness, oozed over her like warm chocolate. Soothing. Sweet. A reminder of happier times.
Of childhood.
She’d been such a happy kid.
Which made the sadness that had followed seem so much more acute.
“Yeah,” she said. “My dad and his wife knew. I had my grandparents to consider, though. By my senior year they were both failing. If I wasn’t there, helping them, they’d have had to sell the family home and move into assisted living. I couldn’t do that to them. Not because I’d made a mistake. I couldn’t abandon them, or force them to live out the end of their lives in what would have been, to them, a prison, not after they’d spent their lives taking care of all of us. Taking care of me. They were both mentally sharp. I went to my dad for help, trying to figure out a way to make it all work.”
She’d already told him and Emily a bit about Ryder. Telling him a few more details didn’t need to change anything in their relationship.
Except it did. She was letting him see her, the person. The woman who grieved, every single day, for the child she’d birthed and given up. And in his seeing, she had to see, too. Had to see how devastating it had been for her to let them take Ryder. And how incredibly painful she was finding the idea of knowing that when she gave birth to Jamie’s child, she’d be losing that baby, too. Even as she justified herself, she rejected the justification. Knew she needed to just shut up.
The baby moved again. Not as energetically, but still completely decipherable, sending muscle memory waves through her entire body.
Resurrecting a memory so vivid it took her breath. And all of her focus. She was there again, lying in her bed, curled in a fetal position, cradling her belly with her hands, promising herself that she wouldn’t give up her baby. Her father was taking her the next day to sign the adoption papers, and even while she sobbed and told herself she wouldn’t do it, she knew she had to.
Because she loved her baby, and her grandparents, that much.
“Just because a person is old doesn’t mean their life is less valuable,” she said aloud. “I was in a position to tend to my grandparents. If they were in a home, I’d have no home. No way to provide for a baby. At least not in a way that would give him a happy, secure life. I was seventeen. And while I had a trust fund, I had no access to it until I was twenty-three.”
“And your grandparents wouldn’t let you use it? Not even to support your child?”
The judgment in his tone was probably unintended, but she heard it. And was oddly comforted. “Gram was willing to give up the part of it th
ey received for my care. She thought she could talk my dad into giving me more. But it wasn’t up to them. My father had full custody of me after my mom died. He set up the trust, with court approval, and he was the executor of it. My grandparents got a monthly stipend for my care, but that came from my father, not from the trust. He also helped pay for any house repairs or other unexpected expenses that came up for them.”
Dad was a decent guy. He’d just eventually made a different life for himself. One that hadn’t fit her. And he’d been kind enough to facilitate her need to stay in Marie Cove.
Life wasn’t always neatly tied up in a pretty bow.
With his hand on her stomach, the telling seemed almost natural. Two boy babies. One in the now. One in the past.
But connected within her.
“So you went to your father for guidance, and he basically forced you to give up the baby.”
She’d been an unwed teenage mother. The situation had been of her own making. The consequences of a completely thoughtless and selfish choice. His defense of her...
She had no idea what to do with it.
Gram and Gramps hadn’t blamed her. They’d told her over and over that she needn’t feel shame. That her heart was good and pure. She’d loved Nathan with all her heart, and that wasn’t a bad thing. They’d all loved him.
“Tammy, my stepmother, offered to keep him, to raise him,” she said, hearing her voice as though it belonged to someone else in the darkened vehicle. “She cried with me...”
Her throat tightened and tears sprang behind her lids. She pushed against them. Waited until she’d won the once-familiar battle.
“My dad said no. He felt that it would hold me back. That I’d never have closure. He also didn’t think it would be fair to Ryder, being raised by his grandparents with his mother in and out of his life. Or, an alternative, to lie to him about his parentage. He said that it would be kinder to give the baby a family that was ready to love and raise him. And kinder to me to put the pregnancy behind me and move forward with my life. To give me a fresh start. To that end, he purposely arranged a private adoption so that I’d have no chance of contact, forcing me to let go.”
A Mother's Secrets Page 15