The Baby Arrangement

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  And he couldn’t get enough of the salty drink to restore his electrolytes and get himself back on an even keel.

  So he went to work. It’s what he knew. What he did.

  He put Mallory, her babies, their health and especially her kiss out of his mind and focused on making money. Lots of it.

  For another hour he sat in his office and made calls, setting up more appointments for the next day. The morning in San Diego, the afternoon in L.A.

  He had dinner at a pub with William, discussed accounts, members of his staff and the raise he’d offered the younger man.

  He was putting William in charge of the San Diego office in his absence. The announcement would be made at the next staff meeting, but he didn’t expect anyone to be surprised. The man might sit out front—his choice—but he was brilliant when it came to real estate.

  Over a second beer, he asked William if he’d be willing to spend time in L.A., as well. William said he’d spend it in Alaska if it meant making money at a company that still put integrity and people at the top of the list.

  And then dinner was over. William had a date waiting for him at the bar, a gentleman who’d been at the last holiday party. A boat builder, Braden thought, if he was remembering correctly.

  It was a little after eight and he had nowhere to be. Nowhere to go but home. He could stay and drink more, but then he’d have to call a cab and wake up in the morning with the hassle of needing to get back to his car.

  Paying the tab, he left, pulled off his tie as he walked to his SUV. He thought a drive down by the pier might clear his head.

  He drove through the Gaslamp District and Balboa Park. He’d been in San Diego so long, he’d forgotten how the city had first drawn him.

  When he passed by an entrance to the zoo, he thought about Mallory and her daughters. In his mind he saw the three of them laughing as she held their little hands and taught them something important about the animals.

  Monkeys, he thought.

  Mallory liked the monkeys best.

  He ended up at her house. Maybe he’d known all along that was where he was headed. Maybe he’d just been giving himself time to change his mind. To come to his senses.

  Senses didn’t seem to matter anymore.

  Mallory had spent an entire weekend alone, in fear for her daughters’ lives. Alone. Just as she’d been most of her life.

  It was criminal.

  He knocked on the door, saw her peek out the side window a minute or so later and then, turning on the porch light, she opened the door.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Of course.”

  She was frowning as she opened the door wider and stepped aside.

  She’d changed from the T-shirt dress to a pair of cotton shorts and a tank top. She wasn’t wearing a bra.

  When she caught him staring at the lusciousness taunting him, she crossed her arms over her chest and left the room, returning less than thirty seconds later wearing a baggy T-shirt.

  “I wasn’t expecting company,” she said, crinkling her bare toes into the carpet.

  “Marry me.”

  Her hands dropped to her sides. She half fell backward into the chair behind her. “What?”

  “Marry me.”

  That was it. He didn’t have anything else.

  “Braden? Are you okay? What’s wrong?” Her mouth hung open.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “I had a couple of beers. You know I don’t drive past my limit.”

  She nodded.

  He liked that she knew him.

  He waited, silent, until she spoke.

  “I can’t marry you, Braden,” she finally said.

  “Why not?”

  “We’d hate each other within a year.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Trust me, we would.”

  “We don’t hate each other now.”

  “We aren’t married now.”

  “You want me.”

  She licked her lips and he got hard. “Yes, but it could just be pregnancy hormones. And even if it isn’t, that doesn’t take away the fact that we’re too different, Bray. I drive you nuts. You hurt me.”

  “I haven’t hurt you lately.” He hoped to God that was true. If he had, she hadn’t said so.

  “I’m not married to you.”

  She would listen to logic. It was one of the things he’d always loved about her. No matter how upset she might be, she listened to logic.

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense, Mal. Look at us. Three years divorced and we’re right back where we started. A new building is going up, same plans, same daycare, and—” he stared at her stomach “—you’re having my daughters.”

  He sat down on the corner of the couch closest to her. He leaned over and took both of her hands in his. “We can’t get away from each other, Mal.”

  “We were no good together.”

  “We were at first.”

  “Because we didn’t have any real challenges to face. Everything was going our way. It was all fun and games.”

  He thought back and had to concede that she was right.

  “But,” she said, “when times got tough, when hard stuff happened—”

  “—we made mistakes,” he said, cutting her off before she could get into all that. No point in rehashing what they both knew.

  She pulled her hands away from his.

  “It was more than that, Bray. I realized recently that I never expected our marriage to last forever.”

  The words felt like a stab to the gut.

  “Not because I didn’t love you, but because I did. Love doesn’t hang around forever in my world. At least I didn’t think it would.”

  Adrenaline pumped through him. The salty pub food he’d had for dinner must have replenished his electrolytes.

  “So at least I’ve proven that wrong,” he said. “Even a divorce didn’t keep me away.”

  Her stare had his heart thumping hard. Was she really going to consider his proposal? Did he want her to?

  “I’m sorry that I didn’t share Tucker’s life and my first pregnancy with you more,” she said. It wasn’t quite what he’d been expecting her to say.

  “It’s in the past, Mal. Like I said, we both made mistakes.”

  “After he died I was so angry and had no one to take it out on. That, I shared all over you,” she said.

  Again, he thought he’d heard enough of the past. “It’s okay, Mal. It’s over.” He took her hand again. “It’s time to move on, just like we both said. And it’s clear that we need to do it together.”

  She took her hand away. Braden watched her, trying to assess how she felt, trying to get them back to logic.

  “It’s not over, Bray.” Her eyes had a suspicious sheen to them. No. No tears. Not when there was nothing to cry about.

  “It’s not over at all,” she continued. “This afternoon is a perfect example of it not being over,”

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” he said, energized again. “We can’t keep our hands off each other. You know as well as I do that sooner or later it’s going to happen. We’re going to end up in bed together again. We can’t stay away from each other, Mal. It’s time to quit fighting it. We’ve got kids on the way.”

  The more he talked, the more she shook her head.

  “That’s not what I meant, Bray. I wasn’t talking about the kiss.”

  “Then what?”

  “Before that, at the restaurant. You wanted to be all in with what was going on until you saw that I was starting to cry. Then you were done.”

  He began to perspire. “Who says I was done?”

  “You asked to order lunch.”

  And he had spent the rest of the meal talking business. He got it.
He should have been more...

  What?

  The words of the counselor who’d done nothing but frustrate him came back to him. He should have “sat with her in her tears.”

  Or some such rot.

  What did that really mean? Hand her a tissue? Sit and watch her cry for hours? Who did that?

  He’d tried to console her during their marriage. Several times. Like that night he’d found her in the nursery, holding Tucker’s penguin, sobbing her heart out. The nursery haunted her. Reminded her every minute of every day what she’d lost. They’d needed to get her out of there. To see that there was still good left in life. That there was more than what she’d lost.

  But when he’d said so, she’d raged at him.

  Standing, Braden shoved his hands in his pants pockets and strode to the window. He looked at the darkness and felt a storm building within him.

  He took a deep breath, and another, waiting for calm to descend once again. He’d learned long ago that giving in to drama only made you do or say things that you’d either have to apologize for or that you’d feel embarrassed about. Like the time his mother had been running her mouth about Mallory, trying to convince him that she’d deliberately belittled her and his sister because his mother was jealous of another woman coming before her and his sister in his life. He’d lost patience with her. He couldn’t remember what he’d said, but he remembered her response. “But, Braden, family always comes first and we’re your family.” What he remembered most of all was his response to that. “Not anymore we aren’t.” He hadn’t meant the words. Not even the second in which he’d uttered them. And the pain they’d caused his mother, the doubt that still lingered from time to time that he’d cut her out of his life if she displeased him...

  When he was calm, he turned around.

  “We’re having twins, Mal. Two daughters.” He should be there, helping with the responsibility. There’d be so much of it. At first, when she was still recovering from childbirth and both babies needed to be fed and changed and held, there would be two of them and only one of her.

  They had to be practical. The rest would work itself out.

  “And that’s part of the reason this won’t work.”

  When she spoke those words, he moved closer to her. She’d lost him on that one.

  “Girls, Bray. Puberty. Drama. Think of your sister, multiply that by two, factor in me, and where would you be?” She was so calm, sounded so logical.

  And then it hit him.

  “You don’t trust me with your children?”

  “Of course I do. I trust you with their lives. I know without a doubt that you’ll always be there for them. Anytime they call, you’ll come running, no matter what.”

  Damn straight, he thought.

  “But I can’t have you around all the time, Bray. Not if we don’t have to. The drama would make you nuts. And if you were here and then left, think how much more that would hurt them.”

  He turned back to the window, breathing deeply.

  “Bray?”

  He spun around. “What? What do you want from me?” He was yelling. Loud enough to be heard on the next block. Or so it seemed to him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said immediately. “That was uncalled for.”

  And then he saw the look on her face. Wide-eyed, Mallory stared at him.

  “Don’t look at me like that. I wasn’t going to hurt you. I’d never do that.”

  “I’m not scared. I’m shocked, Bray. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you raise your voice to me.”

  “Yes, and I apologize. It’s just...can’t you see how frustrating this is? We belong together. It makes sense. I know you love me, Mal. I know it. I could feel it in your kiss today. And other times, too. Yet you’re sitting here telling me that we can’t be together for reasons that don’t make sense.”

  “That’s because you can’t feel the results of them.”

  No, he couldn’t. He didn’t get it. But he knew that marrying Mallory again was the right thing to do. He sat down.

  “So tell me how it feels.”

  “Your inability to understand my emotions makes me feel like a freak. It got so bad that by the time you moved out I felt like I had to cry in the bathroom with the fan on even when I was the only one home.”

  He stared at her. What on earth was she talking about?

  “I was ashamed, Bray. Every single time pain welled up, I’d choke it back down. I hated that it was there, like it made me weak. And when I was happy or excited, you’d humor me.”

  He didn’t remember it that way.

  “You could never join me in being excited about anything,” she continued. “Like this afternoon, I told you the babies are okay and you just stood there. I was ready to climb to the roof and fly, or to laugh and dance. But I’d have been doing it alone. When I told you we were having girls, again you just stood there.

  “I got nothing, Bray. And that’s fine for me now. With us being friends. But think what living with that would do to our baby girls. They’d grow up learning to curtail their excitement, their joy and their sorrow, too, because little girls have an inborn instinct to please their daddies. You might not mean to teach them that, but they’d take it all in on an instinctive level. Just as I did.”

  Okay. Wow. Braden didn’t have any idea what to make of that.

  He stood. “So, just to be clear, you’re telling me that because I don’t get giddy or have crying fits, I’m not the right man for this family?”

  It wasn’t really what she’d said. But it seemed pretty damned close.

  “I’m telling you that we’re just too different, Bray, in a way that neither one of us can help.”

  So she thought he wasn’t meant to ever have kids? Because he’d “rob them of their joy”?

  That was another phrase from the counselor who’d done no good.

  “I get excited,” he told her. He reminded her of the time he’d caught a twenty-pound bass on a camping trip they’d taken early on in their marriage.

  “Of course you do. But when the chips are down, when something is really important, bone-deep important, you aren’t there.”

  “Where am I?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Believe me, I’ve tried to figure that one out. You just space, Bray. And that’s not wrong or bad. It’s what works for you. It just doesn’t work for me.”

  Sit in the fire with her.

  Go deep into the woods with her.

  He recalled the therapist’s advice.

  Mallory was right.

  But it just wasn’t him.

  Turning his back on the only life that made sense to him, Braden quietly let himself out.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Mallory felt awful. On what should have been one of the best days of her life she felt like total and complete crap.

  The only consolation, if she could call it that, was that Braden wouldn’t be feeling the pain she’d caused him nearly as acutely as she did.

  It killed her to hurt him.

  To deny him.

  She wanted him so badly, that killed her, too.

  She was crying before he’d shut the door behind him. Great wracking sobs. She didn’t even try to stop them. She just let them flow.

  Five days of worry, of sometimes debilitating fear, of loneliness poured out of her.

  What a cruel twist of fate that the love of her life would be a man who wasn’t right for her. A man she wasn’t right for.

  It was worse than starting life with a prostitute mother. Much worse. Her mother had loved her enough to get her out of that life.

  And while she’d never had a family of her own, she’d had a foster mother who’d loved her. Who’d kept her, helped her get to college.

  She was healthy. Had a successful business she loved. Friends.
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br />   And now she was having healthy, identical-twin girls.

  Still, she cried.

  Because she couldn’t imagine her life without Braden in it.

  Sometime later she got up, took another bath, turned on the television and climbed into bed.

  She’d survive.

  She always did.

  She had babies to provide for. Children of her own who were going to need everything she had to give. Children who didn’t deserve a ripped-apart family and a torn-up mother. Which was exactly what would happen if she and Braden married and divorced again.

  She couldn’t do that to them.

  Or to Braden or to herself, either.

  As much as she hated it, she knew she’d finally grown up.

  * * *

  Braden left San Diego that night. He didn’t make it all the way back to L.A. Instead, he found a hotel half an hour from the city and sat in the bar, watching a rerun of a baseball game and drinking beer.

  The next morning, he was at his desk by six, sending texts to change the morning meetings in San Diego, making those he could video meets, and threw himself into each and every one.

  He worked hard the rest of the week and into the next. It was what he did. What he knew.

  When a decent amount of time had passed—meaning, enough for him to be right with himself—he called Mallory.

  It had been almost two weeks since he’d seen her.

  “I’ll be in town tomorrow,” he said. He had a meeting Wednesday morning with his staff and then a full day of appointments. “How about a quick lunch?”

  He was going to tell her about William taking over the San Diego office for him, check in with how she was doing and then head back to L.A. that evening.

  He might or might not tell her that he was no longer seeing Anna.

  He’d broken it off with the woman when he’d returned from San Diego. He hadn’t seen much point in continuing to see her. Clearly he wasn’t into her enough if he’d practically begged his ex-wife to marry him while he’d been dating Anna.

  “I don’t think lunch is a good idea, Bray.”

  Mallory’s response floored him. Almost literally. He dropped into his desk chair.