A baby drove them apart.

Can a baby bring them together?

Divorced after a heartbreaking tragedy, Mallory Harris is determined to have a family. Even as a single mother by choice with a baby conceived through artificial insemination. When her ex-husband, Braden, learns of her plan, he offers to be the donor. Mallory is touched...and reluctant. She needs to move on from Braden. But how can she say no to the only man she has ever loved?

Having written over eighty-five novels, TARA TAYLOR QUINN is a USA TODAY bestselling author with more than seven million copies sold. She is known for delivering intense, emotional fiction. Tara is a past president of Romance Writers of America and is a seven-time RWA RITA® Award finalist. She has also appeared on TV across the country, including CBS Sunday Morning. She supports the National Domestic Violence Hotline. If you need help, please contact 1-800-799-7233.

Also by Tara Taylor Quinn

Her Lost and Found Baby

An Unexpected Christmas Baby

Fortune’s Christmas Baby

A Family for Christmas

Falling for the Brother

For Love or Money

Her Soldier’s Baby

The Cowboy’s Twins

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

The Baby Arrangement

Tara Taylor Quinn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09082-7

THE BABY ARRANGEMENT

© 2019 TTQ Books LLC

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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For Finley Joseph.

May you always be aware how very much

you were wanted.

You’ve filled holes in many hearts, Little Man.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter One

She didn’t want dinner. She wanted his support of her plan to buy herself some sperm.

Excited in a way she hadn’t been in far too long, Mallory Harris calmed herself as she waited for Braden to join her at the upscale, quiet restaurant he’d chosen for the meeting he’d called. Staring out the wall of windows toward the harbor, watching people walking along the decks of a cruise ship that had docked, she turned her attention to the pink skies beyond, the miraculous beauty of the sun’s final rays gracing the Pacific before it would drop beyond the horizon for another day.

Wishing she’d ordered a glass of wine, she changed her mind and did so. A glass of her favorite California-grown Sauvignon Blanc. Braden would be expecting her to have one and she didn’t want any raised eyebrows until she was ready to deliver her spiel.

A little liquid courage didn’t hurt, either, though she wasn’t normally one to seek sustenance from anyplace except inside herself. And somewhat from Braden. She and her ex-husband might not be simpatico, but she still trusted his judgment on most things. Things that didn’t deal with actual emotions.

He’d had a reason for the upcoming dinner. Though they ate out together on a fairly regular basis, it was never just to eat. There was always something to talk about requiring them to come together.

Speculating about the reason for the meeting was wasted energy, she’d decided long ago. After three years of being post-divorce friends, she and Braden had found a groove with which they were both relatively comfortable. At least she thought so.

One was never quite sure how Braden felt—probably not even him. If ever a man was disconnected from his emotional side, it was Braden.

All water under the bridge. Not her problem anymore.

He was probably going to tell her he was seeing someone. Why he felt the need to confess to her every time he saw a woman more than once was beyond her. They were divorced. Technically, she no longer had a right to know.

Or even a desire to know.

Her wine arrived and she took a sip. Okay, maybe a little piece of her, way deep inside, liked that he told her about his relationships. Like she was in one step deeper than the women he told her about. Shaking her head, she pushed the thought away—as far as she could get it.

Wanting to be inside Braden’s deep places wasn’t healthy. She’d very purposely and specifically chosen, through much personal work and counseling, to get herself outside of him. To stay outside of him. Lest she waste her life in a vortex of void and unfulfilled need. Or feel like she had to hide every time she had a tear to shed. Being ashamed of her grief was something she’d worked long and hard to get past.

Braden had never meant her to feel shame, she knew that. But when someone got uptight every time you cried, or, worse, walked out when you cried, you ended up with learned reactions that weren’t necessarily accurate. Humiliation. Mortification. Guilt. And a host of other words she’d heard bandied about during her group grief sessions.

So yeah, wine was good. If he thought her idea was nuts, she wasn’t going to cry. Or even be embarrassed. She was going to remind herself that they were divorced and that she had every right to pursue single parenthood. That, for some women, it was not only the best choice, but the only real workable choice.

When the waitress came by again, she ordered a beer for Braden. She’d purposely arrived early enough to not risk walking in with him—looking or feeling like a couple. When they were meeting others, it didn’t bother her to travel together, but when it was just the two of them, she had her rules. Her boundaries.

They never spoke of them, but he respected them just the same. She always got there at least fifteen minutes early. He’d arrive exactly five minutes before the designated time.

Unless he texted to say he was going to be late.

Or she did.

They had the friendship down to a science.

Now if only she could be certain that he was going to be friendly about the new direction her life was about to take. With all of the preliminary testing and physical exams done, the paperwork filled out and money paid, all that was left before the actual procedure was letting him know. She could do it without him. Would do it without him.

But life was still better with Braden in it.

* * *

She’d changed after work. It wasn’t a big deal for her to have done so. Her house was only a couple of miles from the daycare—and from the harbor restaurant he’d chosen for dinner. Braden just noticed, as he was walking across the room to meet her, that she looked phenomenal in black leggings and that tight-fitting cream-colored shirt. He’d been expecting jeans and a Bouncing Ball polo shirt. After all, she didn’t know that this meeting was major, as opposed to the more general passing of news for which they normally came together.

She didn’t need to know that the sight of her still turned him on.

Working in the same high-rise executive office building as they did, albeit with his property management and real estate business taking up the top floor and her daycare housed in a double suite on the ground, they could chat there any day they chose. They just, by some unspoken agreement, didn’t choose to.

No point in having people who shared their professional days gossiping any more than necessary about the couple who’d divorced after their five-month-old baby died.

The pity, even after all this time, was hard to take. He had no desire to feed the trough.

He was hungry, though, and ready, as he slid into the booth across from his ex-wife, to order a big juicy steak. She’d have some kind of meal-sized salad.

He’d never been a salad kind of guy.

Taking a long sip of the beer she’d ordered for him, he smiled at her, liking the warm gaze she sent back in his direction. Maybe he was making a mistake, transferring himself a little further out of her life, but he had to do something or they were both going to stagnate and die.

By the end of their smile, the waitress was standing there, tablet in hand ready to take their order. Without looking at the menu, they both told her what they wanted. She thanked them, took their menus, turned around and he all but pushed her away from the table.

He had to get this over with. Plans for his move to L.A. were moving rapidly. He needed Mallory to know.

And to fully understand, from the outset, that he wasn’t selling the building in San Diego or in any way changing their business arrangement. It had been in effect before they were married and would remain for as long as she wanted The Bouncing Ball, her highly successful daycare, to be housed in the executive office building that used to be his only commercial holding but was now one of many.

He raised his beer to her glass of wine and sipped it, words spilling in his head, unable to utter them. Not at all like he’d decided this would go.

He knew he just had to say what he’d come to say. That he was acquiring land north of L.A. to build a professional complex similar to the one they now shared in San Diego, and he would be moving there for the foreseeable future.

“I’m going to have a baby.”

Good thing his beer was close to the table. When it slipped out of his hand, it didn’t break. And barely spilled.

Mouth hanging open, he sat there, too dumbfounded to say anything.

“I just wanted you to know.”

He stared. White noise from the room around them faded.

“I’d kind of hoped you’d be supportive, but if you’d rather not know about it, hear about it, I completely understand.”

He didn’t move.

She did. Standing, she touched his arm. “I’m so sorry, Bray. I had no idea the news would upset you so much. I guess... I mean, in light of the fact that the last time we did it together... I mean...with losing Tucker... I should have been more sensitive. I just... I’m the one who’s been dragging us both down with my inability to move on and I’m really excited about this. I just...couldn’t wait to let you know that I...”

Her fingers on his arm were nice. Familiar. Tender and light.

“Sit.” He got the word out, then followed it with, “Please.”

He took a full breath when she quickly slid back into her seat.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He’d broken an understood rule—one was never to make the other unduly uncomfortable or bring an overabundance of emotion into their joint atmosphere.

He could blame it on her for laying something like that on him, but they were allowed to tell each other anything they wanted to share. That had actually been a spoken agreement. Reiterated more than once, by both of them, in the early days of their post-divorce relationship.

Hell, for all he remembered they’d said it to each other like a vow during the actual divorce proceedings. They’d said several things meant for their ears only when they’d sat before the judge that day, holding hands.

He shook his head and sipped his beer.

“You’re pregnant.” He got the words out and he wasn’t cut as sharply by the sound as he’d expected. Who in the hell had gotten his ex-wife pregnant?

The unwelcome words kept repeating, like an annoyingly bad rhythm, in his mind. He wouldn’t speak them. They weren’t cool.

“Not yet.” From the crease in her brow, the way she leaned toward him slightly, the hint of an upward curve on those beautiful lips, he knew she was placating him. Dammit.

And yet...she wasn’t pregnant?

Holy damn. Relief eased the sweat that had popped up all over his suited body.

“But you’ve met someone.”

The truth still loomed. She was going to have another man’s baby. Start a family separate and apart from him.

The implication he was to draw from that followed almost immediately.

She was moving on.

This was good news.

Very good news.

Exactly-what-he-wanted news.

But he wasn’t smiling anymore.

Mallory had someone else to watch her back now. She was finally over the past enough to start anew.

He was free.

Chapter Two

Braden was going to give himself a crick in the neck if he didn’t quit the exaggerated nodding.

Prior to that, he’d sipped his beer a couple of times and some expressions had flitted across his face. She wasn’t going to put herself back into near suicidal mode by trying to decipher them. Or make more of the hint of despair than was meant to be there.

Braden didn’t allow himself to acknowledge despair, nor was he all that comfortable around those who did. For all she knew, he honestly didn’t get the feeling. Not like she did.

He’d gotten the love, though, hadn’t he? Back before Tucker died. No one could deny, seeing him with their son, that he’d adored that boy.

Tears stung her eyes while welling emotion clogged her throat. She took a sip of wine, forcing her muscles to relax. She was not going to do this. She would not fall prey to feelings of inadequacy around her ex-husband—which meant she couldn’t cry in front of him.

It had been an unspoken rule between them since they’d decided to stay friends after the divorce.

And the best way to not burst into tears was to think happy thoughts.

He was wearing one of her favorite Braden ensembles. Dark grey suit with just a hint of lighter threading, the striped shirt in grey, black and white with the maroon tie. At six-two, with that lush, thick, dark hair and those baby blue eyes, Braden could easily have been voted sexiest man alive.

“No, I haven’t met someone,” she said after the silence between them had stretched a bit too long. “I’d have told you if I had. You know that.”

There were some things they counted on from each other. Telling him if she was moving on was one of them.

Which was probably why he was always informing her when he was seeing someone. He hadn’t ever seemed to get to the point of seriously moving on, though. He dated, he fizzled, he dated, he fizzled.

His frown brought back a wave of tension. “I don’t understand, then.”

“I’m going to be artificially inseminated,” she told him. And then, before he could voice an opinion of any kind, she barged full force ahead with the spiel she’d practiced in bed the night before and in the car on the way over, too.

“With the advance in research and technology, and with changing lifestyles, more women than ever are using sperm banks to have children. There’s even an acronym for us, SMC, Single Moms by Choice,” she said—not at all what she’d practiced. “I’ve already had all of the exams and testing done. I’m using a facility in Marie Cove, forty-five minutes south of LA. They’re fertility specialists, not a sperm bank. I met with the owner when I was looking at places and I just really like her. I got a good feeling when I was there.

“It could take up to six tries, and I’m prepared for that, financially and emotionally,” she continued, speaking to the man she knew him to be—one who dealt with facts, with reality, and shied away from the emotional aspects of being alive.

She didn’t blame him. She’d met his mother and his sister many times. She had sat next to him through countless phone calls where they’d tried to get him to side with them against whoever they felt had slighted them, from something as menial as someone using a hurtful tone of voice against one or the other of them, or their claim that someone had been deliberately manipulative or demeaning. As the only male influence in their home growing up, he’d spent his youth learning how to bypass the drama to get to the truth of whatever might need attention.

“Way back in the ’80s, more than 30,000 children were born as a result of donors,” she told him. “There hasn’t been any numerical research collated since then as there’s no one body of collation, no database. But judging by the sheer volume of clinics today and the number of clients they have, you can logically guesstimate that the number of births has risen well into the hundreds of thousands.”

She’d gotten out of bed the night before, in the middle of preparing her spiel, to do that particular research. For him. She really wanted him to be okay with her choice.

He was still sipping beer. Watching her.

“I’m going to do this, whether you approve or not,” she told him. “I’d love your support. It means a lot to me.” She paused, sipped her wine and hoped dinner didn’t come for a while because her stomach was in knots. “It means a whole lot to me,” she added. “But my decision is made.”

Because she’d had to be certain that she was doing the right thing for her life. She hadn’t even told Tamara yet. But she was fairly certain her friend from grief counseling would approve. Though Braden hardly knew the woman who’d lost four babies—three to early term miscarriages and one a viable birth but too premature to sustain life—Mallory felt as though she and the other woman were soul mates in a lot of ways.

His expression gave away very little. He was studying her.

Was he trying to figure out how to diffuse this emotionally wracked tangent she was on?

She watched him back, knowing her last thought wasn’t fair. Not to either of them. Braden had always shown her the utmost respect when it came to her life choices. And he had often times sought her advice when it came to his own matters. Still did.

Their waitress stopped to say their dinners were almost ready and asked if he’d like another beer. He nodded. Her wine glass was still more than half full.

“Say something,” she told him when the waitress walked away.

“There’s a light in your eyes I haven’t seen in...well, too long.”

She smiled. “I’ve found my future,” she told him softly.

Then he shook his head. And she braced herself. She wanted his support, so she had to listen to his concerns. It wasn’t like there weren’t any. She had them, too. She readied her answers as their waitress delivered his beer.

“Being a single parent, Mal, having to work and take care of a child all on your own... We were exhausted when there were two of us.”

Meeting his gaze, she took him on.

“I grew up with a single mom who not only worked and tended to me but regularly opened our home to other children, as well. Troubled children.”

He knew her history, starting with the high-end prostitute mother who’d tried to keep her but who’d eventually realized what her life was going to do to her daughter and had given her up. Mallory had been almost three then. She didn’t remember the woman who’d later died of AIDS, contracted after Mallory’s birth. She remembered having to be tested, though, just to make certain she wasn’t carrying the HIV virus.

By the time Mallory went in the system she’d been too old to be immediately grabbed up like a newborn. There’d been a couple who’d wanted her, though. And after almost a year in the courts while living in their home as their foster child, they’d gotten pregnant on their own and changed their mind about the adoption.

She remembered them.

And then Sally had come into her life. A social worker in another county, who had her own professional caseload of children, Sally was also a licensed foster parent in the county where Mallory had been living. She’d taken Mallory in and kept her until she’d gone off to college. There’d been children in and out of their home during the entire time she’d been growing up, but she’d been the only permanent foster Sally had had. The other kids had been like a shared project between them, with the two of them doing what they could to love the foster children during the time they were in their home.

Mallory had always loved caring for kids. Nurturing came naturally to her. She was meant to be a mother.

“Have you talked to Sally about this?” Braden asked. He’d met the woman a couple of times, but she’d retired, moved to Florida, met a man and married—her first marriage, late in life. He had a big family that she’d taken on as readily as she’d taken in all those children over the years.

“Not yet,” she said. “But I’ll let her know at some point. You know she’s going to tell me to adopt, rather than birth, and while you’d think, in my position, having grown up as I did, that I’d be looking in that direction, I just want a biological family of my own.”

“So find a man to share it with you.”

Her heart lurched. And quieted. She shook her head.

“You’ve hardly dated, Mal. I’d hoped that guy at Thanksgiving—that dad—was someone you were getting interested in.”

“I have dated,” she told him. And she listed four men in three years. He nodded as each name rolled off her tongue. She’d told him about every one of them. “There’s been no spark.” She could have left it there, but for some reason, didn’t.

“You know as well as I do, Bray. The magic is so great in the beginning, but there’s no guarantee it will last. Look at us. Tragedy happened. You changed, I changed, or we found different parts of ourselves that hadn’t had reason to present before.” She shook her head. “I just don’t trust the whole magic, in love thing. Besides, you said yourself many times that I changed even before tragedy hit. I loved motherhood more than I loved being a wife.”

His words, not hers, but she wasn’t sure they were wrong. She’d loved being his wife more than she could ever put into words. And yet, being a mother...it was like an empty cavern inside of her had suddenly been filled to the brim.

“The Bouncing Ball takes up twelve hours a day of your time.”

She was proud of her daycare. It had a waiting list now, since she’d made the news the previous summer when a couple come to her for help in finding their kidnapped child. She was even, at Braden’s suggestion, raising her rates for new clients. She’d put her foot down when it came to charging her current clients more.

“I spend my days taking care of children, Bray,” she said now. “And I have a fully trained and certified staff who also specialize in child development.”

Yes, she spent twelve hours a day at the center, doing what a mother does. Now, instead of just doing it for other people’s children, she’d be doing it for her own, as well. And then getting to spend the remaining twelve hours a day doing the same.

“There’ll be no more empty hours,” she said aloud.

Braden seemed to be searching for words, and for the first time in a while she hated what they’d become. Hated the friendship that kept so much inside, erecting an invisible and completely safe barrier between them.

“Tell me what you’re really thinking.” She blurted the words.

And, of course, their waitress chose right then to deliver their dinner.

* * *

She could hardly eat. But because he was devouring his steak, she forced herself to go through the motions.

Was she being way too insensitive here? Telling her ex-husband that she was having a baby when the loss of their own child was what had driven them apart?

Telling him she was having a baby when she knew he blamed himself for their loss?

“You wanted me to move on,” she said, putting down her fork when she couldn’t pretend to eat anymore. “More and more I can feel your tension, Bray. You need me to get a life.”

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

He didn’t deny her accusation.

“I’m right, aren’t I? You feel responsible for my unhappiness, which means you can’t move forward until I do.”

Putting a forkful of meat in his mouth he chewed. His lack of response infuriated her. And yet, not as much as it might have done six months ago. Just because Braden didn’t respond didn’t mean he had no response.

“SIDS is not something you can predict,” she said. “And if we’d been home, Tucker still would have died.”

That’s what the doctors told her. And the counselors. She still didn’t totally believe it. If she’d been home, if Braden hadn’t pressured her to leave their son with a nanny so that he could have some one-on-one time with her and spend most of the night making love with her, she might have heard a change in his breathing on the baby monitor. Might have been able to get to him in time.

To do what, she didn’t know. At least she could have had a chance to breathe her own air into him.

To hold him.

Feeling herself sliding backward, she took a sip of wine. Four years of counseling, of recovery, and then she could so quickly be right back there.

“If you’d really believed we did nothing wrong by being gone that night,” he said, “you’d have been able to have sex with me in the months that followed.”

His softly spoken words hit her with a ferociousness she knew he hadn’t intended. She sat back, hands shaking, trying to get control of emotions that just didn’t die.

Her inability to want sex with him, even after the immediate blow of grief had worn off, had been a final nail in their marriage’s coffin.

Their lovemaking the night Tucker died had been incredible. She’d even admitted, sometime during it all, that Braden had been right to insist that they have that time alone together. She’d missed him so much. Had half forgotten how incredible he made her feel, how right it was to be locked body to body with him, riding the crazy crest together.

And afterward...

“I felt so guilty for being so into you that I’d actually forgotten about him, on and off, for those hours when we were together. I was having the orgasm of my life while he was dying.”

She could feel the tears pooling in her eyes and knew she’d gone too far.

She expected him to motion for the bill and almost reached for her purse.

“You aren’t supposed to think about your children in the middle of sex, Mal. Or be turned on when you’re thinking about them. It’s a God thing, I’m sure. A shut-off valve that’s embedded in us to keep the parent-child relationship sacred and on track.”

She stared at him. Had he just said that? Were they really having this conversation?

Now? After all this time?

“My current concerns don’t stem from anything to do with me,” he told her then, getting them back on topic.

She sat back, the threat of tears gone. “I’d like to hear them,” she told him honestly.

He cut a piece of steak, ate it. She broke off a piece of bread, played with it, making a pile of crumbs on her plate.

“I’m worried about you being alone and facing all of the things that could possibly go wrong.”

“You don’t think I’m strong enough to deal with life on my own?” That was a new one to her. She’d grown up in foster care, caring for foster children. She knew a hell of a lot about what could go wrong.

“I do. It’s just that when it comes to mothering, Mal, you’re so all in, and losing Tucker just about killed you. The idea of you having another baby... I figure it needs to happen for you, but are you sure you’re ready? And doing it alone. What if—”

She shook her head. “No what-ifs, Braden. Not unless you want me stuck with no life forever. There are always what-ifs. I’ve chosen to tackle them one by one as they come, if they come. As a part of living.”

He put down his fork, not quite through his steak. He’d barely touched the potato.

“You’ve really thought this through,” he said, meeting her gaze head on.

“For months,” she told him. “Remember last November I told you about Tamara referring that man to my daycare whose mother had died in prison giving birth, and he suddenly found himself with custody of a newborn without even knowing that his mother had been pregnant?” This was how she’d practiced telling him how she’d arrived at her decision.

This was what Braden would understand.

He nodded. “I kind of thought you and he would hook up.”

“Tamara tried her best to get me to think that way, for a minute or two. I knew all along she had a thing for the guy.”

Her friend had been unable to so much as hold a baby, however, which had definitely been a major roadblock for the couple. Still was, sometimes. But they were working on it. And there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Tamara loved that baby girl. Mallory could see it when Tamara came in to The Bouncing Ball, sometimes with Flint, sometimes not, to pick up little Diamond Rose after work.

“The thing is I’ve learned from seeing her courage, seeing how she forced herself to fight her way out of hell to give herself a chance to be happy, to make others happy. I have to do this, Braden. I can’t let the past prevent my future.”

Which was why she’d agreed to spend the previous Christmas on a yacht with some old friends from college instead of with Braden, as they’d done in the past. He’d gone home to North Carolina to be with his mom and sister, but up to the last minute had tried to get her to go with him. He’d been worried about her spending the holiday alone.

It hadn’t been her best Christmas, but she’d done just fine.

“Okay.” Hands on the table, he looked at her. Then loosened his tie and motioned for the check.

“Okay, what?”

“Okay, you’re going to do this.”

Her smile broke through with more of a rush than the tears. “And I have your support?”

“Of course. I told you the day we divorced that you’d always have that. It wasn’t conditional, Mal.”

Tears filled her eyes. “Thank you.” She nodded and left him sitting there, credit card in hand.

Because she knew that was the way he’d want it.

Chapter Three

Holy hell, Mallory’s going to have a baby.

Up at one in the morning, walking naked to the kitchen of the upscale high-rise condo he’d purchased on the beach not far from the harbor, Braden couldn’t get the thought out of his brain.

He’d gone straight to his office after dinner to look over figures that had been coming in for a couple of days regarding his real estate interest north of L.A. He’d put out a contractor bid request and was going over every submission line by line. He’d put a call in to his architect, too, the same man who’d designed the complex where Braden Property Management had first begun and still resided. Some changes would be needed to suit the L.A. property, but the basic plan would be the same.

And it would bear the same name: Braden Property Management. Once upon a time he’d envisioned his second big venture to be titled a bit differently: Braden and Son Property Management. Once upon a time.

He hadn’t told Mallory about his move. Hadn’t even realized that he hadn’t told her until after the check had been paid and he was heading out to the parking lot.

Holy hell. Mallory’s going to have a baby. Alone.

He’d been prepared for her dating. Getting serious. Eventually marrying. All of which would have led to a very different future for her. Then he’d have prepared for her having another family. One that worked for her this time.

At thirty-three she was getting closer to her biological safety zone. She hadn’t brought up that point at dinner but he was certain it had been on her mind. She was a child-development guru and firmly believed that her best chances for conceiving a healthy and robust child were before she turned thirty-five. Back in their other lives, she’d hoped to have at least two and maybe four by then.

Always in evenly numbered increments. She didn’t want a family with an odd man out.

In his know-it-all, youthful arrogance, each time she’d mentioned her “clock goals” he’d pointed out that women were having babies successfully in their forties now. His way of deflecting the tension she’d begun to bring to their marriage after three years of still using birth control. They’d been establishing their businesses, and both had wanted to wait for children until they were secure.

It might have been more manly to deal with the tension. To acknowledge the validity of her feelings and sit with her as she felt them.

Sit with her. She wasn’t the only one who’d had some counseling after Tucker’s death. Sit with her. It had been what his counselor had told him he should have done when Mallory’s grief had flooded their home to the point that he’d had to escape.

He hadn’t been able to fix things. Hadn’t known how to help. What to do.

What she’d apparently needed was for him to sit with her. Just be there while she grieved. Be willing to be in her grief with her. Whatever that meant. He got the words but he’d never completely figured out the concept.

Nor the next one. Let her into your grief.

The whole counseling thing hadn’t lasted very long.

Wandering to his desk instead of heading back to bed, he sipped from his milk and stood in front of his computer—an identical setup to the one he had at his office and linked to it.

But work wasn’t calling him.

Insemination was.

For a few minutes, earlier that night, he’d been with the old Mal. The one who didn’t carry grief with her everywhere she went. From the way her eyes had lit up, even the way she’d held herself, it had seemed at first that he’d been sitting with the woman who’d blown his life away with her beauty, her contagious good feeling. He’d been in love all over again, there, for just a second.

For just a second he’d forgotten that he’d robbed her of the chance to kiss her baby good-night for the last time. To change him for the last time. Bathe him. Feed him. Hold him. Rock him to sleep. That had all been done by the nanny.

The next morning, the coroner had already been to the house by the time they’d arrived home. And Mallory’s breasts had been leaking Tucker’s food all over the place.

No matter how many times you relived it, the picture was always the same. He sipped his drink.

For just a second, earlier that night, Mal had seemed to be soaring again, instead of sagging.

He couldn’t take that from her. No matter what misgivings he might have. No matter how valid they might be.

He was still staring at his computer, his milk almost gone.

If he was going to support Mallory in this venture, he needed to know everything there was to know.

Heading off for some boxers he came back and set to work.

An hour later, he had her on the phone.

“Braden? It’s two in the morning! What’s wrong?”

“You never said when you were going for your first procedure.” Or what kind it was going to be. “For all I know, it’s first thing in the morning. I wanted to chat a second before it happens.”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” she reminded him. “My appointment’s on Monday, after work, unless I don’t ovulate as expected.”

Not that far off, then.

“I called tonight’s meeting. When were you planning to tell me about this?”

Whoa, buddy. You don’t sound like a friendly and supportive ex-husband.

“Before tonight...or last night, now,” she said. “But when you called Wednesday, asking to meet, I figured Friday night was fine.”

He moved on, letting himself slide on the over zealousness of his questioning due to the lateness of the hour and shock of her news.

“I assume, given the circumstances, your ability to conceive, your age and your excellent health that you’re considering either ICI or IUI,” he said, looking at the screen of statistics in front of him. Intracervical insemination. Intrauterine insemination. And there was intravaginal, too.

“Really, Braden? At two in the morning?”

“IVI is cheaper, by far, less invasive and less painful, but chances of conceiving the first time are considerably lower. ICI is still cheaper and less uncomfortable. But IUI has a slightly higher success rate. I think you should go with that. The less raised hopes and disappointment here the better.”

“I’m fully prepared for this to take several months.”

She yawned. And sounded slightly amused, too.

It was two in the morning.

His nearly naked body yearned during the second it took him to remind himself that it was Mallory he was talking to. The woman who had no interest in being a wife once motherhood was in the picture.

Mallory, who’d been unable to feel any desire for him at all since their son died.

Because she felt guilty for how great it had been for her that night.

That was new knowledge that he’d process at some point.

That night had been the best sex of his life, too. He didn’t feel bad about that.

“How about a meet-up sometime this weekend?” he asked.

“Fine.” Another yawn.

“I’m taking the boat out on Sunday,” he told her. “You want to go fishing?”

“I’d rather lie on the deck and soak up some spring sunshine.”

Right. He knew that. She’d gone out with him plenty of times. She’d never caught a fish and had only tried once or twice after he’d bugged her to the point where she’d given in.

If she had a boy, who was going to teach the kid to fish?

Knowing Mallory, she had some kid’s fishing development group already lined up.

“Seven too early for you?” They’d have plenty of time on the boat for talking.

“Nope.”

He could tell her about his L.A. plans, too. “Meet me at the dock?”

“Yep.”

“Okay. We can—”

“I’m going back to sleep now, Braden. Good night.”

He caught her chuckle just before the call went dead.

* * *

In leggings, a short-sleeved, oversize black shirt and tennis shoes, her dark hair tied back in a ribbon, Mallory boarded the fishing boat Braden had already owned when she’d met him eight years before. She carried a plastic bowl of cut fruit in her hands.

He was on board with a plate of doughnuts.

Looking at each other’s goods, they laughed. “Some things don’t change,” she said, not as worried as she might have been about spending leisurely time with her ex-husband.

Surely, after three years of successful friendship, she and Braden could handle a few hours alone on the ocean. He probably wouldn’t even leave the harbor.

He’d set a lounger for her on the deck, maybe the same lounger she’d used in the past.

She’d brought her own towel and dropped it on the lounger while he did what he did with his bait.

She opened the food, set it out on one of the benches with the little disposable plates, napkins and plastic forks she’d brought. He started the engine, fixed himself a plate and backed away from the dock. The boat had a little cabin and, noticing the travel mug he had next to him at the helm, she went below, found the coffee he’d made and poured herself an insulated cup full. With doughnuts and fruit on a plate, she pulled on the hoodie she’d brought aboard and settled in her lounger. When the sun was fully above them, she’d be hot, and she’d take off the hoodie and get some color on her skin.

And at some point, Braden was going to want to talk. Apparently to make certain that she knew she was doing the right thing and to tell her he was seeing someone again, she supposed.

Which was fine.

She’d listen, as she always did, and support him in his endeavors, as she always did.

Until then, she was going to relax into the bliss.

* * *

“Can you come up here?”

Drifting off to sleep, the rising sun’s warmth cozy in the cool San Diego spring air, Mallory heard Braden. Not in the mood to hear about his new girlfriend, she took a second to decide whether or not to acknowledge that she’d heard.

The engine had stopped. She’d heard him moving around, getting his rod and casting his line. He’d be sitting up on the bow, watching the boats on the horizon as much as anything. She’d always said he did more relaxing than fishing when he went out, but hadn’t seen that as a bad thing.

Thinking he had to carry the whole world on his shoulders as he did, Braden didn’t relax enough.

And then she quit picturing it. Braden on the bow of the boat, wind in his air, was just...hot. A part of them that had to be dead to her now.

“Mal?”

“Yeah, I’m coming,” she said, repositioning her sunglasses as she opened her eyes. They’d only been out half an hour. So much for her bliss.

But, hey, by the following night she might be pregnant. Braden could get remarried and it wouldn’t be enough to snap her out of her good mood.

Joining him on the bow and sitting with her back propped on the small rail, she faced him, her feet in front of her with knees bent. His jeans and tennis shoes were new since they’d been divorced. The forest green T-shirt she’d washed before. A breeze blew his hair and he didn’t seem to notice.

It made him look free. And just a touch wild.

The impressive breadth of his shoulders...that was the same as it had always been.

“You said you wanted my support in this venture of yours.”

She wouldn’t call having a baby a “venture” but understood that he would. And that what he called it didn’t have to matter to her anymore. She nodded.

“Then I have some concerns I’d like to address.”

He wasn’t going to spoil her good mood. Not that he’d ever want to. Or intend to. He was trying to help. She got that.

“What are they?”

Throwing up one hand, he glanced at the line hanging placidly over the front of the boat.

“Most of them—” He stopped and shook his head. “There’s one major one, but I have a plan that can tend to it.”

Did Braden just have a hitch in his voice? Heart beating faster, she studied her ex-husband. This mattered to him.

A lot.

Which warmed her. A lot.

“What’s your plan?”

He frowned. “I’d like to present the concern before I move forward to the solution.”

Had they been married, she’d have felt rebuked. She smiled, instead, finding his predictability, his need to keep things in order and under wraps, kind of endearing. “Of course.”

“I’m concerned about the Y component,” he told her, catching her completely off guard. She’d been expecting something more along the lines of her being a single parent. Taking on a two-person job all alone. Concerned that if she had a son, the boy would have no father figure.

Or anyone to take him fishing.

“You won’t know family history,” he continued, when she decided silence was the best answer until she could figure out where he was going with the conversation. “According to the National Human Genome Research Institute there are forty-eight known and listed genetic disorders that could be passed on to your child. That doesn’t include the ones that occur when certain genes meet with inhospitable partner genes. If that were to happen, your likelihood of miscarriage would increase greatly, but I’m not even there yet.”

It sounded like he was right there. Some more of her bliss faded. She wouldn’t let go, though.

She was going to do this.

“Women have been having healthy donor babies for decades.”

“And they’ve been having children with disabilities, too.”

“So have married couples.” So could they have had.

“But at least when you know the Y component, you have more of a chance to prevent something or to catch it in its earliest stages.”

She didn’t have an immediate answer to that. Except what she’d already said.

“You’ve been through so much, Mal. I applaud what you’re doing here. I’m elated to see you taking up the reins of your life again. Moving on. Creating a future where you’ll be happy.”

Elated and Braden weren’t words she’d put together. At least, not since Tucker died. Before that she’d seen some elation. More than he’d probably realized. But not as much as after she’d found out she was pregnant.

Was the pregnancy what had changed him? At least somewhat? Was there more to their divorce than just their dichotomous ways of dealing with life’s tragedies, which ultimately blew their emotional trust in each other?

“I’m concerned, Mal,” he said after a lengthy silence had fallen. “Really concerned. All weekend, the more I think about it, the more concerned I get. To the point that I’m not sure I can give you my support. Not with such a huge unknown.”

So she’d do it alone. She’d already made that decision. And she’d known from the beginning that she might not win his buy-in.

Still, she could feel the weight of sadness come back, trickling into the outer recesses of her heart.

“I’m worried about what you’d do if you lost a second child.” The depth of compassion in his tone was something she hadn’t heard in a long, long time.

“There are never guarantees, Braden. He or she could be hit by a car or a bolt of lightning. The point is, I’m not going to let the past rob me of my future.”

Which was exactly what she’d told Tamara she shouldn’t do.

Exactly when the words had become her mantra, she didn’t know. She just knew that she felt the truth on a soul level.

“But why play with fate when you have a choice?”

Again, she had no ready answer so she thought about what he was saying, instead. She’d asked for his input. Having his support meant more than him just agreeing with everything she said and did.

She valued his opinion and she wanted him to care enough to speak up.

“You need a full family medical history,” he said. “Or as complete of one as you can get. Way more than the general things the sperm bank provides. You need to know if his grandfather was prone to anxiety attacks or his entire family were unmotivated sloths.”

“Right, so what do you suggest I do, Bray? Put an ad in the paper for sperm that comes with that kind of extensive history?”

“Of course not.”

“Then what?”

It was only when she asked the question that she remembered he’d said he had a solution to her problem. A plan that would tend to his concern.

“You let me be your donor.”

A wake from an incoming cruise ship in the distance hit the boat and she grabbed the rail, holding on so tight her knuckles turned white.

Chapter Four

She was staring at him, clutching the rail, mouth open, looking at him like he’d lost his mind.

He hadn’t. Exactly the opposite, in fact.

He had to do this. He might not want to do it. Didn’t like the messiness.

But he had to do it.

He owed it to Mallory.

“You’re already going to be fighting the fear of another loss,” he said, keeping things practical because he knew that was the only way to get through this. Through any tough situation. “You’ll need all of the reassurances you can get. During your first pregnancy, you worried about the fact that you don’t know your own family history. Knowing mine helped calm those fears.”

She’d closed her mouth but was still staring.

“It’s not conclusive that genetics have any link to SIDS, but we know that there is no evidence of it whatsoever in my family.”

Shoulders drooping, she’d lost all appearance of happiness. Though that was not his goal, it was often the outcome whenever they had a real conversation. Still, he couldn’t drop this.

“There are no guarantees, Mal, we both know that, but I’m as close to a guarantee as possible when it comes to healthy genes.”

After Tucker’s death, he’d had complete genetic testing done on himself, including familial screening, which he’d paid for. The results had shown that he and his family had absolutely no predispositions for any of the maladies such tests could indicate. He’d shared the news with Mallory.

And it had been the absolute wrong thing to do at the time. She’d taken his information to mean that she was to blame for their son’s death.

“We also know that our reproductive environments are compatible.” They’d conceived Tucker the first month they’d tried. “The sooner you conceive, once you start trying, the less stressful that portion of the process will be.”

He saw her blink and took that to mean she was hearing him.

“Further down the road, if the child were to develop an illness or sustain a severe injury, something that needed a blood transfusion or donor of any kind, you’d have both parents to pull from.”

She let go of the rail, wrapped her arms around her knees and looked out to sea. Was she going to turn him down?

“We can get everything drawn up legally,” he continued, figuring that he’d covered all of the bases in his mind since Friday night, and if he just kept talking, he’d allay any concerns she might have. “You’d be the sole parent, just like you want. I’d have no say in anything, no legal rights, no more than any anonymous donor.”

He drew from the thoughts that had consumed his weekend. “It would save you money, as well,” he said. “You wouldn’t have to pay for the sperm.”

Her glance, when it swung back his way, had his heart palpitating for a second. He wasn’t sure why.

“You’re actually suggesting that we have sex?” The sentence ended almost on a squeak. He wasn’t sure if she was offended or simply appalled and shocked.

At least she’d spoken.

“Of course not,” he quickly reassured both of them. Yeah, he’d been cursed with an apparently lifetime attraction to his ex-wife, but she cringed at the idea of sex with him, and there that possibility ended. “I’d leave my specimen at the clinic, but I’d do so as a non-paid donation specifically for you.”

She’d have to pay for the procedure, just not the sperm.

“If you go with IUI your chances of conceiving the first time would be better than with sex.”

Mallory was shaking her head.

“What?”

“Do you realize the mess we’d be making if we did this?”

Sitting on the bow of his boat, her little feet in ridiculously small-looking tennis shoes, the woman made him nuts and peaceful at the same time. Helping Mallory was the right thing to do. Tucker would have expected it of him.

Hauling her downstairs to bed was not even in the realm of possibility.

Nor did he want it to be, anymore. Sex with Mallory came with a whole knotted ball of strings attached.

“That’s the beauty of it, Mal,” he said, glancing over as his fishing line grew taut. There’d be no fish there. He hadn’t baited the damned thing.

He could just imagine being in the middle of presenting his case and having to stop to reel in a slippery, smelly, great-tasting piece of fish.

“We’re in complete control here, Mal, and we’ve got the perfect vehicle. We’ve spent three years building a friendship that would allow the peace of mind you need for this venture. It couldn’t be better if we’d planned it all along.”

“We live on the surface,” she said. “A baby won’t stay there. Nor will all of the emotions attached to having one. I’m fully prepared for that. Are you?”

She wasn’t getting it. “That’s just it! I won’t be emotionally involved. I’ll be going on with my life, as planned, while providing you the means to go as safely as possible on with yours.”

Frowning at him, her eyes only partially hidden by her sunglasses, she said, “You honestly think you can father a child without feeling anything?”

Sure, there’d be some feelings attached, at first probably, until he fully adjusted to the changes in their lives. “No more so than any other sperm donor.”

“They don’t ever know if their sperm is even used, let alone have a relationship with the recipient.”

“Some do.” He’d researched that one. “Men donate to gay women friends. Women are surrogates for gay men friends. I read about a man who donated to his best friend, who was celibate, so he and his wife could have a baby. And a mother who carried for her barren daughter and son-in-law—”

“We were married, Bray. We had a son together. Lost a child together. And you think you can father my second child and just walk away?”

“I do.” He really did. “When I’m ready to have a family of my own, I know full well I can do so. I’ll meet a woman, the desire will be there and I’ll have my family. I’m not there yet. But you’re ready to have your family, and I can help ensure that you have the best chance at doing so happily.” He didn’t waver as he met her eye to eye. The plan made perfect sense.

“I need your support during the pregnancy more than I need the sperm,” she said. “Sperm I can buy. But you’re right, it’s going to be hard. I’ve done all the reading, too, and giving birth after SIDS is hard. Your head plays with you, makes you afraid what happened before can happen again. I blame myself, like my body is broken somehow because it produced a child with a faulty breath regulator. What I was hoping to have from you was the common sense reminders that calm my fears.”

“And you’ll have them.”

“It would be much easier for you to give them with more detachment,” she said, the steady look in her eye and the calm tone of her voice making him listen to her. “Having no intimate involvement will better ensure you getting through this with the least amount of discomfort. You know, if the child isn’t yours...”

“He won’t be mine in an emotional or legal sense,” he said immediately.

She was making a point. He got it. When the kid was born, wouldn’t Braden need a second chance, too?

He shook his head, adjusted his baitless pole. “I’m giving away my sperm, Mal, not becoming a father.” The designation was key. “It’s all in how you process it.”

But if she truly didn’t want his biological component in her child...if, in spite of the testing he’d had done, she still thought his genes were partially to blame for what had happened, then he wouldn’t force her. Couldn’t force her. And he didn’t even want to try. He just wanted this to work out for her. Most of the process was completely out of his control, except for this one small area where he could possibly positively affect her chances.

“Can I think about it?”

Her question came right when he was giving up.

“Of course.”

“On the deck? In the sun?” She was already crawling her way off the bow, giving him too good a view of her ass as she did so.

Way too good.

Hard in the wrong place, he set about baiting his line. It was time to do some real fishing. And not for the things he couldn’t have. Or things that no longer existed.

* * *

Weak in the knees, Mallory made it back to her lounger without incident. Sinking into the woven chair, she kept on her sunglasses just in case Braden was looking. And she refrained from wiping the tears from her cheeks for the same reason.

She’d just been given a second chance. From the minute she’d met her ex-husband she’d known that she’d wanted him to be the father of her biological family. To someone who’d grown up an orphaned foster kid, whose own mother hadn’t even known who’d fathered her, biology was important.

So important.

As important as Braden Harris was to her.

She couldn’t let him do this. Couldn’t use him this way. It was his guilt playing with him. She knew that.

Just as she knew that keeping your baby in your room was a key SIDS preventative. She’d studied them all, from the Mayo Clinic to the American Academy of Pediatrics and every blog or message board she could find in between:

Place baby on back, not side or stomach.

Remove all fluffy bedding.

Keep crib as bare as possible.

No prenatal smoking.

Good prenatal care.

Pacifier at night after four weeks of age.

Breastfeeding.

And baby in your own room for a minimum of six months, better if it was twelve.

Not in your bed but in your room. It had to do with waking more easily, among other things. Logic then followed that if she’d been home that night Tucker would have been in his smaller crib in their room, where he’d been every night since his birth. She’d have been there, too. Which could have prevented SIDS.

Braden had done his own reading. He had to know this, too. And he was offering to give her what she wanted in order to appease his guilt.

Maybe it would be kindest to give him a way to atone and move on.

How could she put him through fathering a child he didn’t want? How could she ask him to experience the pregnancy with her, knowing what it would probably cost him? How could she hurt him any more than he’d already been hurt, loving him like she did?

Unless...if atoning set him free...

She tried to doze, to let the sun take her to the peaceful place outside of pain, and ended up thinking about Tucker instead. The sound of him laughing. The first time he’d laughed Braden had been at work. She’d been alone with the baby, coming at him again and again with funny noises, stopping just short of reaching him to pull back and start again, reveling in the way his eyes had followed her every movement.

Braden had missed the whole thing. Tucker had been asleep when he’d arrived home that evening and though Braden had gone to wake him, she’d told him not to. It would have been too hard to get the baby back down. Feeling as sleep deprived as she had been, the admonition hadn’t been completely without warrant, but what would it have hurt in the long run? Yeah, she’d been exhausted, but it wasn’t like she’d had to get up to go to work. She’d still had another month of leave ahead of her. Even if the baby hadn’t laughed again that night, Braden would have racked up more minutes of memories to feed him in the years that followed.

Someone like Braden probably wouldn’t access those memories like she did. And when they came to him, calling up a wealth of emotion, they might be more a hindrance than anything else.

So maybe someone like Braden, someone who was happier shutting out emotion than letting it in, would be the perfect sperm donor—if he really didn’t want another child of his own.

But what if he only thought he didn’t? What if, once they got into it, once she heard a heartbeat and then started to show, once the baby started to kick, he found out he really wanted it all again, too?

She tried to find the idea abhorrent but couldn’t.

Because if Braden could be the man she’d thought he was, there’d be no more perfect scenario than having his baby.

Which was the true problem, she acknowledged, lying there with her eyes closed, the sun beating down on her, the gentle sway of the boat rocking her.

The real problem was her. What if she got pregnant, heard the heartbeat, started to show, felt the baby kicking her...and wanted Braden to get excited about all of those things because it was his baby, too? What if she fell in love with him all over again?

What if she started to fall back into who she’d been? A woman who’d been ashamed to cry because her husband didn’t like emotional outbursts. One who’d curtailed her most exciting moments when he was around for the same reason.

One who’d grown to relish her time alone with her baby so she could gush and be all intensely moved by the miracle of him and just feel complete.

No, she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t have Braden’s baby.

That settled, she concentrated on the slow rhythm of the boat’s movement and tried to drift off with it.

But she lay there, wide awake as a thought struck her.

She had to put the baby first.

Always.

In the end, she didn’t matter at all. What mattered was her baby’s health. His or her best chance at a long and happy life. Braden was right. With a sperm donor there were many unknowns.

She herself was an unknown, too. Yes, she’d had her own genetic testing and didn’t carry any alarming signs, but her family might. She had no way of knowing if there was a history of cancer. Or liver or kidney disease. Or slowly developing areas of the brain that regulated breathing.

Not only could her baby develop something, but she could, too. What if kidney failure ran in her family? Or car accidents?

Sitting up, Mallory opened her eyes, taking a minute to bring herself back mentally to where she was. The ocean. The boat. Fresh sea air and sunshine.

Car accidents weren’t genetic.

But they did take people unexpectedly, leaving loved ones behind to fend for themselves.

In her case, it would leave her little one with no known family at all. He or she would be just like Mallory, a foster.

Rising, she made her way back to the front of the boat. Braden was sitting with his forearms resting on raised knees, looking in her direction. His line lay limp before him. There wasn’t a single fish in the basket close by.

With a raised brow, he seemed to ask if she’d reached her decision.

“I have a question.”

“Okay. If I don’t have the answer, I’ll see what I can do about finding it.”

The reply was so Braden she almost teared up again. And smiled, too. He tried. He really, really tried hard.

“If something were to happen to me, would you be willing to take the child, to raise him or her?”

“Of course.”

It wasn’t so much his answer—which she’d have expected if she’d given herself enough time to think about it—as it was his lack of hesitation that set her suddenly frightened heart at ease.

“Then I accept your offer.”

“Good.”

He was looking at her. She looked back at him.

They’d just agreed she was going to have his baby.

And it felt as though they’d never been further apart.

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