A Baby Affair
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Tara Taylor Quinn
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Chapter One
“Listen to your voicemail. Christine called from the Parent Portal. You need to call Dr. Craig Harmon. I left you a voicemail about it. And here’s the doctor’s number, so you don’t have to write it down.” A phone number ended her sister’s frantic text.
Sitting in the window seat in a plane crowded with travelers facing customs, Amelia was weary from an eight-hour flight. She immediately put a protective hand over her mostly flat belly, tucking it beneath her tight white cotton shirt and lace-pocketed black jeggings. She warned herself to stay calm. Stress could have a negative impact on the baby.
So could all of the other people taking their time to vacate the plane. Because they were causing her stress. With a couple of thumb swipes she accessed voicemail. Pressed to listen.
“Amelia, lishquensenhse...”
It went on for thirty-three seconds, that garbled sound in Amelia’s ear where her younger sister’s message should have been. Either Angeline had been in a loud crowded place when she’d left the message, or technology had just failed. Either way she was screwed.
Hell. Just hell. Why did she need to call a doctor? Please God, let her baby be okay. At a little more than fourteen weeks along, she’d passed the critical first three months.
Standing, she hit her head on the rounded ceiling of the plane, attempting to see how much longer she was going to have to wait.
At least ten rows. Maybe eleven. She glared at the backs of slow-moving heads and pressed her sister’s speed dial icon. And got Angeline’s voicemail.
Of course.
Ripping a silent expletive that stood in for the frustrated tears she was holding back, Amelia remembered that Angeline, who was also her business partner, was in a meeting with the New York designer who could ensure their financial security for a long time to come. Not that they were hurting, anyway. Who’d have thought sewing lace on jean pockets, and adding lacy embellishments to their purses as teenagers, would have exploded into a retail business that kept them both bountiful?
Six rows to go. Voicemail still garbled the second time she tried to listen to her sister’s message. She’d bumped her head on the low ceiling twice more. And the guy in the aisle seat at the end of her row hadn’t bothered to put his tablet and extra battery back in the pack under the seat in front of him.
She had the number. At the rate things were going, she could have the call made and done before she exited her row. Action immediately followed the thought. Amelia was too het up to think twice.
For all she knew, Dr. Harmon was on staff at the Parent Portal, the private fertility clinic where she was being followed. Perhaps its staff just wanted to let her know he’d written an order for the sixteen-week ultrasound. Or some more blood work—there were a lot of things they could check on these days, and she’d opted for all of them.
As tired as she was, it would be like her to make something out of nothing. And Angeline would think she’d heard the voicemail.
Taking comfort in the curtain of long auburn hair around her face, she stood slightly hunched, watched people slowly vacate and listened to the fifth ring—rehearsing words in her mind for when the receptionist picked up.
This is Amelia Grace. I was told to call this number... Is Dr. Harmon available?’
Three rows to go.
And a male voice answered her call.
“Craig Harmon...”
“Dr. Harmon?”
The call came in on his private line, where he was just Craig, but... “Yes.”
“This is Amelia Grace. I was told to call you.”
He’d been waiting hours for her call. But hadn’t expected it would come that day. Maybe not even that week. Figured she’d need time to process.
He shrugged out of the white coat he still wore to see patients, where others of his peers opted for shirts and ties. White coats had pockets.
“Yes, thank you,” he said, feeling anything but his usual confident self. He was generally the one offering calm reassurance. Assistance. Advice and treatment. He was the one with answers. Now he needed some. “As I told Ms. Elliott, at the clinic, I’d like for us to meet.” He ran a hand through dark blond hair, which needed a cut. He had to do this.
“Excuse me?”
“Per the agreement,” he said, and stood up from behind the massive cherrywood desk in his office at the clinic he owned along with six other doctors. He’d grown up in Sacramento, but a buddy of his from med school had first introduced him to Marie Cove, the little town south of LA, during med school, when he’d told him about a new fertility clinic there. What made it unique was the lines it left open between donor and client. The only way she’d have gotten his number was if the clinic had contacted her and told her that he’d requested to speak with her. That’s how it worked. Either party could request at any time and the other party agreed to have at least a a conversation or other limited contact.
What he’d give now to have never heard of the place.
“What agreement?”
A hand in the pocket of his pants, Craig looked out toward the ocean beyond the cliff face across the street from his second-floor office and frowned. “With the Parent Portal.”
“I’m sorry, who are you?” She grunted, as though she’d been shoved from behind. Or run into something.
“I’m the father of your child,” he told her, getting more concerned by the second. More certain than ever that his need to connect with his biological offspring was valid.
Her lack of response added to his unease. “Ms. Grace, are you okay?”
“I’m...” She huffed. “Just getting off a flight from France. Can I call you back?”
Without giving him a chance to respond she hung up.
Leaving him with all of his questions, plus some, and no answers. He knew one thing more than he had previously, though.
His child wasn’t even born yet and he or she was already a world traveler. He wasn’t sure he liked that idea.
The father of your child. The father of your child? What the hell? Oh, God, what the hell?
Carrying a large black purse filled with the remainders of her snacks and a bottle of water, her tablet and her smaller purse crammed in there, too, Amelia made it down the narrow aisle of the aircraft and out to a crowded gate.
The father of your child. She made a quick bathroom stop. Washed her hands. Refused to look in the mirror. To risk seeing the panicked eyes gazing back at her.
Before hoisting her bag back up on her shoulder, she pulled out her phone and tried her sister again. Just in case Angeline was wearing her smart watch, saw the multiple notifications and chose to excuse herself from the meeting long enough to calm Amelia’s heart rate.
They were in this together. After their own childhood—having a mother who loved them, but who had to answer to her husband first—they had both chosen to have their own families without marriage or partners. Amelia first, and then Angeline was going to have herself inseminated, too, down the road a bit. They’d agreed to be guardians to each other’s child in the event anything happened to either one of them. They’d signed paperwork at the clinic, providing that they were both privy to any and all information. They even had each other’s medical power of attorney.
Her younger sister didn’t pick up.
Bag back on her shoulder, Amelia told herself she wasn’t feeling nauseous, that this was not going to be the moment when she learned how morning sickness felt, and headed toward baggage claim.
Each step she took played a word in a recurring beat.
The father of your child. The father of your child. The father of your child.
He was wrong. This Craig Harmon guy who was posing as a doctor. Or even if he was a doctor, this information was still wrong.
Her child didn’t have a father.
Her baby had come from a sperm donor, fulfilling a biological component.
Not a father.
Not. A. Father.
“You signed the paper, Mel.” Angie’s soft red curls drifted around her perfectly oval face as she faced Amelia. Her younger sister had arrived at their new corporate office space in Marie Cove at the same time as Amelia, who’d come straight from the airport. In a short denim skirt with lacy embellishments, a short-sleeved white cotton top and denim wedges, Angie looked ready to conquer the world, where Amelia, still in her travel-wrinkled jeggings and shirt, felt ready for a shower and bed.
After she took care of the business waiting on her desk.
Which would happen as soon as she could spare a brain cell to focus on it.
“I signed the paper for my baby’s protection,” she said now, holding back the frustration she felt toward her sister for something that wasn’t at all Angie’s fault. Her sister had expected her to hear the voicemail. And had known that Amelia would be all panicky and struggling to get the number from a fuzzy audio message, so she’d also sent the text.
She’d chosen the Parent Portal specifically because of the private facility’s policy about openness of communication between biological components if the need ever arose. The biggest concern she’d had with an insemination was the black hole where paternal genetic history was concerned. Things that went beyond basic medical testing. Like a tendency toward obesity, or a history of obsessive compulsive disorder. The Parent Portal’s personal database for each donor was much more extensive than a lot of clinics’. Not that she’d been seeking that kind of information, but if there was a problem, she could know that she could have all information to help make the best decisions...
“I never, in a million years, expected the donor to call me,” she said, still standing. She needed to sit. Which was why she didn’t. Giving in to weakness wasn’t permitted in this kind of moment. She looked at the glass-faced shadow boxes lining the walls of her office, holding various fine laces and original versions of many of their designs.
Her gaze landed on the very first purse she’d embellished. She’d been fourteen. Had wanted a new purse for starting high school. Something cool. To give her confidence as she left Angeline behind in middle school. Duane, their stepfather, had overheard her talking to her mother about it and had gone off on an ugly rant about the purse he’d bought her for Christmas the previous year, how nothing he provided was ever good enough for her. He’d been drunk off his ass at the time, of course.
She’d taken that plain denim bag he’d bought her and, using lace made by his family’s company, made herself a purse everyone loved. Including her stepfather. She’d had girls she didn’t know coming up to her in the school halls, upperclassmen even, asking where she’d gotten her bag. Just like that, a business—now known as Feel Good—had started. Embellishments, a brand, distribution: all of it. They bought plain items in bulk from manufacturers and made them their own.
She’d shown up a drunk angry man and started a minor empire at fourteen. She could handle a guy who left a deposit in a cup.
“I never should have talked to Christine.” Angie’s face got “that” look and Amelia cringed inside. She’d promised herself she’d never, ever be the cause of that expression again. The one where Angeline feared she’d somehow compromised their relationship.
Angeline hadn’t been the one to do that. Amelia had. And it was up to her to spend the rest of her life, if that was what it took, rebuilding her little sister’s trust in “them.”
“Of course you should have,” she said, stronger now as she tended to her sister instead of to herself. “I want you completely involved in this, just like we said, and what if the call had been to tell us that there was something with the baby that needed immediate attention? A mistake on some test or something? You did the right thing, Angie. I’m just...”
“Scared?”
Yeah. “Why do you think he’s calling?”
“I have no idea.” Angie sat on the couch along the back wall of the smallish room, patting the seat beside her as she reached over to a small refrigerator and pulled out an organic fruit juice mixture. “But what I do know,” she continued once Amelia took a couple of sips, “is that he has no legal rights to that baby. He or she is yours and everything you signed absolutely guarantees that.”
With a head tilt to the side, Amelia studied her sister. “You sound sure about that.”
“I already called Tanya and confirmed. The second I got off the phone with Christine.”
Tanya Cypress was their attorney for matters both personal and business. Amelia had only been in the air a couple of hours when Christine Elliott, managing director of the clinic, had called her. While she’d been unreachable, Amelia had her calls forwarded to Angeline. Angeline had called Christine, and then left a voicemail for Amelia. If Angeline had bothered to listen to her own message, she’d have known it was garbled. She hadn’t. She’d already beaten herself up over that one, apologizing several times, and Amelia hated that her sister was still so insecure where she was concerned.
Hated herself for it. Growing up with a stepfather who was mean when he drank, and a mother who placated him because she loved him and couldn’t bring herself to leave him, a mother who’d believed his promises that he’d stop drinking, had taken a toll on both girls. It had made them closer than many siblings, to be sure. More dependent on each other.
Which was why when, for a short time, Amelia had fallen under the control of a man she’d loved and ditched her sister at his behest, Angeline had suffered so deeply.
Her sister loved her. But Angie no longer completely trusted Amelia to have her back. Not completely.
And so she was always trying to prove to Amelia that she was good enough to deserve her loyalty. When it clearly should have been the other way around. Angie didn’t need to try harder. To go above and beyond.
Amelia did.
“You have to call him, Mel.”
She nodded, a surge of panic striking again as the moment bore down on her.
The father of your child.
“It’s just odd that he introduced himself as ‘father’ rather than ‘sperm donor.’”
“Just remember, he has no rights to that child. None. It’s up to you to stay strong and establish that,” Angie said, glancing toward Amelia’s belly.
Stay strong, rather than giving in to the male influence.
She nodded again. And pulled her phone out of her pocket.
