Roarke's Kingdom

She tried not to think about how she’d take care of her mother while carrying her child, or how she’d keep her job, or what she’d do about child care once the baby was born.

Dr. Ronald had asked her all those things and when she had no real answers, he’d grown stern.

“And what will you tell your mother?” he’d demanded. “How do you think she’ll react when she knows you’re going down the same path she did?”

“It isn’t the same. I was raped!”

“The end result will be precisely the same,” the doctor had said brusquely. “You’ll be a single mother raising a child alone. If you don’t want to consider how that will affect a child, consider what it will do to your mother. She’s dying, Jennifer. Is this the last thing you want her to know about you and your future?”

That was when he’d first mentioned adoption.

She’d recoiled in horror. Give up her baby? Give it to strangers? Spend the rest of her life wondering if her child was happy or sad, healthy or sick?

Ronald had urged her not to be selfish.

“It’s the right decision,” he’d said. “For your mother. For you. And for your baby. Trust me, I’ll take care of everything—and I’ll find your baby the world’s best parents, I promise.”

The decision had been agonizing, but finally she’d agreed that he was right.

Adoption was the only choice for her baby, for her mother, for herself.

Fortunately, she’d carried small. Her pregnancy hadn’t shown beneath the oversize sweaters and loose clothing that was all the rage that year.

And true to his word, the doctor had handled everything.

She’d delivered her child in Chicago Women’s Hospital at seven-thirty in the evening, January sixteenth. It had been a frigid night with wind-blown snow pattering against the windows.

She’d begged to see her baby. The doctor told her it would be a mistake.

“Let her go straight into her adoptive mother’s arms,” he said. “Let them have the joy of an immediate bon

d. Do that for your child. Let that act of kindness be your gift to her.”

Two days later, eyes still red and swollen with tears, she was at her mother’s bedside, answering questions about the flu that had kept her away while the doctor smiled his reassurance across the tubes that snaked in and out of her mother’s body.

“You did the right thing,” he’d said later.

Now, she began crying again, just as she had that night.

She had done the right thing. She knew it in her heart.

It was just that no one had ever told her how badly she’d ache for the child she’d never seen.

Sometimes, when she held Susanna in her arms, the pain was almost more than she could bear. How could Alexandra Campbell have turned her back on her daughter and her husband? Roarke’s former wife had had it all—a child to love, a man who was surely everything any woman could ever want.

A man whose heart still belonged to her.

Jennifer wiped her eyes.

There was only one way out. She’d known it for days. She had to leave the island before things went any further, before—

“Jennifer?”

Roarke’s voice, and his light rap at the door, startled her. Her gaze flew to the clock. He was earlier than usual, the earliest he’d been in days.

“Jen? Are you in there?”

She drew a steadying breath, then got to her feet. “Yes,” she called. “Just a second.”