Her Motherhood Wish (Parent Portal 3)

“Biologically formed from your sperm, yes.”

Right. Right. He got the designation. He might be less schooled than a lot of people, but he was not a stupid man.

“Then please give her my number,” he said. And then added. “But please tell her to call between six and ten tonight, if that’s possible. After five, at any rate.”

No way was he having a conversation about his sperm at work. Nor was he going to miss a day of it. He hadn’t, ever, and wasn’t going to start.

But that didn’t stop him from thinking about the damned situation all day long. He might not vividly recall everything he’d documented in that file of his, but he knew for certain he’d been completely honest. That was how he rolled.

So, what, had she missed the education part? The career page? Was she hoping to find out he’d made more of himself in the time since he’d allowed his little fish to be frozen?

Maybe she just wanted to get a firsthand, in-person peek at what her kid could turn out to look like.

Yeah, and that didn’t sound like an urgent matter.

More likely the woman was having second thoughts now that she was really pregnant. Though what she thought he could do about that, he didn’t know.

Nah, no one would spend all that money, put herself through the insemination process, just to change her mind.

As the afternoon wore on, he wondered what she looked like. Who she was.

Wondered if she’d be anywhere near the strong but still gentle and loving mother who’d given birth to him and Peter. Raising two headstrong boys on her own after their father died of a heart attack when Wood was five.

By quitting time, he’d run out of distractions. She’d be calling soon about an urgent matter. And he hoped to God it wasn’t to tell him that there was something wrong with her baby.

That his sperm had given her a less-than-healthy child.

Because he had no idea how to fix something like that.

Chapter Two

She had a tiny baby bump. Her sonogram included a video with gray shadows of moving arms and legs. Two healthy heartbeats. Hers and the baby’s.

She’d only told the key players in her life—the partners in her law firm, her mom and stepdad, some friends—that she was pregnant.

Cassie Thompson was going to have a baby. She was not going to let one dark spot on a piece of film control her life. Or stop her life. It might change her existence, but, as with anything, she’d deal with change as it happened.

She’d known something was wrong. The look on the ultrasound technician’s face had changed from smiling and happy to neutral, her voice changing after the celebratory words as they found the heartbeat. Her morphing tone, which became more professional as she pointed out other body parts, had been telling. The woman had seen something on that screen and hadn’t been at liberty to verbalize what it might represent.

Okay, so there’d been a few minutes the day before, after the ultrasound, when she’d first heard the doctor tell her that there was a shadow on the baby’s brain, indicating a possible blood abnormality, that Cassie had fallen apart. Then panicked. But she’d gotten a hold of herself. Called back to ask questions. And then spent the night as a single, capable, in-control thirty-four-year-old corporate lawyer would—researching every piece of writing on fetal blood disorders she could find so that she had every base covered. Taking a break or two to hug the teddy bear she’d purchased in celebration on her way home from the clinic the day she’d been inseminated. And to cry.

By morning she’d been cried out, at least temporarily, and had a list of things to do. Doctors to call, specialists in neonatal hematology, tests to request. All of that went beyond the amniocentesis her doctor had already scheduled for that next week and calling Christine Elliott at an ungodly hour to arrange to contact her sperm donor. She’d once heard the woman say she’d been in her office since six in the morning, had taken a chance, would have left a message, but got lucky and spoke with the director on her first try. The stars were aligning.

By five that first Thursday afternoon in June, on her way from work to the home she owned in a gated community on a small private stretch of the beach just outside Marie Cove city limits, she was regressing back to the day before, the moments when she’d spoken with the doctor. She needed to be taking charge. Doing something productive.

When bad things happened, when times were hard, you got up out of bed just like every other day and went about your work. You just kept going. Doing. Working. The rest would work itself out, or not, just the same. Her daddy had never said those words to her, maybe hadn’t had the wherewithal to put it just like that, but his steady, reliable actions had shown her. When Cassie’s mother had told him she was leaving him, he’d blinked. And gone to work.

Cassie had been four at the time, but she still remembered that.

The day her mother had remarried—a finance broker with a successful career—Cassie had begged a family friend to leave the second the ceremony was over so she could get to her father, with whom she’d be staying during the honeymoon. She’d been eight and worried sick about him. She’d found him in his yard, building a shed. And she’d spent the rest of that weekend building right there with him. Probably getting in his way more than anything, she’d realized years later, but at the time, he’d made her feel as though she was a huge help.

She hoped, in some fashion, she had been.

Her sperm donor, A203B4, had a name now. Woodrow Alexander. He’d said she could call anytime after five. Five-oh-three was after five.

She glanced at the screen on her dash, at the button on her steering wheel that she could push to command the car’s system to make the call.

He’d requested that she wait until after six.