A Mother's Secrets (Parent Portal 4)

She’d been only ten when her mother had died at forty, attempting to give birth to a son who had also died, and her father had left her with her grandparents and moved to LA.

He’d moved on by becoming someone else.

Some people dealt with death that way.

Others, like Dr. Jamison Howe—Jamie, he’d told her to call him—moved forward, creating a different life that included who he’d been.

Was that why the man’s request had hit her so deeply? Why his remark about her past had made her feel like lashing out and then wanting to retreat and be left alone?

Was he the antithesis of the man who’d hurt her so deeply, let her down so critically?

Was he asking her to help him do what she wished her father had found a way to do? Did he want her to help him take the man he’d been into the new life he must now create by using his wife’s choice of surrogate?

The owner of the small roofing company she’d hired waved from the rooftop as she pulled into her drive and then around back to the three-car garage. Parking in her usual spot in front of door one, she noticed the peeling paint on all three garage doors and then thought again about the quote she’d had done to have automatic doors put in.

She just was loath to change the garage.

And hated to see it in disrepair, too.

She could borrow money from the trust that she’d designated for The Parent Portal—but while the clinic was currently supporting itself qu

ite nicely, that trust money was the clinic’s security. She couldn’t put something she loved at risk.

Shrugging the problem aside, she gathered her brightly flowered leather bag—a knockoff she’d been excited to find at a street fair in LA—and made her way into the only home she’d ever really known via the back door.

It was her night to help out at the local women’s center. She was teaching a class in crocheting baby hats, which would be sent to neonatal units overseas. It was something Gram used to do—and taught her to do—before the older woman’s hands became so crippled by arthritis that she couldn’t work the needle anymore.

And after class, she and Olivia, another friend and volunteer, were going out for a late supper and glass of wine. Who had time to think about a widower asking her to have his baby?

“It was just another day at the office,” she told herself as she threw in a load of laundry, dusted the library slash Gramps’s den, freshened up for her evening out—and said it again when she was facing Olivia over the booth they’d chosen in their favorite eatery in downtown Marie Cove.

“I hear all kinds of things,” she continued, taking her second sip of wine in almost as many seconds. “Couples struggling to have babies are about the most emotional people in one of the most emotional situations. I never know what someone might do or say or suggest. By the time they get to me they’re often feeling desperate.”

In Jamison and Emily’s case, there hadn’t been anything making it impossible for them to get pregnant. They just hadn’t conceived.

Olivia’s dark-eyed gaze softened. “You want to tell me what’s going on?” They’d both ordered grilled chicken ranch salads, which should have been there already and weren’t. Christine looked around for their waitress.

Olivia insisted she was single because she just hadn’t met the right man yet. Christina wasn’t so sure. In the six years the woman had been her friend, she’d never known Olivia to have gone on any dates. Though she had a ton of friends, both male and female, and a full social schedule, the young doctor seemed content living alone in her upscale condominium, her mother her most frequent visitor.

“Chris?”

She only realized, as she heard her nickname, that she hadn’t answered Olivia’s question. And that it was too late for a casual shrug accompanied by “Nothing.”

“I didn’t quite finish dusting Gramps’s den,” she said. She only had to do one room a day in order for her to keep the big house relatively clean without help.

“Sheila’s ready to add you to her client list anytime you say the word,” Olivia said, naming her cleaning woman for about the umpteenth time since they’d known each other.

“And why didn’t you finish dusting the den?” Olivia called Christine’s gaze back to her.

“I have a client who wants me to have his baby for him.” There. It was out. Thank God.

“What!” Mouth hanging open, Olivia’s eyes were wide, brows raised as she stared at her friend. And then said, “Is he nuts? He thinks your clinic is some kind of freakish baby-making place, a drive-through? And you, personally? Maybe you should think about calling the cops. The guy sounds scary to me.”

As a pediatrician specializing in neonatal intensive care, Olivia had seen as many of the emotional family dynamics as Christine had. Probably more.

“No.” And suddenly she didn’t want to say any more. Jamison wasn’t a freak. His request, while bordering on inappropriate, given the circumstances, hadn’t been the least bit frightening. Or even, considering those same circumstances, out of place. “His wife died a year ago. They have frozen embryos. She thought I would be a good surrogate.”

“You know her?”