The Baby Arrangement (The Daycare Chronicles 3)

“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.