The Baby Arrangement (The Daycare Chronicles 3)

“I do.” He really did. “When I’m ready to have a family of my own, I know full well I can do so. I’ll meet a woman, the desire will be there and I’ll have my family. I’m not there yet. But you’re ready to have your family, and I can help ensure that you have the best chance at doing so happily.” He didn’t waver as he met her eye to eye. The plan made perfect sense.

“I need your support during the pregnancy more than I need the sperm,” she said. “Sperm I can buy. But you’re right, it’s going to be hard. I’ve done all the reading, too, and giving birth after SIDS is hard. Your head plays with you, makes you afraid what happened before can happen again. I blame myself, like my body is broken somehow because it produced a child with a faulty breath regulator. What I was hoping to have from you was the common sense reminders that calm my fears.”

“And you’ll have them.”

“It would be much easier for you to give them with more detachment,” she said, the steady look in her eye and the calm tone of her voice making him listen to her. “Having no intimate involvement will better ensure you getting through this with the least amount of discomfort. You know, if the child isn’t yours...”

“He won’t be mine in an emotional or legal sense,” he said immediately.

She was making a point. He got it. When the kid was born, wouldn’t Braden need a second chance, too?

He shook his head, adjusted his baitless pole. “I’m giving away my sperm, Mal, not becoming a father.” The designation was key. “It’s all in how you process it.”

But if she truly didn’t want his biological component in her child...if, in spite of the testing he’d had done, she still thought his genes were partially to blame for what had happened, then he wouldn’t force her. Couldn’t force her. And he didn’t even want to try. He just wanted this to work out for her. Most of the process was completely out of his control, except for this one small area where he could possibly positively affect her chances.

“Can I think about it?”

Her question came right when he was giving up.

“Of course.”

“On the deck? In the sun?” She was already crawling her way off the bow, giving him too good a view of her ass as she did so.

Way too good.

Hard in the wrong place, he set about baiting his line. It was time to do some real fishing. And not for the things he couldn’t have. Or things that no longer existed.

* * *

Weak in the knees, Mallory made it back to her lounger without incident. Sinking into the woven chair, she kept on her sunglasses just in case Braden was looking. And she refrained from wiping the tears from her cheeks for the same reason.

She’d just been given a second chance. From the minute she’d met her ex-husband she’d known that she’d wanted him to be the father of her biological family. To someone who’d grown up an orphaned foster kid, whose own mother hadn’t even known who’d fathered her, biology was important.

So important.

As important as Braden Harris was to her.

She couldn’t let him do this. Couldn’t use him this way. It was his guilt playing with him. She knew that.

Just as she knew that keeping your baby in your room was a key SIDS preventative. She’d studied them all, from the Mayo Clinic to the American Academy of Pediatrics and every blog or message board she could find in between:

Place baby on back, not side or stomach.

Remove all fluffy bedding.

Keep crib as bare as possible.

No prenatal smoking.

Good prenatal care.

Pacifier at night after four weeks of age.

Breastfeeding.

And baby in your own room for a minimum of six months, better if it was twelve.

Not in your bed but in your room. It had to do with waking more easily, among other things. Logic then followed that if she’d been home that night Tucker would have been in his smaller crib in their room, where he’d been every night since his birth. She’d have been there, too. Which could have prevented SIDS.