The Baby Gamble (Texas Hold'em)

She crested the hill, triumphant, and hardly out of breath. Yes. She could do this. Could do anything she set her mind to.

She wasn’t a quitter. Didn’t buckle or give up. She was…

“How’s your temperature?”

Annie’s calf cramped. Taking her foot off the pedal, she glided down the opposite side of the hill, giving herself up to the breeze, the freedom. She could fly if she wanted to. And end up someplace else. Another time. Another life?

“Are you going to call Blake?”

Trust Becky to get right to the point, even if Annie didn’t acknowledge there was one.

“I don’t know.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t.”

Glancing over at her friend, Annie tried to read Becky’s mind as easily as the other woman read hers. And failed.

“Cole is accepting of this whole plan now and I need his support,” she said, curiously worried that Becky might think she shouldn’t do this. Which made no sense, because most of the time, Becky agreed about it. “You and he are the only people I have that I can call on a second’s notice. I can’t afford to lose either of you.”

“And Blake meets the criteria, I know,” Becky observed. “You know his genetic history. Don’t have to worry about someone lying to make a buck.”

“Maybe you think it shouldn’t matter,” Annie replied, half coasting, waving as a friend of her mother’s passed, going the opposite direction. “And maybe it shouldn’t, but it does.”

Becky slowed enough to look at Annie squarely as she said, “I understand that. I think it matters, too, considering the situation.”

“Dr. Snow said that the chances of manic depression, or bipolar disorder as they’re calling it now, being genetically passed on are about ten percent at the most.”

Becky nodded. “Genetic studies are relatively new in the whole psychiatric–bipolar field, but from what I’ve read, there are some chromosomal indications. However, there also tends to be a need of some kind of environmental trigger.”

“Blake and I had genetic counseling when we were married.”

“You never told me that.”

“I never told anyone.” She hadn’t wanted anyone to know that she might be as flawed as her father. She’d spent her entire life showing the world a girl, a woman, who fit society’s expectations of a perfectly normal, emotionally healthy human being.

“I’m assuming everything came out fine, or you wouldn’t even consider him.”

“We were a perfect match.” At the time, she’d thought the test results had been extra validation of the fact that she and Blake were such a good fit.

As it turned out, those results were the only perfect match between them.

“Of course, you could undergo the same kind of testing with any other candidate.”

She could. And go through it several times if she had to.

“I know I can trust Blake.”

“Which lessens the risk of the potential sperm donor backing out of the agreement at some future date.”

Right. And that was a big con

sideration.

“And you know him,” Becky added. “You know about the things that don’t show up on genetic testing.”

Still pedaling slowly, they turned onto another long country road, the second leg of the route that would take them back to town. “Think about it, Bec,” Annie said, letting go of the handle bars for a moment to sit upright. “The man lived through four years of captivity at the hands of crazy terrorists. He returns home to find the life he’d left completely gone. All of it. His business, his uncle, the kid he’d thought he had, his marriage…”

She had to stop. Catch her breath. Wait for emotion to pass.