A Mother's Secrets (Parent Portal 4)

Good. She nodded. Okay then, they were fine.

“The struggle I was referring to has to do with you.”

Not fine? They weren’t done here. “Me? Am I doing something that displeases you? If so, you definitely need to speak up. That’s why we have the contract, to protect both sides. If you have a problem...”

His head shake stopped her words.

“You aren’t going to get something like this to fit neatly into a contract,” he told her. “I’m just...you’re carrying my child...you went from a virtual stranger to...the woman carrying my child. There are feelings involved with that...and...and... God, I feel like a first-class ass, and...”

She recognized guilt when she heard it. Her heart softened. Opened a bit more.

“Jamie. It’s fine,” she told him, wanting to help him feel better. “I promise you it’s perfectly natural that you’d feel some resentment toward me. Emily, your wife, the woman you’ve loved since you were eight, should be carrying this child. Not me. You can’t help but have a part of you resent that...”

There were some things you just couldn’t fix. But you could make them more bearable by sitting with those who were suffering. Offering comfort.

“It’s not resentment I’m feeling.” He was still standing straight. The intensity of his gaze hadn’t lessened in the least.

“It’s not?”

“No.”

Her mouth was dry. She no longer wanted to continue the conversation.

“I’m finding myself attracted to you,” he said. “We hardly know each other. But...you’re carrying my child. The most important part of me is inside you, dependent upon you, and...like I said, I’m a first-class ass.”

She shook her head again, tried to shore up the walls around her feelings. “It’s just a product of the situation,” she told him. Knowing that, above all else, to keep things professional, ethical, safe, she could not allow her own feelings to come into the situation.

She’d be betraying his trust if she did so.

And if she acted unprofessionally, she could do damage to the clinic’s reputation as well.

“A form of transference, and completely understandable,” she said, with a little too much breathlessness for her liking, as the words came to her. “Certainly nothing to beat yourself up about,” she added, finding strength from within to give them both a solid piece of advice.

“You’re not an ass, Jamie. You’re a decent man who’s owned up to something that you could have just kept secret. Which makes this situation safer for both of us. What we’re doing here is a beautiful thing, a miracle, really, but with every great thing there’s a shadow side, too. By nature of all that’s involved, pregnancy, even a planned and traditional one, generates a lot of varying emotion. Nothing’s free. We’ll get through this...”

The words were powerful. She felt them. Saw his face relax and allowed relief to flow through her as he grinned. Nodded.

“I’m sure you’re right,” he said as he turned off the office lights and locked the door behind him.

They walked silently, side by side, several inches between them, out to the parking lot.

He stopped by her car, and she turned to ask him when he wanted to meet again.

“I do see real truth in what you said,” he told her, just inches away, his gaze locked with hers as though he had some otherworldly mesmerizing power. “But you are a beautiful woman, Christine. I’d notice you whether you were carrying my baby or not.”

Notice her. Like he probably noticed most women of an appropriate age, as men did.

“Jamie...”

He held up a hand. “Don’t worry, I’m not hitting on you. I’m just keeping it all out in the open, as you said.”

He could have been hitting on her. They were alone in a deserted parking lot with the sun setting romantically behind them.

But he wasn’t. She believed him. One hundred percent.

And that didn’t stop her body from wishing that he had been.

That he could be.