herself. She looked at the toddlers still perched, albeit precariously, on their father’s lap. Perfect little Ariel, and Alisha with her tiny curled cowlick. She saw Beth—and herself. The desire to hold them, to be a part of that private family unit, was so strong that it scared her to death.
“You walked out on me ten years ago, Sloan,” she said. Keep your mind on the things you can have. And off the things you can’t have. “You have no right to come back now just because you don’t know how to live with the consequences of your actions.”
“It was my senior year, Ellie—I knew I was going to be busy.” He stood, one baby on each hip. The girls, as though sensing the tension in the room, sat silently, their little faces turned toward their father. “And I know I don’t have the right to ask for your help. But this isn’t for me,” he continued. “It’s for them.”
Looking down at his daughters, Sloan swallowed. “You’re a twin, Ellie. You work with babies every day. You’re smart. And you were always able to see inside me. To help me see.”
He wasn’t being fair. Ellie swallowed, too, needing to run. She felt another panic attack coming on. Two in two days.
“You wouldn’t just come in and do what needed to be done, Ellie. You’d enable me to do it myself.” He was still holding her gaze, reaching inside her to the young girl only he’d ever known existed.
“No.” She stood, backed up. She just had to find the strength to turn away, then the interview would be over.
“I need you.”
She shook her head.
“They need you.”
As if on cue, both girls looked up curiously at Ellie. She started to shake; her hands and feet were tingling. She had to make him go.
“Those children are not my responsibility, Sloan. I can’t help you.”
Ellie’s relief when Sloan finally walked away lasted only long enough for her to recognize the woman lurking outside her open office door. Tattle Today TV reporter Chelsea Markum had heard every word.
Her stomach knotted painfully, and Ellie wondered just how big a price she was going to pay for sending Sloan away.
She wished it were only the television reporter she cared about.
CHAPTER THREE
“GOT A MINUTE?”
Ellie didn’t even bother looking up. “Go away, Chelsea.”
“Who was that man who just left here looking like his mother had died?” the reported asked, plopping down in the seat Sloan had just vacated.
“No one.”
“You sounded pretty upset for talking to no one,” Chelsea said.
Glancing up from the needle codes she was trying desperately to concentrate on, Ellie stared at the auburn-haired reporter. Only a year or two older than herself, Chelsea had the eyes of an old woman. A green-eyed avaricious old woman. And unfortunately they were pinned on Ellie.
“When are you going to give up and go away?” Ellie asked, too weary to deal with the Chelseas of the world today. The woman had been hounding the clinic since baby Cody had made his debut. And when she couldn’t get fresh leads on the baby, she turned her roving eye on Ellie, looking for a way to prove the charges of nepotism.
“Sounded like there might be some more abandonment going on.”
Chelsea would stop at nothing, it seemed, to get a story. To validate her existence, Ellie thought nastily.
“Not by anyone here,” Ellie hated herself for rising to Chelsea’s bait. “If you want their story, you’ll have to go see their mother in New York.”
“Still, it did sound as though you knew the man rather well, and that he wanted something from you.”
Ellie bit her tongue.
“That’s got to be the most gorgeous man ever to step foot in your office,” Chelsea baited her, refusing to give up.
“He’s a friend from high school,” Ellie said, exasperated. “Period.”
Crossing one shapely leg over the other, Chelsea nodded, letting the subject drop. “Heard from any of your brothers lately?” she asked.
“I see two of them right here every day,” Ellie replied, relaxing a bit as Chelsea reverted to the cat-and-mouse game the two of them had been playing for the past month.
“What about the third—Jake, isn’t it?”
Ellie smiled. “Haven’t heard from him.”
Chelsea sat forward, elbows on her knees. “So who do you think fathered that poor baby?” she asked, eyes intent.
If the reporter hadn’t had her teeth sunk so fiercely into Ellie, Ellie would almost have admired her. Chelsea was intelligent. Beautiful. And tenacious. She didn’t give up. Ellie liked that in a person.
But her teeth were snapping at Ellie—and at the helpless, innocent child Ellie had spent half the night holding. Suddenly the game had changed. The rules were different. It wasn’t just the clinic’s reputation, the family’s reputation that was at stake.
“You stay away from that baby, Chelsea Markum. He’s an innocent child whose life you could permanently affect by your purely fictional innuendoes.”
Blinking in surprise, Chelsea sat back, then stood up. “I’m just looking for the truth, Ellie. I have no desire to hurt the kid.”
“Right.” Ellie stood, too, signaling an end to the unwanted meeting. “Stay out of our lives, Chelsea.”
“I’m not the one who chose to live such a public life, Ms. Ellie Administrator Maitland. Maybe you better think about that one.”
The reporter’s last shot hit Ellie in a sore spot she’d been nursing since she was a child. It had been one of the biggest ironies of her life to be born into the socially prominent Maitland clan. She’d never had the chance to just be the plain Jane she really was. From the moment she was born, she’d had the family reputation to live up to. And it hadn’t taken the young Ellie long to figure out that, for her, that was an impossible task.
Her own goals were another story. They were something she could—and did—live up to. Something she could count on. Her goals were realistic, and meeting them brought her peace, if nothing else.
ELLIE WAS JUST PACKING UP for the day, earlier than usual since this was her night at the university, when she had another visitor. A welcome one.
“You in a hurry?” her older sister Abby asked, leaning against the door frame of Ellie’s office.
“A little,” Ellie told her, but she’d take time, anyway. She could always be a minute or two late for the economics class. She’d read a couple of chapters ahead, anyway.
“Was that Sloan Cassidy I saw leaving earlier
