all this.”
“Yeah, me, too,” Ethan agreed, because he was sure that once his own astonishment and excitement abated, he wouldn’t have to worry about being attracted to her or overwhelmed with the joy of becoming a father. His common sense and logic would return and he would be just fine.
But when he again caught her gaze, he saw sadness in her eyes and suddenly recognized that while he was fighting the desire to rejoice over getting a child she was being forced to adjust to having to share her child. From the pain in her eyes it was a devastating blow.
Again he remembered her as she was when she worked with him. Shy. Sweet. Vulnerable. Guilt tightened his chest and made him draw a deep breath.
“I know this has been an awful day for you. I don’t feel right leaving you by yourself.”
“I’m not going to be by myself. I have friends coming over in a few minutes,” she said, backing away from him. “Since I got pregnant, we’ve made Friday night our poker night.”
“Poker?”
The question in his voice must have amused her, because she smiled. “What? You think women don’t like to gamble a little or get together for a weekly gossip session?”
He wished she hadn’t told him she liked to gamble, but in some ways he was glad she had because it brought him back to earth with a hard thump. He didn’t know how much she had changed in the past two years. She might not have had any part in stealing his property, but now that she knew he was the father of her baby it wasn’t a stretch to realize she would soon see she could make this work in her favor.
Before Ethan had a chance to say anything, there was a quick knock at the door. Her guests didn’t wait for an invitation to enter, and Ethan had to jump out of the way as the women he assumed were her poker pals entered around him. Redheaded twins, a blonde and a brunette made up the quartet. Each of the women was in her early twenties. All wore simple jeans and colorful T-shirts.
“Hi, Savannah!”
“Hi.” She paused, glanced at Ethan and drew a quick breath. “This is Ethan McKenzie. Ethan, these are my friends, Andi, Mandi, Becki and Lindsay.”
Ethan said, “How do you do?”
“How do you do…?”
Four pair of eyes eagerly assessing him might have cowed another man, but Ethan held their gazes steadily, making his own quick assessment of things. Just from the cornered expression on the face of the brunette, Ethan knew her poker buddies weren’t simply here for a night of playing cards. He would bet his last dime they came here every Friday night more to check up on Savannah than to gamble and they would take care of her. The smartest thing for him to do would be to get the hell out of here and regroup before he said or did something that he regretted, if only out of compassion for the woman carrying his child.
His child.
He almost couldn’t believe he was about to have a baby. The knowledge overwhelmed him. Took his breath. Which was exactly why he had to be careful. The last time he let an emotion control him, it cost him much more than he could afford to risk.
He looked at Savannah and forced himself to see her objectively, honestly and through the filter of unhappy possibilities. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
The second he was out the door, Savannah turned to her four friends. Protectively placing her palm on her stomach, she said, “I’m in big trouble.”
“What?” Becki, one of the twins, groaned. “Please don’t tell me that good-looking guy is suing you or something.”
“Or something,” Savannah said, leading her friends into the living room, where they sat on the sofa and round-backed chairs, tucking their feet beneath them and getting comfortable, though they continued to stare at Savannah with rapt attention.
“He’s the father of this baby,” Savannah said, then looked from blond-haired, blue-eyed Lindsay, to the red-haired twins Mandi and Becki, to dark-haired, dark-eyed Andi. “I didn’t know it. He didn’t know it. But Barry did. Ethan had sperm cryogenically frozen for some reason when he was married. Apparently, my fear about getting a good father for the baby led Barry to search the banks of people who had sperm stored but weren’t donors. When he found Ethan’s name he knew we had our father because we knew Ethan to be a good man since I had worked with him. So Barry forged Ethan’s signature to get his sample mainstreamed into the donor banks to be used for my pregnancy.”
“Oh, boy,” Mandi said slowly, her blue eyes widening with each word.
“Yeah, oh, boy.”
“So, is this guy pressing charges?” Lindsay demanded.
Savannah licked her lips. “Not if I marry him.”
“You’re kidding!” Becki gasped, flopping back on her chair as if flabbergasted.
“It gets worse. His father is…”
“Parker McKenzie,” Andi said. A reporter who was part of a team that covered the Washington beat for several newspapers, Andi knew everybody on Capitol Hill. She had facts at her disposal that the general public wouldn’t have. She also knew backgrounds that frequently got forgotten. “He’s a senator who had to live down the pasts of a starlet mother and drug-using pro-football player father. His son’s sperm theft would be the final embarrassment of his career. But his son’s marriage, even a hasty marriage, would go virtually unnoticed.”
“That’s approximately what Ethan said,” Savannah confirmed.
“He’s right,” Andi said, combing her fingers through the mop of thick, blunt cut sable hair that fell to her shoulders. “A marriage would make this ‘problem’ a nonissue.”
“So you think I should marry him?”
“I don’t know what you should do—” Andi began.
“Marrying him virtually guarantees legal standing in a custody suit,” Mandi interrupted.
“He doesn’t need to marry her to get legal standing,” Lindsay said, as all eyes turned to the law student. “He has legal standing. He is the baby’s father. Actually, it’s probably more documented than if you had gotten pregnant because you were lovers. He doesn’t even need DNA tests. He has papers that prove his sperm created your baby.”
All eyes then turned to Savannah. “Does he have papers?” Becki asked.
“The Georgia State Police told me Barry forged Ethan’s signature to mainstream his sperm for use by the clinic. So, that’s one paper. They also had search warrants that let them roam the entire bed-and-breakfast looking for clues of where Barry might be. Since police don’t get search warrants from judges without a good reason, I’m assuming it’s all documented somewhere and that’s why Barry went into hiding.”
Becki caught Savannah’s gaze. “Do you know where Barry is?”
Savannah shook her head. “No. All I know is he called me and told me that he was leaving for a new job in Canada. Though he avoided telling me where the job was, I knew something was wrong. Then eight hours after he called, the police
