coal in the pit of her barren belly.
“Payton, darling.” Helen stood and pulled her favorite daughter-in-law into a gentle embrace. “How are you feeling, love?”
Payton pushed an auburn curl off her forehead, then beamed and rested her hands on her swollen belly. “I’ve never felt better.”
Helen held her at arm’s length, taking in her entire being. “It shows. You are positively radiant.”
Payton preened. “I always feel my best when I’m pregnant.”
Of course she did.
Lucky for her since she was always pregnant. Resentment flared inside Olivia. It seemed like Payton and Grant produced a child to commemorate each wedding anniversary.
“Here, sit, sit. Next to me. Get off your feet.” Helen returned to her seat on the sofa and patted the cushion beside her.
“Well, Mom, we have been in the car all morning.” She braced her right hand on the small of her back, which made her stomach stick out all the more. “But I guess I could sit a while longer while we catch up.”
“You know, if you keep giving me grandchildren at this rate, I’m going to have to move you up here to Stanhope Manor so that there’s a place big enough to house all of you under one roof. Jamison doesn’t seem to have any interest in the place.”
Helen shot a pointed look at her son as Payton planted herself next to her mother-in-law.
“It would be wonderful to live with you up here. If you keep talking like that, we just might take you up on it.”
Olivia glanced at Jamison, who was wearing an over-my-dead-body look on his face. She had a hunch that his sour expression wasn’t simply a remnant of his mother’s earlier indelicate blurting, but had more to do with the threat of his younger brother’s status-hungry wife bumping him out of his birthright with her pregnant belly.
Maybe, for once, Payton’s selfish antics could actually help Olivia by making Jamison change his mind about holding off on having children. Even so, it seemed unlikely that an army of children could keep Helen at bay if they moved in with her.
Payton must have sensed Olivia staring because she smiled up at Jamison and Olivia and said, “It’s been a long time. How are the two of you?”
They made small talk for a few moments until Grant entered with an infant seat in one hand, a toddler on the opposite hip and their oldest boy trailing behind him. Grant flashed his trademark toothy, white Mallory smile, greeting everyone as he walked over to kiss his mother’s cheek.
Grant had been a latecomer to politics, winning a New Hampshire congressional seat just last year. He and Jamison had always been competitive, but when it came to politics, there was an unwritten agreement that Jamison was the one who would make a bid for the White House. After he’d had his go, then, if Grant was game, it was all his.
Olivia wondered if the same accord applied to Stanhope Manor or if Helen would seriously offer the home to Grant and Payton—even as a strategic move to force Jamison and Olivia’s hand. On top of everything else, the thought was more than Olivia could deal with. So she pushed it out of her mind, vowing only to worry about it if and when the crisis came up.
“Merry Christmas, son,” Helen said to Grant. “And where’s your nanny? Surely you didn’t give her this week off? Now more than ever your wife needs the extra hands to help her.”
Grant and Payton had imported a woman named Ingrid from Sweden to help with the kids. Payton took pride in flaunting her Swedish nanny, so it was a surprise when Grant said, “She went home for the holidays.”
Helen shot Payton an alarmed glance. “Oh, you poor dear. However will you manage?”
Olivia was delighted to fall off of Helen’s radar as Payton dutifully played the martyred mommy, regaling her audience with details of how it would indeed be a challenge, but that she would somehow get by.
Anger and shame rose in Olivia’s throat like bile, as she moved as far away from Payton as possible.
As the day progressed, Helen wasn’t the only one driving the baby train. Payton and her brood—and pregnant belly—drew inevitable comparisons and incessant questions from friends and relatives about why Jamison and Olivia weren’t keeping up with his younger brothers.
If Olivia had been in a certain frame of mind, she would’ve taken offense at their questions. Asking a couple about when they were going to have a baby was not so far off from quizzing them about their sex life. It was a private matter. Didn’t people understand that?
Obviously it took sex for pregnancy to happen.
Unless the couple went the in vitro route, as Jamison and Olivia well knew. They’d tried to conceive the usual way, and when that failed, they’d opted for in vitro.
The hormones to help Olivia produce more eggs for harvesting had wreaked havoc with her physical well-being, causing headaches and mood swings and overall malaise. She and Jamison had ended up fighting, so much so that they’d decided to separate.
The thought of how something as wonderful as having a baby could create such turmoil in a marriage was beyond Olivia.
She wished Jamison could understand it was the side effects of the hormones that had caused their problems. Not the possibility that their marriage was unstable. And certainly not the act of having a baby and building their family. Looking at it rationally, she could understand his hesitation. She just wished he could believe that it would be different when they tried again.
Because it would be.
This time she knew what to expect. This time she would be prepared.
A new doctor had recently joined the Armstrong Fertility Institute. Chance Demetrios was one of the leading fertility research specialists in the world. Her brother Paul had hired him away from a teaching hospital in San Francisco. Olivia had seen him once, just before she and Jamison decided on the trial separation, and she hadn’t followed up when he’d said there was a slim chance she could get pregnant. Slim, but a chance nonetheless. Since the pain of their separation was so fresh, Olivia’s mindset made her question the point of following up if her husband wasn’t on board.
But now, especially as she watched Payton, Olivia was looking at things differently. Suddenly, there was an urgency. There was no time to waste. Maybe it was Jamison’s sudden hesitation, but Olivia was feeling her full twenty-nine years. She certainly wasn’t getting any younger. Maybe, if Jamison wasn’t willing to cooperate, it was time to take maters into her own hands—even if it meant getting pregnant without her husband’s blessing.
After all, once she was carrying his child, he’d come around.
Wouldn’t he?
Jamison retreated into the library with his glass of wine. As a kid, he’d always enjoyed the solitude of the room—the built-in mahogany bookcases and never-ending stacks of books felt like comfortable old friends. When life overwhelmed him or he had a problem that needed sorting out, he’d come here, grab a book and sit in the window seat. Sometimes he’d lose himself in a classic. More often than not, he’d lose himself in his thoughts as he gazed at the panoramic view of the mountains that stretched like a grand painting framed by the horizon of the backyard.
