Fifteen
Prologue
T he man across the heavy, gleaming desk cleared his throat. “Rebecca, I know who fathered your child.”
Rebecca Holley blinked. When she’d been called away from her shift as an OR pediatric nurse to meet with Morgan Davis at the Children’s Connection facility adjacent to Portland General, she hadn’t known what to expect. Certainly not a statement of the obvious.
“Well, of course you know, Morgan.” Though the sperm donor had been anonymous to her, as director of the fertility clinic where she’d been inseminated, the man sitting opposite her had access to the complete records. Her palm slid across the lavender smock of her Minnie Mouse-printed scrubs to rest over her still-flat stomach. At seven weeks pregnant she’d yet to experience morning sickness, but the odd expression on Morgan’s face was beginning to make her queasy.
She cleared her throat. “What’s going on?”
“Rebecca…” His gaze dropped to the open folder on his desk and then moved back up to meet her eyes. “There’s no easy way to say this.”
Now her stomach mimicked a dying fish—flop, flop, flop. “The pregnancy test wasn’t wrong, was it?”
“No, no! You’re pregnant.” Leaning forward, he lowered his voice. “But we recently discovered a mix-up of some donor vials, so we went back and checked our recent insemination cases.”
A mix-up? Rebecca swallowed, trying to stay calm. He was telling her there had been a mix-up of donor sperm. As a nurse, she could see why the clinic would be concerned about an error, but how could such a thing affect her? She’d looked over the profiles of the donors and selected one with a working-class background—he’d spent time as an enlisted navy man like her dad—who was dark-haired and dark-eyed like herself.
But she wasn’t picky.
She let out a little laugh to cover her nervousness. “As long as the baby’s healthy, Morgan, it won’t matter to me—even if it’s as blond-haired as…Blondie.”
Morgan glanced down at the folder again and grimaced. “Your baby may very well look as you describe, Rebecca. We inseminated you with the sperm of a blond-haired man. A very wealthy, respected man…and one who didn’t provide his sperm for this purpose.”
“But that doesn’t matter, right?” Rebecca pressed her palm against her stomach. Don’t worry, Eisenhower. The nickname tumbled into her mind, and she almost smiled at the old family joke. It was the name Rebecca’s folks had used when referring to each of her four younger brothers and sisters before they were born. Apparently she was going to carry on the tradition.
Eisenhower, it’s going to be okay.
“Everything’s still anonymous, Morgan,” Rebecca continued. “I don’t know the man. I don’t know who the father is.”
Morgan shook his head. “But this man has a right to know he is going to be a father, Rebecca. Children’s Connection can’t keep this a secret from him.”
She found herself rising to her feet, her voice rising, too. “What? Why not?” Her protective instincts were quivering like antennae, though it was hard to wrap her mind around all the ramifications this “mix-up” might mean to her and her baby.
“It’s the ethical thing to do, Rebecca. You can see that.”
What she could see was her hopes and her dreams turning from something joyful to something dreadful. No, no! She couldn’t think like that. She wouldn’t. Her baby was still her baby. “Who is this man, Morgan? You let me talk to him and I’ll…I’ll straighten it out.” She’d explain what had happened and then assure him that she and Eisenhower expected nothing from him whatsoever.
Morgan frowned. “Rebecca—”
“You owe me, too, Morgan,” she said, her voice sounding thin and breathless. “You owe me the chance to talk to this man first.”
His frown deepened. “Rebecca—”
“Tell me who he is, Morgan.”
Morgan and his wife were in the process of adopting a baby and it must have given him sympathy for Rebecca’s fierce desperation because he glanced down at the file once more, then sighed. “The father of your baby is Trent Crosby, Rebecca. Trent Crosby, the Crosby Systems CEO.”
One
I t was past six o’clock when Rebecca steered her hatchback into a spot in the far corner of the Crosby Systems near-empty parking lot and turned off the ignition. Her fingers unclipped her Portland General Hospital name badge from her scrubs to stuff it into the purse on the passenger seat beside her.
Then she looked up at the rearview mirror, gazing at the reflection of the Crosby building’s gleaming glass front doors. “Okay, Eisenhower,” she said in a brisk voice. “It’s time for us to get this over with.”
Rebecca discovered that her legs didn’t share her can-do attitude, however, and that her behind was determined to remain glued to the vinyl driver’s seat. When she tried again to leave her car, again nothing happened.
“Eisenhower,” Rebecca muttered, “your mom’s no wimp. Honest.” But she was acting like one. She snuck another glance at the rearview mirror. It was the Crosby name that was spooking her. She knew about the family: they were powerful and they were rich. It didn’t help that she’d caught a glimpse of Trent himself at a charity auction last December, because beyond being powerful and rich he had something else intimidating going for him, too.
“You’re getting some seriously good-looking genes, Eisenhower,” she whispered. “No doubt about it.”
Maybe she shouldn’t have insisted on breaking the news herself, she thought. Maybe she should let Morgan tell him, man-to-man, and then she could wait for Mr. Rich, Powerful and Good-Looking to approach her.
But no! The last thing she wanted was to be at the emotional mercy of some man, right? Been there, done that, got the painful divorce.
So she forced her feet from the car, slammed shut the door, then reminded herself of the number of new situations she’d faced as a navy brat. Those eight moves in seventeen years had made her an expert at assessing new people and new surroundings and then finding a way to fit in—or at least fade into the woodwork. It was why she’d insisted on talking to Trent herself. She was practiced in making herself appear agreeable and non-threatening, certainly a big plus at a moment like this.
So there was absolutely no reason to hesitate. Squaring her shoulders, she faced the company entrance and…
…let her gaze wander to the freshly painted Dumpsters off to her right. She told herself she wasn’t putting off the inevitable. She told herself it was because her attention was snagged by several appliance-size, empty cardboard boxes sitting beside them. Boxes of the ideal size and condition for that playhouse she’d been promising to make for her favorite pediatric patient.
Rebecca glanced up at the cloud-filled sky. It had rained that morning and now it looked as if it might rain again. She could take the few moments necessary to flatten the boxes and stow them safely away in her car.
