CHAPTER TWO
Twelve hours earlier...
“OH, COME ON, screw the sperm bank.” Tina sighed with a dismissive flutter of her candy-apple acrylics. “Where’s the fun in that?”
Megan Scott tipped her glass, swallowing the last decadent drops of white-chocolate martini, then slumped deeper into the plush cushions of the lounge chair she’d taken up residence in some forty minutes before. Contemplating another drink, she did her best to ignore the incessant bickering her fellow bridesmaids had perfected through a lifetime of practice.
That it was her womb they were battling over was of as little consequence as the fact that Megan already had a plan and she was sticking to it.
“Um...the fun comes nine months later,” Jodie snipped back. “All tiny and new, wearing one of those little nursery beanies...and without any of the communicable side effects on offer with your plan...”
Tina’s plan, as Megan understood it, revolved around the T-shirt—hot off the silk screen and sporting the slogan GOT SPERM?—folded neatly on the cocktail table between them.
“I mean, seriously, who’s to say this total, random stranger enticed by your thirteen-dollar custom call for baby batter isn’t attempting to walk off the early stages of Ebola or worse? Casual, unprotected sex is stupid. And you’re trying to talk Megan into it. For God sake, why don’t you pick up a knife and stab her.”
Turning the glass upside down, Megan watched as a single last drop of martini goodness slid to the rim. Catching it with her tongue, she hoped the cocktail waitress would take her action as the plea for help it was and bring a refill. Fast.
“You’re such a prude. It’s pathetic.”
Eesh.
“What I am is too much of a lady to say what you are.”
“Girls, please,” Megan interjected before the volley of barbs got any more intense. “I totally appreciate you two looking out for me this way.” Okay, she was stretching the truth, but somehow her tongue let her get away with it. Honestly, she’d have rather been of such little interest they both got her name wrong all weekend and ignored her through dinner. But courtesy of her mother’s propensity to spill secrets, the family grapevine had guaranteed her Vegas arrival for cousin Gail’s wedding was met with a tempest of polarizing opinion regarding her decision to undergo artificial insemination in two months’ time. “Tina, I love—really love—this T-shirt, but the only place it’s going is into my scrapbook. And, Jodie, thank you for the support but—”
Jodie’s hand came up, cutting her off. “I don’t, really. Support what you’ve decided to do. You ought to wait to find a husband like the rest of us.”
Images of Barry and the two years they’d dated flashed through her mind, threatening to suck her into a vortex of churning emotions she wouldn’t allow herself to surrender to. Shame, embarrassment, anger and helpless frustration.
“Megan, I swear I didn’t even realize it myself. Not until right that minute...and suddenly I knew. I’d never stopped loving her.”
She wasn’t going there again, wasn’t wasting another precious second on the man who’d left for a conference talking about starting a family with her and then come home married to someone else.
Spine stiffening, she reined herself in.
She didn’t need Barry.
She didn’t need any man to have the child she’d always wanted—well, at least not for more than five minutes of quality time with a plastic cup.
Jodie sighed, a faraway look settling over her features. “Wait for your Prince Charming and you’ll have someone to share your special moment in the nursery, making it all the sweeter.”
“Well, actually,” Megan started, but Jodie wasn’t finished.
“You’re what’s wrong with our society. I mean, life isn’t about getting everything you want the instant you want it. Some things are worth waiting for. That said, in a toss-up between bedding down with the next patient zero or hitting the drive-thru for prescreened sperm...I’ll back the bank.”
Megan felt the telling wash of heat rush through her cheeks, but thinking about Gail and what kind of wedding she’d have if all three of her bridesmaids were at each other’s throats, she tamped it down. “Okay. Well, thank you...for your thoughts on the issue.”
Tina’s less-than-delicate snort sounded from beside her, and Megan craned her neck in search of their waitress. Only, rather than the leggy server with the no-nonsense attitude, she found her attention snared by the man walking past their table. Hand raised in casual greeting, mahogany eyes fixed on someone across the room, he was tall, dark and handsome in the most traditional sense. Broad and tapered, chiseled and cut. All clean lines and classic good looks. The balanced symmetry of him so flawless, it might have made him bland.
If not for his mouth.
This guy had one of those slanted smiles going on. The kind so lazy only half of it bothered to go to work. And yet, something about the ease of it suggested a near permanence on his face, while its stunted progress implied—well, she supposed that was part of the lure. It could really imply anything.
That smile was the kind women got lost in while trying to unravel its mystery.
Only, Megan was through trying to read signs and figure guys out. Which was why she pried her eyes loose from the table where this one had settled in with a friend or associate or whomever, and forced herself to refocus on Tina and Jodie...who were totally focused on her.
In tandem they leaned forward, resting on their elbows.
“Window-shopping the gene pool, Megan?” Tina asked with a knowing smirk as one pencil-thin brow pushed high. “See something you like?”
Jodie’s eyes narrowed. “His suit is too perfectly cut to be anything but made-to-measure. The suit, the watch, the links. This guy has quality catch written all over him. Megan, quick, cross your legs higher and give up some thigh. Tina, get his attention.”
Megan’s lips parted to protest, but Tina was a woman of action. “Wow, Megan, I knew you were a gymnast, but I didn’t think anyone’s legs could do that!”
Tina’s face took on an expression of benevolence and she crossed her arms, leaning back in her seat. “You’re welcome.”
Needles of tension prickled up and down her back as she struggled for her next breath. Eyes fixed on the tabletop in front of her, Megan held up her empty martini glass and prayed to the cocktail gods for a refill. When she thought she could manage more than a squeak, she cleared her throat and replied to anyone within listening distance, “I’m not a gymnast.”
At which point Tina and Jodie burst out laughing.
* * *
“It may not seem like it now, but you’re better off without her...”
Connor Reed shifted irritably in his chair, swirling the amber and ice of his scotch as he listened to Jeff Norton forfeit his status as one of the guys. “Noted.”
And
