the best way to not burst into tears was to think happy thoughts.
He was wearing one of her favorite Braden ensembles. Dark grey suit with just a hint of lighter threading, the striped shirt in grey, black and white with the maroon tie. At six-two, with that lush, thick, dark hair and those baby blue eyes, Braden could easily have been voted sexiest man alive.
“No, I haven’t met someone,” she said after the silence between them had stretched a bit too long. “I’d have told you if I had. You know that.”
There were some things they counted on from each other. Telling him if she was moving on was one of them.
Which was probably why he was always informing her when he was seeing someone. He hadn’t ever seemed to get to the point of seriously moving on, though. He dated, he fizzled, he dated, he fizzled.
His frown brought back a wave of tension. “I don’t understand, then.”
“I’m going to be artificially inseminated,” she told him. And then, before he could voice an opinion of any kind, she barged full force ahead with the spiel she’d practiced in bed the night before and in the car on the way over, too.
“With the advance in research and technology, and with changing lifestyles, more women than ever are using sperm banks to have children. There’s even an acronym for us, SMC, Single Moms by Choice,” she said—not at all what she’d practiced. “I’ve already had all of the exams and testing done. I’m using a facility in Marie Cove, forty-five minutes south of LA. They’re fertility specialists, not a sperm bank. I met with the owner when I was looking at places and I just really like her. I got a good feeling when I was there.
“It could take up to six tries, and I’m prepared for that, financially and emotionally,” she continued, speaking to the man she knew him to be—one who dealt with facts, with reality, and shied away from the emotional aspects of being alive.
She didn’t blame him. She’d met his mother and his sister many times. She had sat next to him through countless phone calls where they’d tried to get him to side with them against whoever they felt had slighted them, from something as menial as someone using a hurtful tone of voice against one or the other of them, or their claim that someone had been deliberately manipulative or demeaning. As the only male influence in their home growing up, he’d spent his youth learning how to bypass the drama to get to the truth of whatever might need attention.
“Way back in the ’80s, more than 30,000 children were born as a result of donors,” she told him. “There hasn’t been any numerical research collated since then as there’s no one body of collation, no database. But judging by the sheer volume of clinics today and the number of clients they have, you can logically guesstimate that the number of births has risen well into the hundreds of thousands.”
She’d gotten out of bed the night before, in the middle of preparing her spiel, to do that particular research. For him. She really wanted him to be okay with her choice.
He was still sipping beer. Watching her.
“I’m going to do this, whether you approve or not,” she told him. “I’d love your support. It means a lot to me.” She paused, sipped her wine and hoped dinner didn’t come for a while because her stomach was in knots. “It means a whole lot to me,” she added. “But my decision is made.”
Because she’d had to be certain that she was doing the right thing for her life. She hadn’t even told Tamara yet. But she was fairly certain her friend from grief counseling would approve. Though Braden hardly knew the woman who’d lost four babies—three to early term miscarriages and one a viable birth but too premature to sustain life—Mallory felt as though she and the other woman were soul mates in a lot of ways.
His expression gave away very little. He was studying her.
Was he trying to figure out how to diffuse this emotionally wracked tangent she was on?
She watched him back, knowing her last thought wasn’t fair. Not to either of them. Braden had always shown her the utmost respect when it came to her life choices. And he had often times sought her advice when it came to his own matters. Still did.
Their waitress stopped to say their dinners were almost ready and asked if he’d like another beer. He nodded. Her wine glass was still more than half full.
“Say something,” she told him when the waitress walked away.
“There’s a light in your eyes I haven’t seen in...well, too long.”
She smiled. “I’ve found my future,” she told him softly.
Then he shook his head. And she braced herself. She wanted his support, so she had to listen to his concerns. It wasn’t like there weren’t any. She had them, too. She readied her answers as their waitress delivered his beer.
“Being a single parent, Mal, having to work and take care of a child all on your own... We were exhausted when there were two of us.”
Meeting his gaze, she took him on.
“I grew up with a single mom who not only worked and tended to me but regularly opened our home to other children, as well. Troubled children.”
He knew her history, starting with the high-end prostitute mother who’d tried to keep her but who’d eventually realized what her life was going to do to her daughter and had given her up. Mallory had been almost three then. She didn’t remember the woman who’d later died of AIDS, contracted after Mallory’s birth. She remembered having to be tested, though, just to make certain she wasn’t carrying the HIV virus.
By the time Mallory went in the system she’d been too old to be immediately grabbed up like a newborn. There’d been a couple who’d wanted her, though. And after almost a year in the courts while living in their home as their foster child, they’d gotten pregnant on their own and changed their mind about the adoption.
She remembered them.
And then Sally had come into her life. A social worker in another county, who had her own professional caseload of children, Sally was also a licensed foster parent in the county where Mallory had been living. She’d taken Mallory in and kept her until she’d gone off to college. There’d been children in and out of their home during the entire time she’d been growing up, but she’d been the only permanent foster Sally had had. The other kids had been like a shared project between them, with the two of them doing what they could to love the foster children during the time they were in their home.
Mallory had always loved caring for kids. Nurturing came naturally to her. She was meant to be a mother.
“Have you talked to Sally about this?” Braden asked. He’d met the woman a couple of times, but she’d retired, moved to Florida, met a man and married—her first marriage, late in life. He had a big family that she’d taken on as readily as she’d taken in all those children over the years.
“Not yet,” she said. “But I’ll let her know at some point. You know she’s going to tell me to adopt, rather than birth, and while you’d think, in my position, having grown up as I did, that I’d be looking in that direction, I just want a biological family of my own.”
“So find a man to share it with you.”
Her heart lurched. And quieted. She shook
