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“Well, yeah. I guess I am. But sometimes, it’s almost eerie, the resemblance between you and Trev.”
He didn’t say anything.
She went on, “I always kind of hoped to meet him. But he was a confidential donor. I left permission that he could contact me if he ever changed his mind. He didn’t. Not so far, anyway—and that reminds me. I need to change my contact information with Secure Choice—that’s the clinic I used, Secure Choice Cryobank.” She waited for his response, thinking of his possessiveness concerning Trev—and also a little worried about the dreamy way she’d spoken of a man she’d never met.
Was he jealous? Would he try to talk her out of keeping her information current, want her to make it more difficult for the donor to get in touch should he ever decide he wanted to?
But then Rule only reached for her again. He eased his arm under her nape and drew her into him, bringing her to rest against his warm, hard chest. “Go to sleep.”
She closed her eyes and let the steady, even sound of his heartbeat lull her.
Of course he’d never been a sperm donor. She knew what a donor went through. She’d researched the whole process when she decided on artificial insemination. It wasn’t just a matter of doing the happy hand in a cup.
A man went through all kinds of testing before he could become a donor. Only a small percentage of applicants were accepted. A man had to donate weekly, at least, and he couldn’t have sex for two days before each donation. He also couldn’t go more than five days without ejaculating, because not often enough was as bad for sperm production as too often. Most sperm donors signed contracts for six months to a year of donations—six months to a year of having sex in a cup on a strict schedule. The money wasn’t even all that much, averaging under a hundred dollars per viable donation.
To have been her donor, Rule would have had to sign on for all of the above with the fertility clinic she had used, or an affiliate. What were the odds of that?
He was a hardworking man who traveled the world doing business for his country. Not only would being a donor be unprofitable, time-consuming and a logistical nightmare for Rule, it just … wasn’t like him. He felt so strongly about family and fatherhood. He wasn’t a man who could help to give a child life and not want to be there while that child was growing up.
Still, she didn’t get the way he’d pulled away from her when she talked about how much alike he and Trevor were, when she’d confessed that he, Rule, was pretty much her dream man come to life. He’d turned onto his back before she said anything about how she’d given permission to be contacted, so his original withdrawal really couldn’t be chalked up to apprehension that the donor might show up someday.
She didn’t like the way he’d said, You’re joking, when she’d asked him if he’d ever been a donor. He could so easily have given her a simple, direct denial.
It wasn’t that she actually suspected he might be Trevor’s biological father. She only wondered why he’d seemed so defensive and why he’d pulled away from her when she’d only been trying to tell him that he was everything she’d ever wanted in a man.
Chapter Eleven
But by the next morning, in the bright light of day, as Sydney hurried to get ready to head to the office, her vague suspicions about Rule …
Well, they seemed downright ridiculous.
He hadn’t really pulled away from her last night, had he? He’d only rolled over to his back. And when she’d asked if anything was wrong, he’d told her there was nothing.
And his seeming evasiveness when she teased him about being a sperm donor? It just didn’t strike her as all that odd now that she’d had a little time to think it over. He was very attached to Trevor. He didn’t want to dwell on the stranger who had fathered her child. She could understand that.
She decided that she would put the whole issue from her mind. She had so much work to do and not all that much time to do it in. The last thing she needed was to waste her energy stewing about stuff she’d made up in her head.
Plus, if she wanted to dwell on something, why not choose something real? Something important. Something potentially quite wonderful.
As of that morning, her period was one week late. It was beginning to look as though she and her new husband were already getting their start on that larger family they both hoped for.
But she shouldn’t get ahead of herself. She had been under a lot of stress lately—meeting and marrying Rule in the space of forty-eight hours, and then having to send him away to make his apologies to the “other woman” in his life. And then there was the way she was working like crazy to finish up at the firm, planning a move halfway around the world.
Yes. Her life was especially stressful right now. And stress could really mess up a woman’s cycle.
She decided she would wait a few weeks before she said anything to Rule. No reason to get his expectations up unnecessarily—or her own, for that matter. She would let that question rest for a while, not allow herself to get too excited about it until more time had passed.
Trev was much better that morning. He seemed to be over the bout of teething pain. His temperature was normal and he was eating his breakfast cereal, chattering away, when she left for work.
He gave her a big kiss. “Come back soon, Mama!”
“Don’t you worry, I will.”
And that evening, she managed to get away from the officer earlier than usual. She was even in time to give Trev his bath before bed. Once he was in bed, Rule said he wanted to take her out to dinner.
They went to the Mansion. Sydney loved the food and service there and Rule liked it, too. The staff knew him and protected his privacy.
He made a toast. “To us. To our family. To our whole lives together.”
