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“The other didn’t become pregnant. By the time she ordered again, I’d had my profile taken down.”
“Just two of us? But … I can’t believe more women wouldn’t have chosen you.”
Under other circumstances, he might have laughed. “My profile was only available for a short period of time. I withdrew my samples when I realized what an idiot I’d been to become a donor in the first place. Secure Choice was not the least happy with me. Our agreement was for ten pregnancies resulting in births or nine months of availability. I made arrangements to reimburse them for the money they would have made if I’d fulfilled my commitment with them. In the end, I simply couldn’t … let it go. And that’s the basic job of a donor. To donate and let it go.”
She continued for him. “But that was never going to work for you, was it? You realized that you had to know—if there were children, if they were all right …” She understood him so well.
He said softly, “Yes. And that was my plan, after I found out that you had become pregnant. That was all I ever intended to do, make certain that you and the child were provided for. I swear it to you. As long as you and Trevor were all right, I was never going to contact you or interfere in your life in any way. I had assured myself that you were a fine mother and an excellent provider. I knew Trevor was healthy. I knew you would do all in your considerable power to make certain he had a good start in life.”
“Yes. I could give him everything—except a father.”
It was her first misreading of his motives. He corrected her. “I didn’t think of it that way. I swear that I didn’t.”
She crossed her long, slim legs, folded her hands tightly in her lap and accused, “Oh, please. You are all about being a father. We both know that.”
Her words hit him like blows.
They were much too true.
And they proved all over again what a hopeless idiot he’d been to become a donor in the first place, how little he’d understood his own mind and heart.
“All right,” he said. “I’m guilty. Guilty in a hundred ways. It is important to me. That my child have a father.”
“So you set out to see that he did.”
He felt, somehow, like a bug on a pin under the cool regard of those watchful eyes of hers. And in the back of his mind a cruel voice would not stop whispering, You have lost her. She will leave you. She will leave you now. Somehow, no matter what happened, he had to make her see the most basic motivation for his actions concerning her. “No. I swear to you, Sydney. It wasn’t … that way. It was you.”
“Oh, please.”
He repeated, insisted, “You. It was you. Yes, Trevor mattered. He mattered more than I can say. But you were the starting point. I pursued you, not my son. I lied, yes, by omission. I never told you why I happened to be in that parking lot outside of Macy’s that first day we met. That it was because of you that I was there, in the first place. Because you fascinated me. So bright and capable. So successful. And apparently, so determined to have a family, with or without a man at your side. I told myself I only wanted to see you in the flesh, just one time. That once I’d done that, I could let you go, let Trevor go. Return here to Montedoro, make my proposal to Lili …”
“You were lying to yourself.”
“Yes. The sight of you that first time, getting out of your car in the parking garage … the sight of you only made me realize I had to get closer, to see you face-to-face, to look in your eyes. To hear your voice, your laugh. I followed you into the store. And as soon as you granted me that adorable, disbelieving sideways glance while you pretended to read a price tag on a frying pan, I knew that there had to be more. Every word you spoke, every moment in your presence, it only got worse. Stronger. I swear to you, I didn’t set out to seduce and marry you.”
She made another of those low, scoffing sounds.
And he was the one putting up a hand. “Yes,” he confessed, “it’s what I did in the end. But it started with you. It was always about you. And by that first evening we spent together, when we had dinner at the Mansion, I knew I wanted you for my wife.”
Her eyes were emerald-bright now. With tears.
The tears gave him new hope.
Hope she dashed by turning away and stealing a slow breath. When she faced him again, the tear-sheen was gone.
She said in the cold, logical voice of an accuser, “You had so many options. Better options than the ones you chose.”
He didn’t deny it. “I know. In hindsight, that’s all so painfully clear.”
“You could have asked
to see me as soon as you managed to find out you’d been my donor. I would have seen you. I was as fascinated by the idea of you—of the man I had chosen as my donor—as you claim you were by me.”
“As I am by you,” he corrected. “And I had no reason to believe you would have been happy to see me. It seemed to me that the last thing a single mother really wants is a visit from a stranger who might try to lay a claim on her child.”
“I had given permission for you to contact me. That should have been enough for you to have taken a chance.”
“Yes. I see that, now that I know you. But I didn’t know you then. I didn’t know how you would react. And it seemed wrong for me to … interfere in your life.”
