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Surely nobody had ever been this much in love. It just wasn’t possible.
Ivy eased down to the sand, legs outstretched in the warm surf, arms back, basking in the glorious warmth of the Greek sun.
The only thing warmer was Damian’s love.
That so much joy had come from something that had started so badly…Not the baby, she thought quickly, putting a protective hand over her belly. Never that. She’d wanted the baby almost the moment she’d missed her first period and known, for sure, she was pregnant.
Known she wanted the baby—and that she’d made a terrible mistake, agreeing to Kay’s awful plan.
That was the bad start. The plan. Not the original one, which had been hard enough to say “yes” to, but the one Kay had dropped on her at the last possible second.
How could she have agreed to it?
Ivy shut her eyes. The truth was, she’d never agreed to it in her heart.
The joy of the sunny morning fell away.
In the end, Kay had asked too much of her. She’d owed her so much, yes, so much, but giving up the baby?
She knew now that she could not, would not have done it.
Wasn’t it time to explain that, to explain everything, to Damian?
Slowly Ivy rose to her feet, tucked her hands into the back pockets of her white shorts and began walking along the sand.
Of course it was.
At the beginning, Damian had assumed she’d made a devil’s bargain. He knew better, now, that she’d never do something like this for money.
And because he loved her, he’d stopped asking.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t entitled to the truth.
It was just that telling him meant telling him everything, starting with what had occurred when she was fifteen and ending with the day a doctor was to implant Kay’s eggs, mixed with Damian’s sperm, in her womb.
Except—except, it hadn’t happened that way.
Ivy swung blindly toward the sea, remembering her stepsister’s face that day.
Kay had shown up at Ivy’s apartment hours ahead of their scheduled appointment at the fertility clinic.
“Everything’s changed,” she’d said desperately. “My doctor says my eggs are no good. There’s no point in implanting them inside you.”
Ivy had taken Kay in her arms, patted her back, said she was sorry even as a mean little voice inside her whispered You know you’re not really sorry, you’re relieved. Carrying a baby, even one that wasn’t actually yours, would have been agony to give up.
“Oh, Ivy,” Kay had sobbed, “what am I going to do? You have to help me!”
“I wish I could but—”
Kay had raised her face. Amazingly her tears had not spoiled her makeup.
“Do you?” she’d said. “Do you really wish you could help me?”
And she’d laid out a plan s
o detailed, so complete, only a fool—a fool like Ivy—would have believed she’d just come up with it.
Ivy had listened. Halfway through, she’d raised her hands in horror.
