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“Yeah, her. What’s she doing? And when’s my great-grandson due?”
“Soon,” Hale said, holding back his impatience. This was another topic Declan brought up again and again. Along with “What’s wrong with that wife of yours that she can’t have a baby?” and “You sure this young lady’s going to want to give the boy up? I know all about those people who change their minds, say they’re theirs and just run off with ’em.”
Truth be told, Hale was having some serious problems with the whole surrogacy thing himself. He never should have agreed to let Savannah carry their baby. He never should have let his wife talk him into the child. Things had become strained between him and Kristina, growing worse, rather than better, during the pregnancy. His marriage had never been as solid as he’d hoped, but he’d believed he could make it work, and Kristina had been so desperately eager for a child that he’d said yes to her screwball plan. Now, he wasn’t sure she even wanted a baby any longer. He didn’t have a clue what was going on with her, but none of it was good.
A few minutes later, with guilty thoughts chasing around in his head, he left his grandfather’s house, dodging raindrops as he dashed to his black Chevy TrailBlazer. Kristina drove a Mercedes sedan, which she’d begged him for, and he’d acquiesced more because he didn’t care than because the expensive car was so dear to her heart. He’d known for a while that his reasons for marrying her in the first place were both more, and less, complicated than love, which didn’t really enter into it at all. He’d been wrapped in grief during his father’s death from a slow, lingering sickness—cancer, Preston St. Cloud had told him—though after his death Hale had learned that none of his doctors had given him that diagnosis. Preston’s last doctor, more an herbalist than a trained physician, had simply lifted his shoulders and said, “Sometimes the dying just know.”
Kristina had been everywhere during that time, helping him, soothing him, running his house, even keeping in contact with Hale’s mother in Philadelphia, who wanted to be apprised of his father’s condition though she and Preston had ceased even to speak since the divorce. Hale and Kristina had dated casually only a few times before Preston’s last bout in the hospital, but Kristina had suddenly charged to the rescue, and when Preston died, Hale had leaned on her.
And shortly thereafter, he’d married her. A case of temporary insanity, apparently, for when he’d woken up from his grief, he’d found himself with a wife who was little more than a stranger to him. Still, she was his wife, he’d told himself, and he’d been determined that he was going to make their union work. He’d balked initially when she’d come to him crying, saying she had just learned she couldn’t have a baby, and wanted to use a surrogate. He’d given her a list of reasons why that wouldn’t work, leaving out the biggest one: that he wasn’t sure about their marriage. And then, when she revealed that her sister would be their surrogate, he’d really put his foot down.
But . . . he did want a child, he’d realized. And though things with Kristina weren’t perfect, he was in no hurry to divorce her. She was his wife, for better or worse. So they weren’t madly in love. They had made plans together and, with the help of an interior designer, had just put the finishing touches on their new home, a Bancroft Development architectural dream, which had a spectacular view of the Pacific and was set well back on a rocky headland, unlike those built on the shifting sands beneath Bancroft Bluff.
So . . . ? he’d asked himself one long night, when he’d stood on the back deck of their home while it was still being framed. Surrogacy? Was that the answer? He’d been lost in thought for hours, and in the end he’d signed the papers, half expecting no
thing to come of the IVF implant. And then the news: the pregnancy had taken. A shock. And he’d shared Kristina’s joy, until she said something about the baby being the cement that would keep them together. When he’d questioned her on that, it slowly came out that she’d been afraid he was going to leave her, and she’d wanted to have a baby to keep their marriage together. Not exactly a shocking revelation, but he’d expected her to eventually join more in the joy and anticipation he was feeling with the impending birth. They were going to have a child together, for God’s sake. The fact that she clearly hadn’t experienced any of that had eaten him up inside throughout the whole pregnancy to the point where now he found himself unable to talk about the baby with her much at all. Worse yet, she seemed to have no interest in talking to him about some very real concerns she was having.
It was all just . . . hell.
Now, driving up to his house, seeing its natural shingles and white trim, its sweeping drive, lush yard, and three-car garage, he swallowed back his misgivings. He hit the button on the garage-door opener and had a chest-tightening sensation of playacting. This wasn’t right. He needed to get things square between them and fast because he and Kristina were having a baby very soon. Their baby.
Her silver Mercedes was in its spot. He exhaled a pent-up breath. Good. She was home. He needed to talk to her while he was full of resolve to put things back together between them.
“Kristina?” he called as he walked through the kitchen, all stainless steel appliances and cream granite with silvery veins. There was a sunroom off the back with windows that looked toward the ocean, but she wasn’t there. As he walked through the kitchen to the great room, which jutted even farther toward the edge of the headland, and looked through the windows to the deck where he’d spent so many long hours that one night, deciding what to do about his marriage and the surrogacy, he didn’t expect her to be outside. The rain was heavy, and it was already growing dark, but there she was, her rich mahogany hair whipping around her face as she hugged her jacket close.
“Hey,” he said, cracking open the French door. Even then the rain slapped against his face. “What’s going on?”
She half turned, and he could see that her face was pale, her lips pinched. She moved toward him, and he stepped back, closing the door hard behind her as a gust of wind rattled the panes.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“No, I’m . . .” She trailed off and shook her head.
“You were standing in the rain,” he pointed out, trying to get her going again.
She gazed up at him through pale blue eyes that seemed to look right through him. He had a strange moment of recalling her sister, Savannah’s, deeper blue ones, and that made him feel uncomfortable.
Kristina’s hair was unnaturally darkened by the rain, and she ran her right-hand fingers through it somewhat listlessly. “I was just taking a moment.”
“You couldn’t have taken your moment inside?”
“Magda came late and just left,” she said, referring to the woman who cleaned their house and also the Seaside Bancroft Development office. “She’ll be here Monday again to finish up.”
“You were outside to avoid her?”
“Leave me alone, Hale.”
He was leery of her flat tone. “If there’s something going on . . .”
“I’m just tired. I feel like we’ve been on a treadmill for a long time.”
He hardly knew what to do with her in her uncertain mood. “Got any ideas how to slow the treadmill down? The baby is coming.”
“You think I’ve forgotten?” She shot him a fierce glance.
He lifted his hands in surrender. “I’m kinda playing catch-up here. If I’m missing something, let me know.”
“You’re not missing anything. It’s just . . .” She squeezed one fist inside her other hand, looking for all the world like she was hanging on by a thread.
