Morgan's Child
Circles of Love Series
Book Three
by
Pamela Browning
Award-winning Author
MORGAN'S CHILD
Awards & Accolades
Waldenbooks Romance Bestseller
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ISBN: 978-1-61417-814-9
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Copyright © 1992 and 2015 by Pamela Browning All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
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Dedication
This book is dedicated with gratitude to the many guiding lights who have illumined my way. Love to all of you!
P.B.
Author Note
My Circles of Love series celebrates untraditional families, all brought together through the love of the hero and heroine for each other. In these four heartwarming books, each loving couple must decide what makes a family. Is family defined only by blood ties? Or is it what we feel in our hearts?
Jane and Duncan, Martha and Nick, Kate and Morgan, Sage and Adam—four couples whose love stories ultimately bring them to the realization that a family is made up of the very special people that we choose to embrace in our ever-widening Circles of Love.
P.B.
Chapter 1
If only I didn't have to go to this ridiculous tea party, Kate Sinclair thought as she set off lickety-split down the ramp from the Yaupon Island ferry and zigged across the oyster-shell path past Ye Olde Pribble Gift Shoppe and the Merry Lulu Tavern.
She dodged a kid trying to maneuver a skateboard down the sticky asphalt street and spared a worried glance at the sky hunkering too low on the horizon. The storm would probably hit before the party was over, which is what Willadeen Pribble and the Ashepoo County Historical Society deserved for throwing a tea party this time of year. Everybody knew that late June was a time for fierce afternoon thunderboomers in the South Carolina Lowcountry.
At the end of the street loomed Plumm House, home of the historical society and the largest structure in Preacher's Inlet. It was a huge Victorian mansion embellished with lots of unnecessary gingerbread, and once Kate had privately tagged it "plum ugly," much to her father's amusement.
"Why, it's Kate Sinclair," exclaimed Willadeen Pribble, as if Kate's knock was a complete surprise. Willadeen's hair looked like a chocolate kiss piled atop her head with a swirl, and it bobbed when her head did.
"Do come in. Our own little lighthouse lady," said Willadeen, her lips arranged into a forced smile.
Kate, who at five foot ten was anything but little and by Willadeen's standards not even much of a lady, reluctantly stepped inside. She managed to murmur a brief hello to the person in charge of the guest book before her hostess sailed away to the kitchen, leaving Kate thankful to be on her own.
The next person Kate saw was Courtney Rhett. She was surrounded by a gaggle of gray-haired ladies who seemed to have turned the various blossoms of a whole flower garden into fabric and plastered it around their posteriors. Courtney, by contrast, looked slim and chic in stark Mondrian color blocks on a white linen sheath.
"Punch?" murmured one of Willadeen's minions as she pressed a glass cup filled with tepid red liquid into Kate's hand.
The room was crowded, and Kate was relieved that no one was paying her the least bit of attention. She wandered closer to Courtney, mostly because the refreshment table was located to Courtney's right. Kate hadn't eaten a thing since early morning.
She'd managed to grab a few morsels of food from the table and was positioning herself to maneuver around the grand piano, whose upraised lid seemed to provide a screen of sorts, when she distinctly saw Courtney Rhett wink. Not at her, certainly.
But when Kate was standing behind the piano lid wolfing down what tasted for all the world like a cat food sandwich, she noticed Courtney easing away from her group and sauntering casually in Kate's direction. Kate stopped eating in mid-bite, suddenly on alert. Why would Courtney Rhett seek her out?
Kate had read the society pages of the Charleston paper often enough in the past to know that she and Courtney weren't exactly in the same social stratum. Courtney was old-money Charleston aristocracy and a St. Cecilia's Ball debutante, while Kate was of a distinctly scientific bent and longed for nothing so much as to resume her research on the lowly oyster.
"I remember meeting you at something or other around here," Courtney said. "I'm Courtney Rhett."
"Kate Sinclair," Kate said. "We met last year at the board meeting of the hysterical society when they were discussing renovations necessary to turn the lighthouse into a museum."
"Hysterical society?"
"I mean historical society," Kate said, hastily correcting her gaffe.
Courtney laughed, a long, full-bodied peal that caused several of their fellow guests to turn and stare.
Courtney ignored them. "So," she said as she tapped a cigarette out of a gold case and lit it. She blew the initial puff out the window. "How'd these old bags get you to come to this shindig?"
"I beg your pardon?" Kate said.
"I knew the minute I saw you that you don't belong here anymore than I do," said Courtney. "My grandmother donated a fistful of money to preserve Yaupon Light, and now that the society is finally going to turn it into a museum, I'm delegated to represent her."
Kate remembered Courtney's grandmother, with whom her late father had developed an unlikely friendship. "I'm sorry your grandmother couldn't make it," Kate said.
"Grandma Robillard is in a nursing home and no longer attends teas. Lucky Grandma. How do you manage to swallow those awful little sardine things? I'd rather eat road kill myself."
Kate smothered a smile. "I'm hungry. This was meant to be lunch. And since you mentioned it, I rank historical-society affairs right up there with trips to the dentist for a root canal. I'm only here because Willadeen felt obligated to invite me and I felt obligated to attend."
Kate left a lot unsaid. In the past month she'd had to realize that she was totally unable to untangle the legalities of her grandfather's will, which had bequeathed the deactivated Yaupon Light to the historical society after her father's death, and that had made the gulf between Willadeen and herself grow even wider.
"So you're the Katie everyone is saying has been stonewalling the society and keeping them from converting Yaupon Light into their museum," Courtney said, favoring Kate with a long appraising look.
"According to the terms of my grandfather's will, I don't have to leave the keeper's quarters until next September. My father only died a month ago," Kate said.
"I heard Willa
deen clucking about how you refuse to leave one minute earlier than the will specifies," Courtney said.
"She and some of the others are pushing me to get out of the keeper's quarters as soon as possible, but I don't have anywhere else to go. So for the next fifteen months, I'm staying put. It is my right." Kate didn't add that the reason she didn't have any place to go was her dispute with the Northeast Marine Institute and the resulting congressional investigation. It was clear that Courtney Rhett would have no interest in behind-the-scenes skullduggery in the scientific community.
"Oh, I wasn't on the side of the historical society," Courtney hastened to assure her. "Willadeen's talk about museum display cases and new rest rooms bores me—a cardinal sin as far as I'm concerned. Say, would you like a little more punch in your punch? I brought some white lightning along for emergencies." Courtney bent over and produced a flask from under her skirt.
Kate stared openmouthed at the little silver bottle. "Thanks, but no," she said firmly, but Courtney sipped quickly and delicately from the flask, licked her lips and with remarkable sleight of hand returned the flask to its place of origin.
"Frankly, Katie, I didn't expect you to be as dull as the rest of these women," Courtney said, focusing a pair of wide violet eyes on Kate's face.
"I don't drink and I don't smoke, and I don't apologize," Kate said, her gaze beginning to wander the room in search of an escape route.
"Well, don't get all het up about it," Courtney said. "I wish I could say the same thing. If I didn't drink and I didn't smoke, I'd go ahead and have those frozen embryos implanted and zap! in nine months I'd be a mommy. But as it is, I don't want to give up my bad habits. I played a pregnant woman on the stage during my brief career in the theater, and I must say that I didn't like it one bit."
Kate's attention homed in on what Courtney was saying; she made little sense out of this new direction in the conversation.
"What?" she said.
"The embryos," Courtney said as if explaining to an idiot. "The story about my court battle with my ex-husband has been in all the papers."
"Yaupon Island is not on the paperboy's route," Kate reminded her.
"Oh. Well, my ex-husband and I went to court to fight for the embryos we produced in our marriage. What I mean to say is, I had the eggs and he had the sperm, but when we—well, let's just say that we tried to have a baby and we couldn't, so we let the doctors mix the eggs and sperms together in a Petri dish, and the sperms fertilized the eggs and became embryos—you know, little bitty babies."
"You're talking about in-vitro fertilization," Kate said in amazement.
"Sure, and I was going to have the embryos implanted in my uterus, but then Morgan and I divorced. So the embryos became part of the divorce settlement, and I won custody."
"Custody—as if these embryos were actual born children?" Kate asked, becoming interested.
"Yup. And I was going to have a baby after the divorce, I honestly intended to do it. Against my ex's wishes, of course, but by that time I didn't care what Morgan thought. You know what they say about him around Charleston? 'Morgan Rhett gets what he wants.' Well, this time he didn't." Courtney's eyes lit with triumph, which made Kate think that her pursuit of the embryos hadn't only been about having kids.
She wanted to keep Courtney on topic, however. "So you were going to bear a child but now you've changed your mind?"
Courtney shrugged. "I got scared is more like it. I mean, here I have these embryos and all, and I've been having these migraine headaches so bad, and I'm afraid to go ahead with a pregnancy. I have to take all this aspirin, which isn't good for a baby, and what am I supposed to do—go around with this awful headache and my stomach out to here?"
"Good point," Kate agreed. She saw Willadeen Pribble heading their way. Courtney pulled Kate into a curtained alcove behind the piano and sank down on the window seat, patting the space beside her.
Kate sat, too, gazing hungrily at the table through the chink between the curtains and wondering if anyone was going to bring out more sandwiches. Ham would taste good, or maybe chicken salad.
Courtney hung her cigarette out the window and went on talking as if her tongue was wound up and had to run until it stopped.
"If I could only find someone to bear the baby for me! I'd be a good mother, I know I would. I'd love dressing a baby up in frilly white hats and taking it for walks along the Battery in its pram, and there's a trust fund set up by my grandmother so I have no financial problems, and Disney World would be so much more fun with a kid along."
"Yes," Kate said thoughtfully. "I suppose you're right."
"But where would I find any woman in her right mind who would carry a child for me?" Courtney asked.
Kate stopped thinking about how hungry she was and started considering, really considering, what Courtney was saying.
"I mean, that's nine months of someone's life down the drain! Who'd willingly do that for another person?" Courtney took another drag on her cigarette.
Kate cleared her throat. "I might," she said. She was glad that Willadeen Pribble wasn't anywhere around to hear her say it.
Courtney exhaled a cloud of smoke and stared at Kate as if seeing her for the first time. "Really?" she asked.
"I might," Kate repeated. She'd always wanted to be caught up in other people's pregnancies. She was fascinated with the way their stomachs rose up out of their clothes day by day and month by month, astonished at the way the mother's skin could shape itself to embrace the baby, and she was curious about the mysteries of giving birth.
Besides, Kate was thirty years old, and she never wanted to be in love again, which made marriage highly unlikely.
"Why would you do it? For money?" Courtney asked.
"Because—because pregnancy intrigues me," Kate said. "Because I've never had an opportunity to be pregnant, and my future is so unstable that I can't bring up a child properly. Single motherhood is out of the question. And because I was responsible for caregiving my father until he died, and during that time I had no choice but to think about death. I want to think about life for a change. Also, I—I've always longed for the experience of giving birth."
"Are you for real?" Courtney asked incredulously. "You mean you'd consider it?"
"Oh, I'd consider it, all right," Kate said.
"Either you're a crazy woman, or—but I don't think you're the least bit crazy. I like you," Courtney said.
"Do you really want a baby?" Kate asked.
"I'd love to be a mother. I just don't want to be pregnant," Courtney said.
"Then—"
"Will you? Honestly?"
"I'd like to. I would," Kate said impulsively. She envisioned her pregnant self stepping cranelike through intertidal mud flats as she moved from one oyster bed to another. She would be the picture of beauty and grace, and she would give birth effortlessly, steeped in joy and sensitivity toward the new life she was bringing into the world.
Courtney smiled, a gleeful smile that nevertheless lit up her beautiful features, and that made Kate feel even better. She didn't know anything about Courtney's ex-husband's looks, but if the baby would look like Courtney, with her reddish-gold hair and violet eyes, it would be a beautiful baby indeed.
"You're exactly the kind of woman I'd want to bear my baby," Courtney said. "You're decent, intelligent, educated—don't you have some advanced degrees?"
"I have a Ph.D. in marine biology," Kate said.
"So you're actually Dr. Sinclair?"
"I don't use the title socially."
"No matter. Of course, if you decided to do this, you'd have to go to the fertility clinic. There'd be tests and you'd need to take hormones to make the embryos attach to the lining of your uterus and so on."
"I don't mind," Kate said. Such talk made her feel very comfortable; oyster larvae had to attach to a suitable surface in order to become adult oysters. Human embryos had to "set" to become babies, too. What could be more natural?
"I'd pay your medical expense
s, of course. What's your fee?"
"I—well, whatever's fair. I don't know how such things are done." Kate still couldn't quite believe that this conversation was taking place.
"I'll have my lawyer draw up some papers," Courtney said, and she named a sum of money that seemed exorbitant to Kate.
"I can't accept that much," Kate said. "Maybe just my living expenses."
"Good enough," said Courtney. "Shall we shake on it?"
Kate extended her hand, and Courtney's fingers gripped hers.
"Done," Courtney said. She stood up. "I'd better get back to the group, or Grandma might find out I'm shirking my duties. My lawyer will be in touch. We'll need a contract, and he'll attend to it."
"I see that they're putting out more sandwiches," Kate said.
"Enjoy," Courtney said, and with a little wave she disappeared among the weaving clumps of pink and blue cabbage roses.
"Kate, dear, I do hope you're having a good time," said Willadeen, whose ample bosom materialized at Kate's elbow just as Courtney took her leave.
"Lovely," Kate said as she scooped several sandwiches onto her plate, spared a nod for Willadeen, and walked away as a jolt of thunder rattled the windowpanes.
Several of the ladies oohed and ahhed and shot nervous glances out the windows. A few of them broke off from their groups and left, and, still munching, Kate took advantage of the commotion surrounding their departures to slip out a side door and head for the dock.
After a hurried side trip into the Merry Lulu Tavern, where Gump, the ferry captain, was engaged in emphatic conversation with an assortment of cronies, she persuaded him to head back toward the island.
Gump's white beard and mustache bristled in irritation as he cast the ferry off from the dock. He spared a dubious look at the clouds overhead. "Get struck by lightning, don't blame me," he grumbled as he coaxed the ferry's engine to life from the wheelhouse.
"We're way ahead of the storm," Kate called up to him as she clung to the lurching railing.
Morgan's Child Page 1
