"You haven't read the contract, Morgan? You should. I'll tell my lawyer to send you a copy. Shall I have it sent here?" Courtney stood up.
"Get out," Morgan said, barely able to contain his fury.
"I'm going," she said.
"Not nearly fast enough," Morgan answered, hurrying to the door and flinging it wide.
"I'm sure you can find someone to marry, Morgan. Don't you have women standing in line to go to bed with you? Too bad you never knew what to do with a woman when you finally got her there." After firing that parting shot, Courtney disappeared into the night.
Morgan slammed the door after her and stood with his fists clenched, fighting the impulse to run after her and scream epithets. Courtney, as usual, had hit below the belt. Their sex life had been a disaster. He'd never known anyone who was as cold and demeaning as his ex-wife. Making love to her had been like cuddling up to an iceberg.
Through the window he saw a shadow detach itself from a tree and join Courtney at the juncture of the path to the ferry landing. It must be the Pribble boy. When they had disappeared into the darkness, he exhaled slowly, his shoulders slumping.
Morgan sat down to finish his drink, massaging his temples thoughtfully. He was sure that Kate had never read the small print in the contract, and she probably had no idea that it specified that her baby could only be adopted by a married couple.
And just as he and Kate were getting used to each other, he didn't want to ruin their burgeoning relationship with an announcement as unwelcome as this one. All his protective instincts were aroused on her behalf. Kate had suffered enough from Courtney's whims, and he would not allow Courtney to sink her claws into Kate Sinclair again.
Besides the big hall and the long line of bedrooms, the lodge contained innumerable bathrooms, a kitchen and a terrace overlooking the ocean. It was a lonely place but well suited for solitary thoughts. He tore open a bag of potato chips and lay back on the couch, listening to the rush of waves to shore and exploring the situation in all its complexities as he munched.
Was Courtney telling the truth? Did the contract really say that the baby resulting from those embryos could only be adopted by a married couple? He didn't like his ex-wife, and she didn't like him. But he was pretty sure that even Courtney wouldn't make up something like this.
And Kate—why hadn't she known what was in the contract? Was she so oblivious to legalities that she had plunged into surrogate motherhood without knowing all the ramifications of the contract she'd signed?
Finally, worn out with thinking, Morgan reached for the book on pregnancy and childbirth that Lavinia had sent. There might be no ready answers for the questions he'd been asking himself about this bizarre situation, but the book was most informative and answered other questions that had come to mind in the past few days.
It did, for instance, have a complete section on sex during pregnancy, a section that Morgan read twice.
* * *
Tony Saldone was jubilant when Morgan reached him at his hotel in Maine early the next morning.
"Good thing you phoned, Morgan. I've got new information about the Sinclair woman."
"Yeah, well look, Tony, you can call off the investigation," Morgan said from the public phone at the Merry Lulu.
"Call it off!" Tony said, sounding injured. "You gotta be kidding."
"I mean it. Fly home and send me a bill."
"Don't you want to know what I've found out?"
"Not especially."
"Kate Sinclair was fired from Northeast Marine Institute for blowing the whistle on the director and a colleague, at least one of whom was fabricating data. She even testified before Congress in their investigation of federal funds being misspent for false research. I cozied up to one of the assistants who works in the lab, and—"
"Can it, Tony. Kate told me about that."
"She couldn't have told you all of it because she doesn't know all of it. According to Penelope, Kate was correct in her allegations about her co-worker's research, and the independent Federal Health Foundation Office of Scientific Ethics is getting ready to blow the whole thing sky-high in a report."
"How does this Penelope know?"
"She's a good, good friend of a guy who works for the FHF. You still want me to quit?"
Morgan thought quickly. On one hand there was Kate's understandable aversion to his putting Tony on her case. On the other hand Kate could possibly benefit from finding out what the Federal Health Foundation intended to do.
"Well, Morgan, what do you say?"
Morgan felt as if he was double-dealing, and he didn't like the smell of this. But if he could help Kate, he would.
"Stay on the case, Tony. Find out whatever you can."
"Good decision. I'll let you know if I learn anything. And thanks. There's nothing I like more than entertaining beautiful and compliant women on an expense account."
Morgan hung up the phone slowly. He felt like a two-faced sneak, poking around things that didn't concern him.
Or did they? They involved Kate, and if they affected her, they also concerned the baby. And whatever concerned the baby also concerned him, committed as he was to its welfare.
Which was why, on the spur of the moment, he drove into Charleston and dropped in unannounced at his attorney's office.
Ted Wickes, his longtime lawyer, was a close personal friend, and Morgan poured out the story of Courtney and Kate, the embryos, Kate's pregnancy, and the baby.
"Courtney offered to send me a copy of the contract," Morgan said.
Ted shook his shaggy head to and fro in amazement. "Let me make some phone calls," he said, and within ten minutes Morgan and Ted were inspecting the contract and its small print.
"Looks like Courtney's right," Ted said.
"What are my options?" Morgan tossed his copy of the contract on Ted's desk in disgust.
"You can either get married or take Courtney to court."
Morgan groaned. "Courtney and I have barely finished our last legal battle. The last thing I need is another destructive lawsuit while I'm still smarting from the divorce."
"You need time to worry this through, is that what you're saying?"
"Ted, I have absolutely no desire to face my ex-wife across a courtroom again. I want to be through with her. I want her out of my life."
"Understandable. So if you still want the baby, get married to somebody else."
"Married. Right."
"Well then, forget the whole thing. Let another couple adopt the kid."
"Allow a Rhett to be reared by someone else? Never! Anyway, I've been thinking it over, and the baby seems like a good idea. Insurance of my immortality and all that. I'd given up on the idea of being a father because after Courtney and I divorced, it didn't seem to be in the cards, but this baby is mine and I want it, Ted."
"Then you know what to do," Ted said.
"I'm paying you for advice like this? I don't need it," Morgan said.
"You asked for it, my friend." Ted smiled and shrugged into his suit jacket. "Join me for lunch, Morgan? We can try the steaks at the new grill down the street."
Morgan declined the meal. "I have some contemplating to do" was his excuse.
He was still thinking when he boarded the Yaupon Island Belle for passage back to the island. And what he was thinking was that there was only one way for both him and Kate to achieve their objectives.
They would have to get married.
* * *
Morgan heard the music when he was still in the shade of the trees sheltering the path from the ferry dock to the keeper's quarters. And he heard a voice, Kate's voice, singing along.
He approached the back door slowly so as not to startle her, and as he drew closer, he saw Kate waltzing gracefully around the kitchen, her head thrown back so that her hair rippled down her back in a shining gold fall, her arms cradling her abdomen.
She looked beautiful, and he was entranced by the sight. Although he meant to move away from the door so she wouldn't se
e him, she glanced in his direction and stopped in her tracks, her rapturous expression turning rapidly to one of consternation.
Her arms fell to her sides and then flew to her face in an attempt to mask her embarrassment.
"I don't mean to interrupt," he said.
"I was just—well, um..." she said, at a loss for words. She turned down the volume on the radio and came and unhooked the door, holding it open for him. She looked so pretty with her face colored pink with embarrassment, and he wanted to tell her so, but she flitted to the other side of the room where she busied herself with something at the sink.
"You dance beautifully," he said, still charmed by her.
"Don't be silly, Morgan. I'm as big as a house."
"Do you always dance around the kitchen by yourself?"
She dried her hands on a towel and turned slowly. "I wasn't by myself exactly. I was dancing with the baby," she said.
"Oh. I see," Morgan said. He hadn't realized that the baby was so real to Kate.
"I mean, the baby can hear things, you know? Like the ocean and my voice and—well, I like to play rhythmic music for it, and waltz music seems to settle it down when it's too lively for my comfort. Okay, okay. I see that you're skeptical."
"It's a side of you I haven't seen before," he said.
"You thought I had no imagination?"
"One doesn't usually think of scientists as imaginative," he told her.
She laughed with only a trace of self-consciousness.
"It's a good thing you weren't around the summer when I was a sea gull," she said. "When I was eight, I thought the gulls looked as free and as happy as I wanted to be, so I turned into one. I held my arms out like wings and 'flew' everywhere I went, wheeling and dipping on the air currents. And when my parents talked to me, I refused to answer—I mewed like a gull."
"And they mewed back?" he asked, glad to have something to tease her about. He liked thinking of her as a little girl.
"Neither of my parents was inclined to play the game, so it drove them crazy. Finally they became concerned that I might try to fly off the top of the lighthouse or something equally stupid, so my father sent for a chemistry set and I became interested in science. After that I was never a gull again." She looked momentarily wistful.
"What a charming child you must have been," Morgan said, meaning it.
She was quick to disabuse him of that notion. "I was tall and gangly and always had scabby knees," she said. "I wasn't charming. I wasn't like a—"
"Like a what?" he asked, prodding gently.
"I was going to say that I wasn't like a Rhett. Not cute and clean in little cotton playsuits like Joanna's children. Like this baby will be. I'm glad you're going to take the baby, Morgan."
He cleared his throat. "Actually, there's a problem," he said.
She focused wide, unsuspecting eyes on him. "What kind of problem?" she asked.
He felt uncomfortable bringing up this topic, but he plunged ahead. "A problem with the contract you signed. It specifies that the baby must be adopted by a married couple."
"I don't remember that part," Kate said.
"I've read the contract. It's true," he said, and quickly he related Courtney's nocturnal visit and his call on Ted Wickes this morning.
"I didn't realize," Kate said in consternation. She sank into a kitchen chair, her face ash pale.
He sat down beside her. "Didn't you read the contract before you signed it?" he asked.
"I skimmed over it, but at the time all I could think about was my happiness at being able to bear a baby. I would have become a surrogate mother for Courtney even with no contract, so signing it was only a necessary formality." She stared at him with eyes in which he divined borderline panic.
His only thought was to calm her.
"Don't get upset," he said. "There's a way—"
"A way! What way? I thought this was all taken care of, I'd actually started to feel good about this pregnancy again, and now I find out that because of my own stupidity and shortsightedness, there's a major stumbling block." She stood up, and he grabbed her arm.
"Kate! Let's talk about this," he said.
She pulled away. "I don't want to talk. I want to think about it in private," she said.
"A lot of good that will do," he replied heatedly.
"Oh? And you have some other suggestion?" She glared at him, and he saw the slightest hint of moisture on her lower lids.
"Yes! We could get married!"
Suddenly it was very quiet in the house. The two of them stared at each other over a tremendous void.
Kate was the first to speak.
"You're joking," she said.
"I am not. It's the solution to the problem."
"You wouldn't marry me," she said.
"Under normal circumstances, perhaps not. These circumstances are anything but normal. I can't let this baby go to anyone but me."
Her laugh was bitter, and he said, "Kate."
"What do you want me to do?" she asked in a low tone.
"Say you'll think about it."
She turned away from him so he wouldn't see the anguished expression on her face.
"Can we at least talk about it?"
She let her shoulders rise and fall in a futile gesture. "We'd better, I suppose, but do we have to stay in the house? I could use some fresh air."
"We could walk on the beach if you'd like," he said.
"Okay," she said. He didn't like the look of defeat in her eyes.
When they had reached the deserted beach, he dared to slide an arm around her shoulders.
"Would it be so bad to be Mrs. Morgan Rhett?" he asked, smiling down at her.
"This has to be the all-time irony," she said. "I'm probably the one woman in the world who really doesn't want to be married."
"I never wanted to be married again, either," he said.
She looked at him out of the corners of her eyes. "Why?" she asked.
"I thought once was enough."
"You loved Courtney at the beginning of your marriage, didn't you?"
"I believed I did at the time. I loved what I thought she was, I suppose. Later, when I found out what she was really like, I couldn't stand her. Which is why our marriage—yours and mine—might be successful. With you I know what I'm getting."
"Somebody who is cantankerous, crabby—"
"Cantankerous Kate, Crabby Kate, and also Courageous and Comely Kate," he said.
"Don't lather it on too thick, Morgan, or you'll have a Kate who collapses under the weight of it," she said.
"I mean it. I admire you, you know."
"I didn't know, but thanks. Still, no matter what the circumstances, marriage is a big step. I've never been married before."
"As my wife, you'd be entitled to Rhett family standing in the Charleston community. That means that Joanna would invite you to join the Junior League—"
"I thought it was a kids' baseball league until a few years ago," she informed him.
"Well, they'd probably let you play first base if you want. And I'm a patron of the theater, and I'm invited to many dinners and a ball or two every year."
"Let's get this straight. If I married you—and that's a big if—you'd want me to live with you? Participate in the upbringing of your child?"
"We could give it our best shot," Morgan said, trying to imagine life with Kate.
Kate rolled her eyes. "I'm not good with babies, and I wouldn't want anything to do with Charleston society. I don't know Rosenthal china from Lenox, and I never even came close to having a debut. I like to dig around mud flats and pole johnboats through marshes. I'd be a terrible wife for you." She managed a brief smile.
"Marrying me would provide you with a place to live," he said. "You told me you have no place to go after you leave the lighthouse."
"True," she admitted.
"I've thought this out carefully, much more than I thought out my decision to marry Courtney. The more I consider it, the better it seems. We could
be good for each other. Will you marry me, Kate? There would be real advantages for both of us."
"I don't love you," she said.
"At our ages we know how treacherous love can be and how complicated relationships can become. Perhaps love isn't important in our case."
"I've never thought I could marry someone I didn't love," she said.
"Unusual circumstances call for unusual measures," Morgan replied in a reasoning tone.
Kate shook her head doubtfully. "Against my better judgment, Morgan, I'll think it over. I can't rush into what amounts to a marriage of convenience. Recent experience has shown me the error of taking on responsibilities without investigating all the angles."
He cast a long look at her, saw the curve of her lashes against her cheek, and remembered the silken softness of her lips.
"Well, then," he said softly, "consider this one," and he pulled her close and lowered his mouth to hers, capturing her in a kiss in which she participated willingly and which engendered a surge of erotic longing that made him wonder how long she could go on ignoring the tension between them.
Translucent lids drifted closed over her sea-gray eyes as she melted into the sensations, her lips parting, her hands sliding up his chest to grip his shoulders tightly. He longed to mold his hands to the curve of her hips and to bring her body into line with his, and he ached with longing. When he stopped kissing her, she had opened her eyes, and he saw briefly reflected in them proof of a fiery passion that he'd only suspected.
"If we were married, we could do that often," he said coaxingly, his lips close to her ear. "Come to think of it, we could do it often before we're married."
She pulled away. She wrapped her arms around herself and scowled, which was not the reaction he had hoped for.
"So you meant it last night," he said, resuming their walk. She trudged along beside him, keeping a self-conscious arm's length between them.
"Meant what?"
"That it was the second biggest mistake in your life to kiss me."
She lifted her head. "It's just that—"
"Don't use pregnancy as an excuse," he said flatly. "Last night you wanted it as much as I did. I saw it in your eyes, and only a moment ago you wanted to take it to the limit."
She considered this. "Yes, I suppose I did," she said slowly. "That still doesn't mean that I think it was a good idea."
Morgan's Child Page 10
