Unbuttoned

by Maisey Yates

  Kelsey watched her sister, her baby sister, stand in the middle of the lawn, her white dress making her look like an angel. All blond hair, blue eyes and big grin. She just hoped Kailey knew what she was doing. That David was going to treat her right.

  Even though she’d spent the last hour of the reception engaged in a pity party, she still just wanted Kailey to be happy. Blissfully so. The kind that would make her feel jealous forever and ever was fine with her. As long as her sister never knew what it was like to be betrayed by someone she loved.

  Those scars didn’t heal as easily as Kelsey wished they would. Trust was sort of hard for her to find these days.

  A gaggle of women dressed in pastel spring colors crowded behind Kailey. Oh yes, there was pushing and shoving. Desperation to grab that bouquet and secure a spot on the ‘next to wed’ list.

  Were any of these girls even out of high school?

  Kailey turned and slung the bouquet over her back, the yellow daisies sailing through the air and over the teeming mass of estrogen. And onto the table, right in front of Kelsey.

  Alexa scooted back, her evil grin barely suppressed. “It’s a sign,” she whispered.

  “I hope not.” Kelsey picked the bouquet up and stood, waving to the remaining guests, who were clapping for her. Some clapping a bit too enthusiastically for her liking. Like the bouquet was going to fix something they all thought was broken about her.

  Kelsey forced a smile and held the flowers up over her head, pretending triumph. Inside she focused on trying not to die from what had to be the most humiliating thing that had ever happened to her.

  She wasn’t getting married next. Not even close. She’d barely had a date since the whole Michael fiasco. Sad? Yes. But it was just...too hard. She had trusted him, wholly and completely. More than anyone else in her life. She’d slept with him, lived with him, been prepared to make vows to him, that she would be with him forever and forever. And he’d been lying.

  If he could lie to her, trick her, anyone could. She was always conscious of that. She kind of wished she weren’t.

  “Want me to give it to one of the sad little girls?” Alexa motioned in the direction of the women who had been vying for the bouquet. “One of them could wear it as a corsage to prom.”

  “You are evil.”

  “It’s been said.”

  “Kelsey?” Kelsey’s second sister, Jacie, approached, baby in her arms. “Can you hold Delia? Aiden is up in the loft in the barn and I need both hands to climb up and get him down.” Her sister sounded more angry than wildly frightened, but having five kids had given her a high shenanigan threshold.

  “Sure.” Kelsey took her tiniest niece in her arms and found herself fighting the urge to smell the soft baby head. The sweet smell of shampoo and the other fresh smell that was impossible to recreate. It was its own thing. Unique, and probably existing for the sole purpose of tying her ovaries in knots.

  Alexa grimaced as Jacie ran up toward the barn. “Really, those are the sorts of problems I don’t want. I doubt you want them. Anyway, isn’t your job really intense right now?”

  Her health and wellness column was syndicated in newspapers across the country, and she’d been doing more and more special features for magazines and blogs as she became more well-known. There had been a couple major talk shows too.

  “Yeah, it is. And it’s great. But...I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m not happy, Alex. I’m just...not.”

  It was the truth. Unvarnished. One she hadn’t even admitted to herself before that moment.

  “You need to come back to New York and visit me again.”

  “I was just there a couple of months ago for Good Morning America.”

  “Yeah, but not for long. We didn’t get to do very much.”

  “We stayed in. We drank martinis. I felt fancy.”

  “Your fancy standard is dangerously low,” Alexa said.

  “Well, neither of us like the club scene.” Alexa grimaced and shook her head. “And say what you will about me, you don’t date much either. We’re both more involved with our jobs than we are with real people and...it’s not what I want. It’s not how I saw my life. I want...more.” She looked down at Delia. “I want this.”

  “Kind of moot since you don’t want a guy though.”

  Kelsey nodded absently. She thought about asking Alexa what she thought about artificial insemination. About choosing to be a single mom. But she couldn’t voice the words. They stuck in her throat.

  You don’t want her to tell you you’re crazy.

  She didn’t want to hear how crazy she was, that was true. Even if she was slightly unhinged for contemplating it. Maybe she was.

  But she’d set out to be successful in her career and she’d done that. She had her house, a house with a gorgeous backyard that no one ever used. She had financial stability, a job that let her work at home. So many things that people would give their right eyeball for, she had.

  But she felt alone. And the only reason she’d stuck the clinic brochures in a drawer and tried to forget, was out of fear of what her family and friends might think. She was still trapped in this little bubble of other people’s expectations, sacrificing her own happiness for it.

  No more. It was her life. She was the one who had to live it.

  She rested her cheek on Delia’s head, and just let herself feel all of the longing. For a baby of her own, for all the mess, and chaos and love that went with it.

  “Maybe I don’t need the guy,” Kelsey said.

  Chapter Two

  “What the hell do you mean you don’t have it anymore?”

  “That’s just what I’m saying, Mr. Mitchell. We don’t have the sample. I’ve...I’ve looked and I can’t find it.”

  “Check your computer again.” Cole leaned over the counter and gave his hardest glare to the man sitting behind it.

  “I...did.” His brow furrowed and his lips tugged down into a frown. “This can’t be right.”

  “What can’t be right?” Cole hated this place, and everything it stood for. A shining city on a hill of his youthful stupidity. A grand reminder of what a jackass he’d been for love. And today, he’d come to face it, end it, stop being such a damned coward about it and ignoring it like it didn’t exist.

  “It looks like your sample was...purchased.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s what I have in here when I enter the code that was linked to your name. It shows the sample was used for several conception attempts by the same patient. I don’t know why your sample was placed in the general bank, only that it must have been.”

  Cole felt like a blood vessel in his forehead was going to pop. It had been stressful enough, making the trip to Portland from his ranch in Silver Creek. He was already dealing with the unpleasantness of trying to settle some of his father’s old debts, debts he didn’t really want his brother or sister finding out about, and he’d decided to tack on the joy of dealing with the last remaining evidence of his extremely short, extremely stupid, marriage. Now this.

  He blew out a long breath. “Attempts? Not actual...success?”

  “I can’t give you any more information about the client, Mr. Mitchell. It’s...this has never happened. Well it’s happened, but not here. And at this point I have to honor patient confidentiality.”

  Cole took his Stetson off and set it on the high counter, squeezing the felt top, trying not to imagine it was the other man’s neck. “You’re telling me some woman ended up with my sperm. That she possibly conceived my baby, and your concern is patient confidentiality?”

  “She signed paperwork guaranteeing her anonymity. Under normal circumstances a donor would have done the same.”

  “I’m not a donor. I was paying you monthly to bank the stuff, and you didn’t even have it. It was supposed to be here so I could have children someday. With my wife.
” A wife he no longer had. Thank God. But he’d work the angle if it would help.

  “And you were here to ask us to discard it today. I don’t know what difference it makes.”

  “Listen,” he looked down at the guy’s name tag, “Troy. It makes a whole hell of a lot of difference. Because I’m not a donor.”

  A baby. He couldn’t imagine himself holding a baby. Never had been able to. But Shawna had wanted babies someday, and since he’d been unwilling to have them right away, she’d come up with the bright idea of banking it for their future. She’d done eggs too. Because they were better off doing it young for genetic reasons, or something. And she was pretty sure he was going to damage his count riding all those horses.

  And because he’d been a freaking moron for love, he’d done it. For her, for him maybe. To keep the peace in his house and try to keep a marriage alive that he should have staked in the heart on sight. Because he’d been a complete ass who had still trusted that people were who they showed the world they were.

  Too bad it had taken him a full two years to figure out that it wasn’t meant to be. Two years of hell and yes dear and sleeping on the damned couch. No wonder she’d needed him to bank his sperm. She never slept with him.

  Not that he was complaining. Better a couch by yourself than a bed with a shrew.

  Even so, after he’d cut the woman loose, he’d just sort of ignored that it had ever happened. And that meant ignoring the fact that she’d goaded him into the sperm banking thing. While he continued to pay for the storage of the stuff.

  “It isn’t that I’m not sympathetic to your situation, Mr. Mitchell, I am. And it isn’t as though we won’t act. But there will have to be attorneys and it’s going to be a whole legal thing. We’ll contact you when...wait what are you...you can’t come back here.”

  Cole rounded the counter and put his foot on the rolling office chair the man was sitting on, pushing it backward three feet so he could lean down over the computer.

  “You’re welcome to remove me,” Cole said, scanning the information that was up on the screen. Dammit. Dammit. He needed something to write it down. “It’s nothing personal, but I don’t really like the waiting that comes with the court system. Any sort of bureaucracy really. You understand?”

  “Uh...it’s not a matter of not understanding...” Troy’s voice faded out. He must have realized arguing was futile. Either that, or he was trying to reach a silent alarm beneath the counter.

  Cole hunted for the print icon and hoped that the printer the computer was linked to wasn’t hidden in a back office somewhere. He didn’t have a major problem shoving Troy out of the way but he didn’t exactly want to storm the clinic.

  Not that he wouldn’t.

  He heard a printer kick into gear to his left and he turned and held his hand out, ready to catch the paper when it hit the tray.

  He grabbed it and nodded at the man who was still sitting, open mouthed. “Thanks, Troy. Tell them you tried to fight me off.” He pulled his hat from the counter and put it on his head, touching the brim and tipping it slightly. Because otherwise he’d just flip him off.

  Or haul off and punch him in the face. Missing sperm was one thing, a baby was another. He had to find out if there was a baby.

  And then he had to figure out what, if anything, he wanted to do about it.

  ***

  He looked like the type who might take his hat off and call her ma’am. But he didn’t. The tall stranger just looked at her, black Stetson firmly on his head, dark eyes fixed on her, brown brows locked tight together. As though he were angry with her.

  He was supposed to be her Chinese takeout. He was not Chinese takeout. He wasn’t even bearing Chinese takeout, and he hadn’t been worth getting up off the couch for.

  Kelsey gripped the doorjamb and tried to hide the fact that her legs were shaking. She also hoped he couldn’t tell she’d just held a second viewing of her lunch in her hall bathroom only a half an hour before. She was pretty sure she still had that just-vomited sweat sheen people were constantly confusing for a pregnant glow.

  Not that she looked pregnant yet. Not that anyone in her life knew she was pregnant. One of those things that were on her ever increasing, very ignored, to-do list. Right up there with dusting the top of the ceiling fan.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Kelsey Noble?”

  “Yeah,” she said, closing the door a tiny bit. Anything to put more of a buffer between herself and the very big man on her doorstep.

  Then he did take his hat off, his large, masculine hands gripping the top, holding it to his chest. She found herself fixating on his hands, mostly because a stationary point helped ward off the weird dizziness that always seemed to come with standing up these days. And because the Willamette River was just out her front door, behind him, and looking at the water would most certainly have her losing her balance.

  Morning sickness, people said. They didn’t say morning, noon and night sickness with crippling vertigo and the inability to get off the couch for more than five minutes at a time.

  Forget making it upstairs to her bedroom. The couch was her home now. Her shining beacon of comfort and stability.

  “I just came from the uh...fertility clinic.”

  “What?” She took a step back. No one knew about that. She hadn’t told anyone. Not even Alexa. No one should know she’d been there except for the employees, and he didn’t work there.

  She would remember a great, hulking cowboy with big calloused hands and strong square jaw. He was handsome. She was almost totally sure. Mostly, right now he looked like walking testosterone. Which was her most hated enemy right at the moment.

  Since the father of her baby was anonymous, pretty much any man was in danger of getting a glare from her. The cause of all her pain and suffering. Men and their sperm.

  Yes, she’d chosen it. And yes, she was happy with her decision. But she was due a good whine.

  “Yeah, I know, patient confidentiality. But I...bypassed that.”

  “How?”

  “Moved the receptionist out of the way. He’s a little guy.”

  “Uh...yeah. And why?”

  “Are you pregnant?”

  She swallowed hard. She couldn’t throw up. Her dinner wasn’t here yet and her stomach was empty. “I think you should just go. I don’t know who you are or why you have a belt buckle the size of a dinner plate, or why you want to know if I’m pregnant and I just think—”

  “It’s kind of a long story but when I went to the clinic today to collect my...sample . . . ” She was pretty sure the cowboy looked uncomfortable bringing up the clinic. Well good, she didn’t really want to stand around talking about any of that with a stranger either.

  “Right. Okay.”

  He put his hand out and gripped the edge of the door. “It’s not. When I went...they couldn’t find it. They checked the log, my name, my social security number. They found it eventually and that it had been...moved. Miscategorized somehow. And that it had been used. By you.”

  She felt the floor tilt under her feet. She was sure it did, because her sight went wiggly and she was having a hard time focusing on anything. Even her stranger’s hands.

  Miscategorized? What the hell was that supposed to mean? A donor was a donor. As far as she was concerned there was no way to categorize them wrong. He left the sperm, she picked the sperm. She never saw him.

  So why was she seeing him?

  “You all right?” he asked. He didn’t touch her. Which was good. She didn’t want him to. She wanted him to go away.

  “No. Nope. Not all right.” She tightened her hold on the doorframe. “I haven’t been all right since this stupid ‘morning sickness’ crap hit two weeks ago. I can’t drive. I can’t sit at my computer. I can’t work. I can’t eat anything. Morning sickness my ass! It’s all the time and I’m so tired of i
t. And now...now my anonymous donor is here, at my house, on my doorstep, trying to give me a heart attack. Does it sound like I’m all right?”

  “Not...maybe not.”

  She was shaking, every part of her trembling from the inside out. She didn’t need this. Didn’t need this added complication. She needed a nap. And to feel human, and not on the verge of death. She needed was to figure out what he was doing here. What he wanted. And then she needed to get rid of him.

  “I am.” She took a breath. “I mean not, but I am. I’m doing it by myself. So I don’t know what you came by for except maybe out of some misguided Old West sense of chivalry or something. But I don’t need it. Thanks anyway.”

  “That’s not why I’m here.”

  “Why else would you be here?”

  “You’re pregnant with my baby.”

  “It’s not your baby,” she said, annoyance clawing its way through the crippling sickness, fighting for front row status.

  He handed her a sheet of paper, along with his driver’s license. And her knees just about buckled beneath her. Right there on the paper, there was his name, and the number of his sperm sample. She knew the number. He was donor #456. And now he had a name. And a face. And, it turned out, a cowboy hat.

  Maisey Yates is a USA Today bestselling author who divides her time between dark, passionate category romances set just about everywhere on earth and light, sexy contemporary romances set practically in her backyard. She lives in rural Oregon with her three children and her husband, whose chiseled jaw and arresting features continue to make her swoon.