by Brenda Novak
“A business deal,” she repeated, then, more loudly, “When do you hope to finalize your plans?”
“The sooner the better.” He thought of a baby’s happy gurgle breaking the tomblike silence of the house that awaited him at the end of each day and thought it couldn’t be soon enough. “Are you interested?”
Her forehead creased and she sighed. “Yes.”
“Then you’ll need to fill out an application.” He strode to his desk and searched for the packet he’d so carefully created, the one that grew thicker every day. By the time Ms. McKinney finished with his questions, he’d know everything about her, from her shoe size to her grandparents’ medical history. “You are single, right? That’s imperative.”
Tucking her silky black hair behind one ear, she gave him a look that said she was surprised marital status even mattered to a man who was already bending all the rules. “I’m divorced.”
“Good.” He handed her the questionnaire, and her eyebrows shot up when the weight of it transferred to her hand.
“I’ve seen shorter dissertations. When would you like this back?”
Thad wasn’t sure how long it would take to fill out. No one else had gotten beyond the initial interview. Macy McKinney hadn’t passed with flying colors, but he was interested enough to take it one step farther. “I’m still interviewing, so you might want to get it back to me in the next day or two.”
“Fine.” She glanced at her watch and stuck out her hand. “I have to go. Thank you for your time.”
Thad clasped her hand in his, noting the delicate bones and soft skin. She had good doctor’s hands, even though they were a bit cool to the touch. And though physical beauty was far from his primary concern, he couldn’t help noticing she had other good features, too—and genes that would make a pretty baby.
“Hello?”
A woman he’d interviewed a few days ago poked her head through the door and thrust out a huge cookie bouquet wrapped in purple cellophane.
Thad stifled a groan.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, her voice sticky sweet, “but I thought you might enjoy these. Aren’t they darling?”
“Miss—”
“Lanna, silly. Call me Lanna, remember?”
Thad tried to suppress the twitch that started in his cheek. With Lanna came the memory of the other bold women his offer had enticed, and suddenly Macy McKinney’s cool reserve looked far more appealing than it had a moment ago. “Lanna, I told you I’d call you when I made my final decision. I’m sorry that it’s taking some time, but—”
“My phone’s been on the blink, and I thought you might have tried to reach me.” Coming into the room, she ignored Macy and shoved the cookies in his face so he could admire them. Then she set the elaborate bouquet on his desk, next to the flowers someone else had sent him yesterday.
Thad looked at the cookies and knew there would be a lot more where they came from if he didn’t do something to stop Lanna and her competitors. “Actually, I’m glad you’re here,” he heard himself say almost before he knew what was going to come out of his mouth, “because I think I’ve reached a decision.”
“Yeah?” Her smile broadened as she positioned herself with one hand on his desk, bending slightly forward to show her cleavage to best advantage. “Who’s the lucky girl?”
“Ms. McKinney and I still have to go over her application, but if she agrees to the background check and everything else is in order, then she is.”
Thad glanced at Macy and saw her eyes widen. He also noted, again, the thinness of her body and the drawn look to her face. “If she passes the physical,” he added.
CHAPTER TWO
THAT NIGHT, Macy’s eyes traced the blue veins visible just below the surface of her daughter’s translucent skin as Haley slept, curled up, in a hospital bed that nearly swallowed her whole. Her breathing was markedly shallow, but after fifteen minutes of studying the rise and fall of her small chest, Macy couldn’t decide whether or not she was resting any easier than she had the previous night. That last round of chemotherapy had really taken it out of her, poor baby, but even at such a terrible price, the treatments had done little to stop the lymphoma.
Thad Winters’s notion of an application lay in Macy’s lap, and she thought briefly of using this time to fill it out. Who knew when Haley’s vomiting might start again, when she might need to be held and rocked. The night could get long. But Macy refused to turn her attention to other things for fear death would creep in and steal her only child away.
“God, Macy, what are you still doing here?” a voice whispered harshly.
Macy turned to see her friend Lisa slip through the door. Almost like a sister, Lisa had been a part of Macy’s life since she was fifteen. They’d gone to school together, weathered their dating years together, attended the same university. Macy doubted she would have survived the past few years without Lisa’s emotional support. “I can’t leave her. You know that,” she said simply.
Lisa’s face creased into a sympathetic smile, and she pushed her glasses higher up on her stubby nose. “Haley’s been in and out of the hospital for nearly a year. I know you’re going to collapse if you don’t start taking care of yourself.”
“I’m fine.” As though contradicting her words, the weariness Macy felt sank a little deeper, into her bones, but she forced a smile of her own. “And you can’t talk. What are you doing here again? You’ve spent almost as much time at this hospital as I have.”
Out in the hall, a strident voice over the intercom directed a Dr. Johansen to the emergency room, but such calls came so frequently they were only background noise to Macy now.
Lisa shrugged her thick shoulders. “You and Haley are family. That bum you were married to isn’t here for you, but—”
Haley stirred, and Macy waved for Lisa to lower her voice. “I don’t need him.”
This assertion was met with a skeptical lift of Lisa’s eyebrows as she wrapped huge arms around Macy for the hug she gave to everyone when she came and when she left. “There’s nothing but noodles in your cupboards. Have you eaten today?”
Macy couldn’t remember whether she had or not, but to save herself from a scolding, Lisa-style, she went on the offensive. “What were you doing in my cupboards? You’d better not have been cleaning my house again.”
“Damn straight I was. The last thing you need to worry about is cleaning and cooking. You’ll find my homemade lasagne in the refrigerator. See that you eat it when you get home.”
“Damn straight,” Macy echoed, thanking the fates for bringing Lisa into her life all those years ago.
Lisa set her purse down and wedged her bulk between the bed and the wall. Her body was big, but not nearly as big as her heart, Macy thought as Lisa stared down at Haley. “You think she’s any better?” she asked.
Macy let her gaze drop to the soft blond fuzz that was all the hair her five-year-old daughter had left, and shook her head.
“Did you call that guy Dr. Peters told me about?”
“Yeah.” She lifted the manila envelope that held Thad Winters’ twenty-page questionnaire. “He gave me this. Can you believe it? He actually expects me to fill out an application to be the mother of his child. Maybe he should copyright it. This has to be a first. Or maybe I’m the only one who thinks something’s wrong with buying a baby. For all I know, he downloaded this application off the Internet. Hell, maybe everyone’s doing it.” She frowned. “On top of everything else, he wants me to take a physical. To be honest, I’m surprised he doesn’t have me go in for some DNA testing just to be sure the baby will have the right color of hair and eyes.”
Lisa folded her arms across her full bosom, Macy’s first indication that she wasn’t going to get the commiseration she anticipated. “His wife died while she was carrying their child, Macy.”
“Says Thad Winters. Some guy puts up a hundred grand and women fall all over themselves to get in line. But has anyone checked his story? What if it’s not true?”
<
br /> “Did he seem insincere to you?”
Macy pictured Thad Winters’s rugged face, the high cheekbones, the thick brown hair, the square jaw and slightly cleft chin, light blue eyes contrasting sharply with the darkness of his five-o’clock shadow. The way he easily controlled his tall muscular body lent him a confident air. He seemed driven, focused, intense, but he didn’t seem insincere.
“No, but good looks and an expensive office are no reason to trust a man, Lisa.”
Her friend grinned. “He’s good-looking, huh?”
Macy felt herself blush. She knew it had something to do with the way Thad Winters had affected her on a personal level, but she tried to ignore that, hoping Lisa wouldn’t notice. “He’s not bad,” she lied.
“‘Not bad’ coming from you means he looks as good as Brad Pitt. And if he’s that good-looking, he could probably get any number of women pregnant without spending a dime.”
Macy wasn’t sure she wanted to be convinced by Lisa’s rationale. Despite his physical charms, she was angry at Thad, for reasons she didn’t fully understand. He was offering her the one thing she needed. He was also exacting the highest form of payment, making her give him one baby to save another. “Maybe he thinks it’s some sort of interesting game,” she mused. “Maybe it arouses him to hold so much power over a woman’s destiny, to have us all groveling at his feet for the privilege of bearing his child. You should have seen all the gifts—bribes, really—stacked in his office.”
“I don’t think so. Dr. Peters lived next to the Winters family all the years Thad was growing up and says he’s never met a better man, or someone more capable of leading a successful life.”
“What, does Dr. Peters make a percentage for brokering the deal?” Macy grumbled.
Lisa pulled her frizzy light-brown hair out of her eyes and scowled. “My, aren’t we turning into a cynic! Thad Winters wants his own baby, and he no longer has a wife to give him one. So he’s taking an alternate route. So what? He’s an ad exec.”
“Which means…”
“He’s creative. As for the application and stuff, there’s nothing wrong with interviewing, playing it safe.”
“Playing it safe would be waiting until he falls in love and marries again. Playing it safe would be doing it the right way.”
“The right way didn’t work for him. What if he feels certain no woman could ever replace his wife?”
Macy considered this, wondering if she’d grown suspicious of all men because of what had happened with her father and Richard. Her father had left her mother before Macy was born. She didn’t know him, had never known him. And Richard had run off almost as soon as he learned of Haley’s illness, which only confirmed what her mother had taught her as a child: men don’t have what it takes to stick around when the going gets tough. It’s women who hang on through thick and thin. Edna was proving her words by being the one to help Macy pay her bills now that she couldn’t work because of school and the time she spent at the hospital.
“I’m just saying it’s normal for him to have a few questions,” Lisa went on.
“A few questions?” Macy repeated. “Look at this folder. He’s expecting me to write a book! Have I ever taken any drugs? Have I had unprotected sex in the past ten years? Do I drink or smoke? Have I ever sought or obtained psychological counseling? How much caffeine do I drink? I’d have to be the Virgin Mary to pass this test!”
“Well, you’d come closer than anyone else I know. You’ve never smoked or taken drugs. You need counseling for what you’re going through right now, but you’ve never sought or obtained it, so you can feel pretty good about saying no to that. And you haven’t slept with anyone other than your ex-husband.”
After a quick check to make sure Haley was still sleeping, Macy gave her friend a look of incredulity and lowered her voice. “Aren’t you forgetting that guy I went home with from Studio 9 last year? You relieved the baby-sitter I’d gotten to watch Haley that night and picked me up at his house the next morning, remember?”
Lisa grimaced. “You can’t count that. Your husband had just run off with a seventeen-year-old. I think what you did was pretty understandable, considering.”
For a short time after Richard left, Macy had frequented the bar scene as a way to help soften the emotional blow, but two things had slapped her awake to the realization that she was heading down the wrong path. One was the night she’d slept with a total stranger and woke up wondering where the heck she was. The other was Haley’s quickly deteriorating health.
“Judging from this list of questions, I doubt Thad Winters will find it understandable,” Macy said.
“Then don’t reveal it.” Lisa’s words were spoken in her matter-of-fact way, but they were far from the brutal honesty with which she normally dealt with the world.
Macy gaped at her friend. “You’re kidding, right? What’s the purpose of an application if I only put down what he wants to hear?” She chewed on the end of a pen she’d picked up from the nightstand. “Besides, I agreed to let him do a background check.”
“What are the odds of anyone finding out about that night? If you tell the truth, you might not get the job.”
“I’m not sure I want the job,” Macy said softly.
Lisa’s attention turned to Haley’s sleeping form, and her expression grew inexpressibly sad. “You don’t have a choice, kiddo. Your insurance is paying for the hospital stay, but the transplant is going to cost over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and it’s not covered. As hard as we’ve tried, we’ve only been able to raise…what?”
“Fifty thousand and change.”
“Fifty thousand dollars. And no hospital is going to perform the operation unless you give them full payment, in advance. We’ve already been through that.”
Reaching across the sterile, white sheets, Macy curled her fingers around Haley’s small hand. Her head was beginning to ache, but it bothered her only slightly more than the burning in her eyes and far less than the ache in her heart.
“What did he say when you told him why you needed the money?” Lisa asked.
“I haven’t told him about Haley yet. I didn’t see any reason to bare my soul when I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do this.”
Lisa studied her. “And now? You’re going to go for it if he chooses you, right?”
Macy sighed. Somehow, somewhere, all the lines had blurred. There was no more black or white, right or wrong, only her daughter, who needed a bone marrow transplant and Macy’s determination that she get it.
“I’m still thinking about it,” she said at last.
* * *
THE DIM INTERIOR of the steak house where Thad had told Macy to meet him was a cool respite from the bright April sun, making it seem later than it actually was. Macy removed her sunglasses and slid them into her purse, waiting for her eyes to adjust.
The smells of the restaurant—grilled onions, broiled meat, blue cheese dressing—greeted her more quickly than the hostess’s smile, but did little to chase away the chill that ran through her blood. She was going to do it. Despite all her misgivings, she was actually going to try to convince Thad Winters, a total stranger, that she should be the one to bear his child. And her only consolation was that she’d spoken to Dr. Peters, another fellow who’d known Thad at college, and a couple of his firm’s clients, and they all said the same thing: he was an honest, intelligent man who deserved to be a father. It was a shame that fate had robbed him.
Just as fate was trying to rob her now of Haley, Macy thought. But she wasn’t about to let that happen—at least not without a fight.
“One for dinner?” the hostess asked.
“No, I’m meeting someone.” Surreptitiously studying the tables she could see from her vantage point at the entrance, Macy hoped Thad Winters hadn’t arrived yet. She needed a few minutes to calm down after her most recent conversation with Haley’s oncologist. The stark realities he softly intoned always shook her to the core, where a fundamental part of her refus
ed to believe her daughter’s chances could really be so slim.
But Thad Winters was already waiting for her. He looked up from the drink he was nursing at a table nearby and spotted her at almost the same instant she noticed him. Standing, he waved to make sure he had her attention, then folded his tall form back into the booth.
“You’re early,” he said conversationally as she put down her bag and slid into the seat opposite him. “I take it you didn’t have any trouble finding the restaurant.”
“No.” She felt his gaze run over her hair, knit top and blue jeans and wished she’d had time to freshen up since her afternoon classes at the University of Utah’s College of Medicine. She’d returned to the hospital, instead, where Haley had been watching Robin Hood.
“Can I order you a glass of wine or something?” he asked.
It looked as though he was having a mixed drink, but Macy wasn’t here to enjoy herself. She asked for a club soda, then pulled the application from her purse and slid it across the table. “I’ve answered all the questions.”
She cringed as he picked up the document and began thumbing through it, partly because many of the questions were uncomfortably personal, but mostly because, in the end, she had lied about having slept with the stranger from Studio 9. Haley needed the money too badly for her to risk the truth. And she justified her falsehood by repeating over and over to herself that it was the only time in her life she’d done something so irresponsible.
When he paused about halfway through, Macy squirmed in her seat. What was he reading? Her answer to the question about having regular menstrual cycles? The one that asked about her marital history? She wished he’d take the darn thing home to go over it, but he thought of their arrangement as business. And if it was business, then this was a business dinner and a perfectly acceptable place to study the “prospectus” in which he was considering investing so much.
God, when had she become a commodity?
The moment I walked through the door of his office a week ago.
Fortunately the waitress arrived with Macy’s drink, interrupting him. He set the package aside in favor of the thick, tasseled menu the young woman handed them both.
