His Miracle Baby

by Karen Sandler

  “Damn it.” He wheeled away from her and strode over to the tall windows. His back to her, he stood still, his shoulders rigid.

  Sinking into her chair again, Shani pressed her hands against her cheeks, horrified by what he might have seen in her face. Good God, what was she doing, lusting after Arianna’s husband? Had she lost her mind? Even more preposterous, she’d almost convinced herself he was attracted to her, as well.

  When he spoke, his voice was tight, controlled. “I’ll make an appointment for you for Monday. You’ll need a thorough physical exam as well as a psychological evaluation.”

  She knew that much from her research. At the moment she felt so loony she wasn’t sure she could have passed any psychiatrist’s tests. “Just call and let me know what time. Earlier in the day would be better than later. My morning job is more flexible.”

  He nodded. “I’ll be speaking with you, then.”

  She pushed to her feet and gathered up her purse. “Leave a message if I’m not home.” Another nod, apparently all the acknowledgment she was going to get. Just as well he didn’t walk her to the door after they’d almost…

  Almost what? Shani asked herself as she stepped out into the intense early-August heat and headed toward her teal blue Mustang. She’d simply let her imagination run away with her. For a crazed moment she’d thought he’d been about to kiss her.

  Merging onto Highway 50, the morning sun glaring in her rearview mirror, Shani shook off the wild notion. This was Logan, the man she’d barely tolerated all those years he and Arianna had been married. Yes, he was good-looking, tall and well built, but her college boyfriend, Devon Masters, had been as well. What had lain behind Devon’s attractive wrappings had been far uglier.

  Even if she wasn’t entering into this surrogacy arrangement with Logan, she truly had no inclination to get involved with a man again. Her experience with Devon when she was eighteen had made a shambles of her life and made her leery of trusting again. It had been easier over the past eight years to focus on work and school, inching toward her B.A. in business.

  No wonder she’d reacted so strongly to Logan today—a woman could sublimate only so much before her libido reared its ugly head. Julie, her friend from school, probably had it right—Shani’s nunlike life wasn’t natural.

  Just the other day, Julie had invited Shani to join a group of women from Sac State for one of their weekly Friday-evening get-togethers. Shani wasn’t much for the bar scene, but maybe she ought to give Julie a call. A night out with the girls might be just the thing to take her mind off Logan.

  Because after Monday, assuming all went well with her medical exams and evaluations, everything in Shani’s life would change. If she was going to build her armor against Logan, she’d better do it now, before her world turned upside down.

  Chapter Two

  The two-plus months it took for Shani’s body to be ready for the embryo transfer dragged by for Logan, torturously slow. The anticipation distracted him at work, disrupted his sleep, set a razor edge to his temper. There were nights it was all he could do to keep from rising from bed and howling at the moon in frustration.

  Now, with Shani beside him in his Mercedes, terror replaced frustration, misgivings and second thoughts piling up in his mind. The beautiful late-September morning, with its golden sunshine and brilliant blue sky, was lost on him. Thunderstorms and gloom would have better matched his mood.

  Arianna would have seen the gorgeous weather as a kind of sign that it was a good day to start a baby. He glanced over at Shani, sitting silently beside him, and wondered whether she saw portents in the day.

  Over the past two months, his contacts with her had been limited to phone calls and e-mails. There’d been no need to see her; she drove herself to the fertility clinic as needed and the nurse he’d hired took care of the twice-weekly estrogen shots. He’d been busy in any case with business travel and endless meetings. He’d wanted to clear the decks for a lighter workload during Shani’s pregnancy, make it possible to have a few of his VPs stand in for him as needed.

  Although their visits were short and they spoke little, thoughts of her occupied far too many of his waking moments. If the pregnancy took and he moved her to the guest cottage, it would only get worse. It shouldn’t matter; they would have nothing more than a business relationship. But the thought of having her so close just added to his edginess.

  A delicate floral scent drifted toward him, tantalizing him. “Are you wearing perfume?”

  She glanced toward him, her eyes wide. “Of course not. The doctor said I shouldn’t.”

  Just his imagination, then. If he couldn’t control it during these few minutes in the car with her, how would he keep himself in line for nine months?

  He diverted his focus to the upcoming embryo-transfer procedure, but that only shredded his nerves more. For months now, he’d mulled over the success-rate statistics for frozen embryo transfers. And he had experienced the failures firsthand with Arianna. Although her pregnancy took the second time, his late wife had lost the baby in the first six weeks. His difficulties in getting along with Shani could be a moot point if the procedure wasn’t successful.

  That thought struck him like a knife edge to the gut. It didn’t bear thinking about. This might not be his last chance for children, but it certainly would be his last opportunity to expiate his various sins committed against his late wife. He had to hope at least one of the four embryos would grow and thrive inside Shani.

  At the clinic, he parked near the door and shut off the engine, amazed to find his hand shaking as he pulled the key from the ignition. Shani’s fingers rested lightly on his wrist. “It’ll be okay,” she said.

  He could feel that slight touch curling up his arm, nesting in his chest. An ache settled in the vicinity of his heart, urging him to tug her into his arms, to hold her, feel her arms around him.

  He broke the contact abruptly, exiting the car. Leaning against the Mercedes, he struggled to pull himself together, baffled by his moment of weakness. No doubt a consequence of too much stress and too little sleep.

  Shani had climbed out and she watched him across the roof. He expected curiosity in her light brown gaze; her empathy nearly did him in. He turned away and started for the clinic door, waiting for her to catch up.

  Another couple sat in the waiting room, clutching each other’s hands, gazing into each other’s eyes. The man brushed a kiss on the woman’s temple, then murmured something in her ear. The woman smiled and leaned closer to him.

  The first time Logan had come here with Arianna, he’d taken her hand, but she’d pulled away. She’d told Logan that his touching her just made her more nervous. She’d moved two seats away and flipped through a magazine as they’d waited. He’d ended up spending most of the time on the phone, thrashing out one problem or another to keep his mind off the upcoming procedure.

  He wondered if Shani would feel the same way Arianna had. She’d said so little this morning, he had no idea how she felt. He should ask her, make sure she was still committed to the procedure. But she would have told him if she wasn’t, wouldn’t she?

  He never got the chance to ask. After they’d signed in, Dr. Conners, the reproductive endocrinologist, arrived almost immediately to take them into her office. The two women led the way, Shani behind the salt-and-pepper-haired forty-something doctor. As Logan followed Shani, he kept his eyes fixed on the back of her head, not allowing his gaze to drift down to watch the beguiling sway of her hips.

  Dr. Conners gave Shani a consent form to read and sign, then handed Logan three photographs. “We were able to successfully thaw three of the four embryos in cryopreserve.”

  Logan stared down at the black-and-white photos of blastocysts, the five-day-old embryos he and Arianna had created and frozen a year ago. He’d been through this part of the procedure twice before with Arianna. Her joy, her burgeoning hope had been obvious. She’d expected that same anticipation and excitement from him, but he never seemed to be able to m
uster up those emotions.

  Why would it be any different this time? The ability to feel that instant connection Arianna had experienced just wasn’t in him. The collection of cells intrigued him, but he’d felt the same dispassionate interest studying the chemical formula for the new polymer in Good Sport’s latest-model racquetball.

  He passed the photos over to Shani. Smiling, she scrutinized the curves and mounds on the printed images. “What a miracle that we all start like this.”

  He considered telling her it was just biology…science. But even he didn’t entirely believe that. These tiny scraps of genetics, nurtured inside Shani’s body, could become his sons or daughters. Considering the father who raised him, he might have had the lousiest role model for being a parent, but that potential life meant something, even to him.

  Dr. Conners set two bottles of water on the desk. “Drink them down, Ms. Jacoby. They’ll give us a good window for the ultrasound.”

  Shani finished the first one, then wiped her mouth. He almost touched her then, to swipe the last drop of moisture from her lower lip. Instead, he clenched his hands in his lap.

  Shani smiled as she set aside the bottle. “I hope I don’t have to wait too long for the bathroom afterward.”

  “Not too long,” Dr. Conners said. “Go ahead and change. Mr. Rafferty will meet you in the preop room.”

  Logan rose to follow Shani, but the doctor put a hand on his arm to stop him. “I just want to make sure you understand the odds of success, Mr. Rafferty. Although Ms. Jacoby is a good candidate, young and healthy, your wife was nearly thirty-five when the embryos were created. The odds aren’t as good for an older donor nor for frozen embryo transfer.”

  “I’ve been through this before. And I’ve read the statistics. It’s not as if I have an alternative.”

  “Then we’ll hope for the best.” The doctor walked him out. At the door to the procedure area, she handed him paper booties and a hat to put on before they entered.

  He rapped on the door to the preop room, waiting for Shani’s “Come in” before he entered. She lay on the bed in a hospital gown, a sheet pulled over her, her arms on top alongside her body. The bones of her wrists were so delicate, the lines of her face so dainty, she seemed incredibly fragile.

  A strand of hair clung to her cheek and without thinking, he stroked it back behind her ear. Her eyes widened and he broke the contact. “Sorry,” he muttered.

  “Are you nervous?” she asked.

  He was, even more than he’d been the previous two times. “You’re the one going through a medical procedure.”

  She laced her fingers on her flat belly. “The procedure doesn’t worry me. It’s the results…but I shouldn’t think too far ahead, I guess.” Her legs shifted under the sheet. “Was Arianna nervous?”

  “Yes.” He didn’t want to remember Arianna lying in that bed, a mass of excited nerves—and his impotence in calming her. She’d let him hold her hand at that point, but he knew it wasn’t enough. Nothing he did ever seemed to be.

  The nurse came then to take them to the embryo-transfer room. Hooking a mask on over his ears, Logan walked alongside the bed, Shani’s gaze steady on his. He wished he could absorb a tenth of the serenity he could see in her face.

  Once they had her bed in position in the transfer room, she stretched out her hand toward him. “Do you mind? I guess I’m more nervous than I thought.”

  Inexplicably, her palm against his calmed him. He wondered if that had been Shani’s intention.

  Dr. Conners moved the ultrasound screen into position, so they could all watch the procedure. She pressed the paddle against Shani’s belly, and an incomprehensible image was displayed on the ultrasound screen.

  “Here’s the bladder and the uterus,” the doctor said, indicating bright spots within what looked like static. “You’ll see the embryo transfer catheter in just a moment.”

  Shani’s grip tightened as the doctor picked up the catheter containing the three embryos. The seven-inch flexible tube was attached to a syringe, the embryos in the tip, ready to be transferred.

  He folded Shani’s hand into both of his as Dr. Conners inserted the catheter. “Watch that thin white line,” she told them.

  He focused on the fuzzy jumble of light and made out the line Dr. Conners had described as it grew longer on the screen. He leaned close to Shani. “You’ll see a white dot. That’s the embryos.”

  At the brief flare of light, Shani’s hand squeezed even harder. “I see it.” She lifted her gaze to him, smiling.

  “Shani…” He fought the urge to raise her hand to his face, to press it against his cheek. “Thank you.”

  Logan pulled up in front of Shani’s apartment complex and put a hand over hers as she unbuckled her seat belt. “Wait.”

  “I can walk inside on my own.”

  “Humor me,” he told her as he climbed from the car.

  With a sigh, Shani pushed aside her seat belt and watched Logan round the front of the car. She let him open the door—he’d probably think she’d strain something if she did it herself—then took his hand. He nearly lifted her out of her seat.

  When he took her arm to guide her toward her apartment, she’d had enough. She snatched her arm back and shouldered past him along the walkway. “I’m not an invalid, for heaven’s sake.”

  He glowered down at her as he dogged her steps. “Dr. Conners said three days’ bed rest.”

  “She also said I could walk to the bathroom, take a shower.” She jabbed her key into the door of her ground-floor apartment. “Were you planning to be there for that, too?”

  She wanted to bite back the words as soon as she said them. The air seemed to grow heavy between them and graphic images flooded her mind—Logan undressing her, stepping into the shower with her. A flush burned her cheeks as she shoved open the door, startling her cat, Seymour, from his nap on the back of the sofa.

  Logan shut the door behind him, in no apparent hurry to leave. “The nurse’s aide will be continuing with your shot regimen. Progesterone every day now in addition to the twice-a-week estrogen.”

  “We arranged for her to be here at eight every morning before I leave for my job at the library.” Shani set her purse down on the sofa and ran a hand down Seymour’s back. The cat, no doubt feeling her edginess, jumped to the floor and stalked off to the bedroom.

  Logan looked around Shani’s small, plainly furnished living room, his gaze abruptly coming to a stop at the portrait of Arianna as a girl. The oil painting, along with a few other keepsakes Arianna had asked to be given to Shani, had arrived in the mail three months after Arianna’s death. The package had included no personal note from Logan, just a tersely worded letter from the probate attorney.

  Logan returned his attention to Shani. “My housekeeper, Mrs. Singh, will be bringing you your meals over the weekend.”

  “She really doesn’t need to. I can just order takeout for delivery.” Shani headed into her bedroom, hoping that would be enough of a hint for Logan to go home.

  He didn’t take the hint, crossing the living room to stand over her. “I don’t want you eating junk food.”

  She stepped away from him and pulled back the covers on the bed. “Excuse me, I have to change.” When he didn’t move, she tugged the hem of her T-shirt from her jeans.

  Logan backed out hastily. “I’ll give Mrs. Singh a call to make sure she’s on her way.”

  Shani hurried across the bedroom to swing the door shut, pressing her back against it as if she could keep at bay the sensations rioting along her nerves. She dragged in a long breath, blanking her mind. Seymour jumped on the bed and eyed her with a cat’s avid fascination.

  “Just me being an idiot,” she told the cat, then yanked off her T-shirt and skinned out of her jeans.

  Digging through her dresser, she searched for something decent to wear. She’d had a weakness for slinky nighties since she was a teenager, the skimpier, the better. No one had shared her bed for more than a year, but she still col
lected bright-colored scraps of silk and lace, nearly filling a dresser drawer with them.

  She pulled out the most conservative confection, a scarlet teddy and matching tap pants. She doubted Logan’s housekeeper would find it terribly shocking to see her wearing them.

  But what if Logan stayed until Mrs. Singh arrived? She knew he’d intended to go in to work once he had her settled in. But maybe he’d have some parting scold before he left her in peace.

  She’d better go for more coverage than the teddy. Digging through the drawer, she found the thigh-length T-shirt she usually wore over her swimsuit and threw it on. Once she’d crawled into bed and pulled up the sheet, everything was safely concealed.

  Earlier, she’d stacked her textbooks on the nightstand with a pad and pens. If she couldn’t do anything else this weekend, she might as well get ahead on her reading assignments. Pillows plumped more comfortably behind her, she scanned the course syllabus for her industrial organization class.

  The text was third in the stack. When she pulled it free, the pile shifted, and the two top books clattered to the floor.

  “Shani?” Logan called from the living room. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine!” She leaned over the edge of the bed, her T-shirt sliding up past her waist. She nabbed one book but couldn’t quite reach the other.

  “I’m coming in,” Logan called out an instant before he opened the bedroom door. He stared at her dangling over the edge of the bed. “What the hell are you doing?”

  She tried to push herself back up, but the T-shirt caught on the edge of the bed, sliding up even farther. She had only to look up at Logan’s face to see she’d exposed more than her rib cage.

  Moving slowly, he went down on one knee to take the book from her hand, then set it with the other on the stack. His gaze locked with hers as Shani eased herself back against the pillows. Praying he’d leave, hoping he wouldn’t, Shani watched, mesmerized as he straightened, then sat on the edge of the bed.