Staking His Claim

by Tessa Radley

  The baby...

  Ella’s hand crept to her stomach.

  Mindful of how much her sister hated it when she nagged, Ella tempered her outrage. “You can’t just leave a baby for a few months...or even a year...and hope it will be there when you get back.”

  “I know that, Ella.” Keira’s brows drew together. “Don’t try to put the guilts on me. I’m not ready for a baby—neither of us are.”

  Ignoring her sister’s unfair accusation, Ella tried to fathom out what Keira’s response meant. Did she intend to give the baby up for adoption? Shock chilled Ella. Had her sister thought this through? She would hate to see Keira suffer when it one day came home to her what she’d lost. Perhaps Keira needed to be reminded of that.

  “If you’re thinking about giving the baby up for adoption, just remember it’s not going to be easy to find a surrogate again if you decide you want a baby when you come back from Africa.”

  She certainly wouldn’t be doing it again. She shouldn’t even have done it this time. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb decision. That’s what came of making decisions with her heart rather than her head.

  Keira flicked back her pale silver hair. “We can do what Yevgeny suggested when we first talked about you being our surrogate—put our names down to adopt a baby.”

  She’d known Dmitri’s high-handed brother was behind this!

  The ache in her lower back that had been worsening all day, intensified. It wasn’t worth arguing with Keira, pointing out that putting down your name didn’t guarantee a baby because so few became available for adoption. And when one did, the legal mother had the final say. She alone could choose whichever couple she wanted—there was no waiting list, no way to predict who she would choose.

  But right now Keira’s future plans were not her concern.

  “And what about this baby?” Ella knew she sounded angry. But, damn it, she was angry. Yevgeny made her blood bubble—even when he wasn’t present. Just the mention of the man was enough! “You can’t just dump it—”

  “I’m not dumping it— You’re the legal mother. I know you’ll make the best decision for the baby.” There was an imploring expression in her sister’s eyes that caused the hairs at the back of Ella’s neck to stand on end.

  Oh, no! Keira had planned to leave the baby with her and come back to claim it. Panic prickled through her. “I can’t keep the baby.”

  Keira’s eyes teared up again. “I know I shouldn’t have expected you to. But you always wanted the adoption of the baby to us to be an open one. So I hoped you would consider...”

  “No!” Panic swamped Ella. “We have a surrogacy arrangement—”

  Keira was shaking her head. “But Ella, you explained we can’t actually adopt the baby until after you sign the consent to give her up on the twelfth day. As the legal mother, you’re entitled to change your mind—but so are we.”

  She’d explained the legalities too well to her sister. Ella swallowed a curse. “You can’t change your mind—because I can’t keep this baby.”

  A wave of sick helplessness engulfed her.

  Keira sighed. “We already have. We’re not ready to raise a child. I don’t even want to think about the decision you’re going to have to make, but you have to do what you feel is right, Ella. It’s your body, your b—”

  “Don’t tell me it’s my baby!”

  Keira looked doleful. “I think I always knew deep in my heart that you wouldn’t agree to keep her, and I’ve made peace with that. Even though I had so hoped...” Her little sister’s voice trailed away.

  Dear God.

  Did Keira not know how much this hurt? What she was

  asking? The pain that pierced her chest was sharp and unforgiving. And guilt made it worse. Ella wished she could burst into tears...weep and wail. But she couldn’t. Instead, she fought for composure.

  She’d always been the adult in their relationship. No doubt Keira had known all along she would agree to sort everything out.

  Her heart was racing, and her head had started to pound. The ache in her back seemed to be growing worse by the minute. Ella knew all this couldn’t be good for the baby. She had to calm down. Think of the baby. She drew a shuddering breath...counted to five...and exhaled slowly.

  Pulling a cloak of assumed indifference around herself, Ella said with every bit of dignity she could muster, “I have a job—a demanding job. I don’t have time for a pet, much less a baby.” Ella would’ve loved a pet—a cat. But she didn’t have time to care for any living thing.

  Keira was staring at her again, her bottom lip quivering.

  Ella refused to feel one bit guilty. She was not going to be left holding the baby; she couldn’t keep it. That had never been the plan. The baby had been conceived for Keira—and Dmitri—to parent. This was not her baby.

  Lifting her hand from her belly, she said, “Then we’re in agreement. I have no choice but to give your baby up for adoption.”

  “If you see no other way out.”

  Before she could reiterate that this was not her preference, that the baby was Keira and Dmitri’s responsibility, to her horror Ella felt the warm, wet flood as her water broke.

  Keira’s baby girl was not going to wait another week to be born.

  * * *

  Night had already fallen by the time Yevgeny Volkovoy strode into the waiting room set aside for family visitors on the hospital’s first floor. He didn’t notice the calming decor in gentle blues and creams lit up by strategically placed wall sconces, or even the soft-focus photographs of Madonna-like mothers cradling babies that hung on the wall. Instead, his focus homed in on where his brother sprawled across an overstuffed chair while watching a wide-screen television.

  Fixing startlingly light blue eyes on Dmitri, he demanded, “Where is he?”

  “Who?” Dmitri swung a blank look up at him.

  “The child.”

  “It’s not a boy...it’s a girl,” his brother corrected him even as the soccer game on the television recaptured his attention. “I told you that after the ultrasound.”

  Yevgeny suppressed the surge of bitter disappointment. He’d been so sure that the ultrasound had been read wrong. He should’ve known! For almost a century his family had produced boys...there hadn’t been a girl in sight. How typical of Ella McLeod to give birth to a girl. Contrary creature.

  He waved a dismissive hand. “Whatever. I want to see her.”

  Retracing his steps out of the family room he emerged in time to see his sister-in-law appear through the next door down the carpeted corridor. Yevgeny strode forward. Nodding at his startled sister-in-law as he passed her, he entered the private ward beyond.

  Keira’s icicle sister was sitting up in the bed, propped up against large cushions.

  Yevgeny came to an abrupt stop. He had never seen Ella McLeod in bed before.

  The sight caused a shock of discomfort to course through him. Despite the fact that she barely reached his shoulder when she was on her feet, she’d always seemed so formidable. Stern. Businesslike. Unsmiling. Even at family occasions she dressed in a sharp, formal fashion. Dark colors—mostly black dresses with neck scarves in muted shades.

  Now he allowed his gaze to drift over her and take in the other differences.

  No scarf. No oversize glasses. No makeup. Some sort of ivory frilly lace spilled around the top of her breasts. She looked younger...paler...more fragile than he’d ever seen her.

  The icicle must be thawing.


  Yevgeny shook off the absurd notion.

  As though sensing his presence, she glanced up from the screen of a slim white phone she’d been squinting at. Antagonism snaked down his spine as their eyes clashed.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  “Where is the baby?”

  He’d expected to find the child in her arms.

  He should’ve known better. There wasn’t a maternal bone in Ella McLeod’s frozen body. No softness. No tender feelings. Only sharp, legal-eagle eyes that she usually disguised with a pair of glasses—and from all accounts, a steel-trap brain. According to the rumor mill her law practice did very well. No doubt her success came from divorce dollars siphoned off men with avaricious ex-wives.

  Ella hadn’t answered. A haunted flicker in her eye captured his attention, but then the fleeting expression vanished and her focus shifted beyond him. Wheeling about, Yevgeny spotted the crib.

  Two strides and he stood beside it. The baby lay inside, snugly swaddled and fast asleep. One tiny hand curled beside her cheek, the fingers perfectly formed. Her lashes were impossibly long, forming dark curves against plump cheeks. Yevgeny’s heart contracted and an unexpected, fierce rush of emotion swept him.

  It took only an instant for him to fall deeply, utterly irrevocably in love.

  “She’s perfect,” he breathed, his gaze taking in every last detail. The thatch of dark hair—the Volkovoy genes. The red bow of her pursed mouth.

  A smile tilted the corners of his mouth up.

  Reaching out, he gently touched the curve where chin became cheek with his index finger.

  “Don’t wake her!”

  The strident demand broke the mood. Turning his head, Yevgeny narrowed his gaze and pinned the woman in the bed.

  “I had no intention of waking her,” he said softly, careful not to disturb the infant.

  “It’s only a matter of time before she wakens with you hovering over her like that.”

  “I never hover.” But he moved away from the cot—and closer to the bed.

  Ella didn’t respond. But he’d seen that look in her eyes before. She wasn’t bothering to argue...not because she’d been swayed by his denial, but because she was so damn certain of the rightness of her own opinion.

  The woman was a pain in the ass.

  The polar opposite of her sister, she was the least motherly woman he’d ever encountered—with the single exception of his own mother.

  Maybe it was as well she wasn’t cradling the baby; she’d freeze the little bundle if she got close enough. Ella was ice to the core—he’d been mistaken to imagine a thaw.

  “Dmitri called to tell me you’re planning to give up the child for adoption?” No discussion. No consultation. She’d made a life-changing decision that affected all of them, by herself. It was typical of the woman’s arrogant selfishness.

  “Then you must’ve heard that your brother and my sister have decided not to adopt the baby.”

  Was that irony buried in her voice? He couldn’t read her expression. “Yes—Dmitri told me at the office.”

  “At the same time that Keira was visiting me.”

  This time he definitely detected an edge. But he was less concerned about her annoyance than discovering the fate of the oblivious newborn in the cot. “So it’s true? You intend to give up the baby just like that?”

  Her chin shot up three notches at the snapping sound his fingers made. “I will take care of the arrangements to find a new set of parents as soon as I can.” Ella glanced down at the phone in her lap, then back at Yevgeny. “I’ve already left a message for the social worker who’s handling the adoption proceedings for Keira and Dmitri, notifying her of their change of mind and requesting that she get in touch with me ASAP.”

  “Of course you have.” It certainly hadn’t taken her long to start the process to get rid of the baby. Anger sizzled inside him. “You never considered keeping her?” Not that he’d ever allow the child to stay in her care.

  She shook her head, and the hair shrouding her face shimmered like the moonlit wisps of cloud outside the window. “Not an option.”

  “Of course it isn’t.”

  She stared back at him, managing to look haughty and removed in the hospital bed. So certain of the rightness of her stance. “Identifying suitable adoptive parents from Jo Wells’s records is the only feasible option.”

  “‘Feasible option?’” Was this how his own mother had reasoned when she’d divorced his father and lied her way into sole custody, only to turn around and abandon the same sons she’d fought so hard to keep from their father? “This is a baby we’re talking about—you’re not at work now.”

  “I’m well aware of that. And my main concern now is the best interests of the child—exactly as it would be if I was at work.”

  Yevgeny snorted. “You’re a divorce lawyer—”

  “A family lawyer,” she corrected him. “Marriage dissolution is only a part of my practice. Looking after the best interests of the children and—”

  “Whatever.” He waved an impatient hand. “I’d hoped for a little less business and a little more emotion right now.”

  From the lofty position of the hospital bed she raised an eyebrow in a way that instantly rankled. “You don’t transfer skills learned from business to your home life?”

  “I show a little more compassion when I make decisions that relate to the well-being of my family.”

  She laughed—a disbelieving sound. Yevgeny gritted his teeth and refused to respond. Okay, so he had a reputation—

  well-deserved, he conceded silently—for being ruthless in business. But that was irrelevant in this context. He’d always been fiercely protective of those closest to him. His brother. His father. His babushka.

  He studied Ella’s face. The straight nose, the lack of amusement in her light brown eyes—despite her laughing mouth. No, he wasn’t going to reach her—he doubted she had any warmth to which he could appeal.

  Giving a sharp, impatient sigh, he said, “You’ve got blinkered vision. You haven’t considered all the feasible options.”

  For the first time emotion cracked the ice. “I can’t keep the baby!”

  Two

  Ella’s desperation was followed by a strained silence during which Yevgeny looked down his perfectly straight nose at her. Something withered inside her but Ella held his gaze, refusing to reveal the fragile grief that lingered deep in her most secret heart.

  But she wasn’t going to keep the baby.

  And she’d hold firm on that.

  For her sanity.

  Finally he shook his head. “That poor baby is very fortunate that you will not be her mother.”

  The contempt caused Ella to bristle. “I agreed to be a surrogate—not a mother.”

  “Right now you’re the only mother that baby has—you’re the legal mother.”

  God.

  This was never supposed to have happened. She stuck her hands under the bedcovers and rested them on the unfamiliar flatness of her belly. After so many months of having a mound, it felt so odd. Empty.

  And, with the baby no longer moving inside, so dead.

  Why had she ever offered to donate her eggs—and lend her womb—to create the baby her sister had so desperately wanted?

  The answer was simple. She loved her sister...she couldn’t bear to see Keira suffer.

  Ah, damn. The road to hell was paved with good intentions. Now look where it had landed her—in an entanglement that was an
ything but simple. Ella knew that if she wasn’t careful, the situation had the potential to cause her more pain...more hurt...than any she’d ever experienced before. The only way through the turbulent situation was to keep her emotional distance from the baby—not to allow herself to form that miraculous mother-baby bond that was so tenuous, yet had the strength of steel.

  But there was no need to offer any explanation to the insensitive brute who towered over the hospital bed.

  Rubbing her hand over her strangely flat stomach, Ella pursed her lips. “I’m well aware that I’m her legal mother.”

  Mother. Just one word and her heart started to bump roughly. She couldn’t keep the baby. She couldn’t.

  Carefully, deliberately she reiterated, “It was never the plan for me to remain her mother. This. Is. Not. My. Baby.”

  It felt better to spell it out so firmly.

  The surrogate agreement had been signed, the adoption proceedings had been started. All that needed to happen to formalize the situation had been to get through the twelve-day cooling-off period the New Zealand adoption laws provided. Once that period had passed, and the mother was still sure she wanted to give up the baby, the adoption could go ahead. But Ella had never contemplated reneging on the promise she’d made to her sister. And she’d certainly never expected Keira to be the one to back out!