by LAURA GALE
His charcoal-gray eyes were the eyes she remembered—she saw those eyes every day. Dark and yet clear, having always reminded Rachel of Apache Tears, the clear black gemstone found throughout Arizona. She’d always been able to see what he was feeling in those clear gray eyes. But not anymore.
Everything about him was so familiar to her, yet she was not comfortable with this man. She couldn’t be sure she knew him at all. Five years changed a person. They had certainly changed her.
Lucas watched her link her hands around her glass of water. He took in the details: short, well-maintained fingernails—maybe some kind of clear polish. Competent hands, he thought, nothing frivolous there. No rings. Not even the ones he’d given her all those years ago. That change bothered him. He couldn’t—or wouldn’t—consider why.
“So,” he began, trying to steer the conversation back where he thought it was supposed to be heading, attempting to draw in a deep breath, “you were about to mention family business of some kind.”
She sighed and looked away, lending credence to his suspicion that something was wrong. She took another sip from her glass before setting it down.
“Yes, Lucas,” she began. “Well, there’s no easy way to say this, so I guess I’ll just…say it.” She shrugged again, completely unaware of the habit.
“That’s a good way to start,” he responded.
Looking him square in the face, she stated, “I need your help, Lucas.”
“My help?” His eyebrows shot up. “You need money?”
“No, Lucas,” she answered patiently, as if catering to a child’s limited attention span. “I’m not interested in your money. I’ve never asked you for money, and I’m certainly not about to start now. What I need is more…personal, I guess.” She paused, catching her bottom lip between her teeth. Taking a deep breath, she rushed on.
“We have a daughter, Lucas. She’s four. She’ll be five in December. She’s ill. She has leukemia. She needs a bone marrow transplant.” She paused in what was clearly a prepared, carefully rehearsed speech, a speech she was nevertheless having difficulty delivering. “The chemotherapy has done what it can. She can’t really do that anymore. And while bone marrow transplants used to be a ‘last resort’ thing, they’re a lot more common now, especially once a patient has gone into remission. They’re effective with children and used fairly often with the kind of leukemia she has. But—” she swallowed “—a compatible donor must be identified. Usually, the best matches are blood relatives. I’m not that match. No one in my family is. We’ve even done a donor drive at the hospital, and while it did a lot to improve the donor registry we have in this state, especially among Hispanics, it didn’t identify a compatible donor for her. That means we need to explore other options.”
She started to run her hand through her hair, then resorted to patting it when she remembered she had it clipped into a ponytail. “There are options, alternative means for obtaining bone marrow—but we need to exhaust the obvious routes before we turn to less traditional means. Those ways…would not be the first choice left to us at this point.” She took a deep breath. “Siblings are usually the most likely source, but with no siblings…” She shrugged again, letting that serve as an answer. “The best choice now is to test you, Lucas. As her father, as a blood relative, it’s logical that you may be the match she needs. I know she has your blood type, not that that guarantees anything. So,” she drew out the word, heard the quaver in her voice, “I’m hoping you’ll agree to be a donor for her. Or, more precisely, I’m asking you to be typed so we can see if you’re a suitable match for her.”
Lucas sat transfixed in his chair, too overwhelmed to move.
So here it is, he thought vaguely, Rachel’s second visit to my office and I’m having my second out-of-body experience.
Chapter 2
“What the hell are you talking about? Have you lost your mind? Do you think I’m stupid?”
Rachel paled at Lucas’s tone and, no doubt, at his volume, but gave no other outward sign of her trembling nerves. “What part are you having trouble with?”
“The part where you claim I have a daughter! That we have a daughter!” He laughed without humor. “And everything else that comes after that!”
Lucas stood, his agitation so deep he simply could not hold still. He began pacing behind his desk. “I don’t believe any of this, do you understand? If you want money for some reason, fine. Admit it. We’ll talk about it. I’m not sure I’d contribute to the upkeep of some kid that can’t possibly be mine—if you actually have a kid of your own, if you’ve been that irresponsible—but trying to convince me that the child would be mine? If that’s what you’re trying to do here, Rachel, you might as well leave now. I don’t have time for lies.” He quit pacing and whirled to face her. “Are you listening? Forget it! Don’t expect me to buy a story like that! Do you hear me?”
He was yelling and he knew it, but he was powerless to stop. It occurred to him that if a scene was erupting, he was to blame. But what other reaction could he have to Rachel’s ridiculous claim?
“Of course I hear you, Lucas,” she responded quietly, with dignity, although she was shaken. She’d be damned if she’d let it show.
“Where should I start?” Mentally enumerating, she began quietly, unruffled only on the outside. She had to make him understand—it was too important. “Okay, Lucas, I repeat: I do not want your money. I want your bone marrow. Or, rather, Michaela does.”
“Mee-kay-la?” he sneered.
“Yes, Michaela. I named her after my parents—Michaela Juanita. Papá, of course, is Michael and Mamá’s middle name is Juanita, as is mine.” She sounded tired but proud. “She’s beautiful, too. Smart. Sweet. La niñita más linda del mundo.” Rachel gave a start, alarmed that she had accidentally said aloud her private motto that her daughter was the most beautiful little girl in the world. “Anyway,” she rushed on, “she is indeed your child—”
“Oh, give it a rest, Rachel! She can’t be mine and we both know it! Our sex life was practically nonexistent when you decided to walk out.”
“Practically nonexistent, yes. But not entirely.” She refused to rise to the bait. This was not the time to argue over who had done the abandoning. “Think about it, Lucas. We weren’t celibate with each other, even at the lowest point in our marriage. Our sex life was irregular, yes. Inconsistent, yes. But not nonexistent. And before you start suggesting I was sleeping around, let’s just recall which one of us sought external…companionship. That was you and you know it.” She clamped her lips together, regretting her outburst. Bringing all that into it would not help her cause.
“Maybe you just hid it better than I did.”
Her eyes shot daggers at him, but she didn’t say anything. Instead, she just opened her briefcase and pulled out an envelope. “Didn’t you ever wonder why I wanted a one-year separation before we talked divorce?”
“That’s a good question. Since you started the whole legal thing, why didn’t you finish it? Why didn’t you file for divorce?”
“Why didn’t you?” she snapped, her breathing rapid. “Oh, yeah, I forgot, Lucas.” She mockingly tapped her forehead. “You didn’t need to. Everything suited you just fine the way it was. You had a wife if you needed her, and other more interesting playmates for the rest of the time.”
Dios mio, but I hate to lose control. Rachel took a deep breath, willing some calm to enter her spirit. “I did what I had to do to deal with the situation. So I went to the trouble of making it legal. I think I never filed for divorce because once we were separated, as far as I was concerned, we were divorced. It was over. Our lives were completely separate from that day on. Anyway—” she paused, trying to stick to the matter at hand “—Lucas, back to the question. Given that our marriage was finished in the day-to-day way, why do you suppose I wanted it to officially, legally continue for another year?”
“Maybe so you could foist some other man’s child off on me,” he suggested coldly. “Get me to pay
for the kid’s up-bringing. Maybe you already knew you were pregnant, knew that you had to cover yourself somehow. Maybe you thought your other man would claim you and then he backed out. How would I know what happened? I sure wouldn’t have bought this story then, if you’d brought it to me. Just like I’m not buying it now.”
At least he wasn’t yelling anymore.
“Fine, Lucas, we’ll play it your way. I wanted some other man’s child to have your name. Of course I did. How clever of you to figure it out.”
Her voice fairly dripped with sarcasm. Lucas squirmed in spite of himself.
“Is that how it’s done in the world you live in? Do people you know do such things? If so, you need to find some new friends, Lucas.” She tapped the envelope on her lap. “Now give my question a little thought. Why do you suppose I wanted an official year of separation?”
Lucas considered the question again, thankful he could continue in the icy vein. “Well, at first I couldn’t believe you were serious about leaving, let alone that you were thinking about doing anything legal about it. I couldn’t believe you’d gone to a lawyer. I was amazed and maybe even amused by what you were doing. Later—” he cocked his eyebrow “—later, I just figured you thought I’d come back to you—you know, that I’d come to my senses eventually—and that you thought a separation would be easier to undo than a divorce.”
He’d never thought any such thing, but he was still on the attack and the words emerged all by themselves. They sounded good to him—and they kept rolling. “Nowadays, Rachel, from my perspective, it’s convenient to be married. I mean, I’m not at risk around other women since I already have a marriage in place. I’m not the type for bigamy.”
“Apparently, you weren’t the type for monogamy, either, Lucas,” she responded sourly, her eyes flashing.
Ouch, Lucas thought, mentally cataloguing Rachel’s first flares of anger over the whole business. He would have expected anger before this, had always wondered at her composure. Maybe she has claws after all.
“So,” Rachel said, “to return to the topic, how long before you realized that I intended to go on living without you?” Her sarcasm was back.
“Several months, I guess.”
“Did I really seem that pathetic to you? That I would cling to you that way?” The words were ripped from her. “You thought I’d take you on any terms you dished out?” She eyed him incredulously, stunned to the core.
“Okay.” She started afresh, one deep breath later. “For the record, I asked for the separation because I wanted our child to be born legitimately. I didn’t want there to be any question about it—”
“I’d say there are all kinds of questions about it, Rachel.”
“Not if you agree to be tested. If you’re a match…well, it’s unusual for nonblood related individuals to match. Of course it happens, or there’d be no need for a donor registry. But I’m sure we can dig up the statistics on the likelihood, something that would at least partially satisfy you. Secondly, if you agree to be tested, you can request a DNA-based test. DNA work is what you’d really be interested in, right?” He nodded, and she continued. “Well, as I said, you can pursue that.”
Looking down in her lap, she commented, “I brought some things for you, Lucas.”
She began sorting the enclosures she’d dumped out of the envelope. “She is your daughter. Legally she is yours. We were still married at her birth. I named you on her birth certificate.” She placed a page on his desk in front of him. “Check the dates, Lucas. We were still together when she was conceived.” Watching him carefully, she plopped a stack of papers on his desk. “There are a lot of medical test results. Dios mio, but she’s had enough of them. But what I told you before, that she has your blood type, not mine and not a combination, is here on this report.” He opened his mouth, but she waved him off. “Sure, I could have run blood type IDs on potential lovers, choosing one who shared B-negative with you, then managed to get pregnant by him exactly during the dying moments of our marriage. But I didn’t.”
Handing him something else, she said, “Of course, there’s also the fact that she looks like you. Her eyes are just the same as yours. Her hair—it’s not only the same color as yours, it even curls the way yours does. Mine is completely straight….” She paused, waving the photo in the air, emphasizing her point. “Her bone structure, her nose and mouth, that’s more like me. That’s her on her fourth birthday,” she was pointing at the snapshot she’d placed before Lucas. “She was diagnosed several weeks after that. She’d had symptoms for a while and I was just starting to face things. But that day, she was feeling good.”
She smiled briefly, remembering, then sat back in her seat to wait. She knew Michaela was a lovely little girl. She had definitely inherited her father’s black hair, not her mother’s brown. She also shared his smoky-gray eyes, eyes that were nearly black at times yet had a translucent quality that Rachel had never seen on anyone else. Rachel knew that Lucas would not be able to block out the obvious resemblance.
Michaela was a spunky, active little girl. She was curious and direct. She was quick to smile and laugh. Or at least, she had been, before her illness had begun to wear her down. Yes, in Rachel’s view, she was the most beautiful little girl in the world, but it wasn’t just her physical appearance that made her that way.
Lucas knew the color had drained from his face, felt his breathing halt. He recognized himself in the child. How could he not see it? Still, he couldn’t accept it, couldn’t believe that he’d been a father for over four years and hadn’t had a clue. He felt humbled, although he wasn’t capable of identifying the emotion at the time. “You said we can check DNA?”
“One of the tests used for donor type is based on DNA, so yes, you’ll be able to obtain significant information that way. I’m not sure on the details. You’ll need to talk to the doctors about it.”
A brief silence ensued.
“If I don’t do this, what happens to her?”
Rachel took a shuddering breath and her gaze dropped to her lap. Her voice came in a whisper. “Well, you are not absolutely the last resort for a donor. There are some other techniques. I don’t think she can take much more chemo—”
“But you already said that wasn’t working.”
“Well—” she took a deep breath “—it did what it could. Technically, she’s in remission, but it took longer to get her there than we expected. She’s weak. She needs continuing therapy to keep her well. In her case, the bone marrow transplant is the best—”
“People die of leukemia,” Lucas stated flatly.
“Yes,” Rachel whispered. “They do. Technically, it’s a kind of cancer.”
Lucas released a long breath, contemplating the cigar resting in its ashtray, deciding not to pick it up. There was a chance his hands were too shaky to manage the task.
“We might still have some success through the donor registry, too. It happens. But if you don’t do it… She needs this, Lucas. Frankly, her long-term chances aren’t very good. They never are. Without this kind of care, it will come back. Or spread.”
“But this treatment can cure it?”
“Well…” she hesitated “…they’re always cautious about throwing around the word cure. But, yes, this treatment is a ical step in helping patients maintain remission and live life leukemia free.” Finally she looked up at Lucas again, her golden eyes dark and shadowy. Whatever emotions caused those shadows were off-limits to him and he knew it. That was as it should be. Right?
It hit him then that he didn’t know what those emotions might be. Not anymore. How he felt about that…well, he didn’t know that, either.
Rachel’s control, which had been eroding since she entered Lucas’s office, was in danger of snapping. “Look, Lucas, if I had a lot of reasonable options, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have involved you. I’ve raised Michaela on my own, as my daughter. It didn’t occur to me to involve you until things got…bad, because I’ve never involved you in anything whe
re she’s concerned. I knew you’d have accusations, I knew it would be ugly. Why would I set myself up for that? There was no reason to force that until now. Until now—” she sighed, her breath catching on emotions that she kept in check “—I had no reason to try to involve you.”
For better or for worse, she added silently. Keeping your daughter from you seemed like my only option at the time. That’s just how it was. Suddenly Rachel was angry—angry at what life had dealt her daughter, angry at what she needed from Lucas. “If you understand nothing else, understand this—I will do whatever I can to help my daughter, including come to you. If you won’t help voluntarily, well—” she faltered, but flared again “—I’ll see if you can be legally forced to do it. At least to find out if you’re compatible.”
She knew that would get his attention. Lucas would go a long way to avoid confrontation of that kind. She was pretty sure he wouldn’t want this dragged into the public arena of the courts. His parents certainly wouldn’t. At least, not on her terms.
“Right now,” she continued, “I’m talking about hope. That’s the best weapon I have—that and continuing medical care.” She took a deep breath and pressed on. “You are her father and I just can’t ignore that when her life may be at stake. In good conscience I need to give you the chance to know your child. To deprive you of that wouldn’t be fair to either of you. You’ve gone long enough without knowing each other. I never would have planned for you to meet this way, of course, but…” Again, her voice trailed away. “I probably should have found a way to tell you about her before now, but there wasn’t an obvious good time or way to do it. Or at least I didn’t think there was, knowing what our reunion would be like. I had to protect her from—” Rachel caught herself before she finished the thought, before she said, I had to protect her from you. She couldn’t be sure if Lucas realized what she’d been about to say.
