by Maisey Yates
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 don’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 alive a marriage 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, openmouthed, in the rolling chair. “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 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. Telling people was one of those things that was 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 focusing on a stationary point helped ward off the weird dizziness that always seemed to come with standing up these days. And also 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 just 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 for 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 d
idn’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 okay. When I went . . . they couldn’t find it. They checked the log, my name, my social security number. They found it eventually, and found 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 door frame. “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 it. 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?”
“No . . . 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 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, I’m 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.
“You look younger in this picture,” she said, holding up the driver’s license.
“It’s been a hell of a few years. But it is me.”
“Yeah.” She looked at his name: Cole Mitchell. On the license, and on the printout from the doctor. She read further on this time. And she saw her name. The printout showed her as the recipient of his donation. “Did you . . . How did you get this? It was supposed to be anonymous.”
He shrugged. “In light of the situation, they felt it best to give me the information.”
“You took it.”
“Yes. I did.”
She handed the license and paper back to him. “I don’t care what this says. It’s not your baby. It’s my baby. I’m the one who’s carrying it. I went to the clinic. I mean . . . we didn’t have sex or anything . . . anything intimate like that. It was just your sperm. It’s not . . . you.”
“My genes. My baby.”
She shook her head. “No. Please go away. Oh, just go away, because I’m going to be sick again. And I’m dizzy. And I’m pretty sure I hate you.” She put her hand on her head and tried to stop the growing, pulsing pain that never really went away. And she hoped that maybe if she closed her eyes long enough, Mr. Tall, Dark and Stetson would disappear.
“You don’t look good.”
Her eyes snapped open, annoyance coursing through her. “I know. I’m pathetic.”
“You’re sick,” he said. “That’s different than pathetic. You need to rest.”
Kelsey just wanted to cry now. Because it was what she needed. It was what she’d deprived herself of receiving from friends or family, because she hadn’t told anyone that she was pregnant. And now she had to take comfort from a stranger.
A stranger who was, apparently, according to him, the father of her baby.
“I don’t want to rest,” she said. “I want to throw up. But I’m pretty sure that’s impossible since my stomach is empty from all the vomiting that happened earlier.”
Cole didn’t have a clue what he was doing; only that Kelsey Noble looked exhausted and half-starved. She had dark circles under her eyes and pale skin, and she seemed far too thin to be pregnant.
Why the hell wasn’t someone here taking care of her? Did she have a boyfriend? A girlfriend? Parents?
“Seriously . . . I have to . . .” She pushed herself up from the table and turned and ran from the door, leaving it wide open, disappearing from his view.
He just stood there on the front step, not sure what in hell he was supposed to do.
“Expecting dinner?”
He turned and saw a girl standing at the bottom of the steps holding a large paper bag.
“Probably.” He peered back into the house, but didn’t see a sign of Kelsey. “Not sure if anyone’s eating though.” He walked down the stairs and took the bag. “Keep the change,” he said, handing the girl a fifty. He would probably regret that later, but now wasn’t the time to worry about it.
He walked back up the steps and looked again. The kitchen was still empty. Well, great. He hesitated for a second, then went inside, closed the door and shoved his wallet back in his pocket. He walked back toward where Kelsey had disappeared and saw a closed door with a shaft of light shining beneath it. He paced back into the kitchen. And then he just stood in the middle of a house that wasn’t his, a house he hadn’t been invited into, and tried to decide what he was doing. Was he going to be a father in seven months? Would she let him? Did he care?
Number one on the agenda was making sure Ms. Kelsey Noble didn’t languish and die. Everything after that . . . he could figure out later. At least that directive gave him immediate purpose.
He set the paper bag on the table and reached into his pocket, pulling out his phone.
Hopefully his dumbass brother would answer. It rang five times. A lot more times than he’d like it to ring if potential guests were calling.
“Hello.”
“Cade, you have to say Elk Haven Stables.”
“Why? You know who you called, don’t you?”
“I don’t have time to listen to you run your mouth. I won’t be home tonight.”
“Did you look at the tractor?” The story for why he’d come to Portland. To look at a tractor. Why his brother had fallen for it, he didn’t know. Or maybe he hadn’t, and he didn’t want to know just what Cole was up to, or why he’d felt the need to lie. If Cole had the option, he wouldn’t want to know.
“Yeah, I’m gonna take a pass on it. The condition wasn’t as good as they made it seem like it might be.” He looked back in the direction of the bathroom again.
“And why won’t you be home?”
“I’m ah . . . busy.”
“You are a terrible liar. You getting laid?”
He heard the toilet flush, followed by a heavy sigh and the sound of running water.
“Yeah, maybe,” he said.
It was all Cade thought about. Getting some. Moving on to the next woman. That was another thing, in addition to his mother’s quilts, that his ex had stolen from him. His libido. Or maybe she just killed it stone-cold dead. Because, thanks to her, he knew now that what started out as a simple fling could easily morph into a road trip to Vegas with a hangover that lingered for years.
“Good for you. I’ll tell them the news. The not-getting-the-tractor news; not the getting-laid thing. I’ll make up a story that’s not about you getting some when I tell them you aren’t coming home.”
“Great. Make sure the guests ar
e taken care of and . . .”
“Cole, I do know how to keep things moving around here. I’m planning on doing a bronc-busting demonstration later.”
“Oh, good. Just don’t tell the insurance company.”
“I’m not letting the guests do it.”
“Well, clearly you aren’t able to ride, so I was confused.”
His brother was silent for a second, and Cole felt a twinge of guilt for bringing up his limitations. “Give me a little credit for not being a total moron.”
“Working off of your track record, I’m not sure I can.”
Cade’s response was filled with color and with words that started with F. Cole held the phone away from his ear and let him rant for a minute. “Finished?” he asked when the line went silent.
“Hell, no. But I’ll let you hear the rest when you get back home.”
“Yeah, in the meantime, don’t blow anything up.”
“Shouldn’t be too hard. Hopefully there’s blowing where you are.”
“Shut up, asshole.” He hit the end-call button and put his phone down on the table.
He let out a breath and surveyed the small kitchen. The house was so feminine. So obviously lacking in male influence. Or at least lacking the influence of a man who had any input on his surroundings. A bowl of dried flowers and some other useless, purely decorative crap was in the center of the table. The pink kitchen rugs matched the potholders and the lace curtains.
The sink was filled with forks. Only forks.
He looked over to the trash can and saw that it was overflowing with white cartons. Her entire diet seemed to consist of Chinese takeout eaten straight from the box.
He looked at the door. It would be easy to walk out the door. To go back to Elk Haven and get back to work. Forget that some woman was pregnant with his baby. She didn’t want him anyway. He didn’t know if he wanted kids. He had no desire to ever get married. That was a hell he wouldn’t visit willingly again. Anyway, his whole inspiration for keeping that marriage together had been his parents’ marriage. And then it turned out that had been a lie too.
No. Marriage was not for him. And in that case, kids weren’t either.
