“Wow. You’ve got a real romantic streak there.”
He pointed his fork at her. “You loved Jacob, right? Can you honestly tell me that the fun bit at the start of the relationship was worth all the pain when things went bad at the other end?”
She thought for a minute. Absolutely it had been hard toward the end with Jacob. The tears, the fights, the almost constant ache in her chest as it became more and more apparent to her that their relationship was doomed. She’d been flat for months afterward, wondering if she’d made a mistake, missing him like crazy.
“It was hard, definitely. But that doesn’t mean I’m not prepared to try again.”
“Then let me ask you the same question. What if you meet someone and fall in love? How’s he going to feel about your baby?”
It was probably very revealing of her psychology at present that she hadn’t even considered how her decisions might affect any future spouse. She’d been too busy focusing on not missing out to even consider how some hypothetical spouse might feel about her unconventional path to motherhood.
“I guess if I meet someone, he’ll simply have to accept that my child and the way I conceived my child are a part of the package,” she said slowly.
“Exactly,” Ethan said.
She forked up more spaghetti. Her brain worked furiously, going over and over what he offered, pulling it apart, trying to find the loopholes and bear traps. It took her a moment to notice that Ethan had finished his spaghetti and was now watching her with unnerving intensity. She pushed the remainder of her meal away and turned to face him.
He didn’t say a word but she knew what he wanted: to know if she was prepared to consider his offer. If she wanted him to be the father of her child.
There were so many conflicting thoughts and feelings racing through her mind that she literally felt dizzy.
She slid off the stool. “I’m just going to… Give me a minute,” she mumbled. Then she made haste for the restrooms in the rear of the restaurant.
She pushed her way through the swing door and went straight into the first cubicle. She closed the lid and sat on it, then she stared at the graffiti-covered door.
She needed to think. Ethan was offering her something incredibly valuable and generous, something that had the potential to be wonderful—or potentially disastrous.
She took a deep breath and cudgeled her brain into some semblance of rationality.
There was no issue with the genetic side of things, obviously. Ethan was every woman’s fantasy in that department—tall, dark, handsome, intelligent, fit and healthy.
There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that her child would benefit from the best of the best in terms of DNA. Those eyes. That body. That wicked, sharp mind of his.
And her child would also benefit from actually knowing his or her father. Ethan had said he wanted to be an involved parent, that he wanted visitation rights and to be a part of major decisions. She had no reason to doubt his sincerity; she knew him well enough to know that he would never have made the offer in the first place if he wasn’t certain. Look at the medical tests he’d had done in advance, for example. He’d already shown that he was considerate and prepared and thorough.
If she said yes, she wouldn’t be alone. She’d have someone to bounce ideas off. Someone to call in the middle of the night for solace or sympathy. Someone to pick up the ball if she fumbled it. A partner, in fact, in almost every way except the most obvious.
So many pros—and yet the cons were not insignificant. For starters, she worked with Ethan. Not only worked, they were both partners, which meant they were doubly invested in their jobs. If things turned sour between them, if something went wrong, there would be no separation between home and office.
There was also the fact that despite having worked with Ethan for two years, despite all the lunches and racquetball games, there was still a great deal about him she didn’t know. She’d never seen him really angry, for example. She had no idea how he was situated financially, what his attitude about money was. She knew nothing about his family, whether he was close to them or estranged.
Admittedly, she wouldn’t know any of those things about an anonymous donor she selected from an online catalog, either, but she wouldn’t be co-parenting with any of those men.
The bottom line was that what Ethan was proposing could be a dream come true—or it could lock them both into a relationship that neither of them were really prepared for.
The bathroom door swung open, bringing with it the noise of the restaurant and reminding her that Ethan was waiting for her. Waiting for her decision. She stood and smoothed her hands down her skirt. Then she flushed the loo, more for show than anything else, and exited the cubicle to wash her hands.
Ethan was studying the coffee grinds in the bottom of his cup when she slid onto her stool. He looked at her, his eyes full of uncertainty. Nerves twisted in her stomach as she took a deep breath.
“We would need to sit down and talk things through in a lot of detail before we made any final decision. If we’re going to even consider sharing the parenting of a child, we need to be on the same page on so many things…”
A slow smile spread across Ethan’s mouth.
“It’s not a yes, Ethan,” she felt compelled to point out.
“But it’s not a no.”
He was trying to temper his smile but she could see the relief in his eyes. The hope.
He wants this as much as I do.
She’d spent so many years trying to coax, cajole, beg and plead with Jacob to get him to even consider becoming a parent that she’d forgotten that there were men who craved children as much as women did.
“We need to talk more,” she said. “A lot more.”
“Absolutely. How about dinner at my place on Saturday night?”
“Okay. That sounds good.”
“Then it’s a date,” he said.
Even though she knew there were so many things that could go wrong, she felt lighter than she had in weeks.
If this worked out—
She clamped down on the thought. There was no point in getting excited over something that hadn’t happened. Yet.
He propped his elbows on his desk and pinched the bridge of his nose as a wave of emotion threatened to overwhelm him.
He’d thought that dream was done. He really had. And now he had a chance. Thanks to Alex.
Get a grip, Stone. It hasn’t happened yet.
The thing was, he hadn’t realized how much he’d staked on this, how much he’d invested until she’d returned from the bathroom and told him she was willing to consider his offer.
It was probably just as well that he and Alex had agreed not to discuss the matter again until Saturday night. He’d need the rest of the week to get his head together.
He had a preliminary settlement meeting booked this afternoon so he gathered his files and went to collect his client from reception. Jolie King had been married a little under five years and had two children under four. Her soon-to-be ex, Adam King, came from money. She did not. Like most of his clients, Jolie was not a happy woman. She was grieving and angry, bitter and hurt.
It went without saying that divorce lawyers rarely saw the nobler aspects of humanity.
Jolie gave him a wan smile when he greeted her.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“Oh, you know. Okay.”
He took her to his office and waited until she was settled before saying the things that needed to be said.
“Tomorrow’s going to be a tough day, Jolie. And I know it’s going to be hard for you, but I need to reiterate that you need to let me handle the negotiation. Okay?”
Jolie shifted defensively. “Yeah. Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”
Ethan was tempted to remind her about the constant string of angry text and phone messages that had passed between her and her ex since divorce proceedings had started. He’d asked her to limit conversations to day-today matters and issues surrounding their two children but had little faith that Jolie had listened to his suggestion. She had too much emotion invested in this situation to see past the here and now.
But tomorrow was important. Tomorrow could keep them out of court and save her thousands of dollars.
“Listen. I know you’re pissed with Adam. I know you want to take him to the cleaners and punish him, but my job isn’t to make Adam hurt. My job is to help set up you and your kids so that you can move on and start living your life again. Scoring points is meaningless at this stage. It’s not going to change anything, and it’s only going to make things uglier, more drawn out and more expensive. We have much more control if we settle out of court. If we leave this in the hands of the judge, anything could happen.”
And usually did. He knew a number of family court judges who prided themselves on ensuring that no one walked away a winner from their courtroom. They considered their job well and fairly done if neither party were satisfied or happy at the end of the trial.
Jolie frowned. Then she began ranting about her ex. Adam was a cheat, a liar. He’d never been a good husband, she didn’t know why she’d married him. He said he loved his kids but he was hardly around to spend time with them—and that was when they were married. Now they were separated, the kids could barely remember what he looked like….
Ethan sat back and waited. There’d be no talking to Jolie until she’d vented her spleen. He had plenty of clients who couldn’t engage the rational part of their brain until they’d off-loaded their anger. Something about divorce seemed to short-circuit otherwise sensible human beings and turn them into muddled, emotional messes. And he was often the dumping ground for their rage and confusion. As much as he told himself it was part of the job, it took its toll. So much anger, so much disappointment and bitterness… Most of the time he tried to let it wash over him, but there were days when it got to him. Definitely.
It wasn’t as though he hadn’t been there himself. He knew what it was like to be so filled with hurt and injustice that he’d felt as though his skin would split with the force of it. He knew what it was like to want to punish the person who had once been the center of his world. And he absolutely knew what it was like to look back over the years together and wonder what it had all been worth and if it had ever meant anything.
When Jolie had finally run herself down, he offered her a cup of coffee and a cookie then began to outline what he hoped to gain from tomorrow’s round table.
He sent her home with instructions to get a good night’s sleep, then lost himself in the sea of emails and other paperwork on his desk. Then he went home and did more work.
Alex and the conversation they’d had over lunch was never far from his thoughts, always hovering in the background, ready to slip to the fore when his concentration lapsed.
If things went well, they might have a child together. He might have a chance to become a father, without the attendant risks of embarking on another doomed-to-failure relationship.
It was enough to keep him awake, staring at the ceiling for hours.
She dismissed the notion immediately. Ethan’s offer hadn’t been made impulsively. He’d gone to his doctor. He’d had his sperm checked out, for Pete’s sake. And if he had changed his mind, he’d look her in the eye and tell her. She knew that much about him.
She felt a cool breeze on the back of her neck as the door to the court swung open behind her.
“Latecomers forfeit first serve,” she said without turning around.
“Sorry. Road work near the Art Center,” Ethan said.
“You used that excuse last time you were late.”
She glanced over her shoulder, determined to treat this like any other Tuesday night despite the important question sitting between them. Then she saw Ethan’s face and every other consideration went out the window.
“Ethan! My God, what happened?” She took an involuntary step toward him.
His left eye was bruised and painful looking, not quite black but heading that way. She fought the absurd, utterly inappropriate urge to touch him to reassure herself that he was okay.
“Don’t worry, it’s worse than it looks.”
“Who did this to you?”
“It was an accident. Things got a little out of hand during my settlement conference this afternoon and I got in the way of the wrong person.” He shrugged as if to say it was no big deal but she could see he was angry.
“This happened in a settlement conference? I hope you had the guy up on assault charges?”
“It was a woman, and I figured it might be difficult having her charged since she’s my client. Not to mention what it would do to my reputation if it got out.”
“Your
client
did this?”
“Great, huh? Nothing like a good settlement conference to bring out the love.” He sounded bitter.
She’d often wondered how he handled all the acrimony and bad energy that came with divorce and custody cases. Apparently, sometimes, not so well.
He glanced at her and shook his head. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to dump on you. It gets to me sometimes.”
“It’d get to me, too. There’s a reason I chose corporate law. All that conflict…” She shuddered theatrically. “Give me a nice, complicated contract any day.”
“Yeah. There are days I wonder why I chose this specialty, too.”
“Why did you?” She’d always wanted to know. Why volunteer for an area of the law that was so personal and painful?
“I thought I could help people, believe it or not. But sometimes I wonder. I really do….” He ran a hand over his head and gripped the nape of his neck, visibly making an effort to calm down.
He was silent for a long moment, then he shook his head.
“You know what I don’t get? Why we even go through the pretense of getting married anymore. I get the historical reasons—primogeniture, keeping power within families, property acquisition, blah, blah. But none of that matters these days. The world has moved on. Yet we still cling to the completely unrealistic idea that men and women can make a bunch of pretty vows to one another and stand by them for the rest of their lives.”
“I know you probably don’t want to hear this right now, but there are some good marriages out there. What are the stats—one in three marriages end in divorce? That means two-thirds don’t,” she said. “Ever stop to think that you’re seeing the worst of marriage because of your profession?”
“Just because two-thirds of marriages don’t end up before the divorce courts doesn’t mean they’re happy marriages, Alex. Believe me.”
Was he talking about his own marriage? Was that what this was about?
“I guess some people are prepared to make tradeoffs,” she said carefully.
“To gain what? Companionship? Security? Children? Is it really worth it? Lying in bed next to someone who is at best indifferent to you or at worst actively hates your guts?”
Wow. He was really feeling the pain today.
“Is that what happened for you and your wife? You didn’t want to live with the compromise?”
He stared at her for a long beat and for a moment she thought she’d stepped over the line.
“Let’s just say that there wasn’t enough love to go around. Which is exactly my point. Once the hormones wear off, love’s a thin foundation to build a lifetime on. Take this couple today—married four years, two kids under three, and this afternoon they couldn’t even tolerate being in the same room as one another.”
Alex looked away from the bleak cynicism in his eyes. She understood that something had happened to Ethan to make him lose faith in people, but she believed in love. She’d seen firsthand how strong it was. The doctors had claimed her mother should have died in the car accident that had damaged her brain irretrievably, but she hadn’t. Rachel Knight had known that she was the only thing her daughter had and she’d hung on to life tenaciously because she refused to leave Alex to the tender mercies of social services.
“What about children?” she said. “If we have a child together, you’ll love him or her, won’t you?”
“That’s different,” Ethan said.
“Is it?”
“You don’t choose to love your children. It just happens.”
“You think people choose to love each other or not? That you can choose to fall in or out of love with someone?”
“I think that human beings are unreliable and fickle and childish and selfish and ultimately unknowable,” he said.
“And yet you want to make a baby with me?”
He looked blank for a moment, then he smiled self-mockingly. “Which only proves my point, right? People are unreliable.”
She understood what he meant. Jacob had let her down, hadn’t he? He’d proven to be all the things Ethan described. And yet her relationship with him hadn’t turned her into a cynic. It hadn’t destroyed her faith in love.
She looked at Ethan, wondering. What would it take to do that to a person? What had gone wrong between him and his wife?
She forced herself to swallow the questions crowding her throat. He didn’t want to talk about it. That much was obvious.
She leaned down and picked up one of the balls she’d been practicing with. “Think you can play with a dodgy eye?”
He didn’t immediately shift gears, but when he did he came out with all guns blazing. “Better still, I think I can beat you, slowpoke. Again.”
“
Again?
I won the last two matches in a row.”
“Are we counting last week? Because I believe I was up on points before we called it a night.”
“No, we’re not counting last week and you’re full of it, you know that?”
He smiled, and it felt like an achievement. As though she’d given him a small moment of lightness in an otherwise dark day.
“It’s been said before. Usually when I’ve got a game or two over you,” he countered.
“Don’t bank on that happening tonight.”
“We’ll see.”
“And don’t go thinking that I’m going to go easy on you because you smeared a little axle grease under your eye,” she added.
Ethan laughed, the sound loud in the enclosed court. “Them’s fighting words, Ms. Knight.”
“And talk is cheap, Mr. Stone.”
She watched him as he moved into position on the court. There was still a grim cast to his features but she could tell he was making an effort to shake off his mood. She felt as though she was seeing two people—the man she’d always thought Ethan was, and the man he truly was. The charming, slightly shallow, witty playboy, and the complex, damaged man.
He must have loved his wife a great deal once upon a time.
Because great disappointment was almost always preceded by great hope and great happiness, wasn’t it?
“Haven’t got all night, slowpoke. Clock’s ticking.”
He was watching her, one eyebrow cocked in challenge. She shook off her thoughts and bounced the ball.
“Buckle up, big guy. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”
The trash talking continued as they played the first game. Despite what she’d said about not giving him special treatment because of his injury, she kept a close watch on him and when he winced and rubbed his temple when he thought she wasn’t looking she walked straight to the corner and grabbed her towel.
“Don’t tell me you’re admitting defeat after one game?” Ethan asked.
“You’ve got a headache. Time to go home, Rocky.”
She started zipping the cover over her racquet.
“I don’t suppose it would make any difference if I said I was fine?”
“Nope. Go home and take an aspirin.”
Ethan joined her in the corner, crouching to collect his racquet cover.
“Worried about me, slowpoke?” He glanced at her, his head tilted to one side, a playful, warm light in his deep blue eyes.
They were close, a few feet apart, and for a moment she was flustered, unable to tear her gaze from his. Then she rallied.
“Of course I am. I’ve got a vested interest now, remember. Unless you’ve come to your senses and changed your mind?” She could hear the note of uncertainty in her voice and she winced inwardly. Hadn’t she already decided that Ethan wasn’t the kind of man to offer something so important on impulse?
He stood. “I’m not going anywhere, Alex.”
“Then you’d better get home and rest that pretty head of yours.” She knelt and fussed pointlessly with her gym bag, feeling ridiculously self-conscious.
Over the past week she’d revealed an enormous amount of herself to this man and it seemed she revealed more with every conversation. She didn’t like feeling at a disadvantage.
Better get used to it. If you’re going to make a baby with him, it’s only going to get worse.
She saw him bend to collect his bag out of the corner of her eye.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” he said.
“Sure thing.”
She threw him a quick smile but her shoulders didn’t relax until he’d left the court.
You’re an idiot.
Despite having had a night and a day to process Ethan’s offer, she was still trying to get her head around the concept that he wanted to be the father of her child. It was too, too surreal. In the space of a few days they’d leapfrogged about a gazillion intimacy levels and she simply couldn’t get the idea to stick in her head.
Saturday night ought to go a long away to helping on that score. A whole evening of hashing out the details of their proposed arrangement would surely make this about as real as it could get.
She checked the time. There was still twenty minutes left of their hour on the court. She unzipped her racquet and stood.
Perhaps if she ran herself ragged she’d sleep tonight.