Donna Clayton - Who Will Father My Baby?

“This isn’t a matter of the heart,” Lacy said. Unable to repress a sudden bout of humor, she chuckled as she quipped, “It’s a matter of the loins.”

“You’re impossible.” Sharon laughed, shaking her head as she returned to the filing.

Lacy sat pondering. She’d conducted her father-of-her-baby search just as she did her successful business: in a logical and rational manner. She’d developed a list of candidates, and approached each one with the common-sense plan she’d developed. But if Lacy had learned anything over the past months it was that, when it came to donating their sperm, men were neither logical nor rational.

Of course, more than one person had suggested she visit a sperm bank, but she simply couldn’t see herself doing that. The mere idea seemed so cold. Not to mention the horror stories she’d read in the national news of women who had mistakenly been impregnated with the wrong sperm. No, thank you.

“Maybe you should think about getting remarried,” Sharon suggested out of the blue. “Husbands are much more receptive to fatherhood than single guys, you know.”

“I’ve tried happily-ever-after. I’m hopeless at relationships.” The admission, and the defeated feeling it dragged along with it, had Lacy’s voice rushing out in a husky whisper.

Poor Richard. The man—or their two-year marriage—hadn’t stood a chance from the start. Not when Lacy silently-yet-constantly compared her husband to the most perfect man in the whole wide world…

Dane Buchanan.

Now, there was a man. Intelligent. Witty. Interesting. Athletic. Compassionate. Utterly fascinating. And more handsome than words could describe.

Lacy did her best to quell the euphoric shiver that washed over her when she remembered the chemistry she and Dane had shared all those years ago when she had been a freshman, he a senior, in college.

Certainly, if Dane knew about this cavernous ache tormenting her…if he was aware of this mothering instinct that relentlessly squeezed at her heart like a ruthless vise…he would understand. He would empathize. He would help.

Closing her eyes, she easily recalled the overwhelming electricity that coursed through her when Dane had touched her. When he’d kissed her. Even now as she sat at her desk, mere thoughts of the man made her skin prickle with awareness, made her heart thrum a staccato beat.

Thoughts of her perfect man had floated through her head often over the years. But lately, she’d found herself thinking of him during the day—and dreaming of him at night. Those night visions were becoming more and more sensual, more and more erotic each time she closed her—

The clunk of the file drawer closing startled her from her extremely corporeal musings.

“Don’t worry,” Sharon said, her hand on the doorknob as she prepared to leave Lacy’s office. “There’s a man out there just waiting to help you…a man who’s perfect for your needs.” The administrative assistant closed the door behind her as she left the room.

Lacy’s lips parted in surprise, her eyes wide and staring. She was struck by the coincidence of Sharon’s “perfect man” words aligning so completely with her own thoughts.

Coincidence? She blinked once, twice. That was no coincidence. It was a sign. A signal from fate. Hadn’t she just had the thought that Dane would help her if only he’d known of her plight?

Why, for weeks now, her own subconscious mind had been sending her blatant hints in the form of frequent thoughts and lustful dreams of the man. Why hadn’t she realized? Why hadn’t she grasped the meaning of it all?

Immediately, Lacy turned to her computer, maneuvered the mouse and clicked the proper links that would log her onto the Internet. There had to be a way to find Dane Buchanan. There just had to be.

Hope sprang to life in her…a kind of joyous optimism, a gleeful anticipation that she hadn’t felt in months.

An hour of torturous city traffic. Lacy groaned as she automatically reached to turn up the fan on her car’s air conditioner. August was a killer month in Virginia. It wasn’t actually the heat that made a person wilt like a cut flower, but the humidity.

She should have known not to rush out of town on a Friday afternoon. She should have waited until tomorrow morning when all the city employees were sleeping in and the roadways were clear. But she’d been too excited to wait a single minute longer to start her trip.

A mere two days had passed since she had pieced together her frequent thoughts of Dane Buchanan with her desire to have a child. In that time, she was able to find some sketchy information and a home address. But it had been enough to stir her excitement and get her on the road.

It was hard for her to imagine that her encounter with Dane had taken place nearly twenty years ago.

Encounter? A tiny voice in her mind questioned. It had been a date. A real, honest-to-goodness date complete with an end-of-the-evening kiss. A kiss, Lacy remembered, that had almost singed the wooden soles of the clogs she’d been wearing at the time.

Yes, but the facts of what had followed their one enchanted evening together were disillusioning. Dane had never called her. Never asked her out again, even though she’d blatantly suggested it. And when she had seen him on campus, usually in the library, she’d been the one who had made verbal contact. If she hadn’t approached him, he’d have been content with a nodded exchange of greeting. Finally, she’d had to face reality. Dane Buchanan hadn’t been interested in her in the least.

But that kiss…

How could he not have been as affected by it as she had been?

She sighed and gazed over at the map unfolded on the seat beside her. She still had a lengthy drive ahead of her.

To have discovered that he was still in the state had been a surprise. Lacy had explained to Sharon that Dane had the kind of intelligence that would have made him a hot commodity to businesses worldwide. If she remembered correctly, his major had been in one of the sciences. It would be easy to imagine him scouring the rain forests of the Amazon, hunting a cure for cancer. Or nestled away in a laboratory, inventing a new and phenomenal synthetic drug to be used as therapy for Alzheimer’s patients.

Stories about him had raged through the students like a fire gone wild all those years ago. Lacy had been terribly curious. She’d been bold, too, even as a freshman. Her brassy confidence had her asking the senior out for coffee…an offer he’d surprisingly accepted. For hours they had talked while their coffee had grown granite cold.

Dane Buchanan, she’d learned after playing a tough game of twenty questions with the young man, had earned an academic scholarship to an Ivy League university. However, he’d chosen to attend a local college in Richmond in order to be near his ailing father. That information alone had been enough to melt Lacy’s heart. He was president of the senior class, led the debate team to victory and was voted MVP of the football team. His dark good looks as well as his prowess on the football field led to his being approached by a New York modeling agency, and Lacy hadn’t blinked an eye when he’d told her he’d turned down their offer for work. He simply hadn’t seemed the type to flash his smile in front of a camera for money. Lacy smiled at the memory, his obvious embarrassment over the solicitation had been quite charming.

In that one short evening she’d spent with Dane in the café, she’d come to the conclusion that it would be easy for a girl to lose her heart to such a guy. He was everything a girl could want. He had brains. A ton of compassion. He was handsome as the devil. And when they had kissed good-night, Lacy had thought her toes were going to curl up into the arches of her feet!