Marie Ferrarella - Baby's First Christmas

Belatedly Sullivan remembered the letter he had asked his lawyer to draft. But he had instructed the man to show it to him first, not mail it. “You weren’t supposed to get this now.”

“Then when?” she demanded. “Just when is a good time to tell me that you intend to rip this child out of my arms no matter what?”

“Marlene,” he began, then stopped. Given the situation, he would have expected her to be turning red. But she was a very deathly shade of white. “You’re turning pale.” Sullivan grabbed her arm as Marlene’s knees suddenly buckled beneath her. “What is it?” he demanded.

“I don’t know.” She was bewildered. “I—” Her eyes flew open. “Oh, my God.”

And then he saw what had caused her to gasp. “Marlene…I think your water broke.”

Marie Ferrarella earned a master’s degree in Shakespearean comedy, and, perhaps as a result, her writing is distinguished by humor and natural dialogue. This RITA ®Award-winning author’s goal is to entertain and to make people laugh and feel good. She has written over one hundred books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide and have been translated into Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, Japanese and Korean.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To Isabel Swift, Leslie Wainger, Tara Gavin, Anne Canadeo, Lucia Macro & Melissa Senate. Thank you for letting me do this.

Love, Marie

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

“W hat do you mean, you don’t have it?”

Sullivan Travis’s voice thundered off the small office’s glass walls, filtering out into the stark white reception area of the Hawley-Richman Institute. All sorts of horrifying ramifications occurred to him as he looked at the lab coat clad technician. There had to be some mistake.

“If you don’t have it, where is it? Is it lost?” If it was lost, no one could use it, he reasoned. He began to relax. Lost. All right, that would be the end of it, then.

The young woman looked up at him, torn between being annoyed and being intimidated. The tall, dark-haired man on the other side of her desk had a commanding presence that unnerved her. She eyed the security buzzer on the underside of her desk. They didn’t get many irate people at the sperm bank. At least, none since she’d been there, but there was a guard on duty just in case. She wondered if this was going to be that kind of “case.”

He was literally leaning over her desk. In an effort to keep things calm, she rose, shoving her hands deep into her pockets so he wouldn’t notice that they were shaking. Martha Riley cleared her voice and tried to sound official.

“It’s been used, Mr. Travis.” What had he thought they would do with his “donation”? After all, he had been paid for his contribution. It was the Institute’s property now, not his.

One look at his face told her that he wasn’t ready to accept that line of reasoning.

“Great, just great.” He blew out a breath, momentarily stumped. Now what?

Sullivan ran his hand through his hair as he sighed. He looked up toward the ceiling, metaphorically seeking heavenly guidance. It seemed rather ironic when he thought of it. Heaven had never figured into the path that his older brother had chosen. A rebel from the moment he formed his first words, Derek Travis had been one of a kind. He had been the epitome of the prodigal son, except that he had never returned home to make amends.

He’d reveled in discord for discord’s sake, and the pieces that were left in his wake were something that Sullivan was always required to reconstruct. Or, when that failed, to sweep away.

But this latest stunt defied description. It was outrageous, even for Derek. How could he have done this? What could he possibly have been thinking?

Sullivan had still been reeling from his brother’s sudden death when he had come across the letter from the sperm bank among Derek’s possessions. He’d stared at it for several minutes, stunned. What made it all the more bewildering was that the letter hadn’t been addressed to Derek. It had been addressed to him, care of Derek.

Reading it, Sullivan had sunk down on the lumpy mattress in his brother’s meager studio apartment, his knees buckling beneath him. He read and reread the letter several times, but the words remained the same each time. Derek had sold his connection to the future, his potential offspring, for what amounted to a few dollars. Sullivan assumed he’d done it to buy art supplies. Getting back at his father was only an added bonus.

Derek and Oliver Travis had never been on the same side of a conversation. It seemed to Sullivan that Derek had always gone out of his way to upset their father.

But this…this was beyond understanding.

Though Derek had pulled some really stupid stunts in his time, Sullivan hadn’t thought for one moment that he had actually sold his genes when he had thrown that up to their father in what amounted to their last argument. Sullivan had assumed that Derek only said it because family heritage and image had always been important to their father. It was easy enough to believe that, like everything else, he’d said what he had only to annoy the old man.

But Derek had not only done it, he had put Sullivan’s name to it, compounding the embarrassment.

Pocketing the letter, Sullivan had lost no time in locating the sperm bank. He’d gone there, determined to pay whatever amount that it took to undo Derek’s reckless folly.

Now it looked as if he’d arrived too late. He stared unseeingly at a commemorative plaque on the wall behind the woman.

Well, it looks like you’ve really gone and done it this time, Derek. You finally made a mess that’s impossible for me to clean up.

The technician touched his arm hesitantly. “Are you all right? I mean, that is why you donated the sperm, isn’t it? So it could be used?”

Sullivan thought of saying that he hadn’t donated any part of himself to this high-tech, antiseptic recycling institute, that it was his brother who had done it and then, to add insult to injury, or perhaps to give vent to some macabre sense of humor, signed his name to the form.

But that would be making a stranger privy to his own inner turmoil and the tensions that existed within his family. That just wasn’t Sullivan’s style. He had always handled his brother’s transgressions with a minimum of fanfare.

Sullivan searched for patience. Somehow the situation had to be salvaged, no matter what sort of damage control he had to exercise. There had to be a way.

“That’s just it. I’ve changed my mind. I want to buy it back.” He paused significantly. Maybe she’d made a mistake and confused his file with someone else’s. “At any cost.”