Tara Taylor Quinn - The Baby Arrangement

So yeah, wine was good. If he thought her idea was nuts, she wasn’t going to cry. Or even be embarrassed. She was going to remind herself that they were divorced and that she had every right to pursue single parenthood. That, for some women, it was not only the best choice, but the only real workable choice.

When the waitress came by again, she ordered a beer for Braden. She’d purposely arrived early enough to not risk walking in with him—looking or feeling like a couple. When they were meeting others, it didn’t bother her to travel together, but when it was just the two of them, she had her rules. Her boundaries.

They never spoke of them, but he respected them just the same. She always got there at least fifteen minutes early. He’d arrive exactly five minutes before the designated time.

Unless he texted to say he was going to be late.

Or she did.

They had the friendship down to a science.

Now if only she could be certain that he was going to be friendly about the new direction her life was about to take. With all of the preliminary testing and physical exams done, the paperwork filled out and money paid, all that was left before the actual procedure was letting him know. She could do it without him. Would do it without him.

But life was still better with Braden in it.

* * *

She’d changed after work. It wasn’t a big deal for her to have done so. Her house was only a couple of miles from the daycare—and from the harbor restaurant he’d chosen for dinner. Braden just noticed, as he was walking across the room to meet her, that she looked phenomenal in black leggings and that tight-fitting cream-colored shirt. He’d been expecting jeans and a Bouncing Ball polo shirt. After all, she didn’t know that this meeting was major, as opposed to the more general passing of news for which they normally came together.

She didn’t need to know that the sight of her still turned him on.

Working in the same high-rise executive office building as they did, albeit with his property management and real estate business taking up the top floor and her daycare housed in a double suite on the ground, they could chat there any day they chose. They just, by some unspoken agreement, didn’t choose to.

No point in having people who shared their professional days gossiping any more than necessary about the couple who’d divorced after their five-month-old baby died.

The pity, even after all this time, was hard to take. He had no desire to feed the trough.

He was hungry, though, and ready, as he slid into the booth across from his ex-wife, to order a big juicy steak. She’d have some kind of meal-sized salad.

He’d never been a salad kind of guy.

Taking a long sip of the beer she’d ordered for him, he smiled at her, liking the warm gaze she sent back in his direction. Maybe he was making a mistake, transferring himself a little further out of her life, but he had to do something or they were both going to stagnate and die.

By the end of their smile, the waitress was standing there, tablet in hand ready to take their order. Without looking at the menu, they both told her what they wanted. She thanked them, took their menus, turned around and he all but pushed her away from the table.

He had to get this over with. Plans for his move to L.A. were moving rapidly. He needed Mallory to know.

And to fully understand, from the outset, that he wasn’t selling the building in San Diego or in any way changing their business arrangement. It had been in effect before they were married and would remain for as long as she wanted The Bouncing Ball, her highly successful daycare, to be housed in the executive office building that used to be his only commercial holding but was now one of many.

He raised his beer to her glass of wine and sipped it, words spilling in his head, unable to utter them. Not at all like he’d decided this would go.

He knew he just had to say what he’d come to say. That he was acquiring land north of L.A. to build a professional complex similar to the one they now shared in San Diego, and he would be moving there for the foreseeable future.

“I’m going to have a baby.”

Good thing his beer was close to the table. When it slipped out of his hand, it didn’t break. And barely spilled.

Mouth hanging open, he sat there, too dumbfounded to say anything.

“I just wanted you to know.”

He stared. White noise from the room around them faded.

“I’d kind of hoped you’d be supportive, but if you’d rather not know about it, hear about it, I completely understand.”

He didn’t move.

She did. Standing, she touched his arm. “I’m so sorry, Bray. I had no idea the news would upset you so much. I guess... I mean, in light of the fact that the last time we did it together... I mean...with losing Tucker... I should have been more sensitive. I just... I’m the one who’s been dragging us both down with my inability to move on and I’m really excited about this. I just...couldn’t wait to let you know that I...”

Her fingers on his arm were nice. Familiar. Tender and light.

“Sit.” He got the word out, then followed it with, “Please.”

He took a full breath when she quickly slid back into her seat.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He’d broken an understood rule—one was never to make the other unduly uncomfortable or bring an overabundance of emotion into their joint atmosphere.

He could blame it on her for laying something like that on him, but they were allowed to tell each other anything they wanted to share. That had actually been a spoken agreement. Reiterated more than once, by both of them, in the early days of their post-divorce relationship.

Hell, for all he remembered they’d said it to each other like a vow during the actual divorce proceedings. They’d said several things meant for their ears only when they’d sat before the judge that day, holding hands.

He shook his head and sipped his beer.

“You’re pregnant.” He got the words out and he wasn’t cut as sharply by the sound as he’d expected. Who in the hell had gotten his ex-wife pregnant?

The unwelcome words kept repeating, like an annoyingly bad rhythm, in his mind. He wouldn’t speak them. They weren’t cool.

“Not yet.” From the crease in her brow, the way she leaned toward him slightly, the hint of an upward curve on those beautiful lips, he knew she was placating him. Dammit.

And yet...she wasn’t pregnant?

Holy damn. Relief eased the sweat that had popped up all over his suited body.

“But you’ve met someone.”

The truth still loomed. She was going to have another man’s baby. Start a family separate and apart from him.

The implication he was to draw from that followed almost immediately.

She was moving on.

This was good news.

Very good news.

Exactly-what-he-wanted news.

But he wasn’t smiling anymore.

Mallory had someone else to watch her back now. She was finally over the past enough to start anew.

He was free.

Chapter Two

Braden was going to give himself a crick in the neck if he didn’t quit the exaggerated nodding.

Prior to that, he’d sipped his beer a couple of times and some expressions had flitted across his face. She wasn’t going to put herself back into near suicidal mode by trying to decipher them. Or make more of the hint of despair than was meant to be there.

Braden didn’t allow himself to acknowledge despair, nor was he all that comfortable around those who did. For all she knew, he honestly didn’t get the feeling. Not like she did.

He’d gotten the love, though, hadn’t he? Back before Tucker died. No one could deny, seeing him with their son, that he’d adored that boy.

Tears stung her eyes while welling emotion clogged her throat. She took a sip of wine, forcing her muscles to relax. She was not going to do this. She would not fall prey to feelings of inadequacy around her ex-husband—which meant she couldn’t cry in front of him.