Tara Quinn - My Babies and Me

“Susan told me she asked you about the baby.”

“And she told me you think she’s insane.” He dropped his pencil.

“I never said that!”

“No.” Michael remembered the tears in Susan’s eyes. “You told her you didn’t think she’d make a good mother.”

Sounding unusually defensive, Seth said, “And you think she would?”

Swiveling his chair away from his desk, Michael looked out the window behind him. He gained no inspiration at all from the barren tree limbs outside.

“She did all right by you and Sean and Spencer.”

“She didn’t have a career then.”

“She has a career now and she still looks out for you.”

Seth swore softly. “Come on, Michael, you know it isn’t the same thing. A kid deserves better than absences, vague promises, excuses.”

“So, it isn’t her mothering abilities you doubt.” He rested his feet on the windowsill. “It’s her time management.”

“Or her priorities,” Seth said. “You know her, Michael, she’s been biting off more than she can chew her entire life, all the while insisting she’ll manage. She always thinks that whatever she’s tackling is a piece of cake.”

He agreed with Seth. But... “She does manage in the end.”

“Up until now she’s only had one priority.”

That was true, too. But who was to say she wouldn’t handle two priorities as successfully as she handled one? If she wanted both of them badly enough...

Michael brushed a piece of lint off his navy slacks. “Answer me something...”

“If I can.”

“Do you think she really knows what she wants?”

“If you mean do I think she really wants this baby, then yes, I do.”

Michael was afraid he’d say that. “Yeah, me, too.”

“So...you going to give it to her?”

This had to be one of the oddest conversations in the history of man—or at least of brothers-in-law. But Michael was getting nowhere on his own. And the decision was too important to be clouded by confusion or wishful thinking.

“I don’t know,” he finally said.

Seth hesitated. “You know she’ll, uh, find someone else if you don’t.”

“I had considered that.” At least a million times in the past six days. “But she might not.”

“I don’t think anything but an act of God is going to keep Susan from having her baby.”

Neither did Michael. Dammit. And damn Seth for saying so. “There’s always artificial insemination.”

“I really doubt she’d consider it.”

So did Michael.

“She’d want to know the man who’s going to be, biologically speaking, the other half of her child,” Michael said before he had to hear it from Seth.

“She’d insist on having the inside scoop on the littlest things, like how soon he’d learned to tie his shoes, how close his family was, whether or not he liked to go to the movies.” Seth twisted the knife a little deeper.

“She’d ask for a complete genealogical workup going as far back as possible.” Michael rubbed more salt into his wound.

After all, Susan was a lawyer. A damn good one. She wanted all the answers.

“Of course, all that extra effort, getting to know someone that well, tracking down someone’s heritage—it might be a little off-putting, might make her reconsider....” Seth was obviously trying his best to help.

“Not Susan.” Michael voiced what both men knew. Turning, he picked up the pencil and added some finishing touches to the cartoon. “Because she’d underestimate the work involved, the difficulties. Just like she always does.” Just like she had that night she’d tried to talk him out of the divorce. She’d made it all sound so simple. Him living in one state, her in another. But he’d known a marriage could never survive under those circumstances. Marriage meant commitment, expectations. Sharing one life. Not two.

“So, you going to do it?” Seth asked painfully, as though he were suffering right along with Michael. And, in a sense, he probably was. Seth obviously felt pretty strongly that Susan was making a big mistake.

Michael tossed the pencil. “The last thing in the world I want is to be a father.”

“I don’t think Susan’s looking for a father,” Seth said. “I had the impression she just wants the...you know. The genes.” He could tell Seth didn’t approve of that, either.

“Yeah,” Michael said. “That’s the way I took it.” She wanted his sperm. Not him.

And that rankled, too.

THE OFFER FROM Coppel Industries came through on Friday morning. Coppel stockholders wanted to make Michael a vice president of finance. If he accepted, he’d be on the road, traveling around the country, analyzing current holdings, but mostly seeking out new ones. Diversification was the key to success. And Coppel felt that Michael could pick winners.

He’d have an office, too, a posh one, at Coppel headquarters in Atlanta.

The offer exceeded his expectations; it was a culmination of everything he’d worked for his entire life. More than a dream come true, it was a mountain successfully scaled, a goal reached, years of endless toil rewarded. Of course, it also came with Coppel’s words of warning still ringing in Michael’s ear. No entanglements. No dependents.

Michael took the job.

“OKAY.”

“Okay?” Susan sat down. She’d been waiting for his call all week.

“I can’t pretend I’m happy about this.”

Sitting on the floor of her bedroom, wearing nothing but the slip and panty hose she’d been in the process of taking off, Susan couldn’t stop grinning. “I know.” She couldn’t believe it! He was really going to do it.

“You don’t have a child on a whim, Susan.”

“I don’t do anything on a whim, Michael.”

“Single-parenting is tough.”

Susan glanced at her watch. Seven o’clock on Friday night. She wondered if he was still at the office.

“I can handle it.”

“And you think it’s fair to the kid, bringing him into the world without a father?”

“I have five brothers, Michael, all of whom live within twenty miles of my home. I don’t think he—or she—will be lacking male attention.”

“This is nuts.”

“I don’t think so.” It felt right. To be having a baby. To be having Michael’s baby. Of course she’d prefer to be doing it the traditional way. To be sharing more than just the conception with Michael. But she’d be happy.

A baby!

“What about your job?”

“What about it?”

“You’re still planning to work?”

Susan frowned. “Of course.” And then, “Who do you think’s going to support this child?”

“And you honestly think you can work fourteen hours a day and still be a good parent?”

Her arms about her empty stomach, Susan leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. “The only reason I still work fourteen-hour days is because I have nothing to come home for.” It was the first time she’d admitted the truth, even to herself. “I’m not climbing up anymore, Michael. I’m at the top.”

“There are always higher mountains to climb.”

“I like the one I’m on.” She used to, anyway. And she would again. In spite of Tricia Halliday.

“I can’t be a father, Susan.”

“I’m not asking you to be.”

Ice clinked in a glass and she heard him swallow. “Hell,” he swore softly. “I don’t even live in the same state.”

“Which has nothing to do with anything.” She wished he’d just relax about it. “Michael, we’re divorced. All I want from you is biology.”

He swallowed again. “You make it sound so simple.”

“Because it doesn’t have to be complicated.” Opening her eyes, Susan stood, finished undressing. “I’m a single woman who’s made the decision to have a baby,” she told him. “It’s happening more and more. Single women are even adopting babies. But I really want the full experience, carrying the child, giving birth. All I’m asking from you is the missing ingredient I need to get started.”