SUSAN MEIER - Married Right Away

“True. But I didn’t do what I was supposed to do, so I’m accountable, too,” Ethan said, sounding logical yet kind.

Immediately Savannah’s instincts went on red alert. She remembered that as an attorney this man was sharp and intelligent. There was only one reason he would take responsibility. He wanted it. And if he wanted responsibility that meant he wanted the baby.

In all the confusion about her brother, her fear of being thought of as an accomplice and her hours of being questioned by the police, Savannah hadn’t forgotten the real issue wasn’t the crime, but the baby. A man didn’t cryogenically preserve his sperm unless he wanted to assure he had a child someday. Though she probably wasn’t the mother he would have chosen, and this might not be the time he would have preferred, the deed was done. He had his child on the way. And he would get it.

Ethan might genuinely believe Savannah hadn’t been in on the scheme, but her brother’s misdeeds would cast a shadow of doubt on her credibility in court. Plus, Ethan was a wealthy man from a prominent, well-respected family. His father had been a senator forever. His mother had served on a president’s cabinet. Her baby, the baby she had been carrying for five months, the child she wanted more than her next breath of air, was as good as lost to her.

Desperately trying not to cry, she nervously fingered the long strawberry blond curls that fell across her shoulders to her bosom. “You want custody of the baby, don’t you?”

“Custody is one of the things we need to talk about.”

“Okay,” Savannah said, nearly paralyzed with fear. Tears threatened beneath her eyelids. She had gone through the tests, the processes, the first five months of pregnancy filled with so much joy that she could barely contain it. She wasn’t ready to let her unborn baby slip through her fingers. Not yet. “What are the other things you want to talk about?”

For several seconds, Ethan said nothing, then finally, quietly, he said, “I’ve been told my father’s friend, Sam Ringer, has decided to run for president of the United States and my father is his vice presidential choice. But Sam isn’t waiting around for his party’s convention to announce it. He’s announcing it in the fall so he can use my father’s pull to help him win the primaries and assure he gets the nomination.”

“Oh, my God,” Savannah said, feeling all the blood drain from her face, as the situation continued to worsen. Her baby had been created without permission. Her brother was a fugitive. The McKenzies were rich and powerful and would probably take her to court to get this child. And her custody battle with the son of a vice presidential candidate would probably start around the same time as the first primary, so every unhappy fact of her life would be fodder for the national news.

The picture of it flashed in her mind. She could see microphones and cameras shoved in her face, and vans with satellite dishes parked in her yard.

She shook her head in dismay. “This is going to be a circus.”

Ethan shifted on his seat. “Not really. I mean, it doesn’t have to be,” he said softly. Still holding her hand, he lightly tugged on her fingers and forced her to look at him. “Savannah, the only thing that makes this news is that your brother falsified records and you were impregnated without my knowledge. But if everybody thought you were pregnant because we were lovers, it wouldn’t be a big deal.”

Remembering again how cunning this man could be, a chill snaked through her. “So you want me to pretend we’ve been dating?”

He shook his head and said, “No, I want you to marry me.”

Savannah’s heart felt like it stopped beating. She laid her free hand on her chest. “Marry you?” she whispered.

“If you don’t marry me, and this story leaks to the press as it is, your brother will be the most popular, most sought-after fugitive in the world if only by the tabloids, and my father will be answering more questions about this baby than about real campaign issues. This story could overshadow every point he and Senator Ringer try to make and render their campaign irrelevant.

“But if you marry me,” Ethan continued, “I won’t press charges against your brother. He won’t be a wanted man anymore and our pregnancy and wedding will be a blip in the human interest pages of a few newspapers. Nothing more.”

“I see,” Savannah said, though she could hardly believe what she was hearing. Yesterday she was the simple, humble owner of a bed-and-breakfast that she had inherited when her parents were killed. Today she was receiving a proposal of marriage from a man considered one of the most eligible bachelors in the nation—because she was pregnant with his child and that child had been created in an unorthodox way, a way that involved forgery and theft.

“Before you agree,” Ethan said, again catching her gaze. “I have to tell you that if this is going to work we’ll also have to make everyone believe we’re a love match. That doesn’t mean that I’m going to fawn all over you, or that I’ll expect you to be my wife for real and forever. But it does mean that we’ll have to pretend to be in love for the general public, including my parents, and that you’ll need to move to Atlanta with me until after the baby is born. We’ll wait a month or two after that to make everything seem legitimate then we’ll quietly divorce.”

Savannah swallowed hard. “I need to move to Atlanta?”

“Yes. It’s where I live. It’s where you lived until two years ago. We worked together. It won’t be a stretch for people to believe we had a relationship.”

Overwhelmed with facts and possibilities, most of them bad, Savannah drew a long breath. “If I marry you, does this mean you won’t fight me for custody?”

“If you marry me I won’t fight you for custody, but visitation is an entirely different thing. I don’t want to be a weekend dad. I will be a big part of this child’s life.”

Well, the cards were on the table, Savannah thought, not entirely pleased, but at least relieved that Ethan wouldn’t take away her basic right as a mother. She knew she could probably use the marriage as further leverage to push him into some kind of visitation agreement right now, but she also recognized that she had more immediate concerns.

She couldn’t handle a cub reporter on a good day. Even though leaving her bed-and-breakfast posed an enormous problem for her, if only because she had bookings, getting her friends to take over for a few months was easier than defending her brother, herself and her baby in the court of public opinion.

She also had to take a share of the responsibility for Barry’s forgery and theft because she had made him promise she would get a good father for her baby. She had to take some responsibility for that, too.

Ethan again squeezed her fingers gently. “Savannah, I didn’t expect you to answer today. But I will need an answer first thing tomorrow.”

Glad to have a reprieve to think this through, Savannah tried to smile, but failed miserably. “Okay.”

“Just remember that the longer you take to decide the less possible this scheme becomes,” he said quietly. He studied her, then rubbed his thumb across her knuckles. “Today, the clinic and a handful of police know. By tomorrow night, you can add a hundred people to that list. This time next week, you can add millions. But with the right word from me, I can have that police report filed away or destroyed as if it never existed.”

“What about the people at the sperm bank?”

Ethan smiled. “Since I could sue the clinic into bankruptcy for this, once I tell the owner I’m not pressing charges, a smart man would shove the paperwork so far back in the corner of his filing cabinet that it would never again see the light of day. Even if one of the employees sold the story to a tabloid, with that paperwork ‘lost’ there would be nothing to back it up and we could easily deny it.