Baby Business. Brenda Novak

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      Macy wasn’t sure she wanted to be convinced by Lisa’s rationale. Despite his physical charms, she was angry at Thad, for reasons she didn’t fully understand. He was offering her the one thing she needed. He was also exacting the highest form of payment, making her give him one baby to save another. “Maybe he thinks it’s some sort of interesting game,” she mused. “Maybe it arouses him to hold so much power over a woman’s destiny, to have us all groveling at his feet for the privilege of bearing his child. You should have seen all the gifts—bribes, really—stacked in his office.”

      “I don’t think so. Dr. Peters lived next to the Winters family all the years Thad was growing up and says he’s never met a better man, or someone more capable of leading a successful life.”

      “What, does Dr. Peters make a percentage for brokering the deal?” Macy grumbled.

      Lisa pulled her frizzy light-brown hair out of her eyes and scowled. “My, aren’t we turning into a cynic! Thad Winters wants his own baby, and he no longer has a wife to give him one. So he’s taking an alternate route. So what? He’s an ad exec.”

      “Which means…”

      “He’s creative. As for the application and stuff, there’s nothing wrong with interviewing, playing it safe.”

      “Playing it safe would be waiting until he falls in love and marries again. Playing it safe would be doing it the right way.”

      “The right way didn’t work for him. What if he feels certain no woman could ever replace his wife?”

      Macy considered this, wondering if she’d grown suspicious of all men because of what had happened with her father and Richard. Her father had left her mother before Macy was born. She didn’t know him, had never known him. And Richard had run off almost as soon as he learned of Haley’s illness, which only confirmed what her mother had taught her as a child: men don’t have what it takes to stick around when the going gets tough. It’s women who hang on through thick and thin. Edna was proving her words by being the one to help Macy pay her bills now that she couldn’t work because of school and the time she spent at the hospital.

      “I’m just saying it’s normal for him to have a few questions,” Lisa went on.

      “A few questions?” Macy repeated. “Look at this folder. He’s expecting me to write a book! Have I ever taken any drugs? Have I had unprotected sex in the past ten years? Do I drink or smoke? Have I ever sought or obtained psychological counseling? How much caffeine do I drink? I’d have to be the Virgin Mary to pass this test!”

      “Well, you’d come closer than anyone else I know. You’ve never smoked or taken drugs. You need counseling for what you’re going through right now, but you’ve never sought or obtained it, so you can feel pretty good about saying no to that. And you haven’t slept with anyone other than your ex-husband.”

      After a quick check to make sure Haley was still sleeping, Macy gave her friend a look of incredulity and lowered her voice. “Aren’t you forgetting that guy I went home with from Studio 9 last year? You relieved the baby-sitter I’d gotten to watch Haley that night and picked me up at his house the next morning, remember?”

      Lisa grimaced. “You can’t count that. Your husband had just run off with a seventeen-year-old. I think what you did was pretty understandable, considering.”

      For a short time after Richard left, Macy had frequented the bar scene as a way to help soften the emotional blow, but two things had slapped her awake to the realization that she was heading down the wrong path. One was the night she’d slept with a total stranger and woke up wondering where the heck she was. The other was Haley’s quickly deteriorating health.

      “Judging from this list of questions, I doubt Thad Winters will find it understandable,” Macy said.

      “Then don’t reveal it.” Lisa’s words were spoken in her matter-of-fact way, but they were far from the brutal honesty with which she normally dealt with the world.

      Macy gaped at her friend. “You’re kidding, right? What’s the purpose of an application if I only put down what he wants to hear?” She chewed on the end of a pen she’d picked up from the nightstand. “Besides, I agreed to let him do a background check.”

      “What are the odds of anyone finding out about that night? If you tell the truth, you might not get the job.”

      “I’m not sure I want the job,” Macy said softly.

      Lisa’s attention turned to Haley’s sleeping form, and her expression grew inexpressibly sad. “You don’t have a choice, kiddo. Your insurance is paying for the hospital stay, but the transplant is going to cost over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and it’s not covered. As hard as we’ve tried, we’ve only been able to raise…what?”

      “Fifty thousand and change.”

      “Fifty thousand dollars. And no hospital is going to perform the operation unless you give them full payment, in advance. We’ve already been through that.”

      Reaching across the sterile, white sheets, Macy curled her fingers around Haley’s small hand. Her head was beginning to ache, but it bothered her only slightly more than the burning in her eyes and far less than the ache in her heart.

      “What did he say when you told him why you needed the money?” Lisa asked.

      “I haven’t told him about Haley yet. I didn’t see any reason to bare my soul when I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do this.”

      Lisa studied her. “And now? You’re going to go for it if he chooses you, right?”

      Macy sighed. Somehow, somewhere, all the lines had blurred. There was no more black or white, right or wrong, only her daughter, who needed a bone marrow transplant and Macy’s determination that she get it.

      “I’m still thinking about it,” she said at last.

      THE DIM INTERIOR of the steak house where Thad had told Macy to meet him was a cool respite from the bright April sun, making it seem later than it actually was. Macy removed her sunglasses and slid them into her purse, waiting for her eyes to adjust.

      The smells of the restaurant—grilled onions, broiled meat, blue cheese dressing—greeted her more quickly than the hostess’s smile, but did little to chase away the chill that ran through her blood. She was going to do it. Despite all her misgivings, she was actually going to try to convince Thad Winters, a total stranger, that she should be the one to bear his child. And her only consolation was that she’d spoken to Dr. Peters, another fellow who’d known Thad at college, and a couple of his firm’s clients, and they all said the same thing: he was an honest, intelligent man who deserved to be a father. It was a shame that fate had robbed him.

      Just as fate was trying to rob her now of Haley, Macy thought. But she wasn’t about to let that happen—at least not without a fight.

      “One for dinner?” the hostess asked.

      “No, I’m meeting someone.” Surreptitiously studying the tables she could see from her vantage point at the entrance, Macy hoped Thad Winters hadn’t arrived yet. She needed a few minutes to calm down after her most recent conversation with Haley’s oncologist. The stark realities he softly intoned always shook her to the core, where a fundamental СКАЧАТЬ