Their Newborn Gift. Nikki Logan

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СКАЧАТЬ would love this child just as much as Molly. And she’d adore a brother or a sister to grow up with.’ Instead of having to create imaginary ones.

      ‘It just seems…’ He looked over at Molly.

      Lea grabbed his sleeve desperately. ‘They throw them away, Reilly. They toss twenty millilitres of precious, life-saving stem cells into an incinerator once the baby is born and the cord is clamped—the cells that could save Molly. How is that right?’

      His brown eyes smouldered like coals as he considered her. It pained her to see disgust in eyes so like her daughter’s.

      After an age, he spoke. ‘I’m sorry Lea. I can’t help you.’

      She staggered back, speechless. She’d been prepared for a humiliating, difficult battle, but in her wildest imaginings she’d never thought he’d simply say no. Not the man she remembered. The man whose eyes had plagued her dreams for two years until she’d finally banished him.

      ‘You won’t help?’ His lashes dropped. Lea gripped his shirt-front with both hands. ‘You don’t have to do a thing. You’ll never even see us again. There’s no expense, no obligation, I promise. Just the…’ She couldn’t bring herself to say ‘conception.’ ‘We’ve done it before. Please, Reilly. Please.’

      ‘Lea.’ He took her icy hands in his and backed her to the side of the house. ‘You barely know me, so I’ll forgive your assump-tion that I would willingly impregnate you with a spare-parts baby and then walk away from any child of mine. But you aren’t hearing me.’

      His jaw was rigid. ‘I can’t help you, Lea. I can’t give you a sibling for Molly.’ He twisted her clenched fingers away from his body. ‘You’ll have to find another way.’

      CHAPTER TWO

      THERE were no other ways.

      The reality of that had sunk in well and truly overnight, after she and Molly had returned home to Yurraji. The poor kid was crashed out in bed, exhausted from the excitement of an all day road-trip, her exertions climbing Reilly’s stairs and then running around after his cat. That was all it took these days. It was now morning and Molly had slept through from sunset the night before. It was the kind of sleep Lea could only dream of.

      The sleep of the dead.

      Lea’s eyes filled with tears. It seemed impossible that she had any left at all after a night of silent sobbing. Reilly had been her best and her last hope.

      And he’d said no.

      The sheer injustice burned like battery acid in her gut. That a stranger could decide whether her daughter lived or died, and that he’d done so in a matter of moments. She twisted her entwined fingers until they ached.

      She’d already called Dr Koek and broken the bad news, and her specialist had immediately gone into super-supportive, damage-control mode, citing statistics to show that cord blood from an unrelated, unmatched baby could work.

      Statistically.

      Maybe.

      Lea let her head drop to the railing surrounding her house paddock. She would try unrelated cord blood—of course she would, as many times as the specialists would allow—but something deep down inside her told her it wasn’t going to work. This was the price she would pay—Molly would pay—for her past mistake.

      Her sisters would pray to God and the universe, respec-tively, but Lea begged karma: please, please do not make my baby pay for something I did. Punish me.

      Punish me.

      A small mob of grazing kangaroos in the next paddock stood tall and looked east to the highway.

      In the same moment, Lea realised there was no greater pun-ishment for a mother than to watch her daughter die. And then live a long, miserable life with that knowledge. Her stomach heaved.

      The roos lurched into flight, springing away and covering the large paddock in a few easy bounds. Lea frowned and turned in the direction they’d been looking. She saw the advancing plume of red dust drifting up over the kurrajongs long before she heard the engine.

      Moments later, a battered Land Rover picked its way down her rocky drive. She recognised it instantly and her gut lurched. The last thing she’d done before roaring out of Minamurra’s beautiful heart, right past this very vehicle, was to hurl a scrap of paper with her phone number and address at Reilly. She’d had no expectation that he would use it, and certainly not within fourteen hours. Not given the disgusted, pained expression on his face when she’d finally bundled up Molly and left.

      Why was he here? She refused to let herself hope. He’d been brutally clear yesterday afternoon. She hardened her heart in anticipation of his next attack.

      He parked his vehicle then loped towards her, looking as fresh as if he’d just stepped out of a shower, not driving since before dawn. Her mind whizzed back five years to the memory of him stepping out of the motel bathroom, unashamed and glorious. She forced herself to remember the man he really was.

      ‘Lea.’

      ‘Something you forgot to say?’ Some organ you forgot to rip out and pulverise under your boot?

      His eyes flicked over her shoulder, looking at the horses grazing in the paddock behind her. Then they slid back to hers. ‘I came to see if you were all right.’ He must have realised how utterly ridiculous that sounded, and he hurried on. ‘And to explain. In case I wasn’t clear.’

      She straightened against the cool of the morning; it wouldn’t stay that way for long. It would be forty Celsius by mid-morning. ‘You were perfectly clear. You won’t help Molly. I get it.’

      He sighed. ‘Not won’t, Lea. Can’t.’

      A sleepless night and complete emotional collapse had left her preciously short of patience. ‘Philosophical objections, I presume?’ she snapped. She’d been prepared for that; stem cells were a touchy subject all round. The only people she’d got absolute acceptance from were her specialist and her sisters.

      His jaw flexed. ‘Physiological objections.’

      Lea frowned.

      ‘Saying you took me by surprise yesterday is an understatement,’ he went on. ‘I was completely pole-axed. I wasn’t thinking straight. I should have stopped you when you took off—explained.’

      He looked uncomfortable. Critically so. His eyes darkened a shade. ‘I was diagnosed two years ago. It has a long medical name, but the short version is that I sustained a string of groin injuries riding the broncos over the years, and my immune system kicked in to protect itself from the damage. But the antibodies didn’t only battle the infection.’

      A cold chill crept through her. Lea knew all about the immune system from studying Molly’s condition.

      ‘The antibodies attack my sperm as though they’re foreign objects.’ He took an enormous breath. ‘I’m sterile, Lea.’

      The dramatic way he paled as the word crossed his lips told Lea it was the first time he’d said it out aloud. Her mind spun. ‘But Molly?’

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