The Baby Bargain. Wendy Warren

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      Gag. Me.

      That was Eden Carter’s first reaction as she stood in the back of the meeting room and tried not to laugh out loud.

      Only a man could possibly have come up with the pablum they’d just watched. More specifically, the man would have to be childless or someone who had never asked his wife a single purposeful question about her mothering experience.

      The Barbie doll in the commercial looked as if she’d never missed a night’s sleep, for crying out loud. Her face was gorgeous, her figure toned and perfect, her hair an überstylist’s work of art.

      Come to the Children’s Connection, Eden thought, we’ll help you have a baby who hardly ever cries and will never bite your boob while he’s nursing.

      Okay, so maybe she was cranky, but she’d missed lots of sleep lately. Whoever had written the syrupy commercial should have asked her—or any of the single mothers who had been helped by the Children’s Connection—what parenting an infant or toddler on one’s own really looked like.

      Shifting the arm that held the plate of cookies she’d brought to the meeting, she surreptitiously pressed her forearm against her right breast with its poor aching nipple.

      Her beautiful baby boy, Liam, was currently adding a new tooth to the three he already had. He’d clamped down on her right nipple so hard this morning that she’d let out a shriek before she could stop herself. Her poor little guy had opened his blue eyes wide then started to squall. It had been a rough finish to a morning that had started late because she’d been up half the night applying a homeopathic teething gel to his swollen gums.

      Liam wasn’t the only one who depended on her availability day and night. As a doula, she was responsible for her patients anytime they needed her.

      If she tried to twirl in a field like the gal in the commercial, she’d collapse from exhaustion.

      Women who wanted to become parents, especially single parents, needed the kind of support and compassion that came from shared experience, and truth, not something so…so…

      Silly!

      When several people whipped around in their chairs to face her, she realized she’d spoken aloud.

      “Do you want to comment, Eden?” Terrence Logan asked her with interest.

      In her teens and early twenties, she’d had a bothersome tendency to speak first and think later. A committed yoga and meditation practice had soothed her jangled spirit and given her the discipline to insert a little lag time between her thoughts and her words.

      Evidently she was suffering a relapse.

      “No, thank you. Very sorry,” she said since she’d clearly spoken out of turn.

      Her coworkers here knew her as the centered, hard-to-ruffle woman she’d become. She’d even Hypno-Birthed her way through an eighteen-hour delivery, thank you very much.

      No one here was familiar with the Eden Carter who’d struggled through each painful day of her youth like a salmon slogging upstream. Back then her burdens had seemed to weigh more than she did, and sometimes she’d release her frustration by picking fights that weren’t even hers.

      Involuntarily her gaze met the speaker’s. What was his name? He was one of the Logans, but belonged to a branch of the family that didn’t have much to do with the Children’s Connection, as far as she knew.

      His articulate brows had hiked to express surprise then lowered quickly to a frown. At first glance he appeared almost confused, but as Eden watched he gathered his wits and smiled tightly, gearing up for a fight if necessary.

      An answering thrill of anticipation shot through her, catching her off guard. She willed the feeling to pass and to leave in its stead a healing serenity.

      “I’m sure we’re all interested in what you have to say, Ms….?”

      Oh, geez. Move on, buddy. Please, move on. “Carter,” she muttered.

      “Ms. Carter.” Silencing the monitor that had gone to blue screen, he flicked on the overhead lights and turned toward her again. “I realize you weren’t here for the entire presentation, but you’ve obviously had a strong reaction to what you did see.”

      Eden’s eyes narrowed to mirror his. The gauntlet had been tossed. Challenge vibrated beneath the committed politeness of his words. He’d invited her comments and undermined them in a single breath.

      “There’s a seat at the head of the table.” He gestured with an innocence that would melt butter, but she understood that his intention was to put her on the spot. “Of course, you’re welcome to stand if you prefer.” He stepped to the side, indicating he was just as pleased as could be to give her the floor.

      Eden smiled, as innocently as he. You don’t scare me, bub. I went through back labor.

      Adopting her smoothest gliding walk, she approached the front of the room, plate of cookies and water bottle in hand, and never broke eye contact with him.

      As she drew near, she saw that his eyes were blue and that he was older than he’d seemed from across the room. On a bet, she’d risk good money that he was mid-to late thirties, at least. Her initial impression had been that he was the born-with-a-silver-spoon type, but the closer she got the less untouched by life he seemed.

      She stood no more than a foot away when she noted the tension around his eyes, eyes that were almost as blue as hers СКАЧАТЬ