The Baby Deal. Kat Cantrell

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      “I’m sorry about Grant and Donna,” she said right away. The deaths of his friends and business partners was no doubt fresh on his mind. “How was the funeral?”

      “Long.” Grief welled inside his sea-glass-green eyes.

      She could still see clear through them, straight into the wrenching agony of having to bury his best friends. Her primal, unchecked reaction to his emotions was frighteningly unchanged as well—a strong urge to soothe, to heal. To hold on to him until the pain fled.

      Instead of reaching for him, she clasped her fingers together in a tight weave. They were virtually strangers now, no matter how abnormal it seemed. No matter how convinced she’d been that time would surely have dimmed the shimmering, irrational dynamic between them.

      It hadn’t. But she’d pretend it had.

      Once, she’d been so drawn to his lust for life, to his powerful personality and his passion for everything—especially her—that he’d engulfed her, until she couldn’t see the surface anymore. It was too much. He was too much.

      She’d never been enough for him.

      So why was he here? Instead of jumping right into it, she went with a safer subject. “Tell me about the funeral.”

      “We did both services together. Better that way, to get it all over with. Closed casket. It was easier. I didn’t have to see them.”

      “Of course,” she murmured. It wasn’t like they’d had a choice.

      Grant and Donna Greene had died in the explosion of an experimental ship designed for space tourism. News stations had continually replayed the clip, but Juliana couldn’t imagine the couple being inside the craft when it blew. It was too ghastly. Instead, she remembered Shay’s friends the way she’d last seen them eight years ago—standing on a bungee platform, sun beating down on the four of them as they waited to plunge into the unknown.

      One by one, they’d jumped. First Shay, because he never failed to be first in line for whatever new thrill he’d conceived. Then Grant jumped, then Donna. They’d all jumped.

      Except Juliana.

      She couldn’t—couldn’t even peer over the edge. She’d just backed away with a wordless shake of her head, too overcome to speak. Too overwhelmed by the slippery darkness encroaching on her consciousness.

      Shay was fearless. She wasn’t. They didn’t make sense together, and she’d known he’d eventually realize that, eventually grow bored with her at best, or resentful at worst.

      She’d just realized the truth first.

      She shook her head now and focused on the breathtaking mountains dominating the view through the floor-to-ceiling glass opposite her chair. She’d moved on, moved to New Mexico from Dallas for a reason. That hadn’t been her place, in a relationship with a man who thrived on the indefinite, with whom she couldn’t imagine a future. Or children. Or a normal marriage.

      In New Mexico, she could find her balance in structure and order, the opposite of what her home life had been while growing up, the opposite of what she’d had with Shay. She could build a safe life firmly planted on the ground.

      It just wasn’t happening quite like she’d planned.

      “How are you coping?” she asked. Her Dr. Cane voice betrayed nothing of the sharp and vivid memories fighting for her attention.

      Eric disliked her Dr. Cane voice, disliked it when she answered all his questions with questions. Shay didn’t seem at all bothered that she’d retreated behind her degree.

      “Taking it day by day right now.” Shay coughed and stared at the ceiling for a long time. “Greene, Greene and Shaylen has some good people running the show and that’ll continue until I figure out some things.”

      “I’m so sorry, Shay. Let me get you a drink.”

      “First I have to tell you why I’m here. The will …” He cleared his throat. “Grant and Donna had a son. You probably heard. Their will named me as the guardian.”

      Her lungs contracted. That poor, motherless baby had been shuttled around with little regard, no doubt, for the potential trauma. Instinctively, she cupped her own barren womb and swallowed. “The news did mention a baby, but I assumed he went to relatives.”

      “I am a relative,” Shay shot back. “Not by blood, but Grant was my brother in every way.”

      Juliana blinked at the fierceness clamping his mouth into a hard line. “Yes, I didn’t mean anything by the term.”

      Shay backhanded a dark caramel-shot thatch of hair off his forehead. Almost every day of the two years they’d been together, he’d worn a baseball cap to keep that wavy mane out of his face. Had he traded the cap for something else or was he always bareheaded now?

      “Sorry,” he said. “It’s been a hellacious couple of weeks. I’ll get to the point. I’m a dad now. I owe Grant’s kid the best shot at that I can give him. But I can’t do it by myself. I need your help.”

      “My help? I haven’t seen Grant and Donna since college.”

      Even then, they’d been part of Shay’s world, not hers. The three were always together, poring over some complicated schematic. Muttering about accelerants and a myriad of other baffling rocket science terms. Three of the best minds in a generation hashing out improbable solutions for the optimal way to get off the ground. Always in a hurry to leave the earth—and Juliana—behind.

      “You’re a kid expert. That’s what I need.”

      He’d been keeping tabs on her. Since she’d kept tabs on him, it shouldn’t have come as a shock. Except Michael Shaylen’s name graced the headlines every week, especially the past couple of years, once the cascade of government contracts awarded to GGS Aerospace catapulted its three founders onto the short list of billionaires under the age of thirty.

      The story of her life was considerably less newsworthy. A dissertation arguing for more traditional child-rearing methods. Marriage to a compatible man. Four failed in vitro attempts. One quiet divorce and a year of floundering. But she was on track now, with a thriving psychology practice and the beginnings of a new parenting book. If she couldn’t have a baby, she’d help other parents be the best they could be.

      Much better than her own parents had ever been. They didn’t know half of what had happened to her and didn’t care to know. They’d always been too caught up in moving to the next town one step ahead of creditors to notice their daughter’s problems, so she’d stopped telling them how rootless she’d felt. She’d stopped telling anyone.

      All her angst, all her longing would be funneled into the book she’d conceptualized a few weeks ago. She’d birth a legacy instead of a baby.

      “Yes, I’m a child psychologist. How does that make me what you need?”

      “How do I raise him? How do I care for him?” Shay met her gaze and the strength of his plea hummed through the air. The years vanished as her flesh pebbled like it always had when provoked with that searing intensity. “Anyone can show me how to mix formula and change diapers. I’m asking you to teach me to be a father.”

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