Page 39 of Fighting His Fate
“How about you stop with the smart comments and listen for a second? I told you, Joni was a scientist. A month before I went to BUD/s training for the SEALs, we went out for lunch. She told me some scary shit about high levels of infertility among returning soldiers from a certain area of Afghanistan. She and Luke were having trouble getting pregnant, and with her fertility research, she suggested I bank my sperm just in case. I figured why not. Better safe than sorry, right?” He shrugged.
“She jokingly asked if she could use my sperm if Luke’s didn’t pan out.” He remembered the conversation like it was yesterday, Joni’s image clear enough to touch, and a fresh wave of grief came over him. “We laughed it off at the time, but when I went to the clinic, there was a space to write in designated people who can use your sperm, giving them legal permission. I put their names down, took a picture of the form, and texted it to Joni with a note that said, ‘Just in case.’ We never talked about it again.”
He looked at the baby in his arms, the perfect eyes. The turned-up nose. The sweet curve of his tiny lips. He put his index finger on Theo’s palm, the boy’s hand closing around his finger. He never could have known what signing that form would mean, never could have appreciated the grandeur that could come from so small a gesture.
Grace sat down on the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry. I just assumed. I shouldn’t have been so quick to judge.”
“It’s all right. But there’s one piece of the puzzle that doesn’t make sense. A mystery. Months after that, I got a letter from the clinic saying my sperm would never impregnate anybody because of a genetic problem. There’s no fix for it, so as far as I know, I can’t even have kids.”
“Then they couldn’t possibly be yours.”
He stared at Theo, his gut telling him the boy was his flesh and blood. “Unless Joni found a way to fix the problem."
Grace’s eyes went wide. “She was studying how to genetically modify human sperm. She’d even authored an op-ed in theNew York Timesdefending the ethics of her work. It’s all online.”
“We need to know for sure if I am the father of these children.”
“And if you are?”
“Then the boys are proof positive of her work. Maybe that had implications for Fleming he didn’t like.”
“The purple diapers.”
Brett furrowed his brow. “What about them?”
“In Joni’s research, she talked about the possibility of unintended genetic consequences. Aberrations. Disease.”
“Like Damon’s Disorder.”
“Exactly.”
“Jesus Christ, the boys’ existence isn’t just proof the genetic modifications can be done. It’s proof they can create dangerous health problems in the resulting children. That’s it. That’s got to be it.” He dialed Mac and filled him in. Grace was staring at him when he hung up.
“What will you do if the boys are yours?” she asked. “Will you keep them?”
His throat constricted against a sudden surge of emotion. “I don’t know if I’m the man for the job.”
“You’re doing fine, as far as I can tell.”
“I have you. Without you, I’d be lost.” She looked away, busying herself with empty baby bottles and a stack of diapers. The tension between them was back, any hint of a connection enough to raise the walls around her in an instant. He needed to set the record straight. “Grace, about last night...”
She held up her hand but didn’t make eye contact. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“It wasn’t that I didn’t want t—”
Now she looked at him, snapping, “What part ofI don’t want to talk about itdo you not understand?”
She was hurt, that much was clear, and he had the uneasy feeling she’d bolt if the twins didn’t need her here. The thought made him more unhappy than he would have thought possible.
There was a knock at the door. “It’s Trace,” called a voice.
Brett sighed heavily. “We’ll talk later.”
She raised one eyebrow. “No, we will not.”
Even angry, she was beautiful. He ran a hand through his hair and crossed to the door, the thick dread of foreboding settling in his stomach. The longer this charade continued, the less likely he was to stick to his convictions and stay away from her in the night.
But HERO Force was here, and he had the manpower to find the answers they needed. And the sooner they did that, the sooner he and Grace could go back to normal.
