Page 16 of Pipe Dreams
In the next two weeks, she needed to select one of the donors on her short list and have the surprisingly expensive vials of sperm shipped FedEx to the clinic of the reproductive endocrinologist she’d been seeing in Manhattan.
And truly? Shopping for your baby daddy was a pretty weird experience. Take donor number 87455, on top of the pile. The fertility lab didn’t provide a name or a recent photo—those were kept private. But there was a picture of 87455 at age four. He’d been a cute preschooler, with shiny brown hair and a slightly devious smile. Currently twenty-four years old, he was pursuing a graduate degree in chemical engineering. He’d played lacrosse for a division III school. His parents were of English, German and Latvian descent. His hobby was playing the ukulele.
He was 5’11”, dark brown hair, 187 pounds. His father had been treated for prostate cancer, but there were no other significant medical issues in the family. Her gaze lingered on that baby picture. A science nerd who liked music—that was appealing.
The process was oddly like reading profiles on a dating site. No matter how cute he’d been as a toddler, donor 87455 was a real, flawed person out in the world somewhere. He might be charming and kind. Then again, he might have an irritating laugh and a mean streak.
Did it matter, though? If she had a baby, it would be the two of them against the world. She squinted down at the smiling boy on the page, imagining what a blend of her genes and his would look like.
She turned the page and read the next profile again. She’dnarrowed it down to these five finalists, out of the thousands on the sperm bank’s website. Once she made a decision, the winning sperm would be FedExed to her doctor in time for her ovulation date.
Each vial of sperm cost a whopping $600, and the insemination procedure itself would set her back more than a thousand more. Luckily, the Kattenberger corporation had excellent health benefits, including fertility coverage. During the open enrollment period last fall, she’d switched to the Platinum plan specifically with this strategy in mind.
A shadow fell over her page. Lauren slammed the folder shut and glared in the direction of whoever had disturbed her.
Of course her visitor turned out to be Mike Beacon, who didn’t seem to take notice of her obvious wish to be left alone. The jerk even lifted up the satchel she’d left guarding the empty seat and tucked it under the chair in front of him, sitting down beside her.
Damn. It. All.
“Hi,” he said quietly.
Lauren spread her hand onto the cover of the folder and stared down at her shiny fingernails. If she had a child in a year or so, weekly manicures would have to fall by the wayside. But she was ready for a change.
“Lauren,” he said, his voice rough. “I’m so sorry for Elsa’s rudeness. I chewed her out, and I’m going to make her apologize to you.”
“Don’t,” she said quickly. “It’s nothing.”
“Lauren,” he whispered.
The sound of her name on his lips scraped her insides raw. And when she lifted her chin to meet his dark eyes, she got a little trapped in the warmth she found there. “What?” she said a little sharply, if only to break the spell.
“It’snotnothing. You shouldn’t have to take any flak for what happened a long time ago.”
“Seriously?” She shouldn’t pick a fight with him. That way lay the abyss. But could he really be so clueless?
He blinked, and the light in his eyes dimmed a little. “Yeah. I don’t want her making you feel bad.”
“Riiiight,” Lauren said slowly. “Elsa is achild, and I feel nothing but sympathy for her. Whatever angry thoughts she has, I don’t blame her. But you have no idea what other people said, Mike. What theystillsay.”
His rugged brow furrowed. “About what?”
“Aboutme.” She knew she should just let this go. But discomfort had churned in her gut for weeks now. “Last night I went into the reception room”—that’s where the wives and families wait for the players after the game—“to distribute the comp tickets to game six. Those women still look at me like they smell something rotten.”
“Why?”
Why. Jesus. “Because I’m their worst nightmare. The other woman. I’m the evil bitch who nearly wrecked your fairy tale.”
Mike’s jaw dropped. “What fairy tale? And you wereneverthe other woman.”
“Please,” she hissed. “They don’t care about the timeline. The minute you walked out on me you became the hero who went back to his family. To everyone else I was proof that karma is real. My own father looked me in the eye and said, ‘That’s what you get for messing around with a married man.’”
He gaped at her. “That’s obnoxious, Lauren. He should have never said that to you.”
“How big of you to say so,” she snapped, realizing with horror that she was about to cry. “You’d like to correct my father’s behavior. And you want to make your thirteen-year-old apologize to me, too. That ishysterical.Because”—She gulped back her tears and looked him straight in the eye—“who’s the only one who really harmed me?”
She knew her point hit home because his face went absolutely pale. “I am.”
“Good guess! And two years later I’m still waiting forthe only apology that ever mattered.” Now her eyes were stinging and her throat was closing up. Lauren stood up in a hurry, but his giant body was in the freaking way. “Would you just...move,” she whispered hoarsely.
