Mission Creek Mother-To-Be

“Oh, Jeff, don’t be silly, they don’t keep men in test tubes here,” she teased.

“They keep the essence of them there, and don’t change the subject. You’ve got plenty of time to go about this in the usual way and you know it.”

“I already tried that.”

“One bad husband doesn’t mean that there’s no one good out there.”

Melanie laughed. “Maybe not, but it certainly opened my eyes to some of the bad that’s out there.”

“Your relationship with Michael wasn’t all bad.”

“Bad enough.” Michael Mason had entered her life as a financial advisor and had left it as a financial liability. The divorce had cost her millions, but it was worth it to get rid of a man who had become more domineering and intimidating with every passing month. The only good thing, if you could call it good, that had come from the relationship was she’d learned early on about medical problems that would make it very difficult for her to conceive a child. One doctor had given her a one-in-a-hundred chance, though to her it felt like one in a million.

Which was a main reason she’d decided upon her current course of action.

“Why not just wait a couple of years?” Jeff implored. “Mr. Right might be just around the corner.”

“Even if he was, and I know he’s not, a couple of years won’t do it.” She tapped her foot on the brakes and glanced right and left as she rolled over some railroad tracks. “Think about it. Say, hypothetically, I meet a guy today. We’d have to date for at least a year before I could trust him enough to even consider sleeping with him—”

“A year?”

“At least. Remember what happened with Roberto?”

“Ah, yes, the pool boy.”

“He wasn’t a pool boy and you know it. He was the landscape artist. And a con artist,” she added miserably. Roberto Loren had been a huge mistake. A flirtation gone out of control. Melanie had met him when he’d come to redesign the grounds of her estate in Maui. They’d spent the summer flirting and dating, and eventually took a trip to his home in Majorca together, where she found out, the hard way, two crucial facts: first, that Roberto was not divorced as he’d said but still quite married with three young children; and second, that he’d set the whole thing up so he could have scandalous-looking pictures taken pool-side, with his children present, which he could sell to the tabloids.

His trashy book on the affair was due to hit the stores this week.

“Okay, I can see why you’d want to take some time to get to know and trust a man,” Jeff conceded. “Maybe do a background check. I’ll give you a year for that.”

“Right,” she said. “So I’m thirty-one right there. Then there’s the time spent trying to get pregnant. You know about my problems there. I already tried for two years with Michael, to no avail. And I was younger then. It could take three, four years now, or even more.”

“Or a month.”

Melanie scoffed. “Those odds are a million to one, as you well know. And with every year that passes, conception grows more difficult. The already minuscule window of opportunity gets smaller and smaller, and the risk of birth complications increases dramatically.” She’d memorized these arguments over the past year of repeating them to herself. “Now, where was I?”

“You were almost forty, I think.”

“Right.” There was a blue hospital sign ahead and Melanie slowed the car and stopped at a red light. “And that’s just the first child. What if I want more?” She felt the questioning gaze of the person in the car next to her and lowered her voice. “I’d have to start all over again with—”

“Stop!” Jeff cried into the receiver, just as the stoplight turned green.

Melanie pressed the accelerator, turned the car left onto Mission Creek Drive and kept her eyes open for Mission Creek Memorial Hospital. “I’ve made myself clear, then?”

“Crystal.” He sounded defeated, but she knew Jeff well enough to know he’d resurrect the subject countless times before it was truly too late. “So how is Texas?”

“Hot,” Melanie answered, tipping her face gratefully toward the summer sun. “Wonderfully hot and sunny. I may never leave.”

“That’s exactly what I was afraid of when you left London. You may have lived here for the past fifteen years or so, but you’re still an American at heart.”

“And on my passport,” Melanie added. She’d grown up in the United States, living first in San Francisco and then in Dallas from ages five to fourteen. After her parents’ death when she was just fifteen, she had lived primarily in London, first attending an exclusive girls boarding school on the orders of her parents’ executor, then, after a brief stint at the Cordon Bleu in Paris, returning to the University of London where she studied art history.

She’d married Michael Turner directly after graduating. They had divorced just under three years later. In the ensuing five years, Melanie had focused her energies on the many charitable organizations her parents had established and patronized, but her life still felt empty. Despite everything she had, all she truly wanted was a family. Her optimism about that was fading fast. It didn’t help that the only men she’d met since her divorce were either party boys or opportunists, after her money and fame.

So Melanie decided she was through with men, through with romance. She did, however, still want a family of her own. So she’d done some research and learned that the fertility clinic at Mission Creek Memorial Hospital was one of the best in the world, as well as one of the most discreet. She’d come in part because of the clinic’s reputation and in part because, after all these years, she was finally ready to come home. Texas still felt like home.

“So what are you doing right now?” Jeff wanted to know.

“Right now I’m in the car. I’m on my way to meet with a family planning counselor,” she said. “A Dr. Cross. Doesn’t he sound nice? As I understand it, I have a quick chat with him, assure him that I know what I’m doing, and then bingo, I’m off for the procedure. Or at least the first one.” She smiled at the thought, although she was well aware she might need multiple tries. Still she felt it was best to be optimistic. “Who knows? Next time you hear from me, I might be pregnant!” She hung up the phone and returned her full attention to the road before her, literally and metaphorically.

When she arrived at the hospital, she strode straight to the elevator, pressing the button with a flourish. “One step closer,” she said excitedly under her breath.

“I beg your pardon?”

Startled, she whirled to see a man standing there. He was tall and dark, with the most striking pale-green eyes she’d ever seen. “I—I was just talking to myself.”

“Oh. Sorry. Didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”

She smiled. “I guess someone who’s talking to herself has to accept eavesdroppers as part of the deal and hope none of them is a psychiatrist.”

He gave her a strange smile, and she immediately thought her joke was idiotic. Now he probably thought she was, too.

“Just kidding,” she added, in case there was any doubt.

“That’s what I figured.”

His eyes were mesmerizing, like a hypnotist’s watch. She couldn’t look away.

He was looking at her, too, and he frowned slightly, as if trying to place her. “I’m sorry, but do we know each other?”

“No, no. I don’t think so. But you do look…familiar,” she finished lamely. He didn’t look familiar at all. This was not a face she would have forgotten.

The bell dinged behind her, and she heard the elevator doors shoosh open. She turned and walked into the mirrored elevator, conscious not so much of the thirty Melanies that seemed to step on with her, but the thirty tall, dark-haired, green-eyed strangers.

She reached out to press the eighth-floor button at the same time he did on the opposite side of the door. She glanced at him and said with a nervous little laugh, “Popular floor.”

He smiled. “Most of the offices are there. Patient rooms are on the other floors.”

“Oh.” She shrugged. “I’m not familiar with the building. This is my first time here.”

“Where are you headed?”

“To see Dr.—” She stopped, reflexively protecting her privacy. “A specialist.” She gave a dismissive smile and watched the numbers as the elevator climbed.

The man nodded politely and didn’t ask questions.

It occurred to her then that she wasn’t entirely sure which suite she was headed for. Glad for the chance to do something other than say inane things to a stranger, she opened her purse and began rooting for the appointment card they’d sent to her in England.