The Family They Chose / Private Partners: The Family They Chose / Private Partners

“I love you, too. Please don’t ever forget it, okay?”

He gave her one last hug before he walked down the red brick steps and got into the car. As soon as the vehicle pulled away, he took out his BlackBerry and dialed Cameron McInerney, his aide.

“Good morning, Cameron. I need you to do a background check on a Dr. Chance Demetrios of Boston. Hire a P.I. if you need to. I want to know everything about this guy, every move he makes.”

Jamison hung up the phone and slid it into the breast pocket of his coat. He stared out the window at the tall buildings of downtown Boston. It was his home, but this morning it felt so strange.

Soon enough he’d know if Dr. Demetrios was, indeed, no one, as Liv claimed … or if he was someone that Jamison needed to be concerned about.

Either way, he intended to discover exactly what his wife was keeping from him.

Chapter Five

The next day Olivia arrived at the institute early so that she could thank Paul for arranging her appointment with Chance Demetrios. True to form, he was back at work even though the institute was closed for the holidays for the rest of the week.

She rapped on his door. When he looked up, she wriggled her fingers at him.

“Hello, stranger,” he said, rising from his desk and walking to meet her. He pulled her into a ribcrushing bear hug. When he let her go, he asked, “Where’s Jamison?”

Olivia donned her best happy wife smile.

“He had to go back to D.C. yesterday.” She shrugged. “I was disappointed, but I understand that duty calls. He hated to disrupt our plans. He’s coming back next week, though.”

When Paul started nodding, she realized she was babbling and stopped.

“So how are you?” he asked.

“I’m doing fine. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help getting me an appointment with Dr. Demetrios today.”

He waved it off. “Oh, it was nothing. Both Chance and I are here this week. So I figured it would be a good opportunity to get you in. Otherwise, he’s pretty booked. Business is booming.”

Paul smiled proudly as he motioned her to sit down. Her brother was the consummate workaholic. Even so, he used to be worse before his fiancée, Ramona Tate, came into his life. Before they met, he rarely took a day off. Ramona had been good for him in that respect, and it was wonderful to see him so happy. Not only that, her brother’s love story was encouraging. His and Ramona’s relationship had grown out of the worst sort of adversity when Paul’s twin, Derek, had hired her without consulting either Paul or their sister, Lisa. Plus, Derek did not do a thorough background check. If he had, he would have discovered that Ramona was an investigative reporter intent on going undercover to write an unflattering exposé on the institute. Olivia was the only one of Gerald Armstrong’s kids who had opted out of the family business. She just wasn’t wired for business the way her brothers and sister were.

It was times like this that she was glad she’d followed her own path.

Olivia and her siblings had made their father proud by graduating from Harvard. But that’s where the similarities ended. Instead of studying business and medicine, Olivia had majored in literature and minored in ballet. In fact, in her sophomore year she’d had the great honor of being tapped as one of Harvard Ballet’s youngest assistant artistic directors. She’d spent her entire stint at Harvard performing with the company in which she’d taken such pride.

Even so, as her relationship with Jamison had become more serious, it had eventually eclipsed her love of dance and she’d given it up for marriage and a family of her own.

Despite her traditional values, she’d always danced to her own tune. Perhaps that was why she was having such a hard time letting Jamison dictate when they’d have children.

The situation with Ramona had caused a lot of family strain, and Olivia took heart in this perfect example of love conquering all. If her brother’s relationship could come up against such strife and survive, surely Jamison could forgive her extreme measures of starting their family. Because despite her husband’s belief otherwise, there was never a perfect time to have a baby. She was sure Jamison would understand that, once he held his child in his arms.

When Olivia got to Dr. Demetrios’s office, she was surprised when he asked her to come in and sit down rather than having her change into a gown and wait for him in one of the examination rooms.

She sat in a leather-upholstered chair across from his desk, clenching her hands, nervous and giddy at the same time.

“I’m glad you decided to come in, Mrs. Mallory.”

He was a handsome man, and Olivia was surprised that a woman hadn’t snatched him up by now. Her mind did a quick inventory of single friends who might a good match for him. The single list grew shorter every year. Not surprising, since Olivia and most of her friends were now happily married.

Happily married.

The thought made Olivia shift in her seat as she ignored the nagging voice that asked what she was doing here alone if she was happily married.

“Please call me Olivia.”

He smiled at her and pushed a wisp of dark hair off his forehead. “Certainly, Olivia.”

He cleared his throat and for the flash of a second, she noticed a hint of something in his chocolate brown eyes that didn’t bode well.

She tightened the grip on her hands, digging her fingernails into her palms.

“I don’t quite know how to say this other than to come right out and say it, but your symptoms indicate that you might be having trouble conceiving because it’s possible your body is going through early onset menopause.”

His words rang in her ears.

“Menopause?” she heard herself utter. “But I’m only twenty-nine years old, Doctor. How can that be possible?”

He raked a hand across his handsome face as if this wasn’t easy for him. “It’s rare, but it does happen. The blood tests I did last time showed low levels of estradiol, which indicates your ovaries are starting to fail.”

“You’ve known this for two months and you didn’t tell me?” she asked as a burning salty sting in the back of her throat brought tears to her eyes and nearly choked her.

“I’m deeply sorry,” he said. “I did try to contact you. My nurse even sent you a letter asking you to follow up with me, but you didn’t respond. Because of patient confidentiality laws, I couldn’t leave a more detailed message.”

She’d received the vague letter that had asked her to set a follow-up appointment to discuss her test results. She’d thought it meant that he wanted to discuss which procedure they’d try next time and she hadn’t followed through because of the trial separation.

How foolish she’d been thinking she had all the time in the world, that she could let nearly three months go by without making any effort to conceive. At least this further justified her being here today—her not mentioning to Jamison the meeting with Dr. Demetrios and making the decision to move ahead—all on her own.

“Do my brothers and sister know about this?” she asked. If they knew and hadn’t told her she might never be able to forgive them.

“No, they don’t know. Again, that’s because of confidentiality laws.”

Olivia swiped at a tear and Chance nudged a box of tissue toward her.

“But before, you said there was a slim chance that I could conceive.”

“I’m sorry. That was before I received the test results.”

Olivia swiped at the tears streaming down her face. It certainly wasn’t the news she wanted to hear, especially with Jamison being so far away … She had to be strong and hear him out. One step at a time. She’d do everything he said she had to do to reverse this condition and then maybe that would be the answer to Jamison’s and her fertility problems.

“As I’m sure you can understand, this comes as a total and complete shock, but I’m willing to do whatever needs to be done to reverse the situation. Please tell me, what’s caused this and most importantly, what can we do to correct it?”

Chance shifted in his chair, his handsome face looking pained.

“It’s hard to pin down the exact reason this has occurred, especially since there isn’t a family history of it. But I do have to speculate that your low body weight may have been a contributor. Have you always been this thin, Olivia?”

Her weight had always been a sensitive subject. A war she’d battled in much the same way as some people battled excess weight. She’d always been naturally thin, but as a ballerina she was encouraged to be even thinner. The thinner the better. But even though ballet had been a big part of her life before she’d met Jamison, she would’ve given it up and gotten downright plump if she’d known her low weight was causing such harm.