The Baby Bind

“So why are you bringing up the subject of adoption now?” he asked, pleased that he managed to sound reasonable once again.

“Because I still want to be a mother—I still need to be a mother—and now I have the chance. But only if you’ll help me,” Charlotte answered in a rush, the look in her eyes one of pleading. “We’ve been approved to adopt a baby girl—as a couple.”

She set the paper and attached photograph on the island countertop and pushed it toward him with a fingertip. But Sean was too stunned by what she’d just said to acknowledge it even with a glance.

Adopt a baby girl? Was Charlotte nuts?

“All I’m asking is that you go with me to Kazakhstan to complete the adoption process,” she added, so amazingly calm and collected that all he could do was stare at her in disbelief. “Of course, we’ll have to pretend that we’re still happily married and living together in Mayfair, but only for a few months. Then you can move back here again and file for divorce if that’s what you want to do. I promise that I’ll agree to whatever terms you choose, and I won’t ask you for anything more ever again—not even child support.”

“Surely you can’t be serious—” Sean began, still unable to believe that she was not only asking something so preposterous of him, but also doing it in such an amazingly blithe manner.

He had prepared himself for the revelation of a serious illness, a request for a divorce, or in the best of all possible worlds, an offer of reconciliation on his terms. But to even suggest that he travel halfway around the world with her— to Kazakhstan, of all places—to adopt a foreign child he neither wanted nor needed in his life… She couldn’t possibly be thinking straight, could she?

“I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life,” Charlotte assured him, her voice wavering, but not her gaze. “Please, Sean…please, please help me bring our little girl home.”

“She’s not our little girl, Charlotte—”

“Yes…yes, she is. Just look at her—she’s beautiful….”

Sean didn’t want to do it—didn’t want to look at the small color photograph attached to the sheet of paper lying on the countertop. But neither could he ignore completely the desperate urgency he heard in his wife’s voice.

Obviously she was well on the way to irrationality regarding this business of adoption. Maybe by cooperating with her just a little he’d eventually be able to calm her down enough to make her see reason.

His mouth set in a grim line, Sean stared at Charlotte for a long, unhappy moment. She continued to meet his gaze without flinching, and at the same time, pushed the photograph a tad closer to him across the countertop.

With a reluctance much greater than he should have been experiencing under the circumstances, Sean finally shifted his gaze to the small photograph. His eyes focused on the child’s face captured on it and his breath caught in his throat.

Not a tiny baby, but a toddler of more than a year in age, the little girl in the photo was beautiful, indeed. But she was also so much more than that. With her wispy brown hair and wide brown eyes, her pale porcelain skin and bow-shaped lips, she was the very image of his wife. There was something about the tilt of her little chin and the calm, direct expression on her face that also reminded him of…himself.

She could have been Charlotte’s child—and his, Sean thought, his heart softening unexpectedly. Anyone who saw the three of them together would easily assume Charlotte and he were the child’s biological parents.

For a long moment, he wondered why she looked so serious, then imagined how much fun it would be to make her giggle, just like Charlotte often did when he said something amusing. Surely that was a familiar spark of mischief he saw in the little girl’s big brown eyes.

Only he hadn’t the first clue how to make a child giggle, Sean realized. More than likely, with his background and upbringing, he’d actually be more apt to make her cry. Then Charlotte would sweep her off to cuddle and coddle, leaving him on the outside looking in.

Reminded all over again of the perils inherent in his vision of fatherhood, Sean gave himself a firm mental shake. He simply couldn’t afford to waver any further from the position he’d already taken. Bad as it was to be alone, being hurt and alone would be even worse.

“You’re not going to help with the adoption, are you?” Charlotte asked, the threat of tears evident in her quiet voice.

Having judged his mood all too accurately, she stood now, too, and reached for the photograph with a trembling hand.

Sean wanted to give Charlotte all the reasons why he couldn’t help her. He wanted to ask her, yet again, to understand and accept how he felt about being a father. But what he found himself actually saying surprised him as much as it must surely have surprised his wife.

Catching her hand in his, he stopped her from picking up the photograph. Then, in a gruff voice he barely recognized as his own, he made the only offer he could in good conscience.

“If adopting this child is that important to you, then I will help you in any way I can,” he said.

“Oh, Sean—” Charlotte began, the smile lighting up her face a glorious thing to behold.

“But,” he interrupted her, his voice flat and his gaze steady as he held up a warning hand to her.

He refused to be diverted from the course he’d chosen by either acknowledging or encouraging her initial joy.

“What?” she asked with confusion, her smile quickly fading.

Sean hesitated for the space of a heartbeat. Then he laid out his terms in a steely tone.

“I’ll help you only with the understanding that once we’re home again and you’re settled with the child, our marriage will be over, and I’ll be filing for divorce.”

Chapter Three

Charlotte stared at Sean, the echo of his last words resounding between them in the brightly lit kitchen, punctuated only by the still steady drumbeat of rain against the window above the sink.

She felt as if she’d just been treated to a wild, unwanted roller-coaster ride. The emotional ups and downs she’d experienced in the space of just a few minutes had taken her from hope to disappointment, joy to confusion, then to the final rattling halt of sad realization.

Charlotte had seen the way Sean’s expression had warmed and softened when he’d first allowed himself to look at the photograph of the little girl they’d been chosen to adopt. She had sensed, as well, the melting of his heart as he’d wordlessly acknowledged how eerily the child’s physical features resembled their own.

She had been so sure that he must have thought—as she had—that the toddler in the photo had been born halfway around the world, in answer to all her prayers, especially for them.

In all honesty, his reaction to the photograph had seemed to mirror hers so completely that Charlotte had been certain that Sean would be able to set aside his concerns about his ability to be a good father at last and gladly agree to pursue the adoption with her. He had to have seen, as she had, that here was the child she had been meant to mother. Here, indeed, was the child she had been meant to call her own.

But in the blink of an eye, he’d withdrawn into himself again, the lines and angles of his handsome face deepening. Having obviously reminded himself that by adopting a child he would also be taking on the burden of fatherhood— a burden he no longer wanted—he had visibly hardened his heart to her.

Charlotte had been ready to put away the photograph, to admit defeat and start the long drive back to Mayfair. Sean had always been a decisive man. Once his mind was made up, he rarely, if ever, changed it.

The six months he’d chosen to live in the New Orleans town house rather than with her in Mayfair were proof enough of how true that simple fact remained. Had she remembered how unwavering he could be several hours earlier as she stood beside her mailbox back home, she likely could have saved herself a lot of grief.

He had surprised her, though, with a one-two punch that had momentarily rendered her speechless. First he had offered to help her with the adoption in any way he could, sending a shaft of joyous hope straight to her heart. But then he had laid out his terms in such a cool, calm, businesslike manner that Charlotte had barely been able to swallow around the clog of anguish that lodged in her throat.

She knew that she shouldn’t have been all that surprised by the bargain Sean expected her to make with him. Six months ago he had stated very clearly how he’d felt about continuing their seemingly futile quest to conceive a child. He had also warned her only a few minutes ago that his feeling on the subject hadn’t changed.

But apparently Sean had made a decision regarding their marriage, as well. A firm decision, in fact, since he hadn’t given her any choice in the matter, had he?

He hadn’t said that she could either adopt the child or work with him to put their life together back on track again. He had simply offered to help her with the adoption, and then he’d said he would be filing for divorce.

Charlotte wasn’t sure what she would have done if Sean had actually asked her to choose between him and the child. She still loved him, just as she had almost since the first day she’d met him, and surely would until the day she died.

They had been so happy together for such a long time. He hadn’t been wrong back in June, either, when he’d insisted that they could be happy together again without the baby she’d been so desperate to have.

Only then she’d been in the midst of a hormone-induced emotional turmoil that hadn’t allowed her to see reason in anything he’d had to say to her.

No, Charlotte didn’t think she would have ended her marriage to Sean in exchange for the chance to have a child. But if their marriage was already over in his mind, as it certainly seemed to be, then she might as well do whatever she could to at least have the child she’d always wanted, and had always believed she was meant to have.

“I realize that my terms probably seem harsh to you,” Sean added, finally breaking the silence that had stretched between them so uncomfortably for the past few minutes.

Letting go of her wrist, he took a step back from the island that separated them and crossed his arms over his chest again. Charlotte saw in his stance a reflection of the brook-no-argument mentality he’d adopted six months ago, and allowed herself a small inner sigh of resignation.

No sense making things more difficult than they had to be. He was willing to give her some of what she wanted from him, some of what she needed. Why risk having him withdraw the offer he’d willingly made by voicing an all-or-nothing demand that he obviously didn’t have the heart to honor?