Their Newborn Gift

Reilly stared hard at her. ‘She’s a great kid.’

It almost killed her to deliver a flat smile. ‘She is. The best.’

She stepped up to the paddock fence as one of her horses walked over. As always, she drew comfort from Goff’s softness and courage from his warmth. She could feel Reilly’s eyes on her through the silence. He stepped closer behind her.

‘Lea, if there was…’ He seemed uncertain; it didn’t suit him. He cleared his throat. ‘If there was a way despite my…’

Lea’s radar began to bleep. But, no, she’d felt like this walking up his stairs, and look how that had worked out. She forced down the little spike of hope, turned to him with a pur-posefully bland expression.

His eyes raked over her, wondering, worrying. ‘I told myself I wanted nothing to do with you. Even for Molly,’ he said. ‘But I lay there last night thinking about this little pixie of a kid and how she looks just like me at her age. And I realised I couldn’t do nothing. She’s my daughter. My blood. I spent most of the night online researching her condition.’

His tanbark eyes burned with intensity and he shook his head with disbelief. ‘I didn’t tell you about my situation so you could feel sorry for me. That’s the last thing I want. But you need to understand this is not a small thing you’re asking. Quite apart from the philosophical considerations, as you so aptly put it, I just don’t have millions of cells to work with. You’re not asking for something minor.’

That made it sound like…Her heart started to thud.

He broke a long silence. ‘When investigations first began, one of my many medicos recommended freezing a sample for later comparison, assuming we’d have something later to compare with. They used most of it up running a fortune’s worth of tests.’

Lea’s breath evaporated. Most.

He turned and looked at her. ‘But there is a freezer in a lab in Perth and it contains one single remaining sample, about the size of one of Molly’s fingernails.’

Lea’s heart lurched to a halt.

‘If it’s like the others, it won’t have a lot in it, but it may just have enough. Enough to help Molly.’ He stared at her in silence while her mouth opened and shut like a baby barramundi.

Words simply would not come, trapped behind a lump the size of a football in her throat. She had a sudden flash of a teenaged Molly—healthy and happy, her whole life ahead of her—cantering a greying Goff around the paddock. And Reilly, the man with only one shot at fatherhood, who was willing to spend it on a daughter he’d only just discovered. A daughter whose parentage he’d not even asked for hard proof of, so strong was his instinctive recognition that she was his.

Lea pushed up onto her toes and threw her arms around Reilly’s surprised neck. For a moment, the very barest of moments, his arms crept around her and a fluttering sense of rightness ghosted through her. But then his hands slid upwards, gripped her shoulders and pushed her firmly away, his eyes locking onto hers. She felt instantly cold.

‘I’m doing this for Molly. Not for you. I have no interest in helping you beyond what it does for my daughter.’

She ignored the hurt snapping at her heels like a cattle dog, accustomed to forcing down personal pain. Her vision blurred with tears. ‘I understand.’

‘And it’s not without a price. There’s something I want in return.’

‘Anything.’

His dark eyes glittered. ‘Careful, you don’t know what I’m asking yet.’

There wasn’t a single possibility she hadn’t thought about before driving to Minamurra, a compromise she wasn’t willing to make. She’d already given him her body, albeit in a moment of grief-stricken insanity. There was nothing he could ask that she wasn’t ready to grant. For Molly.

She tossed her head back and met his gaze head-on. ‘What do you want?’

‘First, I want to be able to see Molly regularly. I want to be part of her life.’

Lea took a deep breath. Since he was the one saving Molly’s life, that wasn’t unexpected. She would watch him like a hawk until she could determine whether he was a man like her father…or something else.

She nodded slowly. ‘Agreed.’

Reilly looked at her, his dark gaze unfathomable, probing, intense. The hairs on Lea’s neck stood to attention and her skin tingled.

‘And second…’

Here it comes. He was going to ask her for a physical com-mitment. A tiny part of her wasn’t dreading it. She remembered every moment from five years ago and the primal haven that was his embrace.

‘…I want custody of the child we make together.’

Gravity suddenly altered its fundamental principles. Lea would have gone down if not for Reilly’s iron grip on her upper arm.

‘Given the sacrifice I’m making, it seems a reasonable trade,’ he said. ‘You get Molly’s cordblood, I get an heir.’

CHAPTER THREE

LEA’S skin prickled despite the morning heat. To find hope only to have it ripped violently away again…Her hands shook. Her voice was strained.

‘No.’

‘Lea, think about—’

‘No!’ She marched off toward her house, heart thumping painfully. She needed to be close to Molly right now. Badly. How could he think, even for a moment, that she would…could…? Her chest tightened like a slingshot. She spun round, wounded beyond measure that he thought that of her. ‘You cannot ask that. It’s not fair.’

‘How fair was it to rob me of a child? To bring her to me only when you needed something?’

‘I had no choice!’

‘Neither do I, Lea. You’re handing me a miracle. How can I just shrug that off?’ He pursued her across the house-paddock, snagged her arm and spun her back round to him. ‘I remember something you said when we were together, about how discon-nected you felt from the world.’

‘I said way too much that weekend.’ Her determination to keep her distance had lasted all of an hour. After that first sweet time together, she’d opened up to him like he was her confes-sor, believing she’d never see him again.

‘I don’t have to tell you about loneliness, Lea. Surely you can understand why your request might be like a beacon in the darkness? The chance I believed I’d never have?’

Lea’s chest lifted and fell with her tumbling thoughts. Of course she could understand it. Molly had been her own beacon, even the very idea of Molly. It was why it had been so easy for her subconscious to subvert her morals five years ago and keep the pregnancy a secret. Her father had done such a prize job on her trust in men—in anyone—she’d given up any hope of meeting someone to have a child with. To have one simply gifted to her…It had felt very fated. Divine.

Was that how he was feeling? Damn him. ‘Reilly, you’re asking me to give you my child.’

‘And you’re asking me to give you mine.’

Lea blinked furiously, realising for the first time just how much she was asking. Her mind worked frantically to find escape. ‘Do you have any idea how to be a father? How will you possibly raise a child alone?’

‘You managed.’ He rushed on as Lea opened her mouth. ‘And, before you play the “I’m a woman” card, ask yourself whether you’d accept that if you were in my position.’

Lea’s mouth snapped shut with a click of teeth.

He stepped closer. ‘I’m granting you the last of my sperm. What you need to save Molly. I understand the price is high but so are the stakes for me.’

She stared at him through watery eyes. ‘It’s more than high. I can’t do it.’

Reilly stiffened his back. ‘Then I’ll fight you for Molly.’