Their Newborn Gift

‘No!’ The fierce yell practically tore its way out of her constricted throat.

Reilly stood his ground and pointed at her heaving chest. ‘There, Lea. Take those feelings you’re only barely managing to suppress and multiply them by one hundred. That’s how you’re going to feel if you walk away from this chance—Molly’s last chance—and she dies.’

It was all too easy to imagine how that day would feel. She thought about it every day. Lea’s whole body shook. Months of suppressed agony, of having to be strong for Molly while fearing the worst, hit her full in the chest. She nearly crumpled.

Nearly. At the last second she swayed back into a surer position. Her voice was thick and strained. ‘There must be some other way.’

His hoarse laugh grated on already tattered nerves. ‘Sure—you could marry me and raise the baby together.’

She smiled tightly at him. ‘I’ll pass, thank you. When I said you were my last choice, I meant it.’

His lips thinned. ‘What happened to you doing whatever it takes to save Molly?’

‘You can’t tell me that’s your preference?’ she gaped.

‘Tie myself to a woman who lied and cheated me out of a child? Who only surfaces when she wants something, and who asks me to be a stud-bull?’ His contempt was palpable. ‘You even need to ask?’

Silence. Goff snorted in his paddock.

Finally Reilly spoke. ‘I’ve told you what I want, the terms under which I’m prepared to help Molly.’

Lea’s snarl was heartfelt. ‘What sort of a man sets terms on saving his daughter’s life?’

Brown eyes blazed. ‘A desperate one.’

Lea clung to the doorframe and watched Molly sleep. Tired as she still was, she slumbered deep and long, her breathing shallow, her skin almost translucent. Surrounded by her toys, she looked for all the world like she was laid out in state.

Macabre but at peace.

Few days were peaceful for Molly, and they were getting fewer. She’d gone far beyond benefiting from treatment; it was now essentially for survival. Without the stem cells, Molly wouldn’t live to go to school.

What Reilly was asking was effectively blackmail. To put such a condition on the life of a child. It was why she’d thrown him and his selfish needs off her property, sent him packing back to Minamurra.

What sort of a man wouldn’t give up even the last of his sperm to save a dying child?

A desperate one, he’d said.

Not so desperate he hadn’t thought the finer details through and laid it all out for Lea as she’d stared, horrified, at him. She would carry the baby to term and doctors could harvest the umbilical stem cells. Then she and Molly would head back to Yurraji, and the baby would be packed off with a nice big tin of formula to the home of a man with no wife who knew nothing about rearing children. He didn’t even have brothers and sisters to have learned from.

It meant nothing that she’d seen a softer side to him five years ago, a side that had potential to grow into the sort of patience and compassion required in a parent. She’d seen not a hint of that today. Or yesterday. The new Reilly Martin was one-hundred percent diamond-ore; cold, hard and unmoveable.

She shook her head. This was the man she’d let into Molly’s life. Molly she could at least buffer, but she couldn’t protect a new child, living alone three hours away with a monster.

Reilly’s minimal interactions with Molly flashed through her mind like a reluctant slideshow—how instinctively gentle he’d been with her. Okay, so he wasn’t likely to be a total monster, but still—what kind of man would make such a request?

What kind of woman would? It was true she was asking him to give up a child.

But in all her planning and visualisation it had never occurred to her he would care about the baby that would result, let alone want it. The paradigm she was working from was five years out of date: Reilly Martin, king of the circuit; lover of women; drinker of beer.

Wanter of heirs, apparently.

She shuddered in a breath. If anything happened to Lea, Molly would go to Reilly. She’d created that reality the moment she’d driven down Minamurra’s long, tree-lined drive. Never mind that her will named Anna and Jared as Molly’s guardians; Reilly would not rest until his daughter was with him. His threat to fight for Molly might only have been a ploy to win an argument, but if Lea wasn’t around to intervene, her daughter would grow up a Martin.

Then again, without this particular Martin, her daughter wouldn’t grow up at all.

The dark, ugly thought crept through and brought her back to Reilly’s request. To give him the baby when it was born; it would virtually be surrogacy. The incubation of a child that wouldn’t be hers, never mind that biologically it was. She’d considered doing it for Anna and Jared, but her sister wouldn’t hear of it, wouldn’t put someone she loved through the pain of surrendering a child.

What Reilly was proposing would be just the same, except she’d be taking her payment in the form of stem cells, more priceless than any money.

But giving up the baby…

Molly’s eyes began to shift beneath her lashes. The anxious twitching of her fingers meant it was more nightmare than dream. Lea crossed to sink down onto Molly’s bed and placed her hand gently on her daughter’s chest, speaking quietly to her. The twitching ceased immediately. A moment later her damp brown eyes fluttered open wide. She stretched up for a big hug and clung hard to Lea’s neck. Lea kissed her and kept up the reassuring murmurs.

‘Where were you, Mummy?’ Molly’s breathless little voice asked. Even hugging her mother made her puff. Lea held tighter.

‘I was right here, chicken.’

Her little face frowned with confused concentration as she fell back onto her pillow. ‘You were gone. I was alone.’

Lea smoothed Molly’s fringe back from her eyes. ‘Shh. No. I was here. I’m always going to be here, baby. You were dreaming.’

‘It was nice there. But I was alone. Don’t leave me alone, Mummy…’

Lea dug her fingernail into her thumb hard to channel the pain, to focus the grief, not to think about the symbolism of Molly’s dream. It took everything she had not to let the tears well up and spill over in front of her anxious daughter. Time enough for that later.

‘Do you feel like waking up now?’ Lea’s voice was painfully tight. Molly rubbed dark, deep eyes and shook her head.

‘Okay. How ’bout I sit with you here until you go back to sleep and I’ll make sure you don’t go back to the place where you were alone—okay?’

‘’Kay.’ Molly sucked her thumb into her mouth and then rolled onto her side. Lea tucked her in more firmly and gently rubbed her back until she felt her daughter’s breathing regulate. Then it was safe to let the tears creep out. They streamed, un-checked, down her face accompanied by the silent sobs she’d become so adept at.

Minutes passed and Lea’s whole body hurt from keeping the pain inside. She sucked in deep, shuddering breaths then tiptoed out of Molly’s room and headed for her mobile. She punched in Reilly’s mobile-phone number and pecked out a concise text-message with badly shaking fingers.

Just three words: I’ll do it.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE conception of their second child was a far cry from their first. Even Reilly appreciated the irony.

Three weeks of blood tests, injections, headaches and hormones, until Lea’s body artificially ripened to bursting point, followed by scans every three days until her eggs were perfect for harvesting. Then the city specialist who had been flown in accessed Reilly’s tiny, frozen sample and injected the healthi-est thaw survivor directly into one of Lea’s eggs.

Shame had been a near-permanent resident in Reilly’s throat, knowing there’d been barely any sperm left, the rest biologically massacred by his over-zealous immune system.

Now, Lea stared rigidly at the beige ceiling and did her best to ignore him and the six people in the room all fussing around the business end of her body where her legs were braced in stirrups and her hospital gown was tented over her bent knees. As if she needed the privacy from herself.

Reilly’s gut tightened and his temperature raised. He hadn’t realised how humiliating this would be for her when he’d insisted on being present for the implantation. Or that every muscle in her body would tremble uncontrollably. Empathy washed through him.

They’d tried to convince him it was nothing they hadn’t all seen before, but the excited buzz and the number of personnel present seemed to indicate an ICSI implantation was something several of them had very definitely not seen before in their remote hospital posting. He could see the bright lights, the graceless position, the room full of strangers, were all starting to get to her. Even with sedation slowly kicking in.